Ep #222: Leaving School Leadership

Hello empowered principals. Welcome to episode 222.

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 Robeck.

Hello, my empowered leaders. Welcome to the end of March. I love that this episode is 222. Because as you know, my birthday is on February 22. So I celebrated my 2/22/22 birthday this past month. Now here we are at the end of March celebrating the 222nd episode of the Empowered Principal podcast. How fun is that?

All right, I’m gonna dive right in because this is a very special episode. I hadn’t anticipated doing this episode, but I had such a huge demand and a huge response to this topic that I decided to share it with you in summary on the podcast. So last month, I did a webinar called Leaving School Leadership. Perhaps you were a participant. Perhaps you wanted to participate and weren’t able to make it.

I only did this webinar live. I did not offer a replay because I wanted people to commit to this topic for themselves. I wanted you to commit and be willing to create a schedule around the webinar so that you would decide about your school leadership position intentionally for next year. I’m going to talk about this. I’m going to talk you through some of the webinar content and some of the points that I made because I feel that this is such a high value decision.

Your career is one of the most important aspects of your life because you spend so much time and energy and passion and effort and focus on your career as a school leader, as an educator. Now, I know some of you are feeling like you do not want to be in education anymore. You don’t want to be a school leader anymore.

Like I said earlier, it doesn’t really make business sense for me to offer how to talk people through the process of leaving school leadership. But number one, I have been there. I have been in your shoes. I know exactly how you’re feeling. I had the same thoughts. I had the same fears. I had the same objections in my mind.

I actually left school leadership in order to create this business of coaching school leaders. I had to get out of the industry in order to help the industry. So I know the process. I know exactly how you feel. I know the thoughts you’re having. I know the obstacles in your way. I know the pitfalls to avoid. I’ve done it. I’ve lived it. So I decided that my bigger goal in life, what’s really important to me most right now, is to end as much suffering as possible for school leaders.

The job is difficult. It’s isolating. It’s hard. It’s demanding. It requires a lot of growth, a lot of evolvement, a lot of personal development in order to maintain yourself, to grow, and to love the job. To want to stay in the job requires you to personally develop. What I mean by personal development, that’s just evolving the way you think. Thinking different thoughts, questioning old thoughts, questioning old belief systems, evolving your brain in a way that helps you feel better, have a different experience in your career and in your life.

This job requires that of you in order to maintain yourself, in order to stick with it, in order to decide with intention how long you’re going to stay in the position, other things that might interest you, and when you decide to leave. So I’m going to talk about all of that today.

So this podcast is really for everybody. Because every year we, as school leaders, should be deciding with intention what we want to do with our careers for the upcoming year. Every single year we should sit down and decide and commit to that decision and love our reasons for that decision and our commitment to that decision. This should be a process you go through every year.

What most of us are doing, most of us are just we got in the position, and it’s what we said we wanted. We default to this is just what is. So I’m going to talk you through the webinar components today. I want you to know even if you’re not a person who is considering leaving school leadership, this is for you. If you want to stay in school leadership, but you’re not happy. Or you absolutely know you want out. You’ve already decided that, but you don’t know how.

Or if you thought maybe you’ve been in the job for like two to five years, a few years, and you thought it would get better. You thought after COVID, it would be better. You’re realizing it’s not getting better. I feel a little stuck. I feel like things aren’t getting easier. They’re actually feeling harder. There’s now a teacher shortage. We’re having civil rights conversations where we’ve lost a lot of instructional time. How are we going to get the scores back up, the kids back up, all of that?

this is definitely for you if you want so badly to love your job. You want to want the job, but deep inside, you don’t love it. You’re not happy. You have no idea how to fix it. You feel trapped. You feel stuck. You feel like you have to stay. So I’m speaking to everyone in school leadership. Either you want to be in school leadership, but you’re afraid. You want to leave school leadership, but you don’t know how. You’re afraid. Or you’re in it, and you feel like you can’t enjoy it more, and you can’t leave. So all of it, right?

The only people that this is not relevant to our people who are happy 100% with their job, with their career, love the work, and have no intentions of leaving. Even for you, happy school leader out there, this still is for you because even so, you should be deciding with intention, consciously on purpose, what your career is. if you are so happy, you want to make a three-year plan. Where am I going to be in three years? Why do I want that? Get busy creating your legacy plan. So this is for everybody. I’m very passionate about it. Here we go. Let’s dive in.

All right, I just want to reiterate I have been in your shoes. I’ve personally done this work. From the beginning to this moment that I’m speaking to you right now. I am going to tell you the process I use to enjoy school leadership, and how I developed this plan to create a career and an income in the way that I wanted to that gives me exactly what I want in my life.

for me, and this is what you’ll need to do, is you need to decide what you ultimately really, really deeply want in your life. There’s things on the surface you want like people-pleasing. You know I want people to like me, and I want to be happy all of the time. No, I’m talking about the big picture here. How you want to experience this human life as a school leader.

for me, those parameters were number one, I wanted flexibility and freedom. I wanted to feel like I had some flexibility. that I had a lot of freedom over my time, over how much income I could make, over when I made that income, how I made that income, the flexibility of where I worked. I was very adamant on being location independent. Because my mom was sick, and I was in California and she was in Iowa. I wanted to spend the rest of her life with her. I wanted to feel delight in my life and enjoyment. I wanted to feel aligned.

What I love to talk about most isn’t for every single school leader out there. There are people out there that have no interest in personal development, no interest in evolving and questioning their thoughts, no interest in having control over their time, having control over their life. They’re happy with the way things are. Totally fine.

I like to dive in deep. I want to feel aligned. I want to feel like it’s okay to talk about these things in school leadership. I want to talk about emotions. I want to talk about our thoughts. I want to talk about failure and the beauty of failure. And why we get ourselves up and dust ourselves off and try again. Why it’s worth investing money into ourselves. Why it’s worth investing time into ourselves. How do we create demand? How do we contribute as much as possible to ourselves, to the world, to our students, to our families, to our loved ones, our friends, our staff, all of that?

I wanted to be highly creative, and I wanted to create a lot of value in the world. I don’t know anybody else who’s offering what I offer. I feel unique and significant and important in my own way. I feel highly valuable. I am an expert coach. I am trained. I’m certified. I have tens of thousands of hours. I’ve been doing this for years. I wanted to contribute and connect with each of you.

The part of me that ached back then, that younger version of me that was so desperate and so tired, so exhausted. So wanting an aching to feel better and to have the life I wanted and to create the income I wanted, and to have the impact as a school leader in the way that I wanted to. I wanted to help people feel better. My goal was to ensure that every person who set foot on my campus had the best experience possible in whatever form that looked like. That was my mission.

I’ve helped hundreds of clients. I’ve taught multiple workshops on this, and the process works every single time. Okay. Why this offer is a little different than what I normally offer is that I am definitely not here to convince you to stay in school leadership. I’m not going to tell you all the reasons why you should look to the bright side and suck it up and be positive and fake it till you make it and keep going and you’re in it for the kids. I’m not going to tell you all of that. You’ve heard that before.

I’m going to invite you to expand in your mind what you think is possible for yourself. The reason you’re unhappy in school leadership isn’t what you think it is. the reason you feel stuck in school leadership is because of your inability to expand what you believe is possible.

So I’m going to teach you that. I’m going to teach you how to stay in the position while you take the time you need to develop a solid exit plan. But before you make any decisions about next year, whether you want to stay or go, you need to follow this process to a tee. Because doing so is going to help you get incredibly clear about what step to take next, and what decisions to make and why.

So here’s what we all really want. We want to enjoy the Monday through Friday-ness of our life. That part of our life that Monday through Friday, and I’m going to say like Sunday afternoon to Friday, we want to enjoy that part of our life. It doesn’t mean be happy every minute of the day. It means we wake up, and we enjoy going to work. We’re willing to go there and have 50% of it be amazing. versus feeling like it’s all dread and all doom and gloom. You want to not dread Sunday evening.

I have a client who calls them the Sunday scaries. Like her brain just starts to freak out on Sunday afternoons because she’s thinking about work on Monday. You want not to be consumed with thoughts about work every single minute of the day, day and night. You want to be able to sleep.

You don’t want to wake up and be up for two hours in the middle of the night, like I was, perseverating about work and worrying about the next situation and the next angry parent and the next staff member that’s not happy. You want to sleep restfully you want to make money in a way that doesn’t involve sacrificing yourself. You want to feel aligned and valuable. you want to feel like what you’re offering is the way in which you want to offer it.

let me tell you this, you want to have some fun. Like, when did life stop being fun? How do we bring that back? I know for sure I was having a blast as a kindergarten teacher. I was not having a blast as a principal until I decided to.

you want to feel like you’re making progress. You’re not just spinning your wheels. as soon as you solve one problem, there’s another problem to solve. You don’t want to be thinking that you’re not getting anywhere. That you’re not making progress. You want to feel like you’re contributing to people’s lives, and that what you do matters.  you want to have a sense of control over your life. You want to feel like your time is in your hands, how you spend your time, how you spend your money, how you make money, all of that.

this is what we try to do. We try by listening to podcasts and joining leadership groups. hey, there’s nothing wrong with a good podcast. But there’s a difference between consuming a bunch of professional content, going to workshops, going to conferences, talking to your peers, journaling, trying to gratitude. There’s a difference between consuming content and applying it and integrating it.

by the way, a lot of times what happens is we get so frustrated that we end up just distracting ourselves by buffering. what I mean by that is we get on social media or we shop or we drink wine or we go out with our girlfriends and commiserate. We promised ourselves we’re going to change. We’re going to go home earlier. We’re going to work out this week. We’re going to not work this weekend. Then we fail ourselves, and then we get in this cycle of disappointing ourselves, and it just doesn’t work. Right?

Ultimately what this spin out cycle creates, I call it the overwhelm cycle. what that overwhelm cycle creates is we feel trapped. Like, we feel like we have to stay in the job because of the money or because we’re in a contract, or we’re brand new. We just started. We said we’d commit to five years. We don’t have another choice. This is what I went to school for.

We settle for mediocracy. We tell ourselves we don’t know what else we’d do. This is just how it is. We can’t change things. we don’t think that better is possible. We think it’s not possible for life to get any better. So why bother? Why try?

We get into a people pleasing loop. Worried about what others will think,  what others will say what others will do. We make decisions based on other people’s opinions and beliefs. So you either are free falling in the thought, I can’t change this. I’m stuck forever. This is just how it’s going to be. Or you’re so over it, you just jump out without a plan. you have no idea what you’re going to do next. You haven’t thought it through.

the reason all of this is a problem is because you do need the money. You do need benefits. You do need a consistent paycheck. This is what your brain is telling you, right? You think you’re never going to have it better financially than you do now if you leave.

You feel like you’ve worked so hard to get here, it would be crazy to leave it now. You worked so hard to get into the principalship. Why would you leave it now? You feel loyalty to your school, the district. You made a promise to stay. You’re not sure what else to do, and you’re afraid that leaving will be a mistake. I know I was so worried about that. I thought if I leave and I mess up, I’m going to never forgive myself. I will regret this decision, which kept me in the job for longer than I wish I had.

Here’s the truth. Here is the truth bomb of the day. Both of these are true. It’s true that you don’t want to just up and leave without a plan. It’s also true that you have the ability to create a plan that is designed based on what you want, based on your values, based on your lifestyle values, what you want to experience. So you don’t have to just jump ship without a plan, and it’s possible to create a plan.

It’s also true that you can learn to love this job. I’m talking about the one you’re in right now. You can love the job, and any job for that matter. You could go to Starbucks and love that, and work at McDonald’s and love that. You can learn how to love the job, and you can also want to create a different professional experience for yourself. You can love something and still want to leave it.

I have school leaders right now that I’m coaching, who are in the process of interviewing for new positions, and they love what they do. I’ve taught them how to learn to love school leadership and still have career desires, professional aspirations. they’re sad they’re leaving their job, but they also want more. You can have both. This is not an all or none game. This is an and game. Okay?

So it’s true. You don’t have to jump ship and just pull the plug without a plan. you have the capacity to make a plan, and you can also stay in the job and learn how to love it and enjoy it more while you’re creating that plan.

if you know how to learn to love this job when you’re tired, and you’re miserable, and you think you never could love this job. When you learn the skill set of how to enjoy any job you’re in, you’ve got the magic bullet. Because that tells you I can be happy anywhere. I can enjoy anything, and I can create value wherever you put me. Put me in any position, I’m going to be the best employee possible.

So here’s what you do. One, you’ve got to reconcile with yourself that you’ve offered enough and you’ve provided enough. I know, for me, I worked for my district for 22 years. I deeply loved my district. I was deeply loyal. I loved the people. I loved the community. I loved being a part of it. I love saying this is where I work. this is who I work with. this is the community I live in, and I love it. I go to all the things. I was very invested in my community. I felt like I still owed them more. There was still more to be done.

finally, a good friend of mine said to me, “You’ve given yourself. You’ve contributed to the community for 22 years. It’s enough. It’s okay to let it go.” So I’ve thought about this, and I realized no matter how long you’ve been in a district or in a position, you can be there for one year and that’s enough.

The value that you have offered during your time, regardless of how long you’ve been there, has been valuable. It’s been worth it. It’s enough. It is sufficient. reconcile that. Be willing to give yourself credit for the value you have provided, regardless of the amount of time you’ve been there. let yourself understand that it’s okay to move on.

Two, you’ve got to clean up your thinking. When you’re worried about what others will think of you, that’s actually a mirror into what you’re thinking of you. You’re judging yourself for not being good enough or strong enough or having what it takes or not being able to handle it. When you think other people are gonna think I can’t handle it or I wasn’t cut out for this, that’s what you’re thinking.

Even if somebody tells you that, the only reason it penetrates you is if you believe it’s true. If someone comes up to me and says to you like, “Oh, girl, you must be quitting because you can’t hang. You can’t handle it.” And you don’t believe that, you’re like, totally can hang. How do I know? I did it. I did it for 22 years. I was a school leader for seven years. I know I did it.

I know I can handle it because I did handle it. I do have what it takes. Just because I’m choosing to pursue new adventures and new desires and new aspirations professionally has nothing to do with my ability to handle something or to have what it takes.

Number three, you must, must learn this. You must learn how to generate joy in your current life, in your current position. where you’re at right now. You have to learn the skill of where joy comes from and how you can create it on demand regardless of what position you’re in. then number four is just math. You make a plan. You decide. You commit. You make a plan.

So here’s my three step process. Number one, step number one is honesty. You have to get really honest with yourself. this can be the hardest part. Because we don’t like to tell ourselves the truth because we’re afraid of the answer. We’re afraid of what we make it mean. We’re afraid of what we might have to do. all that means we’re afraid of what we might have to experience emotionally, how we might have to feel if we told ourselves the truth, and we actually went for what we want.

What do you want and why? What are your fears and doubts? What would you do if you didn’t have these fears and doubts? If you were 100% confident that you could have whatever career and position you wanted, then what would you do? How would you show up differently? What would make you committed 100% to your dreams? What truth are you avoiding? What is it that you’re not telling yourself? Where are you unwilling to be honest? Where are you unwilling to show up and feel the emotions that come with being honest?

A lot of times we don’t tell ourselves the truth because we’re afraid to tell other people the truth. I remember being so worried about telling people I wanted to be a life coach. People will laugh at me. People will think that’s crazy. I have a six figure job. Why would I leave that job? I had a multiple six figure job. It’s like why would I leave that? A lot of thoughts about other people. I was not willing to be honest with myself.

So step one is honesty. The first steps the hardest. Because once you’re honest and you tell yourself the truth. look, you don’t have to tell other people right away. Just tell yourself. Just sit with it for a while. Here’s the truth. I don’t want to be a school leader. That’s the truth. I’m just gonna sit with that truth and feel how that feels. I don’t have to tell anybody else. I don’t even have to tell my spouse.

I just want to say it to myself. The truth is I hate this job. I don’t want to do it. That’s my truth. I want to be a barista. I want to sell tchotchkes on Etsy. I want to craft. I don’t know. Whatever it is you want to do. Just tell yourself the truth.

Step two, clarity. Honesty is going to help you create clarity, and what clarity is going to help you do in step two is create a set of standards. What I mean by setting standards is you have to decide. If I’m going to change up my career, whether you stay in education or you leave it entirely or you just want to move to a different position or a different school.

You want to ask yourself what needs to be in place for me to make this decision? What has to be in place? What is an absolute yes, essential? I need to make this much money or I need to be at an elementary school, not a high school, right? You have to decide and make some parameters about what it is actually you want.

So what’s essential, and what’s a hard no? So what are all the yeses that have to be in place? What are all the no’s, the boundaries. Like I won’t work at a high school or I’ll only work at a high school. Make those decisions? Then what are the grey, like the flexible things? I’m willing to flex this, right? I must be at an elementary school, but I’m willing to work at a small one, medium sized, one large one. Doesn’t matter the size. That’s a flexible, but the essential is the yes.

The hard yes is it has to be elementary. The hard no is I’m not doing high school. The flexible might be the size of the school or you might dabble in middle school. Who knows? Be clear but be honest. Don’t lie to yourself and say, “Oh, I’m willing to do at all.” That’s not true. You’re not willing to do it all. Think about what you want.

then finally, what are you willing to do? What actions are you willing to take? What emotions are you willing to feel? I’ll tell you the super sauce secret. The more you’re willing to feel any emotion, the faster you’re going to create the result you want for yourself. Because here’s the truth. The goal isn’t to be happy all the time, to feel hyper productive all the time, to be successful all the time. It’s the 50/50.

If you’re willing to go through the yucky feelings and the muck and the discouragement and the disappointment, you’re going to go out and interview 20 times, and 19 times you’re going to get a no. you’re going to feel really sad and disappointed. You’re going to be frustrated because you felt like you were the perfect candidate. You don’t understand why they didn’t give you the job. You’re going to go through a lot of emotion.

Are you willing to keep going no matter what until you get to yes and land that ideal job? So think about this. What has to be in place? What’s a boundary? What are you willing to feel? What are you willing to do?

Once you have clarity on all of that, step three is strategy. So step one is honesty. Step two is clarity. step three is strategy. that’s simply creating a plan, developing a plan.

Now, I’m going to give you some ideas about plans here because it’s not just step one, step two, step three of this is how I’m going to go about getting my job. I’m talking about a money plan, an income plan. What is your value plan? What are you offering to the people you’re interviewing with? They have a position, and they want you to offer them high value. You want to be the most valuable interviewee that they talk with.

What is the value you have to give them? What are your skill sets? What are you bringing to the table? What is your offer? You want to know what you have to offer, what you can offer another district or another position.

You need to have a happiness plan friends. A fun plan. This was something I had to consciously work on because I thrive on like professional accolades and achievement and accomplishment. Like I like getting stuff done. I love checking the boxes. I love being highly valuable. That’s where I get my highs and my happiness. I had to teach myself that I need to balance. If I’m going to teach balance, I need to be balanced.

so I had to create a fun plan. What is my fun plan? What’s my happiness plan? How am I going to fill my bucket, get some pleasure out of life, and not make it all about work? Even though I love coaching so much. I love this podcast so much. I love all of you so much. I love what I do. But I also love my life outside of coaching and running this business.

finally, a time schedule. You need to decide how am I going to spend my time? What’s my schedule going to look like? What is my plan? Where will I fit in working out or taking a walk? How long am I going to sleep? When am I going to spend time with my own kids? What about my husband or my spouse, my partner? What about my friends?

You want to include all the things you want to do in life on your calendar. You’re in control of your time. Time is not in control of you. Just like you’re in control of your money. Money’s not in control of you.

Why this works. Number one, honesty is why you’re unhappy in the first place because you’re not telling yourself the truth of what you want and what you’re thinking. You’re also allowing yourself to avoid things that you think will be hard or complicated. telling yourself the truth is the first step in feeling the relief you’re seeking.

If the truth of the matter is that you don’t want to be a principal next year or the year after that, your desire is something else. Just saying it to yourself feels like relief. Truth always feels like relief. Even if it’s painful, even if it’s sad. Even if you’re sad that you don’t want to be a school leader, the truth feels good aligned, right.

Clarity is what you need to determine standards of happiness and success and fulfillment, and only you are the person who knows. What are your standards for happiness? What does it mean to you to be happy? What does success look like for you? I can’t tell you that. Nobody can tell you that. You’re never going to be fulfilled in your profession if you let other people decide those values for you. You have to know what you value, and let those values drive your priorities and your decisions and the way you spend your time.

you have to be willing to do what it takes and say no to things that are truly what you do not want. you also have to be willing to feel the emotions that come with going for it 100%. We’re all in to create that experience you want in your career. yes, half of the time, it involves fail. Failing, failing, failing. It involves getting no’s. It involves being rejected. It involves all the yucky feels, but I promise you this, you’re already feeling the yucky feels.

School leadership is hard. You’re feeling the yucky feels. Going for what you want, you’re gonna feel the yucky feels. But guess what? You’re gonna feel all the good feels, more of the good feels. Because you’re going to be in alignment with the truth of who you are and what you want, and your personal values, and the meaning behind the work that you do.

developing a strategy plan is how you build up the courage, and how you convince your brain to go for that career, to pursue the career that you love whether that’s in education or doing something totally different. It’s not the position. It’s not the job that makes you feel the way you’re feeling. It’s the thoughts that you have about yourself, and those you work with and the job itself that contribute to your emotional state. You have to be able to separate those two. You think it’s the job. That’s never true. It’s your thoughts about it.

How do we know? If it were the job, everybody in school leadership would feel the same way you do. that’s not true. They have different thoughts than you do.

You need to use your resources, your top assets, your brainpower, your time, and your money. You need to implement those resources and invest in them to help you strategize a plan that works for you and gives you a sense of control and trust that you have thought through all the potential obstacles. You’re 100% committed to solving this. You know whatever comes your way, you’re going to figure it out.

So you have some decisions to make. Number one, what do you value most and why? What do you believe is possible for yourself? What are you willing to do in order to have the dream career and the dream life? What are you willing to feel in order to obtain it? Then how much time are you willing to allow? That last one gets us. We’re like, “Oh, I’ll do all the things for a hot minute. But if it doesn’t work, then I’m out.”

No. The truth of this is you have to commit for the long haul. You have to be willing to give your dream some time. You don’t have a baby and then tell that baby, “Well, you know, it’s been a year. You should be walking by now. You should be earning some income right now. You should be feeding yourself right now. Come on. Let’s go.” No, your dream is a baby. It’s an infant. You have to nurture it and love it and give it all the time unconditionally for as long as it takes.

Some kids walk at eight months, some kids walk at one year, some kids walk at 18 months. Nothing’s wrong. Nothing’s gone wrong. Just like some kids learn to read in kinder. Some kids learn to read in third grade. Nothing’s gone wrong. They’re just growing in their own time.

You’re not going to throw them out because they haven’t learned to read by the end of third grade, which I hear in some states parents are getting letters. Let’s think about this. We want to give our dreams time. Treat them as though it’s your baby. Your dream is your baby.

So here are some skills you need to develop. Questioning. You have to be always, always questioning. Spending more time questioning and answering those questions then problem solving. Questioning, asking and answering honestly. Constraining. The art of constraint. That is a skill to develop. Practicing and prioritizing and saying no to things outside of that priority. That’s a hard thing to do because we’ve been conditioned to say yes to all the things.

Three, trusting. I found this one really hard. I didn’t used to trust very easily. When it comes to fight or flight, I’m a fighter. I don’t trust so I’ve had to practice the skill of trusting. Where do I trust? What can I trust? I had to build up my belief in myself, my trust in my process, my trust in other people, trust in my plan, and in my resourcefulness and believing that I have what it takes to figure it out no matter what.

the fourth skill is processing. Allowing yourself time and space to process the emotions that come your way. Whether you’re in your current job now and while you’re pursuing your dream job for the future. the outcomes of being willing to commit to this work is that you get to reconnect and commit to what you most value. You get to recommit to yourself. Redecide, reconnect, get to align with yourself and your truth. you get to feel that relief of being truthful with yourself and eventually with others.

what I love most is that I gained complete agency over my career path and my top assets. I felt back in control of my mind. What I was thinking about, who I was spending my time with, what my focus was. My money and how I was spending it, how I was making it, how I was saving it, how I was investing it, how I was donating it, all of it. My time and my money and the ability to think about what I wanted to spend my time thinking about.

Look, all of us are on the planet, and we’re all thinking about certain things. We’re all trying to solve problems. We’re all trying to come up with solutions. You get to choose which problems you want to solve, and how you want to solve them. again, that sense of delight and alignment and flexibility and freedom and creativity and value, contribution, connection, all of those things come flowing back into your life when you get honest with yourself. You gain clarity about what you want and what you don’t, and you come up with a strategy.

So I’m going to close out by giving you a few pitfalls to avoid and how to avoid them. Pitfall number one, do not leave your job without a plan. Do not jump out and have no plan. Jumping all in saying, “Forget this, I’m out.” It’s going to get you out of the current pain of your job, but it’s going to cause a whole new set of pain points. So don’t jump out without a parachute.

Be willing to give yourself at least one full year to create your plan. when you leave without a plan, you don’t fully understand what you do want to do with your time. Even if you just went and said I’m not going to work next year, but you don’t have a plan, you’re going to have a lot of time on your hands. you’re not going to know with intention how you want to spend it. what will happen is you’ll default to just buffering or just consuming and filling up your time with things that aren’t of high value.

I want you to also deeply consider that you might be unhappy now, and you might want to jump ship. But consider this. You might actually decide to stay in education after you go through this process. You might actually want to stay, but you just didn’t know before this how to process your own emotions or handle the emotions of all the other people around you. That’s one of the reasons we hate it so much is because other people are constantly barraging us with their emotions and their demands. we don’t know how to navigate that. So we’re unhappy.

Pitfall number two, avoiding your money situation and other numbers. Avoiding the data in your life. So there’s math, and there’s drama. People have a lot of mind drama around math, which is the money, which is the time.

Money fears and scarcity is going to create more of it. If you’re afraid to look at your money and come up with a money plan of how you’re going to transition out or how you’re going to transition into another position that you enjoy more, you’ve got to look at your numbers. So get comfortable with your money while you still have that consistent paycheck coming your way. then learn about money. Understand what money is and how it’s created. then consider all the other data points you need in order to determine where you’re at and where you’re going.

Pitfall number three, not clearing up your mindset first. Your happiness, safety, trust, certainty, joy, all of those emotions, those are created in your mind based on what you’re thinking. The goal of being happy all the time is going to leave you unhappy more of the time because that’s not the goal, and that’s not the human experience. So if you think that safety and certainty are coming from a certain dollar amount in the bank or a certain income level or a title or a position, you are always going to be chasing more. You will never feel sufficiency.

If you believe that trust comes from other people or external situations. Like that person needs to behave in this way for me to trust them, you’re never going to feel grounded in trusting yourself. Trust comes from within.

If you think that joy comes from a different job or a bigger house or a bigger income level or positional authority, life will feel like a whack a mole trying to uplevel for the next hit of happiness. You’re always looking for that next dopamine hit of I need a bigger job. I need a bigger house. I need a bigger income. I need a bigger title. Right? You’re just constantly whacking around trying to find where you’re going to get that next little hit of happiness and joy.

finally, what to expect on the other side. Life is still going to be 50/50. You are not going to be happy all the time friends, I promise you. I’ve been through the ring of fire. I’m on the other side. I’ve been doing this for almost five years now. I can tell you there are times when I’m still not happy. If you know this ahead of time, you won’t be in such a rush thinking that the future is better than where you’re at right now.

There are things that are better, things that are different. It’s just I’m choosing the problems in the 50% that I want to experience, right. I’m willing to feel unhappy half of the time, but I’m choosing the container, the framework, in which I’m feeling those feelings.

The other thing to keep in mind is your relationships may significantly change. You’re going to go through a major personal change, and you’re going to be a different person. You’re going to think differently. You’re going to feel differently. You’re going to act differently. you might have relationships that change or end. Be prepared for that. Have a coach or get coaching and coach yourself on what that means and why it’s worth it anyway.

Your self-identity is going to evolve tremendously. It feels very, very vulnerable and uncomfortable. I felt like I had shed my skin. I felt so raw, so vulnerable, so exposed. It was very uncomfortable for a period of time in my life. You will have to create a lot of safety and comfort for yourself because you’re not going to get it from your past life or the person you used to be.

There will be moments where you miss it. You’re going to want to go back to those old zones of comfort. You’re going to think, “Oh, I should go back. It would be so much more fun if I just went back to school to be a school leader.” I’ve done this. I’ve thought this many times. You can have those moments and not react to them, not given to them, not take action on them.

ultimately, the work becomes looking forward, not back. Every time you look back, it’s gonna stall your progress. You’ve got to look forward and plan your career from your future. You’re always thinking about it from the future standpoint. Okay.

That is the gist of how to leave school leadership. I know this was a big juicy podcast. It’s got a lot of information on it. here’s the deal. There’s one thing to consume this information intellectually and understand it intellectually. It’s another thing to apply it and integrate it and stay on track. I am offering to work with you on this plan.

I want you to believe that number one, it’s possible for yourself. Number two, having help is the fastest way to transforming into the career that you want and to enjoy school leadership. three, that coaching is the process to get you there. Be willing to invest a full year into your plan. Give yourself time to create this plan, to implement this plan. Invest your money into yourself.

let me tell you this, would you rather have money in the bank or would you rather be creating a plan for your future that you love? Because here’s the thing. With the money that you could invest in coaching, you don’t have to invest in coaching. You could buy a car. You could buy a house. Not buy a house, but you could like put money in your house. You could go out and buy fancy clothes. You could take a vacation. There’s a lot of things you can do with the money that I charge for a full year of coaching.

But let me tell you this. Your car can get crashed. A vacation lasts a week. Your house could burn down. People could steal your stuff. All the tangible things that we think are going to bring us happiness are always temporary, but the gift and the understanding and the knowledge and the skillset of knowing how to create your own happiness, how to design your future. It is priceless.

People could take away everything from you, and you would know, here’s how I create value. Here’s what I have to offer to the world. Here’s how I make money. Here’s how I want to live. Here’s how I want to experience my relationships with my friends and family and my colleagues. Here’s how I want to show up. Here’s how I want to feel.

when you know how to do that, people could take everything away from you, and you would still be able to build it all right back up because you have the tools in your mind. Your mind has evolved. It’s the most valuable gift I could ever offer you.

So whether you’re thinking of staying in school leadership or you’re thinking of leaving school leadership, you want to give yourself a full year. I invite you to sign up right now for a consult. Let’s talk about your plan. Let’s get honest about what you want. Let’s get some clarity. let’s come up with a strategy. I’m here to help you with it. I love you all so much. May you be well. May you be happy. May you be safe. Have a great week. I’m going to talk with you next week. Take care, bye.

If this podcast resonates with you, you have to sign up for the Empowered Principal coaching program. It’s my exclusive one to one coaching and mentorship program for school leaders who believe in possibility. This program is designed for principals who are hungry for the fastest transformation in the industry. If you want to create the best connections, impact, and legacy for yourself and your school, the Empowered Principal program was designed for you. Join me at angelakellycoaching.com/work-with-me to learn more. I’d love to support you in becoming an empowered school leader.

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.