Hello, empowered principals. Welcome to episode 422.

Welcome to The Empowered Principal® Podcast, a not so typical educational resource that will teach you how to gain control of your career and get emotionally fit to lead your school and your life with joy by refining your most powerful tool, your mind. Here’s your host certified life coach Angela Kelly.

Today we’re going to talk about how can we invite luxury and how can we allow it, especially when we’ve been taught not to. It’s not humble, it’s not ladylike, it’s not becoming of you to want luxury in your experience, to want your school to look and feel and have a luxury vibe to it. And I’m not talking about pasting things up on the wall to make it look like luxury. I’m talking about the energy of it feeling luxurious. You could be in a school that is one of the lowest income schools, the least amount of money. It’s not about the money. It’s about the energy, the vibe, the mindset, the approach, the intention that we bring into our classrooms, into our hallways, onto our campuses, into our schools. Okay?

So luxury is a feeling that we experience. And luxury for you and your school and your situation might look and feel different than somebody else because as we said in day one, it’s in the eye of the beholder. It’s about gratitude and appreciation and enjoying the thing that you have. And then on day two, we get into that duality of luxury. With luxury, right? So with the example of my little mini fridge and my little snack box and my little, you know, coffee pot, my little baby one, it was so cute.

I had the responsibility of making sure it was stocked. And I, our superintendent made us all turn them off and clean them out for every long break. If we had a break of a week or longer, which basically was, you know, this time of year, we had to take everything out, make sure it was cleaned out. It was just, he knew a lot of people were getting these little mini fridges. So he’s like, “Please, clean them out, turn them off,” just to save electricity, energy, to ensure nothing goes wrong, just make sure they’re all unplugged. So we all did that. And it was another responsibility I had before each break, but it was one that I took on with joy to do that. I was happy to ensure that it was cleaned out and fresh products were put in, and the old products were out because what mattered to me, the luxury of having it mattered more than the responsibility of the luxury.

And but there is, you know, a duality. And sometimes that duality, we can be afraid of the responsibility that comes with the luxury. So when we get, you know, we ask for whether it’s human resources support, we need more hands on deck, or we need more photocopiers, or we need more materials, we need more paper, pens. At this day and age, you know, people are buying their own stuff in their classrooms. It would be nice just to be able to fund teachers with basic essential supplies that a school uses on the daily. So even that might be a luxury, pens, pencils, markers, crayons, paper, you know, tape, all the things, scissors, you know, computers, all of that. Those can be luxuries.

So for every luxury that we desire, we understand that there is a responsibility that comes with it. And today we’re going to talk about how we embrace that and own that and like take that on. Even if we don’t like to clean out the fridge, right? Even if we don’t like the duality part, we honor it and respect it and we take ownership of it. We do it because we love the luxury so much. We love the luxury enough to do the thing, right?

So I was talking about, you know, having there was a soda machine in our staff lounge. I ended up as one of the teachers getting assigned to like having to fill it because I was a kindergarten teacher and we released a little bit earlier each day was like, you know, 30, 40 minutes, something before the rest of the kids got out. So that gave me more time. So my principal said, “Hey, will you be the one to run to Costco and get the flats of soda and refill the machine?” It was, you know, I was happy to do it. It was a, was I always happy to do it in the moment? No, it was a lot of work. But I was happy to do it because it was a luxury for my peers, my staff. And I used the soda machine sometimes too.

So doing that job, my staff, and I was a teacher at the time, so my peers received the luxury of having the soda and having it always filled because I took on that ownership as a member of our team. And if it wasn’t me, somebody else would have done it. I just chose to do it. So there is a duality that comes with luxuries.

Now, if you want to talk like high-end luxuries, like getting a new playground or like big ticket items on your campus, like having, you know, hiring professional development to come in or having a new science center built or a new wellness room maybe, where there is a space where kids can go and have somebody who’s certified or qualified to work with them when they are dysregulated. Wouldn’t that be a luxury to when a child is dysregulated or an adult is dysregulated, there is a wellness room where they can go and they can regulate themselves in a private, safe space? That would be a luxury. That might be a big ticket item you’re looking at. Or maybe you’re looking at a prolonged professional development program that brings in this kind of work, that brings in someone like me where you would be getting coached on an ongoing basis. Right?

There’s big ticket items that are luxury items. There are small little things you can do for luxury. And it feels like the bigger the luxury, the more pressure of the duality of it and being able to hold the pressure of that duality, which is what we talked about yesterday. So check that one out because that really does make a difference. We can kind of stress about, well, I would love to have that luxury, but, you know, the pressure of having that, you know, the pressure of raising the funds for that wellness room or that science center or the new playground, that’s more pressure. And then, you know, having construction on campus, if you’re building a new space or getting a new playground, or you’re spending all of this money on some professional development or some kind of program, there’s pressure from your district like, “Okay, you decided this, let’s see results.” That kind of thing, right? So there’s pressure when you have luxuries.

Or on the personal side, right? I think we talked about this yesterday. You buy a really high-end car, the duality of that luxury car comes with maybe a higher sticker price or a higher registration tags, whatever, higher insurance rates perhaps, maybe, you know, it needs premium gas versus regular or it needs different kind of maintenance systems. So there is a bundle that comes with luxury. And that can, you know, push us back from we might want it, but do we want it enough? And that’s something to know. It’s something to take into account. You might say no to a luxury at this time because you might not have the bandwidth or the capacity to handle the pressures that also come with having that luxury. And it’s good to know inside like when you feel that it’s a yes or it’s a no, you’re taking into account the entire package of that luxury, right?

So let’s lean into the fun part. Let’s talk about how we invite luxury in and how we allow it. So I’m going to preface this with a story, a true story about little me when I was 13 years old. So you can think back to a time in your childhood when you got something that you really wanted, right? So if you’ve ever watched the movie A Christmas Story where little Ralphie, he desperately wants that BB gun, Red Ryder BB gun. And the whole movie is about a child’s desire to receive something that he thinks is like the most luxurious toy on the planet. It’s fun for him. His peers will go wild over it. He can play, he can get the bad guys. Like the whole movie, if you’ve ever seen this movie, if it’s called a Christmas story, the whole movie is about this desire for this Red Ryder BB gun. And Mom is saying, no, you can’t have it. You’ll shoot your eye out.

So she kind of shuts down the desire for luxury, shuts down the desire, his desires, and he’s thinking the whole time there’s no way on this green earth or this snowy earth, I guess he’s growing up in the Midwest. But there’s just no way on the planet I’m going to get this, you know, and spoiler alert, if you’ve never seen it, he ends up getting the prize, the present.

But this happened to me, a similar thing. So I was 13 years old and it was my birthday. And I really wanted the Thriller album. Now, back when Thriller came out, they came out on actual albums, LPs, and I had a record player, a stereo, right? I had dual speakers. My family is really into music. My dad is a musician, my sister is a musician, and they both have created their own music. My sister’s put out albums, like very musically inclined family. I am not an instrument player perhaps. I dabble on the piano, I dabble on the guitar, but I don’t play. I could not pick a guitar up and play for you right now. I don’t have a beautiful singing voice. My sister and my dad do, but I love music. I grew up around it. I love, love, I love live music. I love concerts. I love listening to music. It really ignites and fires up my energy and my soul.

And the gift I have with music is I can remember lyrics. And my whole family jokes about this. They’re like, how do you remember the lyrics to songs? And I’m like, I don’t know. So if I could sing and remember lyrics, I would go be a Taylor Swift or a version of her. Unfortunately, that is not what I was gifted with. I was gifted with the lyrics, not with the voice.

So maybe in my next life, but this album was like, I was obsessed with getting the Thriller album. It was like the album of the year. And I was in love with Michael Jackson. I just wanted that album. It was just everything. And so my family celebrated my birthday. And my mom made a cake and she made my favorite, you know, dinner, whatever it was at the time. I don’t remember. I just remembered the cake. And we had cake and ice cream. And then we opened gifts. It was just the four of us. I didn’t have people over. Sometimes my family would invite other, you know, our family friends over, but we were, oh, I know why because we were, we had just moved. My dad got transferred and so we had to move from our hometown to another town so he could have work.

And unfortunately, this was, must have been during kind of a recession because he had been laid off from the job that they just moved him to. And so money was tight. Money was always tight, but money was especially tight. And so I didn’t really ask my parents for the album because I didn’t want to burden them with the pressure of getting this album for me because I knew, you know, it was expensive. It was asking for one more thing. So we went out, we were opening presents and I got, you know, a pair of pants or socks, just like, you know, stuff. It was like, yes, it was a birthday gift, but it was stuff my mom would have bought me anyway, right? Like it was like essentials, but it was fine. I was like, “Okay, thank you very much.”

And I was, you know, I was grateful for the new clothing items or whatever I got. And then I kind of scooped them all up and I started walking up the stairs and I could feel the burn of disappointment. You know when you’re just, you’re grateful and disappointed at the same time. I felt the burn. I can remember feeling it. I was carrying all the things, was mostly like clothing and, I don’t know, a couple of little things. But and I was walking up the stairs and I went into my room and put the stuff down on my bed. And then my dad said, “Hey, you forgot a gift.” And I was like, “What?” “Okay.” And I came downstairs and I saw no gift anywhere. I said, “Well, oh, I’m sorry, where’s the gift? I don’t see it.”

And he’s like, you know, looking around. He’s acting like he’s looking for it. He’s like, “I know there was one more gift around here somewhere. I don’t remember, you know, where we put it.” And then he pulls the couch back and there is the rectangle wrapped item behind the couch. And everyone knew what it was. I knew what it was. I rip off the paper. I scream. I grab my dad and give him the biggest hug and I run upstairs.

And my parents said they did not see me for like months on end because I got that album and I loved that but I ran upstairs and played it and played it. Like, I just, I was so happy and not just in the moment. I wasn’t just like, “Yay,” and then I listened to the album a couple of times and I was over it. I literally like was genuinely so happy, so grateful. And what was fun about that gift and this memory that was created in my family and myself was I didn’t need to earn that gift. There was nothing I had to do to earn the album.

I didn’t have to, you know, prove my worthiness to my parents. I didn’t have to give them something back in return because they had given me something. I was just open to receiving it. I just received it because I received it. There was no attachment. It wasn’t a tit for tat. We give you this album and now you have to wash the car. We give you this album because you earned it. You got good grades or we give you this album because, you know, you have established your worthiness now you’re a teenager and now you’ve, you know, gone to some new echelon of worth. There’s nothing like that. It was simply my parents being so excited to give me that album.

And the look on my dad’s face when I received it with open arms with the screams, with delight, with the squeals and the laughter and the big hug and it, I was so open to receiving it. I was not like, “Oh, this is probably expensive and I know you guys are on a tight budget. You probably shouldn’t, no, you shouldn’t have, you shouldn’t have gotten me this. Oh, this must have been really expensive.” I didn’t say any of that. I just said, “Yes, thank you. Oh my gosh. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

And that album, I treated it like it was made of gold. I kept the cover pristine. It was like this open, I don’t know if you guys have ever seen the Thriller album, but like it had two records in it, so you would open them up and then there was, I guess called a centerfold. Back, no, is that what called? I don’t know. Maybe that’s a bad thing. But I thought of it like it was open, there was like a big, you know, photo of Michael Jackson. And I know like this was before I knew anything else of him, but at the time, I just loved the music. I really respected him as an artist and I just took such great care of that album. And I played it all the time. I still own the album. My sister literally just bought one of those console vintage record players that are, they look like a great big piece of furniture. And we listened to vintage Christmas music on it and I felt like I was in a movie. It was so great.

So we’re going to sit down and listen to our albums and she has my Thriller album at her house, along with Grease, along with all the other ones that I wanted. But the story and the reason I share this is because it was pure. My openness to receiving the luxury of that gift, I knew my parents struggled to make ends meet. You know, my dad got laid off and we had to get government cheese, government milk, government butter, government bread. We had to stand in that line. I remember the embarrassment, the shame. My, you know, I didn’t feel the shame as much, but I could feel it from my mom, but she had to feed her kids. And we were in this situation, but in that moment, complete luxury. And I knew it, and I received it. I didn’t have to do anything to earn it or its worth, and I didn’t reject it.

And that moment sticks with me because I remember this happening over and over in my life. Just I was a child who was open to receiving. And I didn’t receive big things often, so when I did, I was in complete gratitude, but there were other times where just little things I received with open arms. I can remember like those little gadgets you put on your backpack, just things like being able to go to a friend’s house. All of it felt like luxury to me. I just delighted in the receiving of it. And I didn’t say like, “Oh, I don’t deserve this or I shouldn’t have this.” I just said thank you and embraced it with all of my heart.

And my openness and willingness to receive the little luxuries in life, the little surprises, the, you know, the things that made life extra special because I was so grateful and so open to receiving them without any rejection or any resistance, it made it fun for others to give to me. You know, it was a gift to give to me because I responded with such gratitude and appreciation and excitement and enthusiasm. I was a joy to give to because I was open.

And I’ve been told that often in my life, like you’re such a beautiful receiver. There’s no, “Oh, you shouldn’t have done that or, oh, you shouldn’t have spent that much money on me.” or, “Oh.” It’s just, “Thank you so much for thinking of me.” And so what’s happened over the course of my life, professionally and personally, like I, I feel like I was, you know, granted, you know, positions with ease. And I just, “Thank you for this opportunity and I will rise to the occasion. I will be that version that you hired me to be,” even if I didn’t know how to do that, I would, I will work to be the version of you. Thank you so much. I allowed and welcomed with all of my heart, you know, big and small luxuries.

So I can remember as a kid like being grateful for like my sister and I had sometimes had to share a room and then sometimes we got our own room. We moved a lot. And having my own bedroom, as much as I love my little sister, she was the cutest little thing. As much as I loved her, like I was four and a half years older than her. I wanted my own space, especially the older I got. And she wanted her own space, right? She wanted to be able to play with her friends and not have me blasting my music and I wanted to be with my teenage friends doing my thing, right? So that was a luxury. Then I remember my parents getting me like a Honda Spree. It was like a scooter style moped. Like, I just thought it was heaven on wheels. I loved the independence. You know, getting jobs, I was, you know, I babysat, I detassled, I worked at a grocery store. I did all kinds of things and just really enjoyed receiving. I was really grateful for the roommate I got in college. She was wonderful.

You know, just meeting Alex’s dad. I met him in college. We got married when we graduated and we had Alex. We were married for 10 years. We and during that time we moved to California, like here’s what I want to show you is that in our lives, when we are open and we say yes to luxuries, we say yes to things that feel good, we say yes to opportunities at work or let’s say your PTA comes and says, “You know, we want to do a fundraiser and we want to try and…” Yes, versus no, that’s going to be a headache. That’s going to take too much time or I just don’t want to bother with it.

But being open to receiving, what happens is when we say yes, and if it’s a clear no, like if you’re setting boundaries, it’s just like too much on the plate and there’s a no, but it’s like a, I know that this needs to be a no and that there’s just that’s it. That’s different. It’s when we want to say yes, but we feel like we should say no. Do you know the difference?

So wanting to say yes but saying no, when you break through that discomfort and you say, “You know what? I’m going to say yes to this. I’m going to be open to this.” What happens is you’re opening the door for more to come in. And the more grateful you are, the more you allow it, it expands your ability to receive even more. And I speak to this professionally and personally because you’re one person. And where your life expands professionally, it expands personally and where your life expands personally, it expands professionally. Okay?

So we start with allowing luxury and the ability to receive it by very first, allowing yourself to desire it. And there’s two parts to this. Number one, we allow ourselves to desire things that we already have. So for example, there was a day in your past when you really desired to become a school leader. It was on your to-do list, you wanted it and you were prepping for it. You had a thought, you’re like, “Okay, I think I’m ready.” You prepared, you took classes, you got your masters, you went the credential, however, whatever journey you took to get your administrative license, you had a desire and you were open to receiving a yes. You were open to receiving a job offer. That was a want match. They wanted you, you wanted them. It was a want match. “Yes, thank you.” and you were open to that.

Now you’re in the job, right? Do you feel that having this job is a luxury? Oftentimes we don’t because we get kind of complacent with the things we already have that in our past were a luxury that we once desired. So maybe you didn’t used to have a car and then you got a car. And now you’re, now you’ve got wheels and you’ve got independence and you’ve got freedom and you can go wherever you want. Do you still feel like it’s a luxury to have the car or is it just like an expectation now?

So playing at first with what are the things in my life that were once desired as luxuries and now I have them? Little, big, and in between. Think about school. Maybe you didn’t have an AP and now you do. Maybe you didn’t used to have an instructional coach, but now you do. Perhaps you had a not cool master schedule where everything was messed up and you’ve worked through it and now your master schedule runs more smoothly. Maybe you had somebody who wasn’t up to standard in your cafeteria and now you’ve got someone who genuinely cares about nourishment and the well-being of students and giving them food they love that’s also semi-healthy. And that’s someone who really loves their job. Or maybe a maintenance person. Maybe you have a bus driver who’s just the bomb.com and they just can handle the kids on the bus like nobody’s business. I think that’s a complete luxury, right?

So first of all, it’s about loving what we already have and seeing it as a luxury and feeling that. And sometimes I think like, well, what would it be like to not have that thing? And then that catapults me into appreciation really fast. And then the second thing is so we love what we already have and then we allow ourselves to desire. Sometimes our spirit got crushed at a young age. Don’t want that, that’s expensive, you can’t have that, you know, hands off at, you know, when you’re going through Target or Walmart or wherever Kmart or Pamida, all those places your parents used to shop at.

Where it was, you know, your desires are just kind of brushed away, no. And you got tired of the disappointment and nobody wants to feel disappointment. And so instead of feeling disappointed, what we do is we just turn down, we turn off the desire. It’s like, okay, our bodies have this little like equalizer system or this mixer system. I don’t know what those are called. But my dad used to have one it was like with all the stereo inputs and outputs so they could equalize everything. I think that’s what it’s called. We’re going to go with that word.

But, you know, you would mix and master all of the different inputs and outputs. Well, if desire kept getting turned down and kept getting turned down and you would turn it up and they would turn it down, then what? Then eventually you’re like, “Well just turn it off then. Just turn off my desire.” You know what? I don’t even want anything. Why would I want something when the answer is no, I just don’t get it anyway. And if I want it and then I’m told not to want it or if I express that I want it and people are like, “Why do you want that?” Then they judge what you want or like, you know, “Why would you want that much? Isn’t what you have good enough?” right?

So instead of one foot in gratitude where we’re appreciating what we have and one foot in desire where we are like, yes and, I’m open to receiving more, not because I’m greedy or selfish or, you know, hoarding, but because I want to experience the biggest life possible. I want to make the greatest impact I can for my school. I want people to love to come to my school. I want people to love being around me, to have them, you know, to enjoy that I’m their leader.

And the more abundant I am, the more luxurious I am, the more details I’m thinking about, like what’s something really little in our office that would just make a big difference? Maybe it, maybe, you know, this is what’s coming to mind, like maybe it didn’t smell very good. Maybe it was like old stinky carpet and even when they clean it, it’s just kind of musty smelling and like the most luxurious thing you guys could do is just put in an air freshener or like, you know, put in some, I don’t know, fragrance or, you know, room juju that zhuzhes it up. right?

Or the big luxury might be saying, “Hey, we would like maintenance to put in fresh carpet over the holiday break or over next summer because we got a funk going on and it’s not inviting.” That might be luxury to your, you know, community coming into that room, to your office staff. Even fresh paint sometimes can just really make a space come alive.

So what are the things that you desire but you’ve been told no? You can’t have that. No, you can’t have new carpet. Okay, well, what can we have? I’m going to get air fresheners or I’m going to get, you know, plants, something that absorbs. I don’t know why I’m thinking of this. It’s just coming up for me, but do you see where I’m going with this? But here’s what happens. One, we get complacent with the luxuries we already have. And number two, we’re afraid to desire because we would rather avoid disappointment than desire luxury and try to figure out how we can create that luxurious experience.

And we’re more afraid of disappointment and failure than we are afraid to just turn off the dial of desire. And to me, it’s so much scarier to turn off the dial of desire because then there’s zero chance of things feeling better, looking better, smelling better, experiencing it better. You know, like emotionally feeling better, mentally being more alive, enjoying like your environment. If we turn it down, it’s like, “Well, I don’t want to get disappointed if somebody tells me no, or I don’t want to try to, you know, get new carpet and I fail at it or I fail, you know, at raising the funds for the new playground.” So if I’m going to fail at it, why even try? So we turn it down. We’re just not going to want that. We’re just going to keep the janky playground. We’re going to keep the janky carpet. And then we don’t have to feel bad.

But are we really avoiding disappointment or are we just creating it in advance? It’s like, I’m going to turn down the volume of desire so that I can just be a little disappointed now, but it’s going to be kind of fake disappointment because I’m not going to let anybody know I’m truly devastated already because I know there’s no chance I’m ever going to get fresh carpet or a new playground. And so we’re just not even going to think about it. I’m just going to, I’m going to numb it out. Okay?

So what we say to ourselves is, well, what kind of person would I be to want this? Who am I? Am I selfish? Am I greedy? Am I a narcissist? Right? Am I a bad person? And we associate, think about this. Think about how you think about people with a lot of luxury in their lives, whether that’s financial luxury or they have like the true love of their life. They have the luxury of a true love. They have a luxury of a great family. They have a luxury, you know, maybe they’re financially successful or maybe they just love their work. Maybe they don’t make a lot of money, but they love their job. Maybe they have the luxury of travel. Maybe they have the luxury of having kids and you want kids, but don’t have kids, or maybe they don’t have kids and you have kids and you want to be free, fancy free, right?

There’s all kinds of things. We look at other people and we think, “Gosh, they have so much luxury.” Think about what you think about them. Like examine those thoughts. Are they bad? Like, are really rich people bad people? Are they selfish? Are they greedy? Are they arrogant, rude, entitled, out of touch? I would never want to be that. If you believe that bringing luxury into your school is going to bring in judgment, criticism, scrutiny, if you think that any kind of luxury or a certain kind of luxury is going to bring in pain and it’s going to bring in like unsafe conditions where you could get judged or you could get criticized or you could get ostracized or you could be in the middle of a public scrutiny situation, then you’re going to, your subconsciously, you’re going to put the brakes on. If you think it’s going to bring pain or it’s going to cause harm or it’s going to make you a bad person or you’re going to be perceived or your school is going to be perceived in a negative way, because we really care about what people say and think and do.

And we also get into our heads about it being us. Like little old me, I shouldn’t have that. Like that is for the echelons of, you know, the Kardashians. They get to have luxurious things, but not me. I’m just little old me at my little old school doing my little old thing. And you know, I don’t really need that. We don’t really need a new playground. Like two out of the four swings are broken, but, you know, the kids just line up. It’s good practice. They just can get in line and they can have to wait. And then we can only do five swings because we got to get the next kid on. You know, we’re making do. We’ve got this. We’re resilient. We’ve got grit, right?

We start to build up character because we don’t have luxury. We don’t need luxury. You know, my beater car, it’s been going strong for 20 years. Why would I need a new car that gets twice as good a gas mileage and actually has heat that works and a stereo that plays, you know, from my phone instead of AM FM, right?

So we can get into this conflict with internal conflict where we attach our identity to luxury, either good or bad, right? I don’t need it. I don’t want it. It’s not worth it. Doesn’t apply to me, doesn’t apply to my life. That’s just not relevant. It’s not for me. So not allowing, not desiring, not letting yourself desire because of failure or disappointment and not allowing things when people do gift you with something, that’s actually the block. It’s like if you’re driving on the road, there’s a barrier in the way, you just run right into it. It’s the block that’s preventing you from getting to your destination.

You know what you want or don’t want. A lot of times we know what we don’t want. We don’t want disappointment. We don’t want pain. We don’t want to be perceived as a bad person. We don’t want these things. But when it comes to what we do want to experience, we’re like, “Well, I don’t know that I can. I don’t know that I should. You know, I don’t know if I’m really capable of creating that. I don’t know if I can hold the pressure of,” and if I buy a new car, I don’t, this one I can just bumper park. Like I don’t if it gets scratched or door dinged, I don’t care.

And it’s kind of nice. That’s a different kind of luxury, right? It’s like, I don’t care what happens to this car. I can drive it into any parking lot and if it gets a door ding, I’m not even going to notice. So that’s a kind of luxury, but is it the net positive luxury you’re looking for? Would you like to have a new car, but you’re afraid it’s going to get a door ding or you’re afraid you’re not going to be able to handle it if it does get a door ding, right?

So what we do is we attach our identity with luxury. And we do so in the sense of our character, our integrity. So I want to offer an alternate thought for you to simmer, let it simmer, let it marinate a little bit here. Luxury isn’t just for you. When you receive something, you’re not receiving it in isolation. When I received that thriller album, yes, it was a gift given from my dad to me. But I wasn’t the only one who received the joy, the delight, the happiness, the feel good feels. It wasn’t just me. It was my dad was just as happy, if not happier than I was because he was able to give that to me. I don’t know what it took for him to give that to me. I’m so grateful he did and he was so proud of being able to do that because he knew how much it meant to me.

When we receive, we also give. So receiving more luxury in your leadership experience, in your campus experience, it is for us, all of us and for all of them. And when it’s for us and it’s for them, now we have it for the greater good. When we resist luxury, we’re actually resisting the experience we want to have and that’s meant for us to have, but we’re also rejecting it for those around us, for those we lead. If I had rejected that album from my dad, can you imagine how he would have felt? How awful he would have felt? Like that would have been so hurtful. And he probably would have been upset and would have been like, “Well, fine, like I’m not going to go out of my way and spend dollars that we could have spent on groceries or electricity to give you this album and that you don’t even care or that you’re like, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t have done that.'”

When you receive as the leader, everyone benefits because you’re all under the same roof. We’re all on the same team. When we say no to things, we’re saying no to our students, we’re saying no for our staff. So we have to expand our capacity. We have to, let ourselves be uncomfortable with receiving and push that boundary and be willing as the leader to experience the discomfort, like, “Wow, this just feels like so much. Thank you. Yes, thank you. Thank you for my students. Thank you for my staff. Yes.” Expanding our capacity to allow ourselves to, one, be grateful for what we have and two, desire bigger, better, more is for the greater good.

If there’s anything that you walk away with in this program, it’s that luxury, having nice things, it’s separate from your character. And what you receive and what you’re willing to desire and receiving it, it simply amplifies the character that you already are. It doesn’t create your character. You don’t become a nicer person because you get more things or you don’t become a bad person because you get more things. In your school, if it ends up receiving grants or scholarships or, you know, people will start want to start fundraising for you and you start receiving more things because you’re putting it out there, “We would love to have a new playground. I wonder how that’s possible.” And we’re thinking in terms of possibility. I wonder how it’s possible to create a wellness room. I wonder how it’s possible to hire this professional person we, you know, this PD person we want. I wonder how it’s possible.

When you put it out there and you say, “We want this, like let’s look at all the ways. Let’s make this possible. How could we do that? Let’s just playfully explore.” You’re planting seeds that says, “Hey, we’re open to receiving this.” But it’s not about your character. You don’t become an arrogant person because you’re received. If you’re arrogant, you’re going to be arrogant whether you receive or not.

So be the person you are meant to be. Be the human that you want to be. Be in alignment with your values and act in integrity on those values and invite luxury into your life, the land of and, both. Because if you’re honest and open and authentic and kind and generous and loving and, you know, having luxury will just amplify that. But if you’re a grinch, it’ll amplify that, right? So it just, just think about this. Like if you’re positive, you can allow that and it will just amplify. But if you’re tend to be negative, you’re then you’re going to be not grateful for what you do have and you’re going to be, you know, disappointed and mad that you don’t get what you want. It’s separate from who you are. So be the person. This is why I say in every one of my programs, it’s not the how, it’s the who. It’s who you’re being. If you’re being grateful for the little things and you’re grateful for what you have now, can you imagine how much gratitude and like your heart’s going to burst open the more you’re open to receiving.

I ask my clients this all the time, how good can it get? How much fun can you have? Because it’s not about, it has nothing to do with test scores. Like those are the result. But can you be in gratitude? Can you be in satisfaction without the test scores? Can you invite the luxury into your experience for your staff, your students, yourself, your families, totally separate from test scores?

So I want you to believe or at least try it on as a new thought that luxury is accessible right now, today, tonight, tomorrow. It’s accessible in the form of gratitude, in the form of belief, possibility, in the form of how you experience yourself, others, the lens through which you look at your school, your community, your job, the future. And when I say luxury, I’m talking about the feelings that you want to feel. I know that there is systemic oppression and I want to acknowledge that. There are schools who are in communities that have been systematically oppressed and they don’t financially, physically have the school building or the resources to maybe create what they would desire as a luxury experience. There’s no discounting or dismissing that. And even then, there is the opportunity to be grateful for what you do have in terms of the relationships and the kids that you’re serving and the families and the stories of triumph and success and the perseverance of your teachers.

So luxury really does apply to everyone on the planet because it’s not just about the financial luxuries. It’s about the luxury of friendships, connections, the satisfaction of productivity, of contribution. It’s putting your head on the pillow at night feeling luxurious because you have the luxury of being in this position and helping others. Teaching is a luxury. Learning is a luxury. Leading is a luxury, right?

There’s also a luxury, I haven’t mentioned yet, but it’s very important on a school campus, and that is the luxury of belonging. And this, I could do a whole another workshop on this. But I want to plant the seed here because we often, no matter how much luxury is around us, if we don’t feel that we belong in it or we don’t feel that we should be here or it’s a part of us or that we can access it, then it doesn’t matter how much luxury is around us. So we want to cultivate cultures of belonging at our schools. Even though most people at some point fear they don’t belong.

So how do we move through that? We have to trust that we are born to belong, right? Belonging is a decision that we make. I belong. I belong because I’m here. That’s it. There’s no argument, there’s no defending that, there’s no having to justify or explain it. I am because I am. I belong because I’m here. That’s it. This is my school. I belong. How do I know? This is where I go to school. That’s it. I belong. And if people doubt that, why would you not belong? What part of this doesn’t feel like you belong? We’re going to say, well, this person said this or this person did this or those people left me out or my grade level doesn’t talk to me. So like I feel like I’m out of the loop.

You decide you belong. You go to your grade level meeting and say, you know, I’d like to contribute this or I have a question about that and you engage as though you belong. You act as the person who belongs and the people will respond back to you as though you belong. I’ve gone to conferences where I was overwhelmed and I, you know, when you walk into a room and you don’t know anybody and you’re feeling like so alone and isolated, the first thing I will do is I will look for a spot that already has people. A lot of times people will go and sit at a table with no humans at it and then wait for people to come to them. And then if nobody comes to them, they’re like, “Oh my gosh, I feel so alone and isolated.”

What I do is I go into a room where there’s a seat and say, “Is this taken? May I sit down?” Because I belong. I walk into a room and I tell myself, “You belong here.” Whether I’m with my family, I belong. If I’m out with friends, I belong. If I’m at a five-star restaurant, a Michelin-star restaurant, I belong. If I’m driving through the fast food because we’re on the road, I belong here too. I get to belong everywhere. I belong at this school. I belong in this classroom. Having these conversations, empowering students that they belong, empowering staff that they belong, para-professionals, well sometimes have trouble with this because there is that hierarchy, you know, mental hierarchy that teachers are above or whatever.

Breaking all that down. We decide we belong and we act from a state of belongingness because belongingness can’t be granted to you. You can’t walk into a conference and somebody hands you a sticker that says I belong. You, oh, now I belong. Oh, well thank you for telling me. It doesn’t mean you feel like you belong. You belong if you decide you belong. We grant belongingness to ourselves and we want to teach kids to grant themselves belonging. I belong here. I belong in this line. I belong, you know, on the playground. I belong. I’m here. I matter. End of story.

So think about this, how do you show up when you go to a meeting? Do you feel like you belong in the admin meeting or not? And the reason this belonging matters when it comes to luxury leadership is that if you don’t think that luxury belongs to you or that you don’t belong in a luxury experience, you will reject it subconsciously. So we want to weave that into the culture of our school. Belongingness really matters. It matters because to experience luxury in our lives, we must believe that it belongs to us and we belong to it. It’s a culture, it’s a mindset, it’s a way of living, it’s a lifestyle, a leadership lifestyle that we are embracing here. I belong in this position, I belong at this school, I’m a member of our staff, I’m a member of the community. Luxury belongs at this school, not just for me, but for my students and my staff, and I stand by that. We deserve a luxury experience. We deserve it because we exist, because we are, because we belong.

So going back to basics, some of the basic luxuries are the best ones. Connection, communication, right? A smile, respect, being welcoming, inclusive, belonging, equity, you know, authenticity, having access. And we want to lead from these energies. We want to lead with gratitude and desire. We want to lead with belonging, the feeling of belonging. The warm fuzzies, right? We want to accept and allow luxury to come in.

So many times we don’t allow luxury because we don’t even consider that it’s an option. Think of something at your school that you’re always, like it’s kind of just this ongoing problem, but you’ve never even thought like what if that got fixed or what if this got improved? How great would life be if this were no longer on my to-do list or having to fix it every time? Right? We had a gate in when I was a kindergarten teacher, there was a gate and it had this, I don’t know who made this gate. It was a fence with this great big gate and then it had these big bolts that stuck out of it. And we kept saying to maintenance, “Take these out.” They’re, it’s just a problem. But you know, you kind of live with it because you forget about it and you’re going on with your day. Until one of my students, you know, five-year-old, walked by that gate and this big bolt was sticking out because it was poorly designed and it literally cut her eyelid clean open. I’m telling you, that gate was taken out that same day.

We don’t want to ignore the little luxuries that could just be handled and become a luxury. We don’t have to hit rock bottom where a student gets injured or worse. This poor little girl and thank goodness she did not lose any vision. I’ve had some terrible accidents as a principal, but that was my worst one as a teacher. I remember that to this day. It’s about thinking about what a luxury it would be and sometimes it’s such a simple solution. We just have to do. We have to get in masculine energy and get her done, right?

So leading with luxury is all about aligning to the energetics of it. And I when I say energetics, I just mean emotion, the emotional state you’re in. Being in gratitude, being in appreciation and being in desire, being in both. Being willing to be disappointed and going for it anyway, being willing to try and fail and still keep going for it anyway, because trying and being disappointed is better than never trying at all and turning the volume off.

So the Empowered Principal Collaborative is going to be teaching school leaders how to lead from luxury. EPC, there’s nothing like it. You come once a week, you get all the coaching you need, you get all of the lessons, all of this guidance, and we get into the alignment of luxury. Empowerment is a luxury. Feeling empowered, leading from empowerment is a luxury. And if we are going to improve the quality of our schools, we have to improve the experience that people feel, students, staff. It’s not about changing all the curriculum and it, we don’t have to dismantle the entire paradigm of education. We simply need to align with the energetics of what uplevels people, which is how they feel, their identity, what they believe they’re capable of, what they believe is accessible to them, what they believe they have access to in terms of empowerment and personal agency, independence, freedoms, permission to be different, how to be the leader that navigates what we actually need in school.

I just saw a Ted talk the other day on what schools, I mean there’s a million people like pontificating in a good way. Like we’re all having this conversation about what schools need. And I was right there with them. I believe what they were saying, but the missing link for me when I hear these things is in order to create external change, whether it’s, you know, what campuses look like, bell schedules, grade levels, curriculum, how we teach, the standardized, the testing, all that, they’re all of that’s external. But in order for that to happen, mindset has to change. Minds have to expand, and then our capacity to handle that new mindset, that new lens, that new perspective has to, we have to give ourselves a minute to grow into that, to strengthen, to condition ourselves. So we can tell schools, this is what it should look like on the external, but how do you go from where you’re at now to changing the external? You have to change the internal first. And that’s what EPC does.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Empowered Principal® Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, please visit AngelaKellyCoaching.com where you can sign up for weekly updates and learn more about the tools that will help you become an emotionally fit school leader.

Hello, empowered principals. Welcome to episode 420.

Welcome to The Empowered Principal® Podcast, a not so typical educational resource that will teach you how to gain control of your career and get emotionally fit to lead your school and your life with joy by refining your most powerful tool, your mind. Here’s your host certified life coach Angela Kelly.

Over the next three days, just to make it clear, there’s three sessions here. Today is day one. We’re going to go into day two and day three. We’re just going to expand this concept of school leadership and really work on enhancing your experience as a school leader. And when we enhance our experience as the leader, we can enhance the experience for staff and for students.

So I want to be really clear, this is not a course on how to be a school leader. I do a lot of workshops, a lot of trainings. EPC has this. One-on-one coaching provides this. My other programs offer the logistics and the skill sets about leadership. This is not that course. You will be able to walk away with things you can implement, but this is more of an exploration of the energetics of leadership and the empowerment that we want to embody as a school leader, okay? This is more the energy behind. It’s the who we’re being versus what we’re doing, okay? So really an exploration and contemplation, okay?

This to me, this workshop is really about an invitation to all educators to contemplate and look through the lens of how can we improve or enhance or evolve the experience and go beyond surviving. You know what that feels like when you’re just hanging on by a thread as a leader and you’re going in, serving, and then relieved that the day is done or that the week is done or that the holiday is here. And you’re hanging on by a thread to get through next week before school, before the holiday break. I want us to shift from surviving to aliving, being alive, to being satisfied, to feeling fulfillment, to believing that we’re making a difference, that we have an impact, and that we’re not just spinning our wheels in probability and spinning our wheels in kind of stagnancy or repetitiveness.

We want to thrive. As school leaders, we want our school to thrive. We want to walk into those doors and see the aliveness on our campus, not from the lens of who’s complaining and what isn’t working and what are the stats that are dragging our school scores down, but thriving in that we know our purpose. We know our mission. We know the intention behind what we’re here to do today. And it isn’t necessarily about me, you know, having things be easy. That doesn’t necessarily mean a luxurious experience where you come up and put your feet up on the desk and have a cup of coffee all day.

That’s not the kind of luxury we’re talking about. We’re talking about satisfaction, productivity, and being proud of who you are as a leader, being proud of the work you’re seeing in your staff and with your students. Pride in the physical campus, pride in the energy of your classrooms, pride in who you are and in your mission and what you’re doing, living the full expression and experience of yourself as a school leader and outside of leadership. Loving your career, being proud when you when you go out home for the day, being proud that you’re a school leader. Feeling like when you lie your head on the pillow at night, yes, this is what I was born to do.

We want to inspire change. We want to electrify our own experience, kind of plugging ourselves in to that energy of, I know who I am, I know what I’m doing, I know that I’m making a difference, and I love what I’ve created around me. This luxurious experience for yourself, for your staff, your teachers, your students, your support staff, and for your community.

So we’re going to explore luxury, and then we’re going to talk about education, and we’re going to look at the two. This is day one. We’re going to just explore it and how luxury and education and leadership haven’t maybe been connected, but how we can connect them.

So when I was contemplating, what is luxurious leadership? You know, what is the image that I get? What is the feeling that I have when I think about the idea of luxury going together with school leadership? Like, does it even go together? Is it even possible? So I started tuning into really defining what luxury is.

Because on the surface, in my experience, what I what I’ve witnessed is that we often tend to define luxury as being either very exclusive, meaning only certain people have access to it. Like that’s very luxurious. Only the celebrities have access to that. It’s very luxurious. It’s very exclusive. You can only VIP people are welcome to access this, which often then is also tied to expensive. Something’s very exclusive or very expensive.

So we tie our definition of luxury, oftentimes, to financial luxury. So it’s related to wealth. It’s related to your bank account. It’s related to your income. It’s related to what you can purchase. And we think about what it would be like to have this luxurious life, having exclusive access to things, to be able to purchase whatever we want and not having to work because our bank account is so full that we don’t need to put out energy.

Luxury might be like having tasks that you don’t like to do, having the cash, again, it’s cash-related, to pay other people to do it for you. So you can be at ease, right? Perhaps it’s financial luxury in the way of like when I think of luxury, it might be like going to five-star resorts or first-class travel or Michelin star restaurants or going and shopping at exclusive, right? high-end, very expensive shopping boutiques, handbags, shoes, designer clothing, certain kinds of cars, certain kinds of homes, the decor in your homes, you know, the access you have to, you know, send your kids to certain colleges, prestige, luxury, right? You see like our culture, our society has defined luxury around the financial luxury. You know, mansions, cars, all of that, right?

And I started thinking about luxury and this is, I believe this is true. There is a type of luxury that is financial luxury and it is somewhat exclusive and it is expensive. But luxury in its entirety is not defined necessarily by wealth. It’s not simply just wealth. There are many kinds of luxury. There is no one absolute luxury.

So think about this. For example, what one person, let’s say, I don’t know, Kim Kardashian, runs out and she goes shopping. What she defines for herself as a type of luxury, another person would not care for that or value that or want it. It’s what she values and what she deems as a luxury in her life versus what somebody else might deem a valuable or a luxury in their life.

So luxury in the way that we’re going to explore it here, in terms of leadership and school and teaching and learning and education at large is that luxury is really about experiencing things that you value in your life and acknowledging and appreciating the luxuries that you do have access to in your life and that what’s luxurious for school A over here, what they find valuable and what they define as, oh, this is such a luxury to have, may not be the same luxury for another school. You know, what’s luxurious to have at an elementary school might not be a luxury at all in college or in high school.

So just as your personal and professional values are unique to you, your type of luxury, what you value, what matters to you and what you desire to experience is different. But just as your values are unique to you, they’re also not comparable. So you can’t say that, well, because I value this, it’s more important than what you value.

So let’s say your friend, she really values having a brand new car. She really values that. That’s like, it’s one of her top priorities. She’s always leasing a new car. She has a new car every three years. It’s just something that she values. It’s a luxury to her. She loves it. She loves her car. She embraces having her car and that’s a luxury to her and it becomes a priority and that’s what she does. That’s a luxury she values and she claims it. That priority for her is not less important if you as her friend don’t value having that kind of luxury. So if you’re not really into cars or you don’t really feel like you need a brand new car every three years, you’re just like, I’m good. I want the car that I know and love. I want it to be in our lives for a long time. I value it. It’s a part of the family. Like I buy a car and then it’s it’s with us for the long haul. That’s what I value.

What she values in cars is no less better or worse or different. It’s not comparable to yours. There’s no right kind of luxury, just like there’s no right kind of value. What you value is what you value. It’s what you appreciate, it’s what you desire, it’s what you respect and acknowledge and you’re grateful for it in your life.

So often times we in education particularly, we want to get into comparing and contrasting and judging and, you know, critiquing the values of other people. So we might dismiss what like, oh, well, I would never spend that much money on a car every three years. That’s crazy. That’s ridiculous. And she might be, uh, hello, how can you ever drive that car without being totally embarrassed? Right? Different luxuries.

So luxury isn’t just a zero-sum game. It’s not a yes or a no, an all or a none, a have or a have not. It’s not an absolute. It’s an opinion. It’s a value. It’s just simply experiencing things that you value. You appreciate that you enjoy and acknowledging them and celebrating them.

You know, one thing that I highly value is like time and flexibility, being able to be location independent as an entrepreneur, as a business owner. I highly value having empowerment over my time, empowerment over my location. And this really came to the surface for me when my mom got diagnosed with a terminal illness way back when I was, she got diagnosed, gosh, I don’t even remember what year it was, but she lived with this terminal illness for quite a while.

But what really where my value and the luxury really became apparent to me was later in life when I was a principal and then I was a district leader, and my mom’s illness was advancing and time was of the essence. Her time on the planet here was of the essence and it was kind of touch and go for a while. My sister was her primary care provider and I wanted the luxury of coming home to be with her when the call came and when the time was coming near. I wanted to be with her. I wanted to be present with my family. I wanted to support my dad and my sister. I wanted to be physically present with my mom as her body transitioned and I didn’t have that luxury available to me while I was working.

And I could have had that luxury. I could have been given permission to travel, to take a leave or use, I had many, many, many days built up because I had worked in the district for a long time. I could have had that luxury, but I wasn’t granted access to that luxury and it became so important to me that time and flexibility and freedom became my overriding value. And that was one of the reasons literally why I decided to resign and start this business because I value time.

So time can be a luxury and time doesn’t cost money. We associate time and money together, but truly when you wake up, you literally have minutes in your day that you can spend as you wish. But it doesn’t cost you paper dollars, right? So the luxury of time, you can create luxury of time. You can say, I want a luxurious amount of time to complete this site plan. I want to know that I have time blocked off in my work day to get this done. I don’t want to have to do it before school, after school, after hours, nights, weekends. I want to do it during the day.

So I’m going to block off one hour per day for the next five days and I’m going to work on section one, then section two, then section three, and then I’m going to review on section on day four, and I’m going to finalize on day five and then that will give me five hours of working on this site plan, all during my work day. And my secretary is going to be a little bulldog at the front door saying like, if there’s not blood or fire, do not enter into her office, right?

You can have different kinds of luxuries in life that aren’t associated or attached to money. Some are as a school leader and some are not. Like the luxury of being able to take care of your physical needs. It is a luxury as a principal to be able to go to the bathroom. Teachers don’t have that luxury in the same way we do. Now, it sounds simple and silly, but it is a luxury. And when you are a teacher in the classroom and you drank thirty-six ounces of water before school started or more, and you’ve got to go and you have to wait till the bell, it feels like a luxury to be able to go when you need to go, right? Okay.

So your physical needs, like the luxury of being able to go to bed early. If you don’t have children or you live alone or you have, you know, the adults, your children and your family can take care of themselves so that you can go and like take a warm bath, get in your snuggies and your comfies and like go to bed at seven or eight o’clock just to like the luxury of being in bed, reading a book, falling asleep, getting a full eight hours of sleep. That’s a luxury.

Mental, like the luxury of like giving yourself a mental health day or the luxury of taking time off. So when my mom did pass away, she passed away a couple days before Thanksgiving and we took that holiday time that was off to grieve, to be thankful but also to grieve. And then again, another wave of grief came at Christmas and New Year’s. And I loved on myself. I still can remember going to my friend Kathy’s house. I have many Kathys in my life, but one of my friend Kathys, we were there for New Year’s. We stayed for a couple days with her. So we my mom passed away here in Iowa, right like just a couple days before Thanksgiving. I flew back to California, spent Thanksgiving with our friends up in Reno. And then we drove back to the Bay Area, which was our home at the time, and we stayed with our friends. I think we just did Christmas quiet, just our family.

And then for New Year’s, we went over, but I on New Year’s Eve day, before we went out to the New Year’s party, I had the luxury of crawling in bed at three o’clock, crying my eyes out until I fell asleep, and just being in this comfort of love and understanding. Everyone was understanding that I was devastated and they let me have that moment and then I literally woke up so refreshed. I felt so much better and I was able to go celebrate the year and then entering in the New Year with my loved ones, even though my mom had passed from the planet, right?

So there’s luxury in taking care of ourselves. There’s luxury in rest and sleep, luxury and, you know, those little daily things where you get some water, take a walk, get a bathroom break, actually eat lunch. That’s a luxury to have lunch, isn’t it as a school leader?

But it’s also a luxury, spending time with people you enjoy. It’s luxury to have a mentor, to have a coach. I am deeply grateful and I feel like it is one of the luxuries I would spend all of my dollars on is to have mentorship, to have a coach, to help me process emotions that I don’t find easy to process on my own. To discuss things, to navigate things, to contemplate things, to question me and to expand me in ways I couldn’t do on my own. That to me is one of the top luxuries in my life. I will go to great lengths to find the right mentor and to work with them and to implement whatever their coaching is for me in that moment.

It’s the luxury of empowerment in our life, feeling empowered, feeling personal power in your life, that’s a luxury. And we take it for granted. We take the powers that we have for granted. So these little luxuries in our lives, they’re invitations. It’s the luxury of being open to change. The luxury of having the ability to try, the willingness to try, the courage to fail, the resilience to keep trying after you failed. It’s a luxury to have the honor and the privilege to try something new and fail and try again. It is a luxury to seek out what you are grateful for, to be in gratitude, to be in appreciation of all that you have, to live and to see every little thing in your life as a luxury. Your holiday lights, being able to buy presents, being able to have a home, a warm bed, insurance, being able to have internet, being able to have a warm coat, being able to drive through Starbucks, all these little luxuries. And we just take them for granted, but they are luxuries. And when we look through the lens of luxury, we see how amazing luxury is.

We can also choose luxurious experiences. One of the things I have been practicing in my own life and in my business is choosing luxury, choosing peace when situations get tense. That’s a luxury to choose peace when things are tense. To choose calm when other people get upset and disregulated. That’s a luxury to be able to do that. And as school leaders, we have access to that. Choosing centeredness when your values get questioned, when the people are coming at you sideways, choosing that centeredness when your values are in question. And then choosing ease when complaints are flying, you’re like, I am not going to play whack-a-mole. I’m not going to be a firefighter. I’m not going to go put all these out. I’m going to ground. I’m going to stay calm and I’m going to approach this with ease because trying to people please got me nowhere.

Now, we’re going to talk about this tomorrow. It’s the dissonance of luxury. So sometimes we actually block ourselves or limit ourselves, kind of like put up a subconscious barrier around ourselves to protect us from having luxury because we believe that if we were granted some form of luxury that there would be a price to pay. And the truth is there is a duality. There’s a dissonance of luxury because with more comes more, more responsibility, like more staff, more responsibility, more observations, more evaluations, more people to coach and mentor and to lead. So you have the luxury of having more hands on deck, which is a positive thing, but you have also more leadership responsibilities.

And when you receive more money and resources for your school, that’s wonderful. You get all of these resources and multiple supports, but you also have the responsibility and the time and the effort to manage those resources and decisions about those resources and implementation and monitoring of those resources. So what we do is we want the part of luxury that feels good and is enjoyable, but we’re not as willing to accept the duality of that, the polarity, the dissonance of with this comes this. And so we will say, oh, I don’t want because I don’t want that part, I’m going to block this part because we can’t have just the good part. We have to have the whole thing. I’m going to talk more about that. That’s a whole separate topic, but I wanted to bring it up because your mind might be saying, well, you know, like, I’m open to luxury. I want luxury of time, luxury of resources, luxury of empowerment, luxury of, you know, emotional regulation. I want all of those luxuries. But do we want them the whole package?

And we’re going to talk more about that tomorrow. So if that’s on your mind, I wanted just to bring that up a little bit to let you reassure you that we are going to explore all of that because that’s really where the crux comes in, right? Where we feel a desire to have a more luxurious experience, to feel more satisfied, to feel more fulfilled, to feel more connected, to feel more impactful. We want to feel this way, but we are resisting what comes with that form of luxury, right? You buy a higher-end vehicle, you love all the bells and whistles, but it may cost more to maintain it. You might have to use premium gas or you might have to have a certain kind of maintenance. Maybe they only service certain kind of cars or you have to have these specialty wiper blades or headlights or whatever. It comes with both.

So there’s a certain amount of pressure that comes with luxury. Like there’s more luxury to being a lead principal. You have some more freedoms, you have some more empowerment than an AP, but there’s more pressure, right? So we want to look at our luxuries and notice that sometimes we think of a luxury as a burden if we’re not balancing that ownership with gratitude, being grateful for it and being happy we have it and taking ownership and embodying it, embracing it.

So we want to appreciate the luxuries we currently have. So the first way, and it’s the way I would say like, when people ask, but how? But how? When I give them the response, they’re like, but that just seems too easy or it can’t be just that. But it is. It is just that. How do you expand luxury? How do you create a more luxurious experience for your school, your staff, yourself? You expand your perspective. You look through the lens of luxury. You allow that dissonance, you know it’s coming, but you also appreciate it because the benefit of the more, the benefit of the expansion is 10x and you’re also expanding your own capacity. So appreciating luxury is appreciating all of it and it is being grateful for the luxuries you already have.

So homework assignment number one, when you get off of this, you know, session today, think about all of the luxuries you already have in your life, the luxuries you have at home, the luxuries you have in family and friends, the relationship luxuries you have. It’s a luxury to be in relationship with your spouse or your partner or your best friend or your sister, your brother, your kids, your own children, your parents, what relationships are luxurious in your life and without them, you would be devastated. They were a luxury to know them. It was a luxury to have them in your life.

It’s especially, I think about relationships where the person grants you space and grace and they’re very loving and forgiving and kind and gentle. What a luxury to have a friend, a partner, a parent, a sibling who is gentle and kind and supportive and forgiving and holds space for you to be human. That’s such a luxury because there’s so many people out there who are always criticizing, always have that snide comment, always a little jab, always want you to play a little less and be a little small so they can feel good about themselves. Like there’s a lot of that coming at us. So it’s truly a luxury when we have someone who really roots for us, who genuinely wants to see us shine and thrive.

So as you’re contemplating luxury, there are many kinds of luxury. It’s not just about wealth and exclusivity. It’s about what we value. The luxury of time, the luxury of freedom, the luxury of flexibility, the luxury of permission, the luxury of empowerment, the luxury of mentorship. It’s what you value. So you can look at, what are the luxuries I have in my life right now that I’m so grateful to have? Like, I’ve had a dishwasher and not had a dishwasher and I love having the luxury of having a dishwasher. Right now, I do not have the luxury of having a dryer. So the washer and dryer, the washer’s working, but the dryer is no longer working. It has moved transitioned into its next life and it’s going to be replaced in the next week.

So I had the luxury of having a working dryer and now I don’t. So now I’m taking my laundry to my sister’s house, which is also a luxury to have somebody in town who has laundry. But it’s these things, like, wow, we got to do the laundry, we take it. Imagine having to walk a mile down to the river with your washboard and scrubbing all three of your children’s clothes plus your husband’s stinky socks that he wore to the gym. Now the laundry, the washer and the dryer are very luxurious.

So think about things in your life that you have. What if you didn’t have a car? What a luxury to have a car. What a luxury to be able to afford gas for your car. Lighting, electricity, and I know these things are basic, but there’s a difference between, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. I’ve got internet. It’s great. It’s great. I got an iPhone. I know, I know, I know. I should be grateful. There’s a difference between yeah, yeah, yeah and actually knowing in your body, feeling it like the gratitude of this computer, the gratitude of internet to be able to be having this conversation with you across the globe. The fact that we can have conversations as educators around the world talking about the similarities of our experiences and the challenges and the differences in our experiences and to provide support to one another and to communicate with one another. We couldn’t have done that 20, 30 years ago.

It’s a luxury. Enjoy it. Be in awe of it. There’s so many luxuries. So do that tonight when you get off this call. I really encourage you, the luxury of having your holiday lights on or your candles or presents under the tree, food in your belly, food on the table for your family. And if these are luxuries that you don’t currently have in your life, what is a luxury you do have?

And can you find luxury without it being related to money or exclusivity? That’s part one. And then the second part of this conversation for tonight is around education. So we’re going to set the conversation around luxury just on the side table for a minute and I want to talk about education and why, you know, when we think about how we define education, why luxury and education aren’t tend to be linked together.

So what do we mean when we say education? So as a society, when we talk about education, when we say education this, education’s a problem, what we’re talking about is we’re referring to the institution of a structured, formalized, systemized education program. It’s the institution of education we’re talking about.

But we also can mean like education like receiving education, like a degree, a certain level, grade levels, a certain kind of education, trade school, master’s program, PhD, you know, and the institution itself, the physical campus, the colleges, the universities, you know, the trade centers, the elementary, all of the schools, the physical campuses, we talk about that as like the physical space of education where people come to learn. And we also refer to like the act of teaching and learning, right? Like acquiring knowledge, gathering, you know, skill sets, informations, you know, learning how to reason, you know, gaining wisdom.

And typically we talk about this in a more formal way, like formal education where it’s very measured, it’s standardized. We got bell curves and norms and grades and scores and test data and we’re comparing schools and ranking all of them and standardizing them, all of that jazz, right? And within that institution of education, when we are defining learning versus not, teaching versus not, trying to decipher what’s good teaching, what are we not teaching? Are we teaching? Are we learning? Are we not learning? There’s like layers of opinions and judgments happening, right? And you’ll see like it becomes a very all or none, very binary system where it’s like you passed or you failed. You either understood it or you did not understand it.

So why was the institution of education at large, why was it created? And we’ll all have different thoughts and opinions on that and these are some of mine and you can agree, disagree, add to the conversation. I would love that. It’s to ensure competency. Like when we when we think about why we started education, we wanted to impart knowledge, wisdom, experience, skill sets to our younger generation. We wanted them to be competent. We wanted to ensure their safety and well-being, to ensure reliability, right?

I think about when it comes to competency, safety and reliability, I think about pilots. I think about doctors. I think about driving, people who are on the road driving. Like things that are life or death matters. Like a pilot, if a pilot’s not competent and safe and reliable, they have no business being in the cockpit of a plane with hundreds of people on board. Doctors who aren’t competent, safe, and reliable have no business being in a, you know, ER or in a surgical center, same with the entire medical staff, lawyers and legal staff, teachers and educational staff.

There’s many professions that we go through educate formal education to ensure competency, safety and reliability. I think people who build houses, construction, engineers, all the electrical, the plumbing, like the trade work people, very skilled. It’s a very specific art to their science. And we need them to be competent. We need them to ensure our safety so we don’t get electrocuted or we don’t flood our house out. We need to ensure reliability that we can trust and have faith in their work and that there is some kind of, you know, measurement standard for the quality of work that they’re providing.

So most professions have some kind of formal education requirements. That’s how our society establishes trust, faith and assurance. So there is a an establishment of rigor. And you guys know, we all know this, even though we do our best in education to create that competency, safety, that rigor, that reassurance and trust, not there’s not a 100% guarantee, right? You’ve had doctors who’ve botched things, you’ve had contractors who’ve botched things, there’ve been pilots who’ve crashed planes, there have been, you know, teachers who’ve caused harm, there have been lawyers who are shady. It’s not a 100% guarantee, but we as a society did our best to create formal educational practices to the point where we have we have created a high percentage of reliability. And we know it’s not foolproof, but there is value to rigor and in our formal education system.

So there’s the institution of education, right? And then there’s teaching within that institution, and there’s an art and a science to teaching, right? And there might even be a book out there about the art of teaching, science of teaching, but I think about like the formal aspect of teaching versus the informal, the science versus the art, like formal teaching environments, schools, universities, colleges, there’s public, there’s private, there’s charter, choice programs, right?

So there’s an art and a science to the ways in which we impart information, share information, expand people’s wisdom, give access to knowledge and skills, mentorship, coaching, teaching, modeling for people, training them, guiding them, educating them. There’s a whole world in which we’re learning as infants up until the last day we’re on the planet. From birth to death, we are learning, we are teaching. We are receiving and we are providing.

And think about the informal teaching environments. There’s parents. We have different adults in our life. There’s role models, coaches, religious leaders. We even have our mentors, siblings. My friend Eric and I were talking about life lessons learned on a school bus. Like rural kids who are country kids who ride the bus for upwards to an hour or more a day each way. They’re the first ones to get picked up and the last one’s off. You learn a lot of life lessons on a school bus. So your siblings, your peers, there’s informal teaching going on those buses. There’s informal teaching going on the playground, in bedrooms when there’s sleepovers. like many, many forms of teaching.

And, you know, there’s many professional development sessions that are more informal, right? Like this. So there’s establishing the institution. There is the teaching aspect of it, where there’s formal teaching and then informal teaching, and then there’s learning. So there’s education, there’s teaching, there’s learning. So we’re learning no matter what. We’re learning from the school of hard knocks, from life, from interactions we have with people, from the experiences that we create in the world. We’re learning from the world globally all the time, the people around us. We’re observing, we’re engaging, we’re learning from these experiences.

So life is access to education. And we tell people like, you need to get educated. Well, there’s the school of life, the world as our teacher, and then there’s the formal, right? You get schooled, right? You learn from the school setting where there’s a structure, formal, standards-based, you know, we have standards in each grade level, whether that’s public or private, but we offer this structure to learning, classrooms, grade levels, bell schedules, curriculum, interventions, the academics, the PE, art, music, some have it, some don’t.

So you can see that when we talk about the institution of education and teaching and learning, nowhere is it talking about luxury, other than this. Education is both essential and a luxury. If you think about education, it’s essential that all humans, we are all born to learn from the minute we come into the world, we’re learning, right? We start crying, they clean us up, give us to mama. We’re learning. That’s mom. This is who loves me unconditionally. This is where I’m going to get my nourishment. This is where I’m going to get my love. This is going to be how I’m going to be held. This person responds to me. We are all learning. We’re all receiving an education from our interactions with the world, with the people, with the planet, the experiences that we have, the places we go, the events we participate in.

So it’s essential that we learn in order to stay alive. Every human learns. They learn what’s safe, what’s not safe, who to trust, not to trust, what to say, what not to say, what to do, what not to do. As little kids, we are learning that when our parents are saying, yes, no, do this, don’t do that. We’re learning if we are lovable. We’re always learning. It’s essential to our existence. We learn how to eat and drink and move our bodies and crawl and clap our hands and play and walk, right? We get older and we learn how to, you know, get dressed, go to the bathroom, put on our shoes, buckle our seat belts, ride a bike. We learn how to make a snack and eventually we learn how to drive a car and then we, you know, we learn, we’re always learning. It’s just all around us.

But we’ve also created it as a luxury, but not in an inclusive way. We’ve made some type of information exclusive, some type of information very expensive, right? So it’s also a luxury. Awareness on what you know and don’t know is a luxury. Knowledge, having the knowledge and awareness around you, that is a luxury. Access to information is a luxury. Acquiring certain skills isn’t only essential, it becomes a luxury. You know, physical skills, mental skills, cognitive skills, emotional skills, financial skills, social skills, societal understandings, that’s a luxury. How to navigate the world.

Self-discernment is a luxury, reasoning, being able to reason and ration for yourself. That’s a luxury. Empowerment is a luxury because when you don’t have empowerment, you have oppression that is not a luxury. Empowerment is when you have luxury.

It’s been said that knowledge is power and it’s it’s true. Awareness is power, alignment is power, education is power. Education is agency and freedom over your life. Education is empowering, liberating, freeing. It’s independence at its finest. Education, the art and skill of learning and leading and teaching is about personal power, enhancing it, evolving it, expanding it. Education gives people power over their lives, which is the most luxurious thing you could give to a person, which is accessing their personal power. Access to education is a luxury.

We all know that. It’s a luxury in this world to have access to education. Not everybody on the planet has access to the institution of education, even though they may have access to learning, but they don’t all have access to the institution of education. And education used to be the gatekeeper. It used to be the holder of knowledge. It had a gate around it. Inside the institution with these very high walls with expensive and exclusivity was all of the knowledge, the power, the wisdom, the skill set. And we kept it for those with prestige, title, status, power, money. It was exclusive to access. Now it’s becoming more universal access. And yet still not everyone, particularly on the planet has access. Not everyone has access to formal learning or to be able to learn in mainstream in these more traditional ways.

So when we think about the luxury of education and the luxury of being a school leader, it is quite a luxury to have the privilege of being in the field of education, leading, guiding, mentoring, teaching, coaching, because before you were at the mercy of the institution. The institution was controlled, controlled who, what, where, when, why, how, controlled what is taught, who is taught, when it’s taught, how it’s taught, why it’s taught, what’s not taught. Very controlling. And then the global pandemic hits and it cracked, it fractured the exterior of education.

So education in and of itself is a luxury. It’s a luxury to be an educator. It’s a luxury to be in education. It’s a luxury to have access to education. Education’s not intended to be controlled or withheld. It’s not intended to be for a select percentage of the population. Education is an essential luxury. It’s not intended to be a luxury for just some or a few. Education is essential to the empowerment of all people and yet, it’s still also considered a luxury. So it’s essential and it’s a luxury. That’s why I call it an essential luxury. It’s essential to the empowerment of all people and yet it continues to be exclusive and somewhat, you know, in some ways expensive. It’s a luxury that it is a privilege to experience being educated. That’s a luxury. It’s a luxury to understand the purpose of education and the value of being educated. And we as educators, we’re there. We were born with a mission to empower people, to develop the humans. We are in human development, personal development. That’s what education is, personal development. We’re developing those little beings and those teenagers into our goal functioning adults who are empowered to have access to the life that they want, the lifestyle they want, the career and the way that they want to contribute to the world.

It’s a luxury and it’s a luxury to be a member of society who is granting empowerment to the younger generations. It’s also a luxury as an educator to have the ability to be educated on ourselves. Let me take you deeper, okay? It is a luxury to understand yourself, to understand how you function as a human, how your mind works, why you feel the way you do, how your experiences have shaped you, when you’re using your past to predict your future, how you’re shaping your experience, what lenses you’re looking through and being aware, oh, I’m looking through the lens of victimhood or I’m looking through the lens of disempowerment or I’m looking through the lens of negativity or I’m looking through the lens of critical thinking, critical skills, criticism, right? What critical lens are we using here to empower? We can look through a critical lens to help empower people, to inspire them, or we can look through a critical lens to bring them down.

What’s on our lens, right? Really to deep dive into who we are as humans and the best specimen to study is yourself, to understand your purpose, your vision, your mission, your experiences on the planet, why you engage with people the way you do, why you interact with the world in the way that you do, why you’re drawn to certain disciplines of study, why you think the way you do, why you tend to behave in a certain way. It’s a luxury to really explore this.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Empowered Principal® Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, please visit AngelaKellyCoaching.com where you can sign up for weekly updates and learn more about the tools that will help you become an emotionally fit school leader.