Hello, empowered principals. Welcome to episode 426.

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.

Well, hello, my empowered principals, and welcome to the podcast. Happy Tuesday. I am re-recording this episode in real time because I guess last week’s episode did not upload correctly or my mic was off. Something did not meet the standard. And you know what? At The Empowered Principal, we show up, we do what it takes to get it right for you guys.

So, I listened to the raw recording that I had submitted and my producer was spot on. It was kind of funky. I used a different mic. Actually, my original mic that I used to use in the beginning, but now I have this new Yeti mic, and it’s a little more compact so I can transport it. And I’ve been on the road a lot, so I have been using my smaller mic, and it seems to be working beautifully. So, here we are, ready to go. And it’s kind of appropriate for this podcast because it’s called A Rhythm Reset.

It’s the time of year in the world of the principals and district leaders where you’re ending out the winter season. Although, as I record this, we’re having a major winter storm in the Sierras right now, but it’s still the end of the winter season in the school world. It’s the end of the observation periods, the evaluations have to get done. People are making decisions about their career for the upcoming year, if they’re going to stay, if they’re going to go, if they’re going on leave, if they’re retiring, if they want to change grade levels, if they want to change schools. All of that HR busyness is starting as you’re wrapping up the evaluation process.

It’s also the season that I noticed in the spring where a lot of conversations around IEPs, 504s, student success meetings, any kind of student academic progress, behavior issues, they tend to spike in the spring because people are saying, “Whoa, it’s the spring season and we don’t have the progress we were hoping for or we’re not seeing the changes or we’re not seeing the evolution of progress that we would like to see.” And now we are a little panicked, we’re concerned, and we want to request testing. We want to request a meeting. We want to request a 504. We want to request assessment for IEP. You will see an uptick of this as you close out the winter and open up your spring season.

So, you’re at the end of a season. And at the end of each season, your plans and your approach to your plan, so in the world of the empowered principal, we create three-month plans. We have a seasonal plan. So, fall, winter, spring, summer. And at the end of a season, it can feel like you are enacting that plan, you are implementing your plan from a more reactive approach than proactive because as the plan unfolds and your work goes on a daily level around and around, it can feel like loose ends start to form and things start to get a little messy or a little tangled or a little chaotic. And we go from being a little more proactive in our approach and our daily decisions and actions into a more reactive approach.

So it can feel like this big snowball effect is happening where there’s pressure mounting, there’s tension mounting around getting things done. And as time passes, you feel this pressure of progress and performance and achievement and accomplishment. And if those things aren’t happening in the timeframe in which you believe they should be happening, it can feel like the pressure of leadership, your job, and the expectations and demands that people have can weigh in and get a little heavy on those shoulders. And it can cause you to go into reactive mode.

So, what I mean by reactive mode is it feels like you show up to work and you’re putting out fires and reacting to the day and what it’s throwing at you versus feeling some sense of calm or some sense of control as things are coming up. So, this is a normal part of the planning process and the leadership process. I want to state that because it can feel like something’s gone terribly wrong, that you’ve not honored your plan or that you’ve done something wrong or that everybody else around you is doing something wrong.

So, it is a normal part of the leadership process, the leadership experience, and the planning process to have moments where it feels like you are in front of the great big snowball coming down the mountain and it’s chasing you versus you pushing it or you feeling like you’re in control of navigating the leadership, the vision, what’s going on in your school, okay? So just normalize that. Nothing’s gone wrong. It’s normal. You don’t need to quit your job. You don’t need to go back into the classroom. You’re doing amazing, okay?

But the goal is to be able to acknowledge when you’re in an overwhelm cycle and when you feel yourself reacting versus responding. And this awareness piece is the most challenging because when you’re in an overwhelm cycle, you can also feel very productive. It’s a little sneaky, but here’s the difference. The key difference between being in a success cycle and feeling productive and an overwhelm cycle and thinking that you’re being productive is that it will feel different. It will feel overwhelming. It will be exhausting. It will feel heavy, difficult, challenging. It will feel like you’re spinning out, like stagnancy.

So you’re doing and you’re busy. It’s not that you’re just sitting at your desk not being productive. You’re physically moving around, you’re tangibly crossing things off of your list perhaps, but the feeling is overwhelm. The feeling is exhaustion. The feeling is maybe exasperation or a little desperation or a little hopelessness of like, what is the point here? Why am I spinning out? Okay?

They both feel productive. So just be aware of that. It’s like, I’m doing all the things. So why do I feel this way? That’s an overwhelm cycle. It’s when you’re in a cycle of reacting versus feeling stability and in control of your actions, decisions, and the day. Now, does that mean you never have wipeout days that you should always be in a success cycle? Absolutely not. It’s about a 50/50, folks. So, if you’re on the higher end of 50% between success cycles and overwhelm cycles, that’s wonderful.

If you are at the end of your winter season and you’re feeling like you’re in a state of overwhelm, a state of chaos, a state of like flailing, you can simply invite yourself to do a rhythm reset. These emotions that you’re feeling, especially at the end of a season here, at the end of a three-month plan, they are information. It’s communication. It’s the signals from your body to your brain, inviting you into awareness so that you can inquire as to what’s going on for you. What’s coming up? Why are you feeling the way you’re feeling?

You might notice yourself really frustrated or exasperated or annoyed, kind of on the anger end, frustration end, or you might feel yourself in the doubt, overwhelm, anxiety, stressed out end of the spectrum. Or you might just be a combination of all of the feels. You might be one-third overwhelmed, one-third anxiety ridden, and one-third frustrated. It just doesn’t matter. But these emotions that you’re feeling, when you’re feeling a little chaotic, and you’re feeling frayed, and you’re feeling pulled in a million different directions, all of that, it’s an indication that it’s time to slow down and do a reset and get back into a rhythm that feels more aligned for you, okay?

Something is just a little bit off, something’s out of rhythm, something needs to be addressed, something needs some attention. Perhaps it needs you to zoom out and look at it at a more global level. And what I mean by that is these emotions are just an invitation to stop and slow down, take a breath, and then look inward into the problem behind the problem.

So for example, I coached on this last week, and this is why I made this podcast, and now I’m re-recording this podcast, this is the content that came up. It was one of my principals who’s a one-on-one client. She’s also in EPC, and she was feeling a little annoyed that everyone seemed to be coming into the office and asking for a room. They needed space to do this project or to test this student or to have this meeting. And the rooms were already full. Activities had already been planned in the extra little spaces around campus. So, the office staff and the principal were spending time putting out fires trying to figure out where they were going to put this person and where they were going to put that person, and then the person would be unhappy because they had a preferred spot. They wanted to be in their spot of preference, but that spot wasn’t available.

So the principal was trying to appease the person asking while also annoyed that they didn’t know that all of these spots were taken, okay? I feel this deeply because this happened on my campus a lot. Everybody thinks they can just get the spot they want when they want it, on demand. And the truth is that there are a lot of things going on in the spring and there are spaces being utilized when other people aren’t aware. So, in the moment, we’re reacting. We are trying to solve the surface problem, which is this person needs a space and these three spaces are taken. Where do I put them? Oh, there’s a little nook and cranny in the library. Oh, there’s a little nook and cranny in the resource room or you know, you find some little spot for them to go. They’re not happy, but at least they can get their job done. And then you’re annoyed because it took you 15 minutes to figure out where to put them. And now, you feel out of rhythm.

And this keeps happening. So, when the principal came to the group and brought this up, one, we could see that there was a problem behind the problem. There needed to be a system put in place or some kind of protocol or some kind of process that needed to be considered and implemented to eliminate the problem. But when you’re in it, you’ve got blinders on. You’re just putting out the fire. You’re not thinking about what caused the fire the moment the fire’s happening. You’re thinking about putting out the fire. You’re not thinking about what started the fire. It doesn’t matter. What matters is there’s a fire and you’ve got to put it out.

So that’s what’s so great about EPC. You can now analyze what started the fire. Why do I have all these fires? What’s creating this fire in the first place so that I can address the core issue, the problem behind the problem, and eliminate the fire from starting, or at least keep it to a small little flame, right?

So, the initial problem in this scenario is that people are demanding a space. You’re going to solve for it, find a spot for them, and go. Now, that external pressure can feel really annoying when you’re having to take it on in real time. It’s interrupting you, it’s interrupting office staff, and it’s taking you away from being in rhythm of what you had planned to do. Some people, some principals, they don’t mind that. They can jump in and out of rhythm very quickly. They have a very short recovery time when it comes to like being interrupted, solving the problem, putting out the fire, and going back to business. And the fire approach does not bother them. That isn’t a reactive approach to them. It’s their proactive approach. They wait till the problem presents itself, they handle it, they move on.

If that’s you and you’re not feeling out of rhythm, then you’re not in an overwhelm cycle. You’re simply just addressing what comes up, handling it. It doesn’t phase you, you feel okay about it, and you move on. For some people, it feels like it’s throwing you off balance. It’s out of rhythm. It puts you out of sync. It interrupts your day. It keeps happening as a pattern. And our reaction is to just put the fire out and then not want to think about it because we want to get back to what we were doing. We try to jump back into rhythm sooner than later. But then we get out of rhythm again, and then again, and then again, and then again, and we’re like, “What’s going on?” Okay?

So, sometimes, as I said, it’s okay to just handle the problem and jump back into rhythm with the understanding with yourself, between you and you, that you’re going to come back and solve the problem behind the problem at a later time that’s more appropriate or convenient, depending on your plan. Other times you’re like, that’s it right here, right now, let’s sit down as an office staff and figure this out. You hit a point of enough, no more. I don’t want this to happen. It’s throwing me out of rhythm. I’m in overwhelm. I don’t like this feeling. It doesn’t feel good. I want to adjust. I want us to go back from reacting and back into responding. Okay?

Now, what I have noticed with my clients and with myself is that when we stay in an overwhelm cycle for a longer period of time, when there is a week or several weeks or a month where we do not take note of the emotional signals, we’re not acknowledging them, we’re not listening to them, when we try to avoid and we just keep pushing forward and pushing forward without slowing down, without resetting our rhythm, without listening, what happens is that internal chaos, where we’re feeling overwhelmed but we’re pushing it down and we’re not listening to it, and we just keep forging forward, when that happens for an extended period of time, the internal chaos becomes external chaos.

And if you’ve ever been a teacher, a mother, a principal, head of household, if you’ve got other stuff going on in your life, you’re caretaking for family members or you have a lot of kids of your own or you are running two schools, which I was doing at one time, or you’ve got two positions, if you’ve got anything more than one thing going on in your life, which is just about every woman I know on the planet, you’ve been through this.

Work gets busy, the kids’ schedule gets busy, your spouse is out of town, or you’re single, or your best friend who normally picks up the kids has got the flu. Something like everything’s in rhythm, but as long as nothing rocks the boat, everything is in flow. But the minute one little thing goes out of place, boom, the rhythm’s off. You’re running here, you’re running there. It goes into reactive mode. The car gets a little messier, the house gets a little messier, your bathroom, you didn’t quite put all your makeup away or there’s clothing on the bed, or you come home and the dishes aren’t done, your brain’s just like, “Ugh, everywhere I look.” The car is a little bit messy, my office, the piles are piling up on the desk, the, yesterday’s coffee cup is still in the car, the kids, you know, backpacks have blown up themselves in the back seat, the dog leash, can’t find it, all of that, that is an external representation, external manifestation of the internal rhythm reset desire, the need to reset that rhythm. And it will show up in the car, on the desk, in your office, at home.

It is another indicator that it’s time to do a rhythm reset. And the end of a season like this, end of February, going into March, is the perfect time. It’s an ideal time for us to sit down and say, “Hey, what’s working? What’s gotten out of rhythm? And where do we want to reset? Let’s get back into alignment.” And it can be very tricky to go from an overwhelm cycle to a success cycle, and I’ll tell you why. And I’ve observed this in myself. I’ve been studying this deeply because there have been moments of my life that feel very stuck and stagnant. And I keep asking myself kind of the wrong question. Actually, I’m like, “Why am I doing this? Why can’t I do this? Why?” Instead of, “Okay, here’s where we’re at. Here’s where we want to be. What would feel like getting back into rhythm? What’s one thing I can do to get back into rhythm?”

And the hardest part about this is the length of time between unawareness and awareness. So there’s a period of time, there’s a gap between when the overwhelm cycle starts and a little bit happens and then a little bit more, and we’re not aware. We’re kind of reacting and we don’t even realize it. There’s this space of unawareness. And what I’ve noticed is there is a length of time between the unawareness and the awareness where we’re like, “Wait a minute, what’s going on here? Let’s take stop. Let’s take stock, reboot, reset, and get back into rhythm.” Sometimes that happens very quickly. It’s like one or two things happens and already we’re like, “Wait a minute, let’s check this out. Let’s go inward. What’s coming up for me? What do I think the problem is? What do I think the solution is? And let’s explore those options and see if we can reboot this quickly and get back into rhythm.”

Other times, it feels like they’re so subtle, we don’t really notice it. We just react. You know, like something little happens at home and then something little happens at work and then another little thing happens at home and little, and then all of a sudden two weeks later, you’re like, there’s a moment of awareness where you’re looking around, your car’s a mess, your house is a mess, or you feel like a mess inside or you’re up all night thinking and worrying, or you feel tired all the time, or you feel like you’re spinning your wheels. There’s a moment where you’re like, “Whoa.” You blow the whistle. Time out. Moment of awareness.

I have found that the trickiest aspect of empowered leadership is that point between unawareness and awareness and knowing when you’re in the gap. And it’s like saying, become aware that you’re not aware. That’s hard when you’re in it. You have those blinders on, which is why it’s so helpful to have somebody else who’s looking in who can help you create that perspective.

That is why coaching is so powerful, why mentorship is powerful, why having a friend who’s honest with you or a therapist who can walk you through or a psychologist or, you know, even a colleague who’s got a third eye, a degree of separation to look in to say, “Hey, did you notice this or have you considered that? Or I’m observing this and I wanted you to know,” to create that awareness. When someone’s like, “I just wanted you to know,” what they’re saying is, “I’m here to create awareness. I’m here to help. I’m here to globalize your perspective, to help you zoom out.” Because we get so in the weeds and we’re trying to react and solve the fire of the day and the problem of the day that we don’t feel like we have the time to slow down.

And that is where we get stuck. So it’s from not knowing and not being aware there is a problem to then we react and put fires out as a pattern of solving the problem to that moment of awareness where our emotions, the experience, finally gets our attention to say, “Hey, there’s something else going on here. There is a rhythm problem. We’re out of sync. And there is something else we need to do besides react right now.”

And the key to a quicker rhythm reset is to tune into our emotions daily, regularly, as soon as possible. Now, we don’t like to do this. Why? We’ve got stuff to get done. We can’t stop and feel our feelings. We don’t like the way that it feels, so we don’t want to shine a light on it and give it more attention. We don’t want to amplify disappointment, discouragement, frustration, agitation, doubt, worry, fear, pain. We don’t want to look at those emotions because we don’t like the way they feel. But they don’t go away. They just wait for us to acknowledge them.

So what we tend to do as humans is avoid and ignore and suppress and try to circumvent the uncomfortable emotions that come up to the surface. We try to outwork them. If I just put out fires faster, longer, quicker, work more hours, I try to work harder, try to expand the hours I’m working. I try to work more efficiently, I try to work faster, run between fires. We start to come in earlier and leave later. We work on nights and weekends. We bring that computer home. We’re trying to put out fire, fire, fire instead of stopping and studying what started the fire to prevent this for the future or to reduce the chances that it could happen.

When we try to outwork, outrun, we’re expanding the time that it takes to go from unawareness to awareness. We’re trying to work from the belief system that more time putting out fires will create the solution of satisfaction. It doesn’t, it creates the solution of overwhelm and working longer. It’s so tricky, isn’t it? But if we can tune in quickly, “Hey, how am I feeling? I know I don’t like this feeling. That’s why I’m going to address it. What’s coming up?” Giving it a voice, giving it time to speak, letting it tell us what wisdom it has for us. The faster we can do that, the faster we can get back into a rhythm reset.

And I know the brain wants to counter you. It’s very counterintuitive feeling to slow down when your brain says speed up. Do less for this next five minutes instead of do more. Don’t put the fire in front of you right now. Stop, find the source so you can unplug the core of what’s fueling this fire. That’s counterintuitive. The brain is so clever and it will say things like, “We don’t have time. There’s a fire in front of us. We don’t have time. We’ve got to put the fire out.” It’s not wrong to put out the fire as long as you create a rhythm reset space in between fires so that you can identify what’s happening.

We know intuitively that slowing down and breaking down the issues that we’re having will help us develop a protocol or a process or some kind of a procedure that will be more efficient in the long run. Yet our brain will tell us every single time, don’t slow down. Don’t solve the bigger problem. We don’t have time for that. It will take too much time. It’s not solvable anyway, so why bother? Putting out the fire is working for today, so why worry about tomorrow today? And again, if that feels good, you’re in rhythm. Go for it. If it doesn’t and you’re frustrated, it can be very annoying to realize that our own brain is working against us from getting back into a rhythm that feels good for us, that feels satisfying, that feels fulfilling, and that feels productive in a positive way.

But this is why we have emotion as humans. This is why we have the emotions. It’s to communicate within ourselves that something is out of rhythm, that we would like to get back into rhythm, that it is time for a rhythm reset. When we avoid rhythm resets, what we’re saying is I went to the gym once, I should stay buff. I ate healthy once, I should have lost 10 pounds. I took one driving lesson, I should know how to drive. I’ve ridden a bike 20 years ago, I should be as agile on a bike. I used to ski, I still should be able to ski. Maybe that’s true, but you won’t know until you get on the skis. So, taking a few minutes to slow down and ask yourself, “Hey, what’s the problem behind the problem? What am I feeling? Why am I feeling this way? What do I think the problem is? What do I think the solution is?” and just explore what’s coming up for you.

So, as you’re listening to this, if you’re in the car, you know, take a gander. Is it messy? Is it organized? Does it need a rhythm reset? Your office, when you get to the office or did you just leave the office? Does it need a rhythm reset? Your home, does it need a rhythm reset? Your sleep patterns, do you need a little more sleep? Do you need a reset? Do you need a reset on the water you drink or the food that you eat? Do you need a relationship rhythm reset? There can be any aspect of our lives that could benefit from a rhythm reset. It doesn’t mean something’s gone wrong. It just means that it’s time. It’s normal. It’s a part of the process.

And something I learned very early on in my leadership journey was that these external spaces in my world were a reflection of my internal world. So when my external space got messy, I knew it meant internal clutter. That there was chatter in my brain, that there was unprocessed emotion, that my body hadn’t moved or exercised or gotten outside or breathed some fresh air. And when I saw that reflecting back to me, I knew it was time to organize that office space, to take five minutes, 10 minutes to clear off the desk or to clean out the car, drive it through the wash, whatever, get the laundry done at home, load up the dishwasher, do my laundry, get it off the bed, get it onto hangers. Just little bits every day. I didn’t have to do it all at once. I just took one little project, the desk one day, the laundry the next day, the, you know, the car on the weekend.

And those little things helped clear up my internal world because I’m taking in the world through my senses. So everything I see feels like another mode of information. It’s another layer. It’s another tab open. Oh, I’ve got to do the dishes. Oh, I’ve got to clean my office. Oh, got to get the car cleaned out. Oh my gosh, the laundry, oh, the dishes, oh, the this and this and that. When things are cleaned and organized, your internal system calms down because your visual sensations, your sense of smell, your sense of taste, your sense of touch, your vision, all of your senses, like what you hear. You can be on audio overload, you can be on visual overload. That can add to a rhythm getting off course.

So, when I took the time to organize a little space here and a little space there, I felt better instantly. It’s amazing to me how many people I’ve coached on this topic. And it’s around this time of year, which is why I’m recording the podcast on it because it’s coming. If it’s not here already, it might be coming for you.

And I observed this concept both with leaders and with teachers. You’ve been in a classroom where there’s one that’s organized and there’s one that gets a little chaotic and a little more and it starts to get messy and it’s like, whoa. And then the teacher spends an evening says, “I’m going to stay for a couple hours and get this stuff cleaned up.” And then they feel better. You’ve probably done that as a teacher. I’ve done that as a teacher. It feels really good to walk in Monday morning and it’s ready to go, cleaned up. But by the end of the week, it kind of starts to fray, right? That happens. It’s normal. So we might be organized on Monday, but by Friday, it’s like, whoa, reboot. Or maybe Thursday you stay late and clean it up and so you can go home early on Friday, whatever works for you.

But you know those classrooms. So we can have this conversation with our teachers. Is anybody in need of a rhythm reset? What is it you need? Is it your classroom? Is it your car? Like do something that feels good for you and your physical space can help you get into like a rhythm reset internally. It’s pretty interesting how simple it is, yet how difficult it is to go from unawareness to awareness.

So, if at the end of this winter season, as it’s coming to an end for you, if it feels out of rhythm, if it’s a little stressful, if it’s a little disheveled, if it’s a little chaotic, it’s not that you’re not an excellent principal. It’s not that you aren’t an empowered principal. It’s that you are a human being. It’s that rhythm of life which gets out of rhythm. It’s that time of season when all the loose ends get a little tangled, some chaos can ensue. It’s normal and it happens. That’s not the problem, okay? Don’t believe that’s the problem or that you’re the problem. That’s just normal.

You don’t need to make it mean something’s gone wrong with you or that you’re not cut out. What it does mean is that it’s just time to slow down and tune inward into your inside world. Check in with yourself. Check in on how you’re feeling. Do a brain drain, write down all those thoughts, get them onto paper. Check in with the problems that seem to be an ongoing pattern for you. Ask yourself, what do I think is the problem? Could there be a problem behind that problem? Do I feel disempowered? Do I feel overwhelmed? What, how am I feeling and why? And then look around you. Notice if your external spaces are mirroring your internal feelings, your internal space, and see if some of the discomfort you are feeling is actually coming from visualizing and being able to see that external disorganization.

Also notice this, does any resistance come up regarding the desire to slow down and reset your rhythm? Because you can create awareness, but then have resistance. You don’t want to slow down. You don’t want to clean the car out. You don’t want to take the time to organize your office. Your brain’s like, “That’s going to be too hard. It’s going to take too much time. It’s too much effort. I don’t have time for this.” But it’s really like, “I just don’t want to do it because I don’t like to do it.” But yet it feels so good in the end. So then you can ask yourself, okay, how do I want to feel and how will I feel when this desk is cleaned? Can I put on some tunes while I’m cleaning my desk? What would make it feel better now? Play that game with yourself. Let it be fun.

Or just say, “I’m going to set a timer for five minutes. I’m going to see how much I get done, and that’s it. I’m only doing it for five minutes. Go. On your mark, get set, go.” Boom. Timer goes off, you’re done. You might find yourself going, “Okay, five more minutes.” Or maybe you got it done in five minutes and you thought it was going to be two hours and it was five minutes.

The resistance into getting back into rhythm can be a challenge in of itself to overcome. And that is the beauty of one-on-one coaching. That’s the beauty of EPC and group coaching. It provides you the luxury of an external perspective that can broaden and expand your perspective. It’s like, let’s say you’re at a national monument and you’re looking through those binoculars. You can’t see because you’re not looking through them, but your friend is, and then they say, “Hey, look through these.” And then you see and you’re like, “Whoa. Oh my gosh, that’s incredible. I couldn’t even see that from far away.” But you get the magnifying glasses, the binoculars, and you’re like, “I see so clearly. That’s really cool. This feels good.” I want more of this. Yes, please, okay?

So, group coaching, one-on-one coaching, any of the programs that we offer here at The Empowered Principal, it can provide you the luxury of time and the luxury of support to surround yourself with love and compassion and perspective so that you can overcome the resistance and turn it into desire and momentum and solve the things that will help you feel better and get back into the rhythm of your leadership style, your leadership intentions, and your leadership impact. And that’s what we’re here to do, guys.

Welcome to Rhythm Reset. For those of you who are aspiring to be a school leader, I’ve got an announcement. I am going to be offering Aspiring School Leader workshop on Saturday, March 7th, from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Pacific time. So that would mean 10 to 12 Eastern time. Saturday, March 7th. And there’s a bonus waiting for you for those who sign up, register, and attend. I’ve got an exciting bonus waiting for you. Come on in, aspiring leaders, to the Aspiring School Leaders workshop Saturday, March 7th. Can’t wait to see you there. Happy rhythm resetting. Have a beautiful week. Talk to you next week. Take good care. Bye.

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 424.

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.

Well, hello, my empowered principals. Happy Tuesday. Hope you are well. And I am going to dive right in. Now, you’re listening to this the second week of February, and I’m recording this in January, shortly after the incidents that have occurred in Minneapolis, Minnesota. So for those of you who are on any kind of social media or watch any kind of news, you have most likely heard of the incidents that have occurred in Minneapolis and not just Minneapolis but around our nation. The events that are happening in our world, in our nation, in our country. And I am going to speak to them today in terms of the humanity of education.

So, I have been coaching school leaders on this topic. And I have several one-on-one clients and I have a group program called EPC, the Empowered Principal Collaborative. And then I also teach kind of a la carte courses and programs, masterminds, masterclasses for an individualized topic experience. And in my group conversations and in my one-on-one conversations, this topic of the humanity of education, the humanity of teaching and learning and leading continues to come up.

And these conversations are in response to, in reaction to the events that are occurring in our communities across the nation. And for many of us, our approach, and I’ll speak for myself, like my approach has been to compartmentalize them, to feel my own feelings personally, cleanse that out and then be available for coaching, which is what I highly recommend because I don’t want to have my thoughts and feelings and opinions bubble up and impact any of my clients.

So I also have made it kind of a philosophy or a value within my company to not address current events per se, because my goal is not to politicize the empowerment of school leaders. My goal is to be open and give all school leaders access to this culture, this lifestyle, this mindset of personal empowerment, regardless of political affiliation or political thoughts and beliefs. We’re not on this podcast to debate the politics of education. We’re talking about your personal power and your ability to lead from that empowerment.

However, in my conversations with clients, it became apparent that if this many people who are already in my programs and in my one-on-one coaching programs are struggling, who have been coaching on the tools, who have been sharing their thoughts and feelings and getting in alignment and in integrity with who they are and what they value and their identity as a leader, if these clients who are well-versed are struggling, I can’t fathom what it might feel like to not have access to these strategies, these tools, and to these mindset opportunities and the invitation into how do I handle the feelings that come up in relation to external events that are happening all around me, okay?

So what we know to be true is that for many people, not everybody, but for people who are tuned in and people who are paying attention or who are not compartmentalizing, that the events that are happening around us are having an impact. They’re impacting us, they’re impacting our staff members, our students, our families that we serve, the community at large, the people who are, at district level, school boards. It’s pretty hard to not be impacted when the humanity of humankind is being questioned, is being scrutinized, is being under attack.

So I’ve decided that it is up to me as a leader, leaders go first and leaders are tested and we have to step one foot in courage and the other foot in faith when we are presenting how do we address this? How do we address the humanity in education?

So in our conversations in EPC, we were talking about how we personally feel. So, step one in leadership is it always starts with us. We go from internal to external. Who we are on the inside, how we feel on the inside, our identity, all of that are what drive the external. So we look inward first.

If you are personally struggling emotionally, mentally, psychologically, or even having these intense visceral reactions inside your body to the events that are occurring, what I invite you into is to validate your emotional experience. To first validate how you feel, that your feelings matter. Because you’re a leader does not mean you don’t have emotions. Because you’re a leader does not mean that you have to set aside your emotions. Because you’re a leader does not mean that you have to numb or avoid or suppress your emotions.

In order to have the bandwidth to have the ability to hold the pressure and the tension of other people’s intense visceral reactions to current events, we have to have space for that. If our emotional needs are not met, when we go to school and our emotional bucket has been ignored and it’s overflowing, the minute that somebody else has a reaction, the energy between you and them or the energy in the room, something will release. There will be a trigger point, there will be an overflow, there will be an explosion, there will be some kind of emotional energy release. So, for example, if somebody comes in and they’re very distressed and you are also distressed and they share their distress with you, you may jump right in the pool with them and now you’re both distressed because you were at your limit and they were at their limit and together that creates overflow of emotional energy.

It’s like when your toddler has a meltdown and you’re super tired and you feel like you just want to get on the floor and tantrum with them. That’s what this is. When we are emotionally fragile because we haven’t allowed ourselves the permission and time and space to care for our self emotionally and to acknowledge and validate and process our emotions, then we don’t have bandwidth. We don’t have the capacity to hold space, to hold the pressure, to hold that tension for when other people come in.

So when we’re rested and as a teacher, when you’re well-rested, you’re prepared, if a student has a meltdown, you’ve got the capacity. You’ve got the bandwidth, the patience, the space in your physical body, your emotional space, your mental space to navigate that situation and to stay fairly regulated. Even if it’s bothersome, you can still manage, okay?

Now, when we’re exhausted, we’re tired, we’re not as prepared, maybe we have distractions going on and we come in and a student gets dysregulated, it might put us into dysregulation and put us over the edge. That is what’s happening with the current events. People are so emotionally impacted that it is next to impossible for them, it feels like it is impossible for them to not be impacted in their external world, how they navigate external situations at school.

So in order for us to be able to hold space and allow for people to feel how they’re feeling and give them permission as fellow humans on the planet to feel however they want to feel and to actually feel, acknowledge their emotions, name it. This is how I’m feeling. This is why I’m feeling it. This is what it feels like in my body. Process it, whether it’s rage, frustration, anger, fatigue, exhaustion, exasperation, grief, sadness, pain, rage, anger, the whole spectrum of emotions may be happening all at once. You may be just spinning in emotion. Those feelings, they need to be acknowledged and validated. They need a voice. They need to be heard, they need to be expressed.

And there’s a difference between like seeing something and then having that trigger, that initial kind of feel like, oh my gosh, like that’s shocking or that’s terrible or, you know, that was the right thing to do, the bad, whatever, whatever your brain offers you, we’re not trying to pick sides here. What we’re saying is the human experience is to have an initial emotional reaction, kind of like that shock value. And then what we do is, ooh, that doesn’t feel good. I don’t like that feeling. I don’t like the anger or I don’t like the sadness or the grief or the pain or the shock or the horror. So I am going to avoid it or I’m going to suppress it or I’m going to numb it, distract myself, you know, to like have a glass of wine versus feeling it or gets on the phone and talk about it with somebody or talk about something else or watch Netflix or just go into another room and fold laundry, something to avoid the feeling, the discomfort of the negative feeling, okay?

And what we’ve been doing, I think since as long as I’ve been on the planet as a student and a teacher and a principal and a district leader is that we tend to avoid talking about emotions because just the conversation around emotions makes people uncomfortable, which is a negative emotion. Just bringing them up, everyone’s like, oh, I don’t want to talk about feelings. Like, why don’t we want to talk about feelings? Why do we call it fluff? That’s a distraction from having to feel them. It makes us uncomfortable to simply talk about the feelings. And talking about emotions can bring up negative emotions and we don’t want to bring up negative emotions. We don’t want discomfort, we don’t want the pain, we don’t want the fears. So we avoid it, but in doing so, we perpetuate it.

It’s like, you know, an itch that you don’t scratch, it will continue to itch. And you’re like, well, if I just, you know, it’ll just go away, it’ll just go away. Maybe you can wait it out, maybe the emotion will go away, but it’s not really going away. You’re just suppressing it. It’s kind of like going dormant for a while because you’re distracting. But then if you were to see the incident again or talk about the incident again, the feelings come right back up to the surface. And now they’re even stronger because they haven’t been expressed.

And I will be the first to admit here, I haven’t wanted to talk about anything political on the podcast because I don’t want to isolate people. My goal is to empower people, right? I have had my own fears. I’ve had my fears of cancel culture coming to shut me down, to shut this podcast down, to shut down my business, fears of people tracking me, tracking my business, tracking my services, and then, you know, like somehow speaking negatively of them to the point to shut everything down or retaliating at a professional level or a personal level. Like, I have my own fears of, you know, something personally happening to me or something professionally happening to me.

And I relate to you because it’s scary to speak up when you are afraid of losing your job, losing your title, your status, losing your positional authority, losing what you have right now. When you fear losing what you have, you will play small, you will speak small, you will, you know, this is when we hide, mask, avoid, numb, distract, we will do anything but hit the nail on the head because we’re afraid if we do so, the ripple effect will be so negative. And there are times when that’s true.

And also being the brand of empowerment. So the brand of this service that I provide, which is, you know, coaching and mentorship for school leaders, for district leaders, for state leaders, the coaching and mentorship that I do, the brand of it is empowerment. But it’s not empowering if we aren’t being honest, if we’re not being direct, if we’re not having conversations about the authenticity of the experience, the humanity of our experience. And being in our empowerment requires us as leaders, one, to go first, two, to take the small steps in the emotional energy of courage to forge forward as leaders. We go first because we’re leaders, right?

So I want to directly say that this is not a conversation about politics. It’s a conversation about the humanity of education, the human experience that we’re having on the planet collectively together and the impact of the events that we are witnessing before our very eyes. The impact it’s having on children, on staff members, on families, on communities, on our district, on ourselves. I don’t know how we can continue as educational leaders in good faith without acknowledging the impact of the energy and the actions that are occurring towards fellow humans.

I don’t understand how education can continue to progress forward, to move forward, to empower students, which is the goal. How can we empower ourselves, staff, students, families? How can we educate them and empower them if we’re not courageous enough to have conversations around the humanity of it all, the reason why we’re doing this in the first place?

And I know what you might be thinking because this is what I was thinking and this is where the conversation in EPC went this week, which was, where do we begin? What happens is we see what’s happening and we want to fix it, we want to change it, we want it to stop. We want, you know, better for everyone. And when we think that way at this like national level or global level, and we want it all to stop, you have an all or none thinking, it’s like, I can’t fix all of that. I’m just little ol’ me. How is my personal power as a school leader going to make any difference?

So, where do we begin? In bringing back the humanity into our leadership approach and leadership experience. So these are my recommendations and these are the steps that we embody in the empowered principal program and in the, I consider this a movement, a philosophy, like a new paradigm or a an addition to like a an enhancement into the educational experience. So as leaders, the simplest way to approach and to invite humanity back into education is to number one, feel our own emotions first, all the way through. Not just the surface emotion, like, ooh, I don’t like that. I don’t think I’m going to go there. But to create a space, a sense of privacy wherever you are.

I like to just be in my bedroom. It feels like a safe haven for me to go in and let myself feel my emotions all the way through. To invite them in, how am I feeling? What am I feeling? Naming it, labeling it. Like, I feel this, I’m so this, I’m so upset, I’m so hurt, I’m so angry. I feel so whatever. I say it, I name it out loud, and I let it kind of ravage my body. I let it vibrate throughout my body because feelings, emotions are feelings. We feel them in our bodies.

But what we don’t want to do is we don’t want to feel that vibration. We don’t like the intensity of it. We don’t like where it’s landing. We don’t want our head to pound or our throat to feel closed off or our heart to pound or our chest to feel tight or for our stomach to feel nauseous or have butterflies. We don’t enjoy that vibration in our body, so we try to avoid it versus letting it run its course and fully all the way through expressing that.

How am I feeling? I’m angry. Why am I angry? Because of this. How does it feel in my body? This is how it feels. This is the intensity. This is the color, the shape. This is where it’s located in my body. Oh, I’m so mad. It comes in waves. It’s just like a good cry, you know, where you can feel it coming on and you can hold back tears and you can pull it together for a while. But if you think about it again, it brings it right back up. It’s like when, you know, I’ve lost my mom, my dad, and my grandmother, and I can still literally feel the grief again when I think about them and I feel them, and I feel their absence, and I think about the memories. Now, the tears might be happy tears, but they sometimes they might be very sad tears.

But like a good cry, it will come to the surface and if you allow it and just let it all out, you cry, you wail, you do whatever you do, have the ugly cry. It kind of starts and then it comes in waves and it gets more intense and less intense. And then the waves kind of come in again and then a little bit slower, a little bit slower. And eventually, the body feels complete. And you’re just kind of done. When you let yourself cry all the way through. Because one of the worst things that happens is that we cry, right?

So you allow yourself and you give yourself permission to have your own humanity experience, to have your own feeling experience. And eventually, when you get to the other side of that, you’re like, now what? I’ve had the good cry or I’ve felt the feels, I’ve been angry, I screamed in the pillow, I did what I needed to do. I took that walk and like, whatever it is you need to express yourself, whether that’s through physical motion, whether it’s through crying, whether it’s through, you know, screaming, whether it’s through punching a pillow, something that’s safe, but also like gets the physical energy out of you.

Let that emotion process all the way through, and then you’ll kind of hit a, now what? What is it that I need? What do I need for me to feel better personally? What control or power do I have? A lot of what we feel is disempowerment. We’re angry, we’re frustrated because we don’t feel we have power. But in believing we have no power, we give the power we do have away.

So after the feels come through all the way, then we’re like, what control do I have in this situation? What power do I have? I have the power to manage my thinking. I have the power to think what I want, feel what I want, act the way I want. I have a lot of control over me, okay? Sometimes just having allowed yourself to process the feeling all the way through is completely enough. It’s like, it’s all you needed. It’s just, that’s what I needed. I feel better. There’s nothing more that I need to move forward. And then I’m good.

Other times, you might feel compelled to make a decision or take an action or try a different approach or, you know, perhaps try a new set of behaviors, new habits, new patterns, either ways of thinking or ways of behaving, or perhaps you’re looking for a way to articulate and communicate and express yourself in a way that feels fulfilling and feels complete for you, or it feels like progress, like empowerment.

So after the feelings comes what next? And then ask yourself because in different scenarios, it’s going to be different things. For some people, it’s getting out and protesting. For other people, it’s, you know, sitting back and supporting family, friends, neighbors, school community. Empowerment can look an endless amount of ways. What feels empowering for you? No one can tell you that. Only you can tell you that. But you’ve got to let the feelings pass through first to have the clarity to even know what’s going to make you feel better, okay?

And then as a school leader, moving beyond our personal, now that we’ve done the work internally, we can take it to the external. What baby steps can I take that will support my school community to do the same? And look, you don’t have to take on the problems of the globe or the entire nation. Just thinking you need to do that feels very intimidating, very scary, it’s frightening. It’s very discouraging. So what are the baby steps? What’s one thing I can do? One person I can support, one student, one staff member, one family. What’s one conversation that I’m courageous enough to have with maybe a district level leader?

Because friends, honestly, I don’t see how education can continue to avoid conversations around the humanity of being human. The experience of being human, which includes the emotional experiences we are having. Our emotions are what make us human. It is a unique feature of our humanity. Our emotions are the fuel that drives our decisions. How we feel impacts the decisions we make and the actions we take. Our emotions determine what we believe about ourselves, our identity, other people, what we believe about others, what we believe they’re capable of, you know, their identity, and what we think and feel and believe about the world. Emotions are the fuel. Emotions are the actual energetics of being human. It’s the energy of being human. It’s the energy behind everything.

So avoiding our humanity and narrowing our purpose as educators down to having blinders on basically of just like, I’m here to teach reading, writing, math, sciences, you know, focus on test scores, focus on improving, you know, student achievement, you know, yes, they have a little bit of arts and, you know, PE, but really, we’re here to like curriculum and test and move them forward, get them reading, writing, you know, doing some math, doing some science, a little bit of art in there, and along they move. When we keep that narrow lens and measuring our successes via test scores, we are missing the whole point.

Our purpose as educators is to empower people. To educate them is to empower them, to give them the identity of a person who has power over their lives, the ability to make decisions for themselves, the ability to decide who they are and what they want to do, the capacity to expand their capacity. We empower children, we empower adults, we empower one another. It doesn’t end when we turn 18 or 21 or 25 or 30. Our expansiveness, our humanity continues to evolve throughout the entire existence we are here on the planet as an individual and as a collective. Our power comes in the form of emotion. Emotions are a topic we just can’t avoid because it’s the very thing that defines us and drives us as human beings. That’s what humanity is. It’s the collective experience as humans on the planet. It’s benevolence. This is the very definition if you look it up.

I feel I have been called to create spaces like this on this podcast and in my empowered principal programs where we openly discuss the humanity of education, the deeper purpose, the value of it, bringing these conversations around the emotional experience of educators and students into the mainstream, to prioritize it. We need to prioritize the emotional experience of our teachers, our leaders, our students, our families, to expand the experience and to improve the experience of learning, the experience of teaching, the experience of leading. How it feels. Because if it feels terrible to learn, and it feels terrible to teach, and it feels terrible to lead, what’s the point? It’s not based on empowerment at all.

We’re seeing what happens when we dehumanize humanity, when we dehumanize experiences, when we turn off the emotions and we turn off the capacity to discuss how something feels and to have compassion and empathy for one another’s experience, to look through other people’s lenses, not to completely understand them, but to kind of look through the lens for a minute, to seek to understand. And I do believe that we have the ability, the capacity, and the empowerment to do this as leaders, to create this impact, to bring back the humanity and the purpose of education, which is empowerment for all humans collectively. We can do it gently, we can do it slowly, we can do it with intention by having one conversation at a time, one discussion at a time, one emotional processing experience at a time.

We don’t need curriculum for this. We need to have conversation. We need to have connection. We need to have the courage and the confidence to hold these conversations. I hope you’re coming with us. I know you are if you’re listening to this podcast. I invite you to join EPC. I’m letting people join at any time. I usually only enroll people in the summer and then at Mid-Year Reboot. But because I wasn’t able to hold the midyear reboot because I’ve had multiple family emergencies, I have decided to open the doors to let anyone in who needs relief from the lack of humanity. We’re here to support you. We love you. We want to empower you. We want to work and collaborate with you shoulder to shoulder.

There is change coming to education whether we want it to change or not. It’s coming, it’s happening, and we can stand in our personal power as we navigate the change or we can feel victim to it and stand in our disempowerment. Come along with us. I want you to choose empowerment and enjoy the experience of school leadership, not just for you and for your family, but for your students, your staff, your families at school and the community at large. Have an empowered week. Take good care of yourselves and I will talk with you next week.

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.