Ep #421: Leadership Luxury Series Part 2: The Desire for Luxury as a School Leader

Hello, empowered principals. Welcome to episode 421.

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.

When we think about what are the luxuries we would like to experience in school leadership, we’re not just talking about having all of the things at our fingertips. We’re talking about the energetic experience that we have as a human, like what it feels like to walk on our campus and be proud of who we are, what we stand for, the people we work with, the work that goes into those classrooms, and the commitment of our teachers, and the commitment of our students, and the fun and the celebrations, and the learning that’s happening, and the engagement of our staff and our students and our communities. When families walk in proud that they send their children to this school, that’s luxury. It’s a win, win, win, win, win. It projects out into the ethers.

And then the experience of today, if you are having a luxury experience, the way that you show up, the way that you treat people, the way that you speak to them, the way you engage impacts their experience. And now they’re having a more luxurious experience of their principal. And how you act today is the memory that they create. And then they have future, like a positive expectation, anticipation of additional future positive interactions. Right?

When you have an interaction with somebody for the very first time, you don’t know what to expect.You’re like, I don’t know. But then let’s say this person is very loving and kind, and they’re interested in you, and they’re engaging, and they’re listening to you, and they’re genuinely interested in your passions and your school leadership conversations and what you have to say and what you think. And they just embrace all of you, and you just feel so held and seen and loved and enjoyed in that moment. It feels like they really cared. Your anticipation of the next interaction with them is going to be very positive.

And you’re thinking about them in a more luxurious way, even though you’re not with them in this moment, in the here and now today. You’re anticipating that the next interaction with them is going to be lovely. Right? And the memory of that first experience, you’ll always remember that first experience. That becomes the story, the narrative that gets written. And we get to be that person for everybody we interact with. That’s luxury.

So there is a desire that we have for luxury. And this is where it can get a little, it can feel a little conflicting. And just hold that pressure for right now. Stick with me here for a minute, okay? Because I know it’s uncomfortable. I feel it in my chest when I talk about it, too, because of what we’ve been taught luxury means or doesn’t mean, and who it’s for and who it’s not for, and if you should want it and if you shouldn’t want it, and who gets to have it and who doesn’t. But just hold a little bit of pressure with me right now. Okay?

Humans were wired to desire luxury. We were born with it. As little tiny babies, we were born into the world expecting luxury, expecting to be held, expecting to be loved, looking for mom and dad to care for us. There was no other way. We expected to be fed, to be held, to be changed, to be bathed, to be caressed, to be swaddled, to be rocked, to be put to bed, to be picked up. We’ve always desired the luxury of living, the luxuries of life, the essential luxuries.

And there are different forms of luxury in different time frames of our life. So, as a child, right, when you think back to your childhood, you experienced the desire for, you know, a friend, to go to the park, to go outside, to have a cookie, to get a treat, to you walk through the department store, Target, and you want a toy. You want to take a trip. You want to go to the water park. You want your mom to take you to the pool, or you want to run go to your friend’s house and have a play date. Right? Very simple luxuries. Just what I would call essential luxuries. The luxuries every kid wants, every human wants. They desire to be engaged, to love, to play.

And then we grow into like our preteen and teen years, and now we have the awareness of our peers and a little more awareness of the world. So we’re desiring, you know, peer relationships. They become very important. We desire, you know, being accepted by our peers. We desire certain friendships. And then we get into puberty and we desire romantic relationships. We start having an interest and a curiosity about more romantic relationships. We start to have a desire within us for a different kind of love and connection, however that love looks, whoever you’re attracted to. But that is wired within us. We’re supposed to have desire for luxury, the luxury of love, the luxury of being loved, the luxury of loving someone else.

I remember like desiring so badly my driver’s license, right? We got our permit, and you could drive with your parents or whatever the rules were back then. In the 70s, they probably let you drive your own car. But we got a permit, which probably allowed us to drive with an adult. And then for me, back in the 80s, at the age of 16, in my state, we were allowed to get our driver’s license. I desired that so badly. Now think about this.

As a 15 year old, 15 and 11 months, right? I thought about my license day and night. I dreamt about it, I thought about it. As soon as I was eligible to schedule a DMV appointment to get that license, it was on the books for the day of my birthday because I did not want to wait one more day. I desired that experience. So the current me that was 15 was anticipating that luxury. I was desiring it. I didn’t have it yet, but I was already living it through my mind. I was feeling the feelings of what it was, I was anticipating what it was going to feel like to be able to drive on my own.

And then once I got the license, so, you know, my past self, I always knew I would get a license one day. But the anticipation of the license, the desire for it was half of the fun. Just like when you go on vacation, you desire, you anticipate that vacation, you desire it. You feel the feelings of the trip in advance. And sometimes those feelings are actually better than the real experience. We’re going to talk more about that in a minute.

But you desire it, and then when you get it, when you get something you really desire, it feels like a bazillion dollars. It’s just like feels like the best day in the world, the best experience in the world. We want those experiences as adults in our career, but we’re not thinking about our career in that way. Therefore, we’re not really creating those experiences or generating them.

So then once I got the license, then I wanted the car. Then I had a desire for a car. So I worked. I upped my hours. I was working at the local grocery store. I worked around 20 to 30 hours a week, and I was a full-time student, and I was babysitting, and I was in a program called Upward Bound, which was a college prep program, and I was in marching band. So I was doing all of the things in order to get that car. I had a deep desire for the car.

And then from there, and because of that, right, it’s like, and because of this, I got my license. And because of that desire, I wanted the car and I got the car. And then because of that, I asked for a later curfew. The teen years were much more peer related luxuries. Right? I wanted the friends, I wanted the relationships, I wanted to be able to go on dates. I needed to get my license. My parents had a rule, like you had to be 16 before you went out on a solo date by yourself with a boy. And then we got the car, like all of that peer stuff. There were luxuries that I desired to have.

Now, there were luxuries that I desired in my teen years that I didn’t get. But there are luxuries that I did get. And then we go into adulthood, right? And then there are different luxuries. We start looking at like money, income, title, positions that we get, status, kind of personal agency, personal freedom, independence. And then we get into our careers and we start thinking about the luxury of making an impact, the luxury of influence and impact and accomplishment and success. And we have that form of luxury, but we also, once we do that for a while, then we’re looking for the luxury of simplicity and calm, quiet, peaceful time. We want the luxury of time.

You know, we were working to have these luxuries, and then we want the other luxuries: time and space, flexibility in our schedule, maybe location independence. So we’ve different luxuries that we desire depending on our identity at the time, depending on our development, depending on the type of impact we want to create, whether that’s individual impact, peer impact, social impact, you know, global impact, and based on the experiences we want to have.

So desire in and of itself is pure. It’s clean. There’s no good, bad, right, wrong that comes with it. And yet, we have feelings about desire that can feel bad. So we have feelings about the desire for luxury, feelings about the desire to have what we want. And is it wrong to experience the desire for luxury?

So when we’re young, we’re kind of unaware. We just have this desire and we just believe like I want this because it feels good. It’s going to make me happy. It’s going to be fun. It’s just kind of like how it’s going to feel. I desire it because it will feel good. It will bring me joy, it will bring me laughter, fun, connection, and experience, engaging life, just interesting.

And then when we’re teens, we become more socially aware, we start to see this luxury as like the haves or have nots. And depending on what we were taught, right? In some families, we were taught that luxury was a bad thing, that people with luxury equals people with money equals not good people. They lose touch. They’re not in touch with reality, or they’re not kind anymore. They’re entitled now, or they don’t know what it’s like to be a real person. They just kind of lose their humanity. Or luxury’s kind of a sin because it’s immoral. We should be giving it to somebody else to have. Questions of like worthiness. Are we worthy of having this? Do I deserve this? Should I be gifting it to somebody else? Is there a zero sum game here? Is it if I have this, then somebody else loses? And if I have it, am I taking it away from somebody who needs it?

And then our guilt will creep in, and we might get shamed for expressing that desire. Like as a teen or as a younger child, maybe you expressed these desires and your parents were like, hey, that’s a little selfish, that’s a little too much. You know, there’s starving children in another country, right? Our desire for luxury gets dimmed or blown out like a candle, or we get shamed for it, and then we internalize that. And we think, oh, we shouldn’t have luxury. Either I’m not worthy of it, or it’s not appropriate.

And we might secretly still desire it, because we really do want it, but we don’t want to be a bad person. And we don’t want to make our parents upset, and we don’t want to look selfish and greedy and unkind and dismissive towards other people. And then if we want it and we express that we want it, we might be embarrassed because we might get shunned or shamed or ostracized by our social circles. So then there is this there’s this relationship brewing with luxury which feels like a problem. And we associate shame or guilt or selfishness around desire.

So I was thinking right before this call, I started thinking about what is this about the shame that we have around desire, particularly when we desire something luxurious. Like we desire something luxurious for our staff. We want our staff to have more planning time. What a luxury. Or we desire for them to have para-professional support in the classroom. What a luxury. Or we want them to have a barista. Or we want an assistant principal for ourselves, or a dean of students, or an instructional coach. What a luxury to have that bandwidth to double down on instructional leadership. But there is some shame associated with desiring a luxury that you want.

And I thought about this, like why would a person, it doesn’t matter who did it, whether it’s parents or some kind of leader or mentor in your life, adult mentor when you were a kid or even peer to peer or your boss, anybody. But somebody who tends to have positional authority over you, so like a parent or a mentor, a religious person, or a coach or a, you know, like one of your coaches, like a sports coach or anything, anybody who’s out there. And you can feel this. You probably have a memory of this, right? Where you desired something, or you asked for something, and maybe you got shamed for it.

Now I thought to myself, why would a person shame someone for wanting to have an enjoyable experience, an enjoyable life, a luxurious experience? Why would somebody want another person not to have that? Why would a parent not want their kid to have a luxury in life? Well, they’ll be entitled, they’ll become a brat, they’ll be a little spoiled brat, or they won’t appreciate it. Or people will see them differently, treat them differently. Or well, I didn’t have it and I lived. They’ll be just fine without it. They can suffer right along with me.

Right? People, they think either they believe that you can’t have it, and they want to protect you, or that you shouldn’t have it, and they want to protect you. So if they couldn’t have it, and they shouldn’t have had it, then you shouldn’t have it, or you can’t have it. So there’s this kind of, well, if I couldn’t have it, you couldn’t have it. Or they wanted something when they were younger, and they got disappointed. They either didn’t get it, or they were shamed. And so they feel like, oh, when someone you know, expresses a desire for some kind of luxury experience, let me shut it down because that’s what you’re supposed to do.

Or they were so disappointed and so hurt that they don’t want their child to experience the pain of disappointment. They want to bubble wrap them, right? Which is interesting because we’re actually giving them the luxury of not feeling disappointment versus saying, go for it. Go for what you want and you might get it. And then celebrating if they do receive that type of luxury in their life, or if they go for it and they’re disappointed, then they learn the bandwidth to feel disappointment and then move on and keep going for it. Right?

Sometimes we’ve been taught it’s immoral or wrong. And that’s basically like that zero sum game, like where if you have it, somebody else can’t. You know, your gain is somebody’s loss. That’s where you kind of feel really guilty. You feel bad if you believe that’s true. And the flip of that is kind of like if you decide, oh, I don’t want that, I don’t need it, then somebody else gets to have it, and somebody else can receive it.

So I believe this comes down to the intention behind our desire. So what’s the reason for wanting a better experience? What’s the reason for wanting to become a stronger school leader? What’s your reason for it? Why do you want to be happier, experience more joy, expand your capacity for influence and impact, create a legacy? What’s the intention behind it? What’s the why? Why are we doing it? Is it to help or to harm?

Are we creating an experience because it feels good for us, and when we feel good, we lead better? Or is it I want to feel good because I don’t feel good about myself right now, and because I don’t feel good, I want to feel better. And so if I feel better, then I can not have to deal with the part that I don’t like. Or I want this because I want to look the part. I want it to look like I’m leading, look like I’m luxurious, look like I’m having a happier, better, more fulfilled experience.

Or do I want to look the part so that others can admire me and wish that they had what I had? So is the intention to not just experience joy for ourselves, but to then share that and to bring it use it to leverage leadership in the world in your school? Is it helping? Are we asking for it, desiring it because we want to leverage it to help and amplify our messages and our impact? Is it because we want to show off and we want to feel important and we want it to look like luxury? Because the frequency of truth is always the loudest. It’s not what it looks like, it’s what it is. So the intention matters.

So in its purest form, the reason you would ever desire to create a more luxurious experience, professionally and personally, is because of the emotional experience we have with it. So when we’re in a moment of having something that is a luxury, it feels like a luxury, we know it’s a luxury, we acknowledge it, we embrace it, we’re grateful for it. Those feelings, those emotions like abundance and gratitude, satisfaction, fulfillment, appreciation, joy, delight, those emotions are what we’re going for because emotions are fuel.

And when we’re fueled with these higher vibration feelings, right? The feel good feels, when you’re feeling on top of the world and really productive and really zippy and really locked in with your and you’re really aligned to your mission and you’re going for it and you’re getting things done for that day, you know that feeling? That’s what we’re looking for. We want more of that. Why? Because it serves better. It helps us serve better.

The energy of luxury is a higher frequency. You know the days where you’re like low energy. You don’t feel good. Maybe physically, you’re super exhausted. You’ve run yourself ragged. Maybe you’ve got a little something, you know, cold brewing, and so you then you’re kind of where your sweatshirt for that day, like can I you know, you put on like your comfiest clothes, you don’t look in your best, maybe you didn’t do your makeup full on today. You just throw on some lip gloss and some, I’ve done this. You put on that, you know, mascara and the lip gloss, call it a day, go. That’s it. Low vibration days, lower energy days. What we crave is those higher vibration days.

So once we’ve kind of dismantled like that it’s safe to desire luxury and it’s okay, like you have permission to desire the luxury. What blocks us from expanding our capacity to receive it, to allow it in our lives? What I have found in myself and in my clients is that it is the duality of luxury. There’s a polarity of luxury that occurs, and we don’t really take this into consideration.

So I remember coaching a client a few years ago and she was aching to have an assistant principal. She was the only elementary principal in her entire district that didn’t have an assistant. And I believe that they were trying to find one. There was somebody left and then there was an opening. They couldn’t find anybody. It was not because she was being isolated or excluded from having one. It’s just that there was a year of not having one. And she probably, if I remember correctly, had an AP, which was the luxury and then didn’t have it and then had to double down on the work and really felt the loss of that luxury and was aching for it.

But in that journey, while she was she coached with me for several years, so before, during and after all of this, but on that journey, they hired somebody who they thought would be a fit, and she was just grateful to have somebody, but then the person wasn’t a fit for the job. It wasn’t a match. I call it a want match where you want them, they want you, it’s a match, and it clicks. It wasn’t the click that they were looking for. So the luxury of having it was, yes, you had a person in the position, but there was a duality to the luxury. Right?

So with the experience of a luxury, there is a balance that comes with it, right? So think of things outside of school. The luxury of travel, which to me, I absolutely love to travel, but there is there is a balance that comes with travel. Sometimes when you travel, there are delays, there are cancellations, there are weather related events, there’s turbulence. They double book your seat, they move you even though you’ve paid for your seat. And that’s just on the airlines, right?

When you’re traveling, maybe you’re in your own car, but you’ve got to stop and get gas, or maybe there’s a delay, or there’s a detour, or there’s weather related. You have to pull over, you don’t want to drive during a tornado or something, right? There is a cost or a balance associated with the experience of luxury, right? So if we have the luxury of lots of money, let’s say, because a lot of people associate luxury with money. To have a lot of money in your life also means the responsibility and ownership of that money, of the responsibility of caring for it, of being a good steward of that money, using money to amplify light, love in the world.

So when we are thinking about luxury, at the time we want it, we’re just thinking about the good part, the good part that fulfills us. We’re not always thinking about what comes with that, all that’s associated with it. And that’s something I’ve really had to expand on because here’s the thing, we can easily receive the good half of the luxury, the part that we’re like, yes, this is what I’m imagining. This is how it’s going to feel. Like going on this vacation. Vacation’s the perfect example.

When we imagine vacation, we’re thinking about bliss. Fun in the sun, you know, pool time, piña coladas, getting caught in the rain, walking on the beach. We just imagine just perfection, this idyllic, beautiful tropical experience, if that’s your favorite kind of holiday, right? Whatever your holiday is. But you imagine it just going smoothly. And then the reality of the luxury of going on vacation, because it’s still an incredible luxury to go on a vacation, it might come with some delayed, you know, some delays at the airport or somebody luggage got lost or, you know, they had to switch your room because, you know, the air conditioner broke, whatever, right? Sometimes there are little hiccups in our luxury experience. And can we hold space for and allow those hiccups to happen, but still appreciate and receive the fact that it actually is a luxury to go on vacation.

And we forget that sometimes. Have you been with somebody who you’ve gone on vacation with them or you traveled with them, and all they do is notice what’s going wrong? They complain and complain and the food’s not good or this was on time or this was late, or the room’s not big enough, or we don’t have a good view, or blah, blah, blah, you know, the service was slow. That chips away at the luxurious experience. And we do this in education. We have luxuries that have just become normalized, and then we just start to like, well this and that, and we complain a little bit, or we chip away at the fact that it’s a luxury.

So if you have an AP who’s brilliant, you cherish them with all your heart. But you can also take them for granted and not be in appreciation, and then you’re it’s no longer a luxury because you’re not in the energy of luxury. You’re not in the good feelings of luxury. Now you’re just in the what’s not working energy. You’re down in the lower vibes, right?

So this is what I call luxury dissonance, where it’s like we want the good stuff, but we don’t want the bad stuff. So I’ll take an AP only if they’re perfect. But I don’t want to have to like mentor them or meet with them or you know, I just want them to go out and like go do their job. I’m too busy to like hold your hand, to be holding your hand. I want the part of the luxury that feels easier, better, and more enjoyable, but I don’t want the part that’s requires any kind of work or discomfort.

So there’s a duality we have going on here, right? And this is how we kind of bring it all in. Luxury isn’t about, it’s not as much about what you have at your school. It’s about how you feel about what you have. Do you feel the luxury of your amazing teachers? Do you feel satisfied with the students who are learning and progressing and happily engaged and who aren’t fighting, who are being good citizens and model students? Do we appreciate the bus drivers? Are we grateful for the fact that we have yard duty when other schools, the teachers are doing it?

So the luxury is much about what the particulars of what we have, it’s about how we feel when we have them and holding the pressure of the duality of luxury. When we have what we want and it requires a little bit of effort to have it, a little bit more responsibility, so there’s having the luxury and then holding space for the duality of it. But then there’s also holding the pressure as a school leader to have desires we don’t have yet. So when people say it’s not possible for you to create a culture that’s you celebrates failure, why would we do that?

Okay. There’s pressure on the outside of your desire. People are like, no, you can’t have it. No, you shouldn’t have it. You shouldn’t desire that. That’s selfish. They’re going to have opinions, and those opinions are pressure. Can you hold strong to that while you’re getting external pressure? Can you hold the desire for the belief that it’s possible to create that luxury at your school? Is it possible to create a culture where everybody’s not suffering all day long and just trying to race to the end of the day to feel some relief, or are we able to like hold the belief that it’s possible to work hard and be satisfied, even if there’s hiccups in the day.

It’s allowing the tension of desiring something that anticipation of it and desiring that about what you don’t yet have, while also continuing to appreciate the luxuries that you do already have. Think about this. There’s a certain pressure that comes with being the lead principal versus the assistant principal. I’ve coached hundreds of APs and they’re like, yeah, at the end of the day, there is a little less pressure because I know the buck doesn’t stop with me. It actually really stops with the lead principal.

And then the lead principal is holding that pressure. It’s a luxury to be the lead principal, but it comes with more responsibility. So there’s a certain level of stress and tension that we all want to practice and learn how to hold. And there’s a certain amount of pressure of the luxuries that we have accepted. So when we accept the luxury of an AP, there is a pressure to lead them. We’re still their leader even though they are an administrator.

So we start to view if we let ourselves do this, we can start to feel like the luxuries are now burdens. Well having all of this is just more. It’s just it’s not a luxury. Now it’s a burden. Now I’ve got to do this and I’ve got to do that. Well, you know, we start to lose the gratitude, we start to lose the appreciation for it, for the very thing we said we wanted, now it’s a burden. Until we sit back and say, wait a minute, like what about this is a luxury? How can I get back into luxury energy? The feelings of delight, satisfaction, joy, abundance, gratitude, fulfillment. Right?

And we have seasons. There’s different seasons of what luxuries we desire. So sometimes we desire to have lots of time and space, like don’t want a lot on my calendar. I just want to be able to come in. You know that morning when you wake up and you’re like, my calendar is, you know, I only have like two meetings all day. So the calendar is nice and full and it feels really good. and you have the luxury of like coming in a little bit slower, getting a cup of coffee, talking with your office staff. Maybe you check your emails, you get your calendar ready for the day, and you just feel space, spaciousness. You go greet students, you get into classrooms, you connect, you’re smiling at teachers, you’re out for yard duty, you’re serving pizza for lunch, just the spaciousness of that day feels so luxurious.

Maybe going home at 4:00 today is a luxury. Sometimes you’re there until 8, or 9, or 10, because you’ve got a an evening event. Right? And I think about high school, they’ve got sporting events and music events. Those go late. And as a little birdie who likes to go to bed early, I’m like, I’m literally my brain is I’m turned off right around 9:00. Put me in my jammies, brush my teeth, and put me to bed. I’m done.

So it’s a luxury to be able to come home early once in a while. It’s a luxury to have space in our day. And then other days, it feels like a luxury to have a full day. I can remember coming in when I had, we had kid talks. We had these kid talk meetings. So we would hire subs, back when there were subs. We would hire subs and we would have, I think we did kid talk, yes, we did kid talk for three days in a row. So we’d have each grade level got a half a day. So the sub would do like morning, they would go to kinder and then afternoon they’d go to first grade. We would meet with the kindergarten team and we would have a half a day. We called it kid talk. We were going through and assessing what every single student in that grade level needed. We called it win time, what I need, what’s working for them, where are we taking them? It was almost like creating individualized plans for every single student.

And then we would, you know, create plans, teaching plans based on kids that needed to be excelled, kids who were on grade level on moving forward, and kids who needed additional supports. I loved those days, highly productive. Not a minute to myself, right? I would have to, you know, you barely eat, you’re barely, you know, getting to the restroom, you’re just not really on campus, you know, visible out there other than being in these meetings. I love those days too, a different kind of luxury.

So different seasons, different luxuries, right? Winter and each calendar season, each like planet season, right? We have spring, winter, fall, summer. Each of those is a different kind of luxury. So in the fall season, think of all the energy and the excitement, anticipation of the start of school. It’s such a luxury. And then we have the fall dip, but then winter comes, and it’s quiet, magical. There’s just there’s kind of a lull that happens usually. But there’s also the excitement and the energy of the holiday season and the celebrations and the end of the year and then the Mid-Year Reboot that’s coming up in January. So we have different desires for different kinds of luxury. Sometimes we desire the luxury of festivities and other times we desire the luxury of quiet and calm and contemplation and rest.

So then we start to wonder, are both possible? As a school leader, because I know this question comes up in my coaching sessions all the time, can I have both of these forms of luxuries? There’s kind of these internal luxuries I desire, like calm, peace, contentment, and these external luxuries that I desire. Is it possible to have both? Is it possible to have the materials my school needs and the resources we need? And also, can I create an ease of managing those resources and managing those materials? Because for all the materials you get, more can be more. And if there’s not a system for organizing it and managing it, the resources just become chaos and lost in the shuffle.

Is it possible for me to be an accomplished principal? To have influence, impact and legacy while also being a rested principal, not being right? and an exhausted principal. Can I contribute as a leader in my community, in my district, and can I also receive support? Can I give and receive? They’re both luxuries. Contribution is a luxury. It feels so good to give. Receiving is also a luxury, to receive support, to receive the help when you need it, and also to be the receiver and receive in a way that allows the person who’s giving to us the joy of giving. Can we do both? Do we have the capacity for both? Those are both different kinds of luxuries.

Can we contribute and create impact and really go for it and be super productive, but also create the luxury of downtime and rest and recovery and play? Can we receive financial wealth, financial abundance in our life and work towards that and create an exchange of value in the world while also being able to play? Or is it all work and no play?

So we attach meaning to all of these luxuries. We want to be impactful. We want to earn, you know, our most financial potential that we can, but we attach earning and receiving with working, with effort and time. It’s like an equation. Like the more work plus the more effort plus the more time that you work equals more earning. We’ve been taught this, but it’s not true. It can’t be true. And the fastest way to dismantle that is there are humans on the planet who work less hours and make a lot more money.

And every human’s given 24/7 on the planet, and how is it that we’re not making the same amount of money? How is time equal money? It doesn’t work that way. Because if effort plus time plus the hours that you worked equaled a certain, you know, guaranteed you a certain amount of income, then everyone working those amount of hours, giving this amount of effort for this amount of time would be making the same amount of money. That’s not how it works. Money’s an exchange of value, the value that we contribute. And we can feel very frustrated and very defeated when we cannot outwork to attract more luxury and a more luxurious experience.

Or we work really hard and we get one type of luxury, right? Like maybe we work hard and we work our way up and we have title, the luxury of title, status, power or position, and we make money, but we work so hard to get there, and we’re at work all the time that we don’t have any luxury of rest or play or, you know, time outside of work with family and friends. So we think that we can have one or the other. Do we have the luxury of time or do we have the luxury of working? So we want this, and then we want this. It’s like a yo, a teeter totter. It’s all or nothing thinking.

So here’s what we think we want. We think we want to experience luxury without having to hold the space for the balance of it. We think we just want the good without the bad. It’s like we want the dream home, but we don’t want the dream home mortgage payment. Right? We don’t want the property taxes, and we don’t want all those maintenance costs. Cost a lot of money to heat that big house. Right? Cost a lot of money to clean that house. Cost a lot of time to clean that house.

So we might want more time at work. We want the luxury of time at work, but we also want the impact. We want the impact, but we don’t want the failures that come with impact. That’s what we think we want. But here’s what we actually want when we peel back the layers, okay? What we actually really want is we want as humans to have the capacity to experience the space for both. We want to be able to hold the pressure of all of the luxury, the balance of it.

We want to be able to handle the pressure that comes with receiving support at our school and holding space for our capacity to organize, manage it, maintain it, lead it. Right? Pressure, the pressure that we feel and our capacity to hold that pressure is what creates balance. There is pressure in balance, right? If you’re thinking of a teeter totter, there’s pressure on this side and there’s pressure on this side. So for it to balance, there’s equal pressure on both sides. There’s no lack of pressure. It would just be sitting on the ground. There would be no teetering or tottering. It would just be, you know, flat. But when you’re on the teeter totter, there has to be an equal amount of pressure on both sides. If there’s one, it’s this way. If there’s one, it’s that way. Right? The pressure’s what kind of holds us all together.

This is the most tangible way I can describe it. Think about a box. Like let’s say you pick up, I wish I had one with me. Here, my water bottle, okay? Let’s say, let’s say this is a big box, and I want to hold, I’m going to carry a large box. Both of my hands have to be on, there’s got to be pressure on this side and pressure on this side. If I pull, this falls down, right? Both hands must be applied to carry the box, if not, you’re going to drop the box.

So this is where we get into the land of and, the balance of life, the balance of leadership, the balance of our careers, the balance of the luxuries we have. It’s not a matter of trading this for that, moving my left hand or moving my right hand. It’s not paying tit for tat. That’s not what luxury is. The truth is that you don’t get to have, it’s not one or the other. That’s how we think about it, right? I can either be successful and work really, really hard and lose time with my family, or I can be really lazy and not contribute in value. But I’ll have a lot of time on my hands. We think we can have money or time because we associate an exchange of time for money. Time does not create money. What you do with your time, who you are being, the value you’re contributing creates money.

You can sit at your desk for eight hours, that eight hour, if you just sit there and do nothing, you have created no value. That time sitting your buns in the seat does not is not what gets you paid. It’s what you do within the eight hours that gets you paid. Okay? So this is another way to think about it. Think about people that you would define as having luxury items or luxury, a luxury lifestyle. There are people who have it all, right? They have the things, they have the external luxuries. They have the car, the house, you know, they have vacation home. They have lots of money in the bank, but they don’t feel luxurious. It’s because they’re not in luxury energy. They’re not in the abundance, in the gratitude of it, in the awe of it.

This is how we create luxury at our schools. We’re in awe of the luxuries we have. We’re in awe of the people. We’re in awe of the growth we did make. Let’s say 47% of kids are on grade level, be in awe of your teachers for doing that and awe of students. And the 52 or three that are below, look at the progress they have made. Who cares if they’re on the line or below it? Have they made progress? And if they haven’t, be in awe that they’re still showing up every day, even though school is so hard for them.

And hold space for their potential. If someone slips a little bit, it doesn’t mean it’s forever. We all have slips. We all have mishaps. But there are there are people, and I feel like in education, we’ve stopped to considering what a luxury it is to be a school leader, to be a teacher, to be a student. And I know you’re taking a lot of shade from all the angles because of we’ve forgotten to be in alignment with the luxury that school leadership is, the luxury that education is, the luxury that teaching and learning is. Take away schools, shut everything down tomorrow. What will happen? Now it’s a luxury. Parents are like, please open the school. I’m not going to tell you how to run it. Just please take my kid because I’ve got to get to work. Right? We’ve forgotten. But we can bring it back. We can be the spark that ignites the idea of luxury.

So there’s people who have it that don’t feel it, don’t experience it. And then there’s people who don’t have it who do experience it because they desire it, and they’re in the anticipation of it, and they’re planning on receiving it. But they’re also looking around for what do I have? And I can be in luxury right now. So you can have what you label as luxury and also feel it, or you can be surrounded by luxury and not feel it at all.

You can desire to experience more luxury while also enjoying the luxuries you have, or you can sit back and just resist luxury altogether. Believe you don’t have access to it. It’s not for you. Other people deserve it. Other people are more worthy, but it’s just not in the cards for you. And you can think it’s not coming to you and you can be like, and look, there’s nothing luxurious in my life right now either. There you go. There’s proof. Never had it, never will. So not being grateful for what is in your life that you could consider a luxury, and also negating and just resisting that it’s even a possible to create more in your future.

So there’s all those different angles. You can have it and be in complete luxury. You can have it and not be in a luxury at all. Just kind of overlooking it as like, yeah, yeah, that’s just expected. You can not have it, but be grateful for the things you do have and desire for more, or you can resist it all together in the having or in the anticipation of having.

So luxury really comes down to our capacity to expand. Instead of seeing it as just the taking the good part and not wanting the bad, we can expand by holding space for the duality of both. And it really does grow us. We really do want to handle both. Like if the universe wrote you a check for $1 million right now and just handed it to you and said, here you are, tax-free, could you hold the pressure of having the money? Not spending it, not giving it all away because it’s uncomfortable to have it, but could you just sit there with it and hold it until you come up with a plan and that every dollar that you choose to save or you choose to spend or pay off whatever your plan is for it, that it’s in the frequency of luxury.

It’s a luxury to write this check and pay off my credit card. Thank you, money. I’m so grateful. It’s a luxury to let this money just sit in my bank account. It’s a luxury to give myself permission to spend $1,000 today on whatever I want. Believing that it’s possible for you to have more luxury in your life, the simple ones and the big ones, appreciating the little things, the beautiful first snow, if you live where it’s cold, you can appreciate the beauty of the snow. If you live where it’s warm, you can appreciate the beauty of the warmth. If you celebrate Christmas, you can appreciate the beautiful lights on your tree or if your kids decorated the tree and it’s it’s all crazy, like kids do, you can just appreciate that and the love that you feel for that tree because your children decorated it. Right?

Being capable of handling the duality, that’s what this is about. So the luxury leadership experience here, the duality of what we’re looking for is enjoying our job as school leaders and holding space for those hard days and not making the hard days mean that you are insufficient or you’re not cut out for school leadership, making it mean that you can handle hard days, because you’re a boss. Right?

Can you be paid as a valuable school leader? Expand your capacity to receive without needing to overwork, people please, overschedule yourself, overexert, trying to serve people from a place of obligation or resentment or frustration or disenfranchisement, right? To create value as a leader and still have space in your life outside of school leadership. Can you have both? Can you hold the duality of that? The luxury of being impactful here and having a beautiful life outside of school hours. Can you be a person of influence and impact without leading from fear, intimidation, coercion, placating people, fawning your boss, or faking it until you make it? Can you be authentic in your influence and impact? Duality, right?

But how, we always say. How can we have hard days and still feel gratitude? It’s been a rough year. How do we get anything done without overworking? How do we become the leader who creates all this impact without being consumed? The luxury is in the who, not in the how. How do you have hard days and feel gratitude? You acknowledge it was a hard day, and you also acknowledge that there’s something in your life today to be grateful for, no matter what. If you want the and, create the and.

This was a hard day. I’m not dismissing it. I maybe even cried on my way home from work. But when I got home and I was received by my family, or I came home to a quiet house because I live alone and I could just be in the gratitude of that solitude or the gratitude of being received by my family, I live such a luxurious life, and tomorrow’s a new day.

How do we get everything done without overworking? We ground ourselves in purpose and in trust that we know how to prioritize and that today what we got done today was what needed to get done today and we trust that what needs to get done tomorrow will get done. Both. We do and we trust duality. How do we become the leader who creates impact without being overconsumed by what other people think? We align to our values and we use our values as a compass to genuinely care and listen to others and not make it mean about us all the time. We’re not here to get accolades as a leader, we’re here to serve and we still serve them even when their opinion differs from ours.

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.