Ep #360: Pleasure Is Not Irresponsible

Hello empowered principals. Welcome to episode 360. 

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. 

Well, hello, empowered principals, welcome to episode 360. Well hello, my empowered principals. Happy Tuesday. Here we are at 360 episodes of The Empowered Principal® Podcast. What a celebration. What a milestone. Unbelievable to be here with you every week for 360 weeks. It’s amazing, and I do hope that if you’re a listener and you’re a fan of this podcast and this conversation resonates with you, that you share this podcast with colleagues, with your boss, with your district, with anybody that you think will benefit from the work that we’re doing here in the empowered principal world. 

My desire is for everyone in education to feel good about themselves, about the work they’re doing, about the progress that staff and students are making, about the culture of our schools, about the intention behind what we’re really doing here, which is developing humans, developing teachers, developing ourselves. 

Learning doesn’t stop when you graduate college or get your master’s or even your PhD. We’re on the planet as humans to be lifelong learners. And I don’t mean that to be cliche. I mean that because choosing that identity as an educator gives us an entirely different experience in our lives. 

When we decide I want to learn how to rollerblade or roller skate or ski or play pickleball or tennis, or I want to learn how to do a TikTok or figure out how to use something on my computer, GarageBand, or I want to learn how to make videos, or I want to understand Instagram better. 

There is an endless supply of ways we can learn and grow, and the way that I’m inviting you to learn and grow is to learn about yourself. What makes you tick? What makes you feel good? What makes you feel bad? Who do you love to be around? What do you love to do? What is your interest, your passion? What do you love outside of work? Who do you love to be with? Who’s the person that you want to become? What are the past pain points we need to heal up, that we need to learn from, that we need to rewrite the script on what happened, why it happened, and how it happened for us. 

There’s an endless way to learn and to grow and develop yourself, all the way up until the end. And today, I want to talk about this idea that we offer in education. We offer to students. We offer it to teachers. We’ve been offered it as a child, as a student, as a young adult. And it’s this concept that leisure, joy, delight, satisfaction, contentment is irresponsible. 

And I have something I want to share with you that really shook my brain to the core. You know that feeling when somebody says something and it catches your attention so profoundly that you’re like, what? Because it feels totally opposite of everything that you believe in your bones, that you’ve believed your whole life. It’s like somebody will say something and for some reason it catches you and you just can’t believe that that might be true for somebody else. 

And you think about it and you’re captivated by it. And it’s like it unlocks something or unleashes something. It just gives you permission to think about your life, your experience in a completely different way that you have never thought of before. Like permission to have dessert before dinner. Like as a little kid that was kind of off the table, you just thought this is the way it goes. 

You have to eat your dinner before you have dessert, or you have to do your homework before you can go out and play. Or that time when you finally got the courage to study for your license and get your license, you went from not being able to drive yourself around and have that level of independence to being able to drive yourself, which gave you access to your friends, it gave you access to getting out of the house, to maybe getting a job. 

That transition from not being a driver to being a driver, huge mindset shift, right? Making your own money. Before, the only way you thought possible was that mom and dad paid, or whoever you’re living with, whoever raised you, like the responsible adults were paying, and then you got a babysitting job, or for me, I detasseled, I babysat. 

And then when I turned 16, I started working at the local grocery store. And then I was like, I’m in, I’m making my own money. I can buy my own snacks or treats. I can get my own clothing. Like it was a game changer for me. It just like blew my mind. Well, this recently happened to me with my coach. All of us have developed hundreds of belief systems that are very rule-based over the course of our lives. We were taught these confines, like based on the rules of your family structure, your parents, the people that raised you, there was a set of rules that you lived by. 

And as a kid, you’re like, oh, this is just it. This is the confined space I’m in. This is the container in which I live in. And they’re so ingrained in who we are and what we think and what we believe that we don’t even question them. We just accept them as like absolute truths of the world or absolute truths of our lives. And when we get older and we create more awareness and we start to interact with people that are outside of our family system or outside of our religious system or outside of our hometown. We go to college. 

That was a huge eye-opener for me, the way that people thought, the way that people lived, everything. Like their routines, their patterns, their habits, their clothing styles, the food that they ate, the way they managed their time. Like it was just a whole world opened to me because the only way I knew was how my family did life, my family’s opinions, my family’s belief systems, what they felt was important, their core values. 

So there’s a point in young adulthood somewhere along the line where we’re like, wait a minute, is this a rule by law? Like, is this actually true? Is this the only way to do this? Is this the only way to believe or this is the only way to approach life? Is this like a law that I have to follow? Is it a rule? It’s like a law of the universe. Is it a law of the people? Is it a law of the land? Is it a law of this nation? Is it a law of just my parents? Is it a rule that I created? I created this kind of law, this way of being, this way of thinking for myself? Or is it just something that you believed was true and it worked for you, it served you, but you never thought to consider an alternate truth, an alternate way of thinking? 

This just happened to me yet again. This is why I love the power of coaching and the power of personal development and growth. It never stops astounding me. It never stops diving deeper into the life I wanna create, the way I want to feel, the experiences I want to have, the mindset I want to develop, the approach that I wanna take for my life. 

My coach said these words out loud during our group coaching call, and it caught me off guard and it stopped me. It’s almost like I couldn’t hear whatever she said afterwards because I kept focusing on this sentence. Pleasure is not irresponsible. Pleasure, joy, delight, satisfaction, fulfillment, contentment, fill in the blank, happiness, feeling good, is not irresponsible. 

I said it to myself over and over again. It literally stopped me in my tracks. Wait, what? Pleasure is not irresponsible. You guys, I’ve been told my whole life, not blaming my family, it’s just that’s what they were told and that’s what they believed. And so they taught me to believe this too. That pleasure is irresponsible in so many ways. Work before play. You gotta get your work done before you can play. And that work is not pleasurable, but play is. It’s an all or none. 

You’re either working and you’re miserable and you’re doing hard things and you’re grinding or you’re playing. But playing before work, irresponsible. Shame on you, you gotta work hard. Work isn’t easy, but you gotta do the hard thing first and then you can go play. You have to earn your play, earn your pleasure. It’s irresponsible to do otherwise. You have to work hard to be paid, to be successful, to have the experiences you want in your life. 

Other kinds of pleasure. You shouldn’t indulge yourself. Don’t be selfish. That pleasure is trouble, or you’re going to get into trouble if you are having too much fun, if you’re experiencing too much pleasure, if you are playing before work, if you’re playing at work, while your work, during your work, irresponsible. 

Pleasure is selfish. You’re just trying to indulge yourself. All you care about is how you feel and not how others feel. It’s selfish. Pleasure is lazy. If the goal is just to be happy, to feel good, then you’re being lazy. You’re not being productive. You are indulging yourself in, I don’t know, sitting around eating grapes all day. I don’t know what, but the idea that if you’re experiencing pleasure. You’re somehow being irresponsible, in trouble, selfish, lazy, uncommitted. You’re not committed if you’re experiencing pleasure. 

If you love your job, you’re having fun in your job, but you’re not grinding, sweating, overworking, you’re not hustling, you’re not that committed. You’re not that committed. I mean, you might show up for work, but you’re not that committed. Pleasure equals goofing off, blowing off work. Do you see where I’m going here? This all or Honestly, it’s still blowing my mind. Pleasure equals recklessness, that you’re reckless. Especially as a female with strict parents, I was taught like, don’t be going out and having too much pleasure as a 16, 17, 18 year old. That would be very reckless of you, promiscuous of you, okay? 

Pleasure, irresponsibility. Do you see it? I don’t know if anybody else relates to this, but I’m guessing some of you do because I feel like so many educators are sold on this idea that if we’re feeling good, if we’re following what feels good, if we’re using feel good as a compass, as a guide, as a goal, that it’s irresponsible in some way. It feels like I’ve been told so many stories about this pleasure is irresponsible, pleasure is bad, that it was written in my DNA to avoid pleasure as much as possible. 

Like if I was slacking off, having fun, irresponsible, get back on track. Like pleasure means off track and working hard means on track. Does that land for anybody out there? So I have been unraveling this for myself. And of course, when I do it for me, I have to do it for me first so that I can uncover and kind of decode what’s going on here so that I can unravel it for you in terms of how this belief can impact you as a leader, how it infiltrates. It’s a lens through which you make decisions. It’s the lens through which you build your identity. 

It’s the lens through which you lead your teachers and coach them and mentor them. Imagine if you’re coming in thinking pleasure’s not allowed, it’s not okay, it’s reckless, it’s careless, it’s lazy, it’s selfish, it’s unproductive. And then you go into a classroom and teachers having fun kids are having fun, you’re going to think something’s wrong. It’s not in alignment with your belief. They should be working hard. Kids should be struggling. Kids should be doing the heavy lifting. They should be not happy. They should be working. 

A lot of people think this. A lot of parents think this. A lot of teachers think this. A lot of students believe this, that if it feels good, or it’s easy, or even though it’s hard, they’re having fun with the challenge, right? Like they’re doing, let’s say, a project-based learning project and it’s really hard. They’re having trouble figuring out. They’re getting frustrated. That still can be fun. It still can be pleasurable even when it’s hard. 

So I think back to my days in school leadership. And when I was a school leader, I absolutely did not believe that the goal was ever to feel good because it did not feel good most of the time. It felt like the goal on my plate, on my agenda was work as hard as possible, keep everybody safe, keep everybody happy, build relationships while also trying to build a culture. I want everybody to follow the rules because the district wants everybody to follow the rules. 

So the job is to follow the rules and have everybody follow the rules, whatever the mandates were, stay on top of all those demands, do what my boss tells me to do, even though they might change their mind 10 times, support the teachers and kind of buffer between district and teachers. So the district’s not upset, but the teachers aren’t upset. And so So I take all the heat, manage all the systems on campus, implement the district’s vision, even though it might not fully feel aligned for me, and try to get everybody on board even though I’m not on board, and then, oh, don’t forget, increase attendance, increase test scores so that you can get the gold star and we can clap for you. 

That’s what I thought the goal was. Never ever, ever could I have imagined one of my goals in school leadership was to have some fun, to feel good about myself, to feel good about my school, to feel good about the work in a way that brought me satisfaction, contentment, delight, fulfillment, pride. 

It just wasn’t on my radar, especially in the beginning years of my school leadership experience. And why is this? It’s because I didn’t have awareness. There was just no awareness to do otherwise. Because I didn’t even question my actions or the thoughts that were fueling them, right? The energy that was fueling my actions. 

It was just autopilot, go to the emotional gas station, fill up with whatever I could muster, which was just do it because… as I was told to, do it because I should, do it even though it doesn’t feel good, put that fuel in, which was like super low octane fuel, put it in my tank, exhausted, red-eyed, blurry, can’t really think straight, not very motivated, not very excited, and then go to work and try to make all the people happy, right? 

That’s how I was leading until I said to myself, there has to be a different way. This is miserable, I hate this, I don’t think I’m cut out to be a school leader. This cannot be possible. There are principals out there who are happy. I know it. I know of them personally. 

I saw principals in my district seemingly happy. I couldn’t figure out the code. And then I studied life coaching. I got certified with Dr. Martha Beck as a life coach. Then a few years later, I got certified as a life coach to the life coach school. And I hired a one-on-one coach, and I never let that coach go. I had her all throughout the rest of my years. I had her in the transition from being an educator into being a business owner. And we are still friends to this day. 

I studied under her for years because the power of coaching, when I figured it out, it transformed every experience of my life, personally and professionally. When I figured this stuff out, you guys, And I started questioning, wait, what are the rules here again? And what rules am I living by? And are they really the rules? Or are they just make-believe rules? Whose rules are these, right? 

When I first started school leadership, I dove head first into people pleasing, into making decisions and taking actions based on how everyone around me felt, how the teachers felt. I was really influenced by, were my teachers happy? Was my secretary happy? Were the parents happy? Were the kids behaving? If they were happy, they weren’t misbehaving, right? Misbehaviors was an indication of dissatisfaction, unhappiness, discontent, right? Was my boss happy with me? Was the district just running around, people-pleasing, not even checking in with myself? 

I was so worried about what the school board thought, what the local newspaper writers thought, because of course they have their two cents and they have blogs and they put their commentary in the opinion section. I was literally living by everybody else’s rules, everybody else’s level of happiness and contentment. And I was thinking that my job was to make the people happy, do a good job, be a good girl, be a good leader. 

I focused on looking like a good principal versus turning inward to develop myself into becoming a good principal. First piece of advice I got, fake it till you make it, right? That’s the first piece of advice I received. The problem I have with this advice is that you cannot fake the truth. It’s literally not in alignment. It doesn’t mesh. Truth, fake, they’re opposites. They don’t align. 

The frequency of truth always rises to the top. You know how the truth always comes out? Yes. And as a principal, you know this, because you can sense when a teacher isn’t being fully honest with you, really telling you what they think, or a student isn’t quite disclosing the entire truth of what happened in a situation, you can feel when something feels truthful and when it’s not. 

So trying to fake something that you don’t believe about yourself or you don’t believe in you, and you’re running around all day trying to please the people so that they won’t dislike you or they won’t judge you or they won’t criticize you, it’s not going to work in the long run. And you’re going to think you’re the problem, or you’re going to think the district is the problem. 

You’re either going to quit and think you’re not cut out for school leadership, or you’re gonna think that your position, your district is the problem, and you’re going to go to a different one and think that it’ll be better somewhere else. But if you bring along people-pleasing strategies and not tuning into what feels good for you, I promise you this, I guarantee this, I have seen it over and over again. You will feel the same way that you did in your old district you keep trying to chase feeling better from an external standpoint. 

I want to feel better about me, so I’m going to go somewhere and please the people over there because it might be easier to please them than it is to please the people over here. These people, they’re a little bit off. They’re a rocker. But if I go over there, that district looks pulled together until you find out they’re just as dysfunctional as the next district. 

The more you attempt to appease other people, the less you please yourself. This is why we disconnect from ourselves. We unplug from what we need or what we want. We go on robotic mode. We tune out. Here’s what’s happening. This is my experience. experience, we don’t feel good and it doesn’t feel good to feel good. So we tune that out. We numb it out. We ignore it. And we’re like, well, if I don’t feel good, I might as well try and go help other people feel good. 

Because we’re not happy, but we’re not admitting it to ourselves. We try to seek some reward, validation, acknowledgement externally from us, from other people. That’s why we carry on in this matter. That’s why we keep chasing it. We’ll tell ourselves, even though we’re miserable, we’re fatigued, we’re exhausted, we feel unsuccessful, We’re like, well, we’re doing it for the kids. It’s all about the kids. Or my boss wants me to. My boss needs me to. I want to be the best employee I can be. This is what the teachers need. I’ve got to protect the teachers. I’ve got to work hard for the teachers. They’re working hard. I need to work harder. 

But here’s what I find very alarming about this approach. Being a servant leader to the point of martyrdom is creating such dysfunction in our schools and in our lives. If we are not using our emotional compass to guide us and we’re not tuning in to what feels good and allowing ourselves the pleasure and delight in our work and in our lives, We may never come to the day where we feel fulfilled on a daily basis, delighted with our lives, pleased with our professional career, proud of ourselves, proud of the experiences that we had, proud of the person we became. 

This is the most alarming part to me. There are people who believe that it is irresponsible to feel good their entire lives. They never, their entire life, allow themselves to lead their lives and lead their schools, lead their careers from a place of delight and satisfaction. They never tune in. They just think the world is what it is, the experience is what it is, that they have no agency, they have no empowerment, they have no control. And from the day they start until the day they end, they did not have any amount of joy or minimal joy, pleasure. 

And here’s the thing. If you think that feeling good is irresponsible or trying to find ways to make the job more pleasurable is irresponsible, if you believe that, then what happens is you become the person in the room that’s disgruntled, the whiny, kind of tired, nothing’s working. No one wants to be around that. How can we inspire teachers, inspire students when we ourselves are not inspired? 

There are principals, there are teachers who go through their entire career believing that it’s irresponsible to tap into feeling good. I don’t want this for you. Just the thought of that stops me in my tracks. It makes me sick to my stomach. To think of somebody going through their entire school leadership experience as a servant to somebody else’s emotional whims, demands, needs, without once tuning in. 

My friends out there, I cannot, in good consciousness, know what I know about coaching, about these tools and strategies. I can’t not share them. I can’t not share what I’ve experienced with other school leaders. I can’t do it. 

Look, building a business, trying to break into education as a life and leadership coach, bringing life coaching tools into schools where people make fun of life coaches on the internet all day long, where people think it’s soft and weak and fake to talk about emotion when they think that you’re just fluffy and that it has no merit. 

This is hard work that I’m doing. I’m literally a pioneer forging my way into schools, one principal at a time, helping them feel a little bit better about themselves, a lot better about their work, helping teachers feel better, creating better cultures. I’m doing this one leader, one school at a time. This isn’t easy. I could go back and I could go be a principal. I could, but it won’t allow me. The calling won’t allow me. You can’t not know this. I will have this podcast until podcasts aren’t allowed in the world. I will keep sharing these concepts with you until you’re ready to come into the world of the empowered principal, into EPC, and to see that it’s working. 

For hundreds of school principals, this work changes lives. Your superpower, your empowerment is your ability to feel good, your ability to experience pleasure, your ability to tune into the compass that’s guiding you. Does it feel good or not? It’s very easy. If it feels good, keep going. If it’s a little crunchy and it doesn’t feel good, let’s make it feel better. It is not. You’re responsible to listen to the compass within you that guides you, that aligns you, that feels good. 

What feels good matters. It’s guiding you to the solutions. It’s the most responsible thing you can do for yourself, for your teachers, for your students. When something doesn’t feel right, that’s an invitation to stand up for what does feel right. When something doesn’t feel good, It’s an invitation to figure out what part doesn’t feel good specifically, and then make that better. 

The empowered principle rules on feeling good and pleasure is all about flipping the myth of irresponsible pleasure, that pleasure is irresponsible. The list that I gave you earlier, I flip it on its head. Instead of pleasure being trouble, that you’re in trouble, that it is a trouble, it’s a struggle, it’s a problem, if there’s a negative consequence waiting for you when you get out of pleasure, I want you to consider that pleasure is the benefit. It’s the reward. It’s the solution. It’s not trouble. It’s not the problem. It’s the solution. 

That instead of pleasure being selfish, it’s actually selfless. Because teachers, students, parents, principal, district leaders, they want to work with principals and district leaders who are pleasurable to be around, who are fun, who are engaging. This is benevolent action that you’re taking. Pleasure is not lazy. 

Think about when you’re in a state of pleasure, you’re in a state of feeling good, you’re activated, you’re interesting, you’re attentive, you’re energetic, you’re industrious, you’re going for it, you’re productive. It’s the opposite of lazy. Pleasure is the opposite of uncommitted. It’s being committed. When you feel good about something, you feel passionate. You’re committed, you’re guided, you’re convicted, you’re decisive. 

Pleasure is not goofing off. Pleasure is actually like being engaged, getting to work, solving problems, making progress. Pleasure is not reckless. It’s mindfulness, thoughtfulness, considerate, intentional. Pleasure is not irresponsible. It is responsible. It is the ability to respond. It is responding to your needs, to the needs of your school. 

I invite you into this work. I invite you in to the world of the empowered principle. We’re changing the rules. We’re changing how it feels. We’re changing our approach. There are two ways to work with me right now. You can wait until 2025 when the doors open again for EPC, or you can work with me one-on-one. 

The choice is up to you. The doors for EPC will be opening in 2025, or you can start working with me today, right now, as a one-on-one client. Or what’s really fun is that when you sign up as a one-on-one client, you get access into EPC as part of your one-on-one package. It’s a bonus that I give to my one-on-one clients. 

You can start now as a one-on-one, and you can join EPC when the doors reopen. How amazing is that? Your pleasure feeling good is not irresponsible. Contemplate this. See how this is true. Try it on, give it a go, give it a chance to work for you. And I’ll talk to you guys next week. Have an amazing week. Take good care of yourselves. 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.