The Empowered Principal® Podcast Angela Kelly | Raise the Bar

Can you believe we’re already a quarter of the way through 2025? Time flies by so quickly that it’s made me pause and reflect on how we’re spending our precious moments. As we enter April and the final season of this school year, it’s the perfect opportunity to examine our intentions and how we’re showing up in our lives.

Many of us feel stretched too thin—not feeling “good enough” in our various roles as educators, parents, partners, or friends. This overwhelming sensation often stems from trying to do too much without clear intention. When we operate on autopilot, moving robotically through our days, we miss the richness life has to offer.

This week, I invite you to raise the bar—not from a place of insufficiency, but from a desire for greater satisfaction and joy. This isn’t about demanding more productivity or discipline from yourself. It’s about elevating your expectations for fulfillment in your career, deepening your connections, and squeezing more pleasure out of everyday moments.

 

Essentials for New School Leaders is my brand-new three-month program for principals in their first year of leadership! If you want to make your first impression your BEST impression, click here to register and find out more.

The Empowered Principal® Collaborative is my latest offer for aspiring and current school leaders who want to create exceptional impact and enjoy the school leadership experience. Join us today to become a member of the only certified life and leadership coaching program for school leaders in the country by clicking here.

 

What You’ll Learn From this Episode:

  • The importance of creating intentional presence in your daily life.
  • Why raising your standards for joy and satisfaction transforms your leadership experience.
  • The powerful balance between rest, play, and work that maximizes your potential.
  • How to approach the final weeks of the school year with renewed energy and purpose.

 

Listen to the Full Episode:

Featured on the Show:

Check out my four-day Aspiring School Leaders series for first-year site and district leaders:

Full Episode Transcript:

Hello Empowered Principals. Welcome to episode 379. 

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

Well hello, my Empowered Principals. Happy Tuesday. Welcome to the Empowered Principal Podcast. Here we are. It’s the beginning of March. And did you realize we are 25% through 2025 already? Three months of the year has gone by. It’s amazing! One full season! 

It made me really stop and ponder how quickly time goes in a calendar year. Just a few months ago, we were celebrating the Mid-Year Reboot. We were celebrating New Year’s Eve. We were celebrating the beginning of 2025 and here we are now, April 1st, ready to go into the second season of the calendar year and the third season of the school year, which is spring. It’s the last season of this school year, and it really amazes me how quickly time passes and why it’s important to be intentional with who we are and how we spend our time and where our energy goes and planning. 

So for those of you who feel overwhelmed, if you feel that there’s too much to do and not enough time, if you’re rushing around and you’re feeling like you’re busy at home and you’re busy at work and you’re not being a good enough mom or a good enough dad or a good enough partner or a good enough friend or a good enough child to your parents or a good enough friend to your friends. If there’s something you’re doing that just feels like it’s not quite good enough? Probably because we are trying to spread ourselves too thin. 

And one of the ways that we can counter this is by slowing down just for a minute and getting very intentional with our lives. To see how quickly one, two, three months have gone in 2025, it made me personally want to deepen my presence in life. To live each day with much more intentionality and much more mindfulness. 

Not in a way that prevents me from getting things done. I don’t want to sit around and just meditate all day and be present like that, although that is a wonderful thing to do, but we want to be alive. We want to live. We want to be engaged, but we want to do so from intention, not out of automation or what I call like robotic living, where we are just living a life as a robot, getting up, doing the same thing over and over again, feeling okay, feeling like we did a good job, but also feeling this kind of flatline, unfulfilled, like automated response to life or reacting to life.

So I want to invite you in to this idea of raising the bar, raising the bar for our experience on the planet, raising the bar for our joy and our fulfillment and our satisfaction, our enjoyment of life, that being alive as a human on the planet, feeling all of the feels, going to the things, doing the fun things, taking time out to rest, taking time out for fun, really being present. What am I doing today and why? Waking up and deciding ahead of time, this is the experience that I want to have today.

I want to expand the experiences that I want. I want to appreciate the connections in my life and the relationships I have developed. I want to raise the bar for my experience as a school leader. We’re not raising the bar out of insufficiency. We’re not telling ourselves, we’re not meeting standards, we’re not good enough, we’re not doing enough, we’re not being enough, therefore I’m raising the bar so that I get disciplined and I get more, you know, on top of my game. It’s not about raising that bar.

It’s about raising the level of expectation and standard for the satisfaction we want out of our careers, for the connections we want to build, for the interactions we want to have. For the joy that we want to experience. For just the pure pleasure of being alive on the planet as a human. Really squeezing out all that life has to offer. Squeezing out the joy and the love and the pleasure and the laughter and the fun and all of the things.

I want to raise the bar for myself. I would love to raise the bar for education in terms of raising the bar for the experience that students have, raising the bar for the experience that teachers have, actually engaging people in a way that feels good, coming to school because it feels good, showing up as a teacher because it feels good.

Leading schools, leading education, pioneering the way for an experience of learning and developing humans in a way that can feel good. We can feel alive. It doesn’t mean we’re going to be happy all the time. Feeling good is about being in alignment with the truth of who we are. When we’re in grief, we’re in grief, when we are in pain, we are in pain. And when we are in joy and delight, we are experiencing joy and delight. It’s being in alignment with the experience that feels most true for us.

So as we’re going into this second season of 2025, so that would be April, May, June. I had to think about that for a second. April, May, and June. We’re going into spring, skidding into summer here, right? I want to invite you to have more fun. Insist it upon yourself. 

If you had to have more fun, if it was your assignment for the day, what would you do? If you had to make life more fun, if you had to squeeze out more pleasure in your day, if you had to rest more, if you had to laugh more, if you had to connect more, if that was your assignment, which, by the way, it is, it’s your life assignment, to enjoy your life, to experience as much as possible.

And I’m not saying you’re running around to the point of running yourself ragged, that’s not the experience we’re looking for. Exhaustion, overwhelm, burnout, that does not equal to an invigorating human experience. I’m talking about raising the bar on the balance of life, getting the rest we need, getting the play that we crave, and contributing to work in a way that feels good.

Think about this as you go into your spring season and into the last season of school. Insist upon yourself to look for ways to have more fun, to laugh more, to rest more, to play more, to infuse pleasure into your workday, to see the collaboration between rest and play and work, and to see how in collaboration when you’re balancing rest with play with work you get this beautiful combination we call life. And you contribute in a way that maximizes your potential. 

When you’re exhausted all the time, your contributing goes down. If you’re only playing, your contributing goes down. If you’re only working, your balance goes up and the experience you have becomes automatic and robotic and you’re not actually living. You’re just automated through the day, robotically moving about. 

So raise the bar for yourself. If there were no limits, if you could purely just design your life the way you wanted to, with no strings attached, what would you be capable of experiencing? What would the bar be? How much fun is possible? How much laughter is possible? How much delight is possible? How much contribution is possible? How much connection and collaboration is possible? How many solutions could we create in this lifetime? How much rest can we embrace to give ourselves the energy required for play and for work?

Using play, rest, and work in collaboration with one another is how you raise the bar. So going into spring season, it’s April. Many of you are just getting hired on as brand new principals. Be looking out for my new school leadership series coming out in April.

Number two, if you are a seasoned principal and you’re heading into testing season, the end of the year, all of the chaos and you’re exhausted and tired, I invite you to join EPC now. EPC for brand new leaders, it’s going to get you on track because you’re going to be thinking about tying up the old job and getting excited and wanting to jump into the new one. And for my seasoned empowered principals who might not be feeling super empowered this time of year, this is a time to reinvigorate.

Come on into EPC now, get your spring season planned. I’ll run you through the three month plan. We’ll get you up and running there. And you can actually enjoy the last eight weeks, 12 weeks of the year. It’s going to be amazing should you decide to raise the bar. Come on in, EPC, now’s the time. Happy Spring everybody! Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy. We’ll talk to you next week. Take good care. Bye.

Hey you guys, calling all first-year site and district leaders. As you know, I hosted a free master course for those aspiring to land a job in school leadership. This was a four-day course that covers what you need to prepare yourself before, during, and after the interview process. So for those of you who are interested, you can find the YouTube links below in the show notes. The Aspiring School Leader series is completely free. 

Now, for those of you who landed that job, I have a brand-new program. Let’s make your first impression in school leadership your best impression. Let’s lead your school with confidence in year one and nail your first year as a school leader. You’ve got what it takes to make an impressive first impression, so come on in. 

I’ve got a brand-new program called Essentials for New School Leaders. It is three months of professional and personal development to give you the strategies, the mindset, and the skill set to lead your school to the next level of success.

There is a gap between the time you get hired and the time you start your contract. Let’s get ahead of the curve, three months in advance, you’ll be ready to go on day one of your brand-new contract. Join Essentials for New School Leaders. For more information, click the link in the show notes.

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. 

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The Empowered Principal® Podcast Angela Kelly | Creating Problems vs. Solving Them: A Fresh Approach to Staff Collaboration

Do your teachers ever come to you with perceived problems they want your help solving? It’s easy to get caught up in trying to solve every issue that comes your way, but what if some of those “problems” aren’t really problems at all?

In this episode, I share a powerful coaching conversation I had with a principal who was struggling with a teacher collaboration issue. We uncovered some key insights about how we can sometimes create our own problems by making assumptions and trying to force everyone to fit into the same box.

I invite you to tune in and consider a different approach to teacher collaboration – one that allows for flexibility, diversity, and acceptance among our staff members. By embracing individual differences and empowering teachers to find creative solutions, we can create a more harmonious and effective school culture.

 

The Empowered Principal® Collaborative is my latest offer for aspiring and current school leaders who want to create exceptional impact and enjoy the school leadership experience. Join us today to become a member of the only certified life and leadership coaching program for school leaders in the country by clicking here.

 

What You’ll Learn From this Episode:

  • Why it’s important to have deeper conversations with staff members who come to you with concerns.
  • The value of allowing for flexibility and diversity in teacher collaboration styles.
  • How to empower teachers to find creative solutions that meet their individual needs.
  • Why forcing everyone to fit into the same box can actually hinder success.
  • The importance of modeling differentiation and accommodation for our staff, not just our students.
  • How to create a school culture that embraces individual differences and promotes harmony.

 

Listen to the Full Episode:

Featured on the Show:

Full Episode Transcript:

Hello empowered principals. Welcome to episode 378.

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

Well, good morning, my Empowered Principles! How are you feeling today? Here we are, end of March. You’ve made it through the longest month of the spring. So congratulations. I know that March can feel like a very long month. There’s a lot of days in March. There’s a lot of pressure in March.

There are a lot of decisions to be made in March, and you, my friend, are handling them. And I want to celebrate you. You only have two to three months to go, depending on what part of the country you live in, what your school district’s timelines are. But some of you are done at the end of May, and some of you are done at the end of June. So I am rooting for you.

So for those of you who have two to three months to go, make sure you’re planning out the last eight weeks of the school year. And be sure, please be sure to be planning out your Summer of Fun Challenge. And for those of you who are on Facebook and you like to have fun, if you are both of those things, come on in to the Empowered Principal Facebook group where we do our Summer of Fun Challenge. I do lots of fun prizes and encourage people to get out, have fun, and to be inspiring to other people. And really what we’re doing is we’re raising the bar to see how much fun we can have as school leaders during the summer and during the entire school year, I would venture to add.

So congratulations on making it through March Madness. I know that it can be a challenge. So as we close out March of 2025, I just want you to notice, we’ve already been through January, February, and March. We are a quarter of the way through the calendar year. And I say that to bring up awareness and to help you realign with who you are and who you want to be and how you want to feel and what you want to experience. It’s been a wild ride in 2025 and I want to create that awareness.

And every week you listen to this podcast, I want you to be thinking about, with intention, the experience you want to have in your school leadership experience, in your career, with your children, your relationships, your relationship with time, your relationship with your money, your relationship with everything around you. But ultimately, the life you want to live, the life you want to lead, the legacy you want to leave behind.

And I don’t mean being some famous person when I say legacy. I just mean your personal legacy, what you value, what you cherish, how you’re going to be remembered, creating those memories with your loved ones while you’re here on the planet, while they are here on the planet. We’re not ever guaranteed another day, another year. So why not make the best of this day and cherish this day and appreciate this day?

So as we’re wrapping up the first quarter of 2025, look back at the last 90 days. Look at your last plan. What did you celebrate? What did you learn? Where did you grow? What accomplishments did you create? What experiences did you have? Who did you connect with? Celebrate your life, acknowledge it and enjoy it.

Okay. Now this podcast is going to be pretty quick because what I want to do is show you how we can create problems for ourselves. So I was coaching one of my EPC clients. Once a month, you have access to a free 30 minute one-on-one session with me as a part of being in the Empowered Principal Collaborative. So you get the best of both worlds. You get weekly coaching, you get all the collaboration, you get the connection and insight from like-minded people.

But then you also, if you have something that’s churning at you or something that’s private or confidential, once a month, every EPC member has access to a 30-minute one-on-one private session with me as a part of the membership. Now, this client has been working with me for several years as a one-on-one client. And when I opened EPC, she did both for one year and now she’s an EPC exclusively. And she scheduled a one-on-one session with me and it caught my attention because this client is pretty savvy at coaching herself. And I know that when she does schedule a one-on-one session, there’s something going on for her.

So we connected. I asked her what was going on. What did she want to coach on? And she felt very distraught. The way that she introduced her problem was that she was going to have to have a hard conversation with a teacher who was very set in her ways and is a very good teacher. So the principal was feeling conflicted because she felt she had to have a difficult conversation, a very uncomfortable conversation with a teacher who she saw as being very set in her ways, but also being a brilliant teacher.

And I asked her, if this teacher is brilliant, what’s the hard conversation you’re having with her? And she said, it’s about collaboration. This teacher has extremely good interactions with children. She gets results. Her classroom’s on point, like teaching wise, we have no problem. But in the principal’s mind, the way that the teacher collaborated was a problem.

And so she felt like she had to address this problem. So stay with me here, because if you have a person like this on your campus and you’re like, they’re such good teachers, but dot dot dot, they’re not good at relationships with adults or they, whatever they do. If you’re in this boat, which trust me, I’m assuming, and I know it’s an assumption, but I’m presuming that there are many of you in this boat because you have people who are really good and this thing or really good, but this thing. Okay. Stick with me here.

So I listened to the story. I allowed my client to brain drain all of her story about what was going on and what was wrong and why it was a problem. And I can’t share the details, obviously, with you, but the gist of it was the colleague, this teacher, had been in a gen ed classroom and now she’s an intervention teacher and there was multiple intervention teachers, and the colleague of the teacher wanted to collaborate differently than she currently was with her colleague and she felt that she was being met with resistance.

So hear me out. The person that the principal had planned to have a difficult conversation with was a person who’s an excellent teacher, but whose identity, based on other people’s opinions, was a difficult person to get along with. Now, it could be true. I don’t know the person, which is great because I can stay super neutral.

So this person perhaps does not collaborate in the way that people would expect, or maybe she does engage with adults differently than children. We oftentimes do. So when we got down to the core of what was going on, I said, what’s the real problem here? Is the real problem that teacher needs to collaborate in the way that the colleague wants her to? Is that the problem? Is the problem that the colleague doesn’t feel connected or supported to her peer? Is that the problem? Is the problem that because somebody came and said something to you, now it’s a problem that you have to solve and you feel an obligation or a duty to solve it for them? What is the actual problem here?

And I want you to hear this out because there are so many things that come our way. And adults will come up to you and say things.

For example, I was coaching another person yesterday and she said, “Well, I had a teacher come and tell me that another teacher came in late.” And again, my question is, okay, the person came and told you something, which that’s fine. They have the right to tell you that. You can say thank you. But do you have a problem as the principal with the person who came in late? Maybe you do, and maybe you address that. But isn’t it interesting that somebody came to you and told you that because that person also has a problem.

And so when they come to you to tell you this person came in late, that person clearly has a problem with the person coming in late. It’s not just the person who came in late, it’s the person who tattled or told on the other person. So what I coached and mentored this newer principal on was, “Isn’t it interesting that this person would come and tell you that somebody’s coming in late.”

So my response to that person, if I were principal, I would say, thank you so much for sharing that. I really appreciate you being honest with me. And how does it make you feel that this person’s coming in late? Is this person’s tardiness impacting you directly in any way? And the reason I wanted to know that is because I want to ensure that if I address this, that I understand the impact of the other teacher’s tardiness.

Is there something about the tardiness that is directly impacting you? And that creates awareness for the teacher who’s coming to tell you, why did I come and say this? Was I coming to tell? Was I coming to get attention? Was I looking for connection with my principal? Was I just tattling? Was I concerned for the person, but I don’t have a relationship with them? And I’m wondering, maybe something happened? Are they okay? But I don’t feel comfortable going to them.

It creates awareness around the behavior of the person who’s telling. So there are times when people come to us and tell us, this is what’s going on. This is how I feel. I saw this, I overheard this. They’re sharing it with you. And you can be grateful that they’re sharing it with you. But it’s interesting to consider, is it really a problem? Is it this person’s problem? Like, where does the problem lie?

Oftentimes what happens without awareness is somebody comes and says, my colleague is not collaborating with me in the way that I want. She’s not sitting down with me during PLC time and she is not collaborating. And you need to know that. And then you’re like, okay, thanks for sharing with me. How are you feeling about it? Well I’m frustrated, I want to collaborate with her. I’m used to collaborating with the other team I used to be on collaborated and this team doesn’t.

Okay. That’s good to know, but notice how the person coming to you is the person you want to engage in conversation with. What exactly is the problem? Why does it bother you? How is it impacting you? What is it that you see? What do you think this obstacle is in the way of collaboration. What do you think the solution is?

The conversation isn’t, oh, thanks for letting me know and you go now and talk to the other person who has no idea what’s going on perhaps, or maybe they do. But do you see how there is an opportunity for conversation to get to understand the person who came to you about their thoughts and their feelings and what it is they’re looking for and their perception and what they think the problem is and what they think the obstacle is and what they think the solution will be that is an opportunity for connection and conversation with that person before you ever go off running to solve it.

Because here’s what’s happening. Somebody tells you something, you take it for truth, you take it at that face value, and then you go and you try to fix it. You try to change somebody else so that the person who came to you can feel better. Right? It’s the same thing. If a student were to come up to you and say, you know, Sally hurt my feelings. Okay. Tell me more. What did Sally do? What did Sally say? How did it impact you?

You would talk to the child who’s distressed about the circumstance that occurred before you would go and just say, okay, go get Sally and let’s have this conversation. Now, some people might do that, but I’m inviting you into the idea that there may not even be a problem.

So back to the story of my client, when we dug down and I asked her, okay, the teacher that you were considering this difficult conversation with, she gets great results, right? She kind of keeps to herself. So maybe she does find adult relationships a little more taxing for her, a little more challenging for her. That could be true. She said, yeah, I’ve had multiple experiences myself and I’ve heard other people say that she can be a challenge to work with.

I said, but she kind of sticks to herself. She gets her job done. She’s prepared, she’s planned. But ultimately, she has an excellent relationship with kids and she gets the job done. So where is the problem, the actual problem? And we spent about 30 minutes dialing down and it became apparent to the principal, oh, I actually don’t have a problem with her. She’s not, to my knowledge, not harming anybody. She’s not harming children. She’s not negatively impacting anybody. She’s just a teacher who tends to keep to herself. She tends to prep by herself.

And it’s the colleague who is feeling the dissonance, like the discord between the two of them. So let’s talk with that teacher because for her, that’s the problem. The teacher who’s out doing her thing and maybe isn’t collaborating in the way that it should look like we all have, you know, in PLCs, this is how it should look and this is how people should talk and this is how people should collaborate.

But if we are truly in the business of human development, in the business of people, and we’re expecting teachers to embrace, allow, and account for differences, diversity, equity, accommodations. Why would we not model that in our staff? Does every single student need to fit the square? Does everybody need to fit in the box? Or do we differentiate for students? For kids who really struggle with social-emotional skills or really struggle to connect and to relate in the exact way, they might not be able to think pair share or to partner up or to work in a group. Not everybody is designed exactly the same.

And so what we do is we understand children, we get to know them, we get to understand them, we get to understand their triggers, and then we create a space that allows them to still feel safe in their own skin, even if they have neurological differences, biological differences, physical differences, mental differences, emotional, social differences. We create a space that accommodates and allows for flexibility. Can we do this on our staff as well? Can we allow our staff members to be different?

Maybe third grade collaborates differently than fifth grade or first grade. But if it’s working for them, we’re good. Now in this case, you have somebody who’s completely happy doing minimal collaboration and somebody who has a desire for more. So for the person, if they’re not causing harm and they’re not doing anything wrong, you can discuss with them, like, how do they feel about collaboration and what’s working for them and what’s not. But also with the person who doesn’t feel like fulfilled or satisfied, is there another way that that fulfillment can be nourished?

And in this case, we’re talking about intervention. So intervention, it might not look the same as gen ed collaboration or PLC time, might look a little different. And if this person in the intervention position isn’t getting the full collaborative experience she wants with this one colleague, might she be able to fulfill that with someone else, with another colleague? Maybe she can push into grade levels. Maybe she can work with the special ed team. Maybe she can work with anybody on the campus. Collaboration doesn’t exactly have to look like one thing.

Now, I know some of you are going to say, well, she needs to be held to the same exact set of standards as everybody else. And that is an option. You can certainly say, this is the standard, this is the expectation, you must sit down and collaborate. But in the conversation I had with my client, what she discovered is that forcing PLC time, collaboration time to look exactly the same in every single grade level and every single department on her campus might actually be a hindrance to their success.

And so she wanted to take into account is forcing people to look just one way and do it just one way is making people sit down for a certain amount of time and talking in a certain way and taking notes in the exact way. Is that level of management, is that really creating the best results?

So this principal decided I’m going to let the results speak for themselves and I can work with this team to see if we can create more connection in a way that’s authentic for everybody involved, not forcing one person to do it the other person’s way, or one person to have to give up what they want, but living in the land of and helping them collaborate and noticing that one, is this actually a problem?

And two, if somebody’s feeling there’s a problem, who are we actually addressing, being mindful of that, and working with that person to come up with multiple solutions. Because when somebody’s in discord, disharmony, they feel that there’s a problem and they come to you, what’s happening is they don’t feel the way they want to feel about something, whether it’s collaboration or a colleague or whatever. The goal for you as they come to you is, how do they want to feel? And then what multiple options might create and generate that feeling?

So in this case, if that person feels disconnected from her colleagues, might she be able to connect with other colleagues to get the sense of fulfillment and collaboration that she craves? How can she fulfill that need for herself and not need this one person to fulfill that need for her? Especially if the other person isn’t intending to cause harm or discord, they’re just uncomfortable or they maybe have, you know, some neurological or some biological, who knows? There are reasons that people avoid different kinds of collaboration, different kinds of contact.

We want to be respectful and mindful of that. So it could be an opportunity to collaborate with this team and also empower your teachers to find other ways to fulfill their needs so that it’s a win-win. We don’t need to force somebody, particularly an adult who may be a little more adverse to adult connection or a ton of adult stimuli, this communication and connection. If that is overwhelming to some of your adult staff members, let’s be open to allowing for flexibility, diversity, allowance, embracing acceptance, embracing flexibility in how we approach teaching, learning, planning, collaboration, conversation. Something to think about.

Have a beautiful week. Happy March. I hope you enjoyed it. We’re bringing up April. Come on in to EPC. If you are a brand new leader, oh my goodness, get in EPC right now so we can get you started. We can get you planning. We can get you transitioning. EPC is the bomb you guys. I could not love it more. The only thing that would make me happier is all of you coming to join us. It is so, so fun and so worth it. I love you guys. Have an amazing week. Talk to you soon. 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.

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The Empowered Principal® Podcast Angela Kelly | Times of Uncertainty

Are you feeling overwhelmed by the rapid changes and uncertainty in the world of education? Do you find yourself struggling to navigate the impact of decisions and actions that are outside of your control? In this episode, I share my insights on how to lead with certainty during uncertain times.

As a leadership coach, I’ve observed various leadership styles and approaches, and I’ve noticed that many school leaders are feeling distressed, concerned, and angry about the current state of education. The impact of leadership changes on schools, districts, communities, families, and students can be significant, and it’s natural to feel a sense of uncertainty and fear.

I explore the reasons why we fear change and offer practical strategies for navigating the challenges of leadership during times of uncertainty. You’ll learn how to slow down your mind, quiet your worries, and lead with clarity and confidence, even in the face of chaos and unpredictability.

 

The Empowered Principal® Collaborative is my latest offer for aspiring and current school leaders who want to create exceptional impact and enjoy the school leadership experience. Join us today to become a member of the only certified life and leadership coaching program for school leaders in the country by clicking here.

 

What You’ll Learn From this Episode:

  • Why humans fear change and how to navigate the discomfort of uncertainty.
  • How to slow down your body, mind, and nervous system to gain clarity and perspective.
  • The importance of focusing on what you can control, rather than what’s outside of your control.
  • How to generate thoughts that create feelings of safety, certainty, and calm during uncertain times.
  • The power of leading from a place of integrity, alignment, and truth, even in the face of chaos.
  • Why change in education can be both challenging and necessary for growth and progress.

 

Listen to the Full Episode:

Featured on the Show:

Full Episode Transcript:

Hello empowered principals. Welcome to episode 377. 

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

Well, hello, my empowered principals. Happy Tuesday. Welcome to the podcast.

It’s good to be here with you today. So I’m recording this podcast in February, and so the energy and the message of this podcast may be a month old for your ears, but it is just as relevant in this present moment. You can take the content of this podcast episode and apply it any time you feel like you are in a time of uncertainty. Because here’s the deal guys, we are living in times of great uncertainty and with new leadership of any kind comes change.

Now some leaders ease into their new positions. So some leaders will approach a new leadership position by meeting people, initiating, building relationships, spending time, connecting through seeking to understand people, getting to know them, to listen to their stories and their experiences and their perspectives. That’s one approach to leadership. And other leaders will come in with their ideas and their plans and their agendas, and they will begin implementing those ideas and plans and agendas pretty immediately. And we’ve seen this happen publicly.

And that style, that approach to leadership focuses more on accomplishing the goal and making that vision a reality as quickly as possible, more than the experience of the leadership position and the experience of those you are leading, and the change and impact on people around you. And while of course, I have my own personal opinions and belief systems. I’m not here to discuss politics, but I am here to discuss how empowered principals can navigate the impact of decisions and actions that are outside of our positional authority. Basically what I’m saying is we’re not here to talk about politics. It doesn’t matter politics. I’m observing leadership. I am a leadership coach and as I observe leadership styles, I’m studying and watching and observing the approaches that people take, the outcomes that they create, the impact it has on themselves, on others, short-term impacts, long-term impacts.

And as a leadership coach, I look at and read about and study and learn and try on many examples of leadership because it’s my goal to not be a one-size-fits-all, to genuinely coach the human that’s in front of me. That’s why EPC is very detailed and personalized to the individuals who are in the group. So I have content, and then we coach on how to make that content customized to your approach, to your belief systems, to your values, to what you want to do, to what you don’t want to do. We tweak it. That I learn other approaches, other perspectives from observing leaders in our communities, leaders in the public eye.

And while any person’s values and opinions and approaches can work, you have to discern for yourself the approach that works best for you. And at the core of what I’m observing, I will share with you my personal truths, what I believe to be true, what I believe to be impactful, insightful, and hopefully for you helpful. Because I am coaching person after person after person, school leader after school leader after school leader, who are very distressed, very concerned, very worried, very angry, very upset. Lots of intense emotions around leadership and its impact on your school, your district, your community, your families, your students, your budgets, your staff, the supplies that you might have available to you, the resources available to you.

Because of leadership outside of our control, it impacts the leadership that is within our control. So here’s what I know to be true. The world is always going to be, always has, always will be in a state of change. Humans are always in a state of change.

Every single day, every single hour we are growing older, our bodies are changing, our bodies are developing, children are developing, adults are developing. We’re still developing. We’re still in the trajectory of human development between birth and death. That never stops. We are always in a state of change.

The universe is in a state of change. The world is in a state of change. Everything, plants, nature, all of it is change. And yet humans will say to other humans, we don’t like change. Change is scary. Change is hard. Change is difficult.

I don’t want change. I want to go back to what I know, back to what felt good, back to what was comfortable. And I started thinking about change and what it means and why we are very uncomfortable with change, why we are uncomfortable with uncertainty, and during times of high levels of uncertainty, what’s going on. And what I’ve noticed is that even though we intellectually understand that everything is changing and that everything has a beginning, middle, and end, we understand that at an intellectual level. The reason that we feel fear with change from what I’m observing is that we fear change when it comes quickly. When it is unexpected, when it’s a spike.

So in our lives, when we’re little, we don’t fear old age. We don’t think about wrinkly skin or, you know, like our muscles maybe not being as strong or not being as fast or agile. We’re not worried about that when we’re 10 because that change happens so slow over decades of time. So when change is happening and it’s happening very slowly, incrementally, very teeny tiny changes over the course of a lifetime, we acclimate to the change.

So when we know a change is coming, and we have some time to step into it, to think about it, to figure out how we’re going to address it and solve for it or adapt with it and, and flow with it. We feel less afraid of it, but when major change spikes of change and a lot of change in a lot of different areas of our lives, or a lot of different changes happening at once.

Like I think about superintendents who might come in right off the wagon and they come into the district and they’re, they’re making all kinds of staffing changes, curriculum changes, programming changes, department changes, or shifting this around, shifting that around, getting rid of this, getting rid of that. That kind of change that happens rapidly, unexpectedly, it spikes, it’s all over the place, it’s unpredictable, it feels a little chaotic.

There’s many changes happening at once and people aren’t able to keep up and track kind of what’s happening, why it’s happening, what’s expected of them, how they can adapt when all of that feels like it’s happening at once, that is when we freak out. So it’s the spikes of change when a lot of change happens at once, or it’s unclear, it’s not really articulated.

There’s like speculation of change, or there’s little dribs and drabs of information where you’re getting a piece here and a piece there, but the dots don’t connect. So your brain, out of trying to create a sense of certainty, it will fill in the gaps. It will fill in the missing blanks. So it’s like a mad lib. You get a little bit here and a little bit there, and you’re like, wait, what does that even mean?

And then your brain fills in the adjective, and it fills in the noun, and it fills in the time, and it fills in the when, and it fills in the who, and all of a sudden the story is like, oh my goodness, education is being canceled. The Department of Education is being canceled. We’re being canceled. I’m gonna lose out a job. What is gonna happen to kids? What about these families? It feels very scary. It’s very uncertain. And hey, I am not going to diminish or dismiss how painful it has been to coach principals who are losing children, who are losing families to immigration changes, to the culture changes in our nation’s administration, and the pain that school leaders, site and district leaders, I coached several district leaders, and the pain, they don’t even feel in control.

So site leaders just know district leaders feel a sense of uncertainty too. And this isn’t a political conversation, you guys, this is a, how do we navigate change when it’s uncertain, when it’s unpredictable, when it’s spiked, when it feels a lot, when it feels like we can’t keep up, when fear has taken over and when the voice of fear slips into the driver’s seat. When they scoot you out, they scoot out the voice of truth and they scoot in the voice of fear and that’s in the driver’s seat. Fear will go pedal to the metal. We try to keep up with the change. This is our reaction.

We try to keep up. We try to understand it. We try to make sense of the confusion, but we try to manipulate the unpredictability. We try to force predictability. We try to understand something we can’t understand.

We try to manage the chaos that we didn’t create. And we focus on all of the things outside of our control. We start reading the news or talking to people and what’s going down and where our brain is trying to collect information to create a sense of safety and security. Or it’s trying to create a plan to protect and defend your existence, your career, your school, your staff members, your students. We’re in fight or flight right now.

We have intense amounts of unpredictability and uncertainty. So what do we do in these times? Focusing on the fear. Consuming fear. Consuming what worries you.

Dwelling on it. Thinking about it. Perseverating on it. It’s only expanding the fear and what it does it expands your fear, which expands your doubt, which expands your disempowerment. You feel helpless, out of control, no sense of understanding, a lack of purpose, a lack of vision, mission.

It feels like when fear is in the driver’s seat, it drives you right into a bank of fog. And you have no control because you’re not in the driver’s seat. You can’t slow down. You can’t pull over. You can’t redirect the car.

You’re just driving through the fog, not knowing if there’s an obstacle in the way, if the road’s going to turn, other traffic is coming.

It feels so helpless. And people are desperate for certainty in their lives. So if you are out there feeling an extreme sense of uncertainty, first I want you to know you’re not alone. There are hundreds, if not thousands, if not tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of educators, if not millions, who feel similarly.

So on days when it doesn’t feel like you can make sense of the world or understand your place in it or know what to do about it, or feel like you’re not doing enough, slowing your body down will slow down your nervous system, your breathing. The urge when you are in fear is to go hyper speed, to do more, to be more, to figure out more, to learn more, to hear more, to understand more, to talk more, to clean up more, more, more, more. We want to outrun the uncertainty.

It feels like we’re trying to outpace it so we can get back to certainty. But that begets more uncertainty, more fear. And now we’re fueling our lives, our careers, our experience, our days with fear. And I want you to think about that. Do you choose to be a school leader, a district leader, who comes in every day to the office and makes decisions and takes actions out of fear, out of hopelessness, out of uncertainty? Do you lead people that way? Is that your preferred method? Does it feel good to you to be in that zone of leadership? Or would it feel better to believe that you have the ability to create certainty during uncertain times?

We know the world is uncertain, but right now there has been a spike in uncertainty. And when there’s a spike, we go into fight or flight. And so we’re in the amygdala brain, trying to figure out and trying to rationalize, but that’s not where rationalization happens. The response to uncertainty is to slow down.

Slow down your physical body. Stop moving. Stop trying so hard. Slow down your body. Slow down your breath. Slow down your nervous system. Slowing down your body and your breathing will slow down your mind. Slowing it out of fight or flight and moving it back up into your prefrontal cortex. And then slowing down your mind will start to slow down your worries. And I look at my worries and I say, what am I actually worried about in this moment? And you’ll find that in that moment, you’re worried about a future fear, an anticipated fear. But what about this? But what if that? But what if this?

And that’s where doubt will start to calm because you’ll say, wait a minute, if this happens, then what? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. But if you slow down the doubt, wait a minute, but if I did know, slowing down the doubt slows the confusion, and slowing down your confusion will speed up your clarity.

It feels very counterintuitive when you need to go a million miles an hour, so your brain tells you, to say stop, take 5 minute time out, and sit, and literally slow down your physical body, your breathing, let your nervous system catch up, and let your mind slow down, and let your worries come to the surface, but see them as separate. You’ll see the worries and you’ll feel the doubt of how you’re going to handle it. And then the doubt will be quieted when you say, wait a minute, I’m not confused.

And when you allow yourself to not be confused, What will I actually do? Let me answer the question. I don’t want to stay in confusion. I don’t want to stay in doubt.

The quickest way to cut through confusion and doubt is to say, but if I did know, what would I actually do? Not spin out like, I don’t know what I would do. Chicken with your head cut off running around. The sky is falling. What would I actually do?

And just like that, you will snap back into alignment, back into awareness, back into alignment because you’re able to go back into thinking rationally, like, okay, now that I’m slow, now that I’m back in my mind, I’ve slowed my mind from chasing away and racing away, my worries, they’re still there, but they’re not pushing the pedal down to the floor. They’re just sitting there. With the truth of who you are, with the faith in what you value, with the trust of where you are headed no matter what, with the certainty of how you want to show up for you, and with the confidence that you are capable and that you can do this, even in the chaos of uncertainty. Because what’s true at the bottom line, your truth, your ultimate truth, is that you will do what you need to do.

And it will feel like the right thing to do. You will have clarity. You will drop confusion. You will drop doubt. You will drop worry.

When you know for certain that at the end of the day, you’re going to have your own back, you’re going to take care of the people you love, you’re going to lead the school with the best of your intentions and with the most integrity you can, and you’re going to lead during uncertain times no matter what.

I get it. It’s very easy to get caught up in the overwhelm. The world is full of overwhelm and it can snatch our attention with all of its unpredictability and chaos. And there’s a little part of our brains that like that because it’s exciting and it’s curious and it’s adventurous and it gives us this big rush of adrenaline and all this, whoa, dopamine being in the loop.

Be mindful of that. It’s an addiction. And if it serves you well to be informed, that’s different than getting caught up in having to know and being in a loop of being addicted to the adrenaline, the dopamine, all of the drama.

So what’s happening outside of you is out of your control. And we try so hard to control it. There’s so much out of our control. Actually it’s astounding how much is out of our control. Everything but one. And the thing that will always be within our power, from birth through death, is how we choose to lead ourselves.

We will always have a power within us in how we lead ourselves, how we determine who we are and how we show up in the world, how we choose to experience our lives both personally and professionally, how we decide to respond to circumstances that are not of our own doing, and how we respond to circumstances that are because of our own doing, taking ownership and taking ownership of how we respond to things that are outside of our ownership. Not by jumping over into the other lane and trying to control, but by staying in our lane and doing our part with what feels aligned to who we are, to your identity, to your values, to what you believe in.

Trust, safety, calm, peace, certainty. All of the things you want to feel are within your reach. So what do you have control over? You. Your thoughts, your beliefs, what you value, how you feel about things, what you do in reaction to those things, the level of emotional regulation you have, the level of mental regulation that you have, where you prioritize your time, your attention, where you put your love into the world, where you put your light into the world, and you also have control over what brings you peace, calm, certainty, safety.

Because the things that you want in a time of uncertainty is to feel safe, is to feel certain, is to feel some calm, feel some peace, feel some balance. These are emotions that you want during times of uncertainty. We want to feel this way. No matter what’s going on around us, we can still feel that way.

So when you want to feel grounded, aligned, safe, certain, redirect your attention back to thoughts that generate these emotions. Thoughts you actually believe. What you do know to be true, where you can say a thought out loud and say, yeah, I see the truth in that. I see where that’s true. Thoughts that you probably aren’t thinking on a regular basis, but when you say them or you write them down or you read them, you’re like, oh yeah, that brings two for me. I do know what I would do in an emergency.

I do know what I’m going to do if X happens or if Y happens. And I know at the end of the day, what I value most are my relationships with my loved ones, my staff, students, and community. I’ll take the action. I’ll do what I can. But half of my work, half of my work is not in the doing of school leadership.

It’s in the being. It’s in the identity of it. It’s in the identity of I’m a calm, aligned leader who gets up and works from a place of integrity, a place of alignment, a place of truth, and a place of certainty.

Even when the world is uncertain, there’s some chaos out there, don’t dismiss how you feel, acknowledge it. If you’re angry, be angry. If you’re sad, be sad. If you’re frustrated, be frustrated.

But if you’re overwhelmed, be curious. You know, I’m not really sure how to end this podcast because I sense that the uncertainty of education will continue. I don’t know that it’s the worst thing that could happen. I think the institution of education has been riding on a very consistent train, maybe a little too consistent for a very, very long time. And it has been wonderful to have such predictability as an educator. And we’re equally frustrated by the consistency. The consistency of inequalities. The consistency is equally infuriating.

The consistency in our test scores, the consistency in who’s in intervention and who’s not, the consistency of behavior struggles, the consistency of teacher burnout, the consistency of turnover.

There’s a lot of consistency in education that we don’t want. And so I invite you to do this work because we are in an era of inconsistency. And that change is going to bring about a wild ride. Some of it good, some of it difficult, but we’re here for it. We’ve got you in EPC. Come on in. Join the movement. Change is inevitable, but we are riding the wave. Have a good week and take care of yourself. Talk soon.

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.

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The Empowered Principal® Podcast Angela Kelly | People Who Want Conflict

Have you ever found yourself in a conversation with someone that seems to go nowhere? No matter how hard you try to resolve the issue, the other person almost seems to thrive on the conflict. As a school leader, I’ve encountered this scenario more times than I’d like to admit.

In this episode, I share an excerpt from my Relationship Mastery program that dives into how to identify and approach people who engage in conflict for their own personal gain. Through my own journey with professional and personal relationships, I’ve gained valuable insights on how to navigate these tricky situations.

Join me as we explore ways to create awareness around this behavior and tools to help shut it down. While we can’t control how long someone chooses to stay mad, we can control how we approach the situation and maintain our own sense of peace and alignment.

 

The Empowered Principal® Collaborative is my latest offer for aspiring and current school leaders who want to create exceptional impact and enjoy the school leadership experience. Join us today to become a member of the only certified life and leadership coaching program for school leaders in the country by clicking here.

Ready to dive deeper into leading with confidence this spring? Join me for the Spring Training Series for School Leaders—an 8-session live program starting in March, designed to empower you through HR, testing, leadership, and more. If you’re not quite ready for the full Empowered Principal Program, this standalone series is perfect for you! Click here to register!

 

What You’ll Learn From this Episode:

  • How to identify people who thrive on conflict and engage in it for their own benefit.
  • Why some people seek out conflict as a sense of power, control, or attention.
  • The difference between reacting and responding to conflict.
  • How to approach people who want conflict in a way that doesn’t fuel the fire.
  • The A-A-B-C-D method for crafting a centered response to conflict.

 

Listen to the Full Episode:

Featured on the Show:

Full Episode Transcript:

Hello empowered principals. Welcome to episode 376. 

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

Well, hello, my empowered principles. Happy Tuesday and welcome to the podcast. It’s such an honor to be here with you today. I have another excerpt to share with you from Relationship Mastery. I mean, I really love this Relationship Mastery program. I created it a couple of years ago, but this year I completely rewrote it, the entire thing. I added some of the concepts that I had prior, but I really have gone through my own journey with relationships, professionally and personally. And I’ve gained so much more knowledge and wisdom and understanding. And I’ve done a deep dive in reflecting on how I want to approach relationships and who I want to be in them and how I want to speak and how I want to treat people and how I want to feel about relationships and be in relationships and connection and how I want to feel about myself moving forward.

So this portion of the module is so good because at some point you will most likely run into this scenario as a school leader. I can promise. And it can be tricky because when you’re in it, it’s very hard to see it. You might not be able to catch it when you’re in it. So I hope that this excerpt creates some awareness so that when you’re conversing with somebody and you don’t seem to be getting anywhere, this episode will pop into your head and you’re like, wait, I wonder if this is what’s happening.

So there are people who are going to get upset, right? People who will disagree with you, people who have misunderstandings or people who will be downright mad and they’ll want to discuss their concerns with you. They will come to you and they’re going to express themselves and express some emotion, but at the end of the day, they are people who want to resolve the issue. They want to feel good. They want this resolved. They’re looking for a solution. And they’re coming to you to work in collaboration even though they’re expressing emotions, negative energy. Okay?

Then there are folks who thrive off of conflict. They kind of seem to be energized by it. They get a lot of traction with it. They enjoy making your life a little miserable. And I want you to take note of this type of behavior. It may be coming from someone who has no intention of resolving the conflict.

And this clip will talk about how to look out for people who want to engage in conflict for their own personal benefit, for their own gains, and ways that you can identify this and then approach them in a way that can maybe shut this down for you. They can stay mad for as long as they want. We can’t control that, but I want you to have some tools to be able to identify and then approach people that might be interested in conflict for the sake of conflict. So enjoy this show and again if you’re interested in purchasing relationship mastering the link will be in the show notes. Have a great week everybody. I’ll talk to you next week. Take good care. Bye.

One of the questions I always like to ask is, is there anything else you’d like to share? Is there anything else coming up for you? Let them get it all out. Because a lot of times they’ll be like, oh yeah and then this other thing. Okay. Let it all out. Let them share. And then when they’re done sharing, is anything else coming up for you? Like, okay, they kind of express themselves.

I take say to them, I want to be in partnership with you. I’m very direct about my intention. I want to be in partnership with you. I want to focus on how you’re feeling and how you want to feel. How do you want to feel about this right now? What’s missing? What’s the resolution you’re seeking? What do you think it is that you need? Because I want to understand where you’re coming from.

Now, let me address very quickly, because I know we’re almost at time here. Some people want conflict. Have you noticed? There are people out on the internet, out on the streets, out in the cars, in public. There are people in our schools who actually seek out conflict. They like it. They like the feeling that comes with conflict. They like the adrenaline rush. They like the cortisol. They like the dopamine hits. They crave it. It’s almost like an addiction.

And I’ve thought about why would people want conflict? They’d love to engage in conflict. Well, one, it feels very powerful when you’re coming in all hot and bothered and stomping around and screaming. And it feels like you have power. Actually, you’re completely out of control.

But for the person doing it, it feels like a sense of control. I’m going to be the boss around here and I’m going to stomp around, probably because that’s how they grew up. They probably had parents who stomped around and screamed and yelled, and that was their positional power. They had authority as parents, and that is how they exhibited their power and their authority.

So people grow up and like, well, it’s my turn. Now I get to be like this. It’s a sense of power and control for them. It might also be a need for attention. You can see that on the internet. You can see it in public, like people just creating a scene, undo attention seeking, and they’re trying to get whatever kind of attention they can.

You probably even have kids like this who are like, they like to get in fights because it makes them look cool, makes them look really tough and strong, and people don’t mess with me. It’s an identity. It’s a need for attention. It’s a sense of power and control when they lack it in other ways.

So oftentimes, it’s coming from past experiences. It’s their zone of comfort. It actually feels better to be in conflict because if there’s no conflict, no drama happening, how boring is life, right? It’s the only approach they’ve probably witnessed. But ultimately, it comes back to people who want to have conflict. It’s about how it feels for them. Powerful, empowered, righteous, justified, important, significant, all of those things.

So how do you approach people who want conflict? I’ve had this, I’ve had parents, I’ve had teachers who have actively engaged in conflict because they liked it, because they felt a sense of power, they felt a sense of power over me. And with those people, after going through all of the stuff I’ve just shared with you and trying to come to a resolution and then I’m realizing, wait a minute, this person doesn’t want a resolution. This person wants conflict.

So I will say to them, what’s the solution you’re seeking? And do you actually want that solution? What’s the solution you’re seeking? How do you wanna feel about this? What do you think would make this feel better and why? I make them say to me, what would resolve this for you? You seem very upset.

We’ve talked about this multiple times. You continue to drag it on. You know, this is continuing for you. I can see this continuation of stress and frustration and unhappiness. And I’m really curious, what do you think would make you feel better? And is this resolution that you think that you need? Is this what you’re actually seeking? Do you want a resolution right now? Because sometimes we don’t want it. We don’t want to make it better. That’s okay.

You don’t need for this to feel better right now. You might not actually be ready to solve this problem. If that’s the case, if you need to feel the feelings and process it, I’m here for you. You can feel however you want for as long as you want. What I want to do is the leader as the school, the principal, or your boss, you know, what I want as your leader is for you to feel good. But I also understand on a hold space for your feelings. So what does that look like?

Now, people who want conflict, who love it, who engage in it intentionally, they are fueled by reaction. When you react when you meet them where they’re at energetically, they love that. It’s like putting gasoline on a fire. But if you respond versus reacting, it doesn’t feel as fulfilling for them. Okay? So notice if people are not wanting to give it up, they might be doing that because the conflict is what makes them feel good. You’re not feeling good, but they’re feeling good.

So you can ask them directly and you can say to them, it’s fine for us not to solve this. And then we’re going to set some expectations. And sometimes they don’t even realize they’re doing it. There’s some people who are like, No, you’re actually right. I kind of want to just be mad about this right now. Okay, fair enough. I’ll give you some time. As long as the way you feel is not impacting your students, your colleagues, then you set some parameters around their emotional response. Okay?

So one more time. For team, tune in. E is express emotional energy. A, align your goals with agreements. And then M, meet them in the middle. Because the goal is harmony. The truth is you actually are on the same team. You’re on team human experience. We both want to feel good.

We all want what’s best for the students. We want to be in harmony. People want to feel good. Even people who love conflict. They actually want you to be in harmony in conflict with them. They want you to engage in battle, but that’s a form of harmony for them. And you can decide, I’m not going to engage in that. That’s just not my standard. But when you’re ready, I will engage in harmony because harmony doesn’t mean perfectly aligned, perfect agreement. It means you have different perspectives, but they can blend together kind of in a way that works.

There is a difference and I’ve said it, but I want to be explicit about it. There is a difference between reacting and responding. Reacting is when we act on our initial emotional experience of an exchange with someone. So it’s when somebody sends you an email and you email them right back, or someone yells at you and you raise your voice, or a teacher talks behind your back and you call them out for it in anger. Or a parent complains about you and you defend yourself, right? The reacting, like a responding to the gut reaction, that is a reaction.

Empowered principals, our goal is to respond. We want to pause long enough to shift from our amygdala into our prefrontal cortex. We need a couple seconds to do that. Responding is basically just pausing, pushing pause when you feel a reaction coming. When you’re feeling the reaction coming, you push pause, which is, this is what push pause looks like. Pause yourself. Do not fire off a text. Do not fire off an email. Do not march down to that person’s room. Do not get in the car and go over there. Do not pick up the phone. Pause. Breathe. A-A-B-C-D. Take it back down a notch.

Creating a response comes from the A-A-B-C-D method. It’s how you create awareness, centeredness with intention. How do I want to respond? And you craft a response that’s based on centeredness and then directing your thoughts back to the outcome you desire. Because the goal is to feel good. It has to be an alignment. Whenever you’re in conflict, if you react, we’re going to raise the energy and raise the conflict, we’re going to fuel it. Nobody feels good.

Even the person who loves the conflict, they’re like, whoa, that felt good in a little bit. But also like, now I’ve got to keep this up. It’s a facade that they’re playing because that’s all they know. That’s how they know. They only know how to react. But deep down, people want to feel aligned. They want to feel calm. They want to feel at peace. They want to feel happy. They want to feel good for us as leaders, for them as staff and students, and for the greater good of our communities.

The goal is to feel good. Imagine a school where people felt good, felt good about themselves. They weren’t trying to keep up a facade. They weren’t pretending to be somebody. They were just feeling good about who they were. They felt good about the school they sent their kids to. They feel good about their teachers. Teachers feel good about themselves as teachers. Students feel good about themselves as students. They feel good about their friendships. They feel like they understand how to navigate them. Imagine a school like that. For us, for them, for the greater good.

Relationship mastery. It involves awareness. It involves alignment. It involves momentum. And it involves knowing how to overcome obstacles. You start with awareness, what you’re thinking about. What am I thinking? What’s going on for me in this relationship? Am I creating this conflict? I feel unaligned, I feel misaligned. What’s happening for me? I start with awareness. What do I value? What are my priorities? What is the desired outcome I want? That’s step one.

And then alignment is knowing those desires and those goals, getting clear about what you’re, you know, looking for in this connection, this relationship, how do you want it to feel for you? How do you want it to feel for them? Creating a win-win environment, creating a win-win connection, looking for a meet in the middle, understanding the goal, how it’s a win for them and for you, aligning your actions and communications with that desired outcome.

When you are able to do that, you gain momentum in building relationships, maintaining them, cultivating them. Relationships are alive. It requires you to nurture them with time and attention, to be engaging with them, checking in with people, genuinely caring, listening, being in how energy, honesty, openness, willingness.

And of course, you’re going to have to learn how to overcome obstacles. That’s what we talked about today. All relationships have speed bumps. They have detours, they have speed bumps, they have road delays, it’s just like a road trip, right? We have to navigate that.

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.

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The Empowered Principal® Podcast Angela Kelly | Your Two Voices

One voice cheers you on, encouraging you to dream big and go for your goals. The other voice tries to hold you back, telling you all the reasons why you can’t or shouldn’t do something. Which voice do you tend to listen to?

In this episode, I dive into the concept of the two inner voices we all have – the voice of truth and the voice of fear. Understanding the role and purpose of each voice is crucial for school leaders who want to make aligned decisions and build strong relationships.

Join me as I explain how to recognize these two voices and share strategies for tuning into your voice of truth more often. By the end of this episode, you’ll be equipped with a powerful framework for navigating your inner world and showing up as a more authentic leader.

 

The Empowered Principal® Collaborative is my latest offer for aspiring and current school leaders who want to create exceptional impact and enjoy the school leadership experience. Join us today to become a member of the only certified life and leadership coaching program for school leaders in the country by clicking here.

Ready to dive deeper into leading with confidence this spring? Join me for the Spring Training Series for School Leaders—an 8-session live program starting in March, designed to empower you through HR, testing, leadership, and more. If you’re not quite ready for the full Empowered Principal Program, this standalone series is perfect for you! Click here to register!

 

What You’ll Learn From this Episode:

  • Why every person has two distinct inner voices and the purpose they each serve.
  • How to recognize the voice of fear and the ways it tries to hold you back.
  • What the voice of truth sounds like and how to tune into it more frequently.
  • The importance of self-acceptance and self-compassion for school leaders.
  • How embracing your humanness allows you to build stronger relationships.
  • Why following your intuition often requires a leap of faith.
  • How your unique differences can become your greatest strengths as a leader.

 

Listen to the Full Episode:

Featured on the Show:

Full Episode Transcript:

Hello empowered principals. Welcome to episode 375. 

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

Well, hello, my empowered principals. Welcome to March. I want to start with a quick announcement before we head into today’s show. It is March. There are only three or four months left of the school year, depending on how late your school year goes. But you are in the last trimester of the year. This is the last season of this school year. It’s the spring season.

So first of all I want to invite any aspiring school leaders or brand new hires. If this is your first time in school leadership or you are applying to become an administrator. If you have recently been hired I want to invite you into EPC this spring, right now. It’s the perfect time to join if you aspire to get hired as a school leader for the upcoming school year because I will be offering trainings on how to get hired, how to be the person who gets hired.

And the more that you are around school leaders, when you join EPC, You’re going to be surrounded by like-minded school leaders. You’re going to be in the conversations. You’re going to be at the table. And the more that you identify as a new leader, whether you’re aspiring or just getting hired, the more aligned you will be to landing that ideal job in your school leadership position.

Okay, so new school leaders that just got hired, listen up. You will want to join EPC now for two reasons. Number one, you’re going to feel pulled in all kinds of directions because you are still in your current position and need to fulfill your role through the end of the school year and you’re going to be compelled to dive into your new position as leaders. Because people basically expect you to start leading the day you get hired, even though you’re in another position.

So it happened to me. I was actually felt like I was working two jobs. So you are going to be pulled into planning meetings. You might be asked to go to the leadership meetings, but you still have to fulfill the role so you can tidy that up and put a bow on it and hand it over to the person who’s going to be taking over for you. And you’re going to want to get caught up on all of the happenings in the new leadership position.

So it’s very likely that the overwhelm is going to build up quickly. Your district leaders are going to want you to be planning for next year. So your brain has to be thinking about how to wrap up this year. And you have to be thinking about 3 to 6 months ahead of the game for your next year. So your brain’s gonna get very overwhelmed and it’s gonna build up really quickly because you’ll be split. Okay? I can support you with this. I have done this personally. I’ve helped other people through it.

Springtime is a busy time anyway. This is the perfect time to join EPC and you’ll be in for the full year. So if you join in the spring, you’ll have all the way until next spring and then you can just join in again and keep it rolling. But there’s going to be a gap in the skill set that you have now and the skill set that you need to become a site or a district leader, depending on where your new position is. That’s totally normal. The gap is normal. You’re not supposed to have all the skill sets in your new job that you had in your old job. That’s normal.

So it feels a little discouraging at first. You’re going to be new, you’re going to be clumsy, you’re going to be clunking around a little bit and feel very insufficient. Okay, that’s normal. Don’t beat yourself up, but it can be really discouraging.

Okay, so I’m going to be hosting the Spring Training Series this month throughout the month of March so when you join EPC you get access to all of those resources all of the trainings. If you’d like to wait until the summer to join EPC, you can purchase the Spring Training Series as an a la carte option for $555. So you can purchase the Spring Training Series when you join EPC by September 1st and apply the $555 credit towards the registration price of EPC.

So EPC cost $1997 for the entire year for all the trainings, all the coaching, all the bonus one-on-one sessions and you get to apply the $550 as a credit and you will only end up paying the $1442 remainder for the entire year of EPC. So it’s such a great deal.

Okay, all of you new leaders, all of you aspiring leaders, this is the perfect time to join because this is the time where all the HR stuff is happening, getting hired, transitioning from your old job to your new job. It’s so exciting. It’s so fun. You want to be an EPC.

All right. Today’s show is an excerpt from the Relationship Mastery Series I hosted last month. This was a three-day program that covers all things relationship. Relationships with others, connection during conflict, and relationship with self. It was pretty epic, if I might say so. And you can purchase that series, the whole replay and the booklets that come along with it for $222 and again if you buy Relationship Mastery and you watch all the replays and you love it and you want into EPC, you can use that $222 as a credit towards your EPC membership when you’re ready. Okay?

So today’s excerpt is from day three of the Relationship Mastery Series, and I’m sharing the concept of your two voices. You have two inner voices. Most likely you’ve noticed them. They’re probably talking to you. You have two of them and they’re opposing most of the time.

There’s one that tells you, dream big, do the things you want to do, be happy, go for it, everything’s going to be fine, Don’t worry. It’s the voice that cheers you on. It’s the voice with your deepest dreams and ambitions and desires. It’s the voice that feels good when you actually tune into its sweet voice. This is the voice of truth. It’s the voice of our heart and our soul. And it’s the voice that tends to get drowned out by the other voice in our head that’s kind of like the louder, more aggressive sibling. I call it the voice of fear.

So on one shoulder you have the voice of truth and the other is the voice of fear. And the voice of fear, for some reason, always gets the megaphone. It’s always fighting to be in the driver’s seat. It wants to tell you all the reasons why you can’t do this or you shouldn’t do that or you won’t do that or you’re not capable or you’re too lazy or you’re not good enough. All the fears. And it’s trying to protect you.

But it goes on and on, and it’s really loud, and it’s really annoying. And there needs to be an approach to being able to listen to both of these voices so that you know when to listen to which voice. Because there’s a purpose to both voices. It’s not like you just throw your fears away and only listen to one side. There’s a reason you have a voice of fear. And I talk about this in this excerpt of the Relationship Mastery Day 3 Training.

It is imperative to build an understanding of these two voices and their purpose in your life so that you can proactively choose which voice you want to follow because each of them do play a very important role and they have an impact on your life and your career. So enjoy this clip and if you’re interested in the Relationship Mastery Series you can purchase it with the free link that’s in the show notes. Have a wonderful week.

The beauty about this course relationship mastery is we get to pause, we get to reflect and contemplate, we get to rewrite the script, we get to change the course, change the trajectory of what it means and looks like and feels like and sounds like to accept ourselves, to love ourselves. Because when you are accepting of you and all of your little humanness, all your little quirks, all your little faults, all your little imperfections, so you call them, all of those things, that little package, when you can get 10% more kind, a little bit more forgiving, a little bit more trusting, a little bit more compassionate.

That fuel, when you start looking at yourself and that fuel, you will also start accepting others because what you’ll realize is that when you can accept your humanness, you can also understand other people’s, which connects you in relationship with them. It’s understandable when people lose their marbles and go off the deep end because they’re so upset and passionate. It’s understandable. It’s relatable. When we see it in ourselves, we can see it in others. When we can accept our humanness, you can allow other people to be human. Your relationship matters, the way you think about yourself, the way you speak to yourself. Because this, I really want to drive this home.

The way you feel about yourself, the emotions that come up when you’re thinking about yourself, when you’re like, ugh, or ugh, just all of it, all the internal loathing, scowling, disappointment, embarrassment, shame, all those icky feels that we feel sometimes when we’ve messed up or we’ve been told things about our bodies, things about our actions, things about who people think we are, our character. When we feel that way, that feeling, those emotions in you, it is fuel. It is energy. That’s why it vibrates. It’s energy in your body. You have an emotional sensation that’s occurring in the body. It’s a vibration and it can be, it’s like I think of like radio waves, right? It’s really low. It’s kind of humming in the background.

It’s like, you know, when you go to a restaurant and there’s ambient, you know, music playing in the background where you, if you tuned in, you could hear it, but you don’t really hear it, right? You’re not at a concert versus you go to a concert. You turn the volume up to 100 and that’s all you’re focusing on the voice in your head. It might be low in the background, but it’s still playing. Or it might be on full blast. But the fuel, how you’re feeling about those thoughts, you turn up the volume too. The louder the thoughts, the louder the feelings. And when the feelings get more intense and that energy is in your body, that is when it impacts the way that you treat people because it’s the fuel.

So it’s like this, when you are at home and something’s gone wrong at home and you’re just all flustered and you got into work late, you can go into somebody’s classroom and still be in that energy and you might snap at them or be more critical about their teaching or like picking on something that you normally wouldn’t even say anything. But that energy’s got to go somewhere because we didn’t acknowledge it, we didn’t validate it, we didn’t release it, we didn’t process it at all. Okay, now I’m at school, I’ll think about home when I get back home. We didn’t do that because we weren’t self-aware, so the energy comes with us.

So when we don’t feel good and we criticize ourselves, we’re criticizing others. Because criticism is what is fueling your actions. So what I have learned about what to do with all of this, the resistance of the acceptance and wanting to accept myself but feeling like I can’t because it’s too selfish, uncoupling all of that. I’m like, what is going on here? And this is when I saw it. We have two voices.

Now, this is not new. You’ve heard this. Some people will say like, well, I’ve got the devil on one side telling me to do all the naughty things and the angel on the other side telling me to do all the good things. We see that portrayed in movies or in books and whatnot.

But the way that I hear the two voices in my head is the voice of fear. So there is a voice that is fueled by my emotions of fear. When I am feeling any kind of fear, the voice that I hear is the inner critic. It’s the judgment. It’s the criticism. It’s the fear of insufficiency. It’s the fear of rejection that’s fueling my thoughts, fueling my energy. It’s fear.

Oh my gosh, I’m not good enough. Oh my gosh, what if they don’t like me? Oh my gosh, am I worthy? Oh my gosh, am I capable? Oh my gosh, am I even accepted? Am I going to win or lose, succeed or fail? Do people want me around? Do they respect me? Fear. What if, what if, what if?

We focus on the failures. We focus on the insecurities. We focus on the imperfections. And that voice of fear is that inner critic. What happens here? And what about this? And what about that? You’re not good enough here. Remember that time you failed? And it just keeps on reminding you and reminding you and reminding you. Remember when you failed at this, remember when you did that, remember you acted a fool. And this voice will run the show every single time if we allow that fear to be the fuel. And what this voice, I believe is doing is it’s speaking up. It’s trying to be critical in the weirdest, it’s trying to be helpful in the weirdest way possible by being a critic, because it’s trying to motivate you or protect you. But what it’s really trying to do is avoid the pain of insufficiency, the pain of embarrassment, the pain of others not liking us, the pain of rejection, the pain of disappointment, painful emotions, uncomfortable emotions, emotions we don’t enjoy feeling.

This voice is doing everything in its power to prevent you from putting yourself into situations where you might have to feel rejected. You might have to feel embarrassed. You might have to feel a disappointment. You might have to feel heartbreak. You might have to feel the burn of failure, the agony of defeat, right? So this voice is telling you, I want to protect you and keep you safe from these painful emotions. So I’m gonna criticize and judge and I’m gonna kind of distract you over here and do a song and dance about, focus on these people, focus on them liking you, focus on you know criticizing yourself. Let’s just stay in this area because at least it’s a zone of comfort, at least it’s safe.

And so when we’re reacting to that fear in the name of motivation, in the name of discipline, that’s how I used to frame it. Oh, I’m just being disciplined or oh, I need a little kick in the pants. Need to get going here. There’s a difference between giving yourself loving feedback, and giving yourself jerk feedback. Like really mean, like terrible feedback just to think it’ll, it’ll feel so bad that eventually the pain will be too much. And I’ll finally get out and get to the gym, or I’ll finally get out and write that book, or I’ll finally get out and do the thing at work that I needed to get done.

And sometimes it does work. That’s why we keep doing it. We have intermittent success with harshness and criticism. And it might motivate us temporarily or it might give us the discipline we need to get something done, but it doesn’t feel good. The whole time doesn’t feel good. So the next time our brain’s like, well, I’m not doing that again. And so we avoid even harder. We go even further around the block. We like take a bigger detour.

But what we don’t understand is in the attempt to avoid criticism, to avoid rejection, to avoid embarrassment, disappointment, we are doing those very things to ourselves with our relationship with ourself. We are rejecting us instead of accepting. We’re criticizing us instead of comforting, right? We are critical of ourselves versus being constructive with ourselves and supportive. We’re being dismissive versus embracing.

We are actually doing the very thing that the fear voice, the voice of fear, is most afraid of. We’re just doing it internally so nobody can see it, Which is why we would be mortified if we somebody saw the way that we talk to ourselves or heard the way we talk to ourselves and treated ourselves.

We’re hiding, we’re trying so hard to hide our imperfections and our failures. I watch myself do it all the time, especially with AI. Now you can like touch up your skin, touch up your face, touch up your photos. You could literally create a totally different human. And we do that with our photos for our physical body, but we do it in the way that we present ourselves.

And we have a persona, we have a facade that we put out there to hide the imperfections of our humanness, emotional imperfections, mental and, you know, mental, like thoughts, imperfect thoughts. Like we hide past mistakes, like judgments, decisions we’ve made that might not have been super in alignment with who we are now.

And we end up playing small, playing safe. We don’t go for big goals. We just kind of do what we’re doing now, which is just getting through surviving and celebrating some superficial wins or celebrating the ones that are comfortable enough to celebrate, because we don’t want to look too big for our britches. We don’t want to look like we love ourselves too much. We don’t wanna look like, you know, we’re tooting our own horn because society makes that mean you’re selfish, you’re a narcissist, you’re egotistical, you’re self-absorbed, you don’t care about other people, all you care about is yourself. All or none thinking.

So we get that feedback from people and we’re like, whoa, we disconnect. We disconnect from them, we disconnect from ourselves. There’s a disconnect, the relationship disconnects and we hold ourselves back. And then what do we do?

We go home, we get in our minds, and we worry. Anxiety, worry. What are people going to think? What did they say? What should I do? What shouldn’t I do? Okay, that society doesn’t like that I am too tall, what am I supposed to do about that? Society like that I’m too short, I’ll wear heels. Oh, society thinks that principals should be servant leaders. Okay, I’ll be at work 24 hours a week. Oh, now they’re telling me self-care. Oh, I guess I’ll try and get some sleep. Oh now they’re telling me that we need to do this. Okay, I’ll do that over here.

Have you noticed that? Society is always changing the rules about what’s in what’s out. What’s cool? What’s not what we should do, what we shouldn’t do. Education is we’re famous for following trends versus creating trends that are consistent with human development. We are in the business of human development. And when we’re listening to the voice of fear, what we’re doing is we are focusing on how it appears versus who we are. And life doesn’t respond to what it looks like, how it appears, the facade, life, people, the experience that we have, it responds to who we are on the inside.

You can hide the fact that you don’t have a healthy relationship with yourself. I’ve tried for decades to be good and kind and generous to all the people and then come home and be mean to me. But what happens is the truth of who I am on the inside is energy. And that is our experience. So you can go out there and everybody could like you and you can kiss up and people please and placate people and do everything everybody asks you to do and so they might be happy, but your experience isn’t happy. You’re not happy. And then you live a life from beginning to end, trying to people please, never feeling genuine to yourself, never honoring the relationship with yourself, never valuing what it is that you want, how you want to feel, what you want to experience, what you would like to contribute to the world in your way, because we’re focused on how it appears versus who we are inside.

Unfortunately, I have observed that that’s how most people live, on the frequency of fear, listening to the voice of fear. But there’s another voice. Thank goodness.

Another frequency we can tune into. It’s like an AM radio, right? You can be on this frequency 96.5 or you can go up to 101.3. Tune into another frequency. This is the voice of truth. It’s when you’re alone by yourself and you’re dreaming about your desires, about your goals, about your dreams, about your thinking back to the wonderful Christmas and New Year’s you had and you’re reminiscing those memories and they already are nostalgic because they’re already memories. Or you’re thinking about the future.

You’re thinking about maybe you’re starting a family and you’re daydreaming about the love you’re going to fill with that little bundle of joy, or maybe your child’s graduating college and you’re sad and happy, you’re so excited to see them spread their wings and your heart is breaking because they’re leaving the home. But it’s the voice of truth. It’s the goals that you have the experiences you want to create. The person you want to be, have you ever been like I wish I was. I actually had somebody hire me and he said I want to be the James Bond of school leaders. He had a vision of who he wanted to be, a vision of his identity of who he wanted to be. He dreamt of who he wanted to be, but he didn’t feel that way. So he wanted that appearance, but it wasn’t who he was.

So we had to actually create an identity for him so that he could feel like he was the James Bond of school leaders. But there is a knowing in you. There is a voice of truth. There is a compass, a GPS system. It’s that intuition or that gut feeling some people will call it. It’s the body saying to you, hey, this is where I want to go. This is what we’re destined for. This is what we were born to do. There is a knowingness. It’s clear. There’s clarity to it. There’s truth. And there’s leaps of faith.

I literally just moved from California. I’ve lived in California for 30 years. I have loved every minute of it. I will even take their traffic. I will even take the eight-year drought we had. All of it. I loved it. And after going through a very significant life change, I had a knowingness. I didn’t know where I was going to land. I didn’t know when.

I couldn’t, there was no answer until my son called me one day and said, “Mom,” he had moved to Nashville about 18 months prior. And he said, “Mom, I think you’re going to love it in Nashville.” And I was like, I couldn’t fathom leaving my beloved California, but there was a knowingness in me. There was something in my gut that said, “Yeah, go. Your son’s there. Go be with him. California’s not going anywhere. If you want to come back, come on back. We’ve got you. But go play. Give it a year. Go have fun. Try new things. Go explore. Start a new chapter. Write the adventure. You are the screenwriter of your story. You are the main character.”

And here I found my son coaching me on how to live my life. And I’m a life coach. And he said, “Mom, I’m going to say what you said to me. California’s not going anywhere. If you absolutely are unhappy, you can always go back. Give it a try.” This is exactly what I said because he was agonizing over what to do with the move. Should he stay in LA? Should he move up? You know, he wanted to go to the Pacific Northwest, but didn’t really know anybody up there. He just didn’t know what he wanted. I said, “Just pick, pick it and stick it.”

So one of his best friends was moving to Nashville and said, “I think you should come with me, Alex. Give it a year.” Alex has been here 18 months. I’ve been here two months and it has been the adventure of my life. I had a knowingness, even though I know nobody in this city other than my son and his roommate, that’s it. And the people at the coffee shop down the street now.

There is something in your body that tells you follow this path. And you’re like, “That doesn’t even make sense. Follow this path. Are you sure?” That’s what school leadership was. “You should be a school leader.” “Oh, no, that does not look fun. I’m not doing that. I’m going to stay right here. And my little kindergarten room in my instructional coaching room. No, thank you.” “Be a school leader.” There’s a knowingness.

And when you listen to the voice of truth, the truth, the clarity, the guidance system inside of you, there is an acceptance with this. The voice of truth, it’s very loving. It’s very kind. It’s gentle. It’s patient. It will wait for you. While you bounce over and listen to the voice of fear, oh, and you freak out, this one, voice of truth is always there patiently waiting, nothing’s gone wrong.

But when you do listen to this voice of truth, there’s an alignment. It just clicks. This is awareness. This is alignment. And from here, the voice of truth, you gain momentum. So when you’re acting in alignment with the voice of truth with yourself, you have this like duality of relationship where you have this relationship with fear, and you have this relationship with truth.

But when you’re with truth, the truth of who you are, you’re a little kinder to yourself, you’re more accepting of your humanness. You can laugh at your or celebrate your imperfections a little bit. You know, you know you, you can laugh at that a little bit. You can just embrace it, celebrate it.

Your imperfections are your, they just equal differences and those differences are your talent, your skills. It’s who makes you who you are. I think about people who have physical, what people would say is not normal, the average human body, right? Whether that’s in size, shape, mobility, cognitive ability, physical ability. The human body comes in every way, shape or form.

And for the people who were born with a different, less than average, not average shape, size, mobility, whatever, they became inventors. They invented ways to live life. People who have had accidents and lose their legs or lose their limbs, people invented materials for those people to embrace life. If it hadn’t, if everybody all had two legs and then something happened catastrophically, we would not have anything in place.

So for all of our differences, they become creations. Our differences are how we become creators. The reason that I can be a life coach, a certified life and leadership coach for school leaders is because of all of my imperfections. I was a terrible principal for a long time. And I say that with love and appreciation and gratitude.

If I hadn’t been so awful and so strung out between my personal life and my home life, I wouldn’t have reached out to get a life coach. I wouldn’t have created this awareness. I wouldn’t have ever applied these tools to education and to school leadership.

And from that, I created programming for school leaders. That’s unlike anything anybody else could ever offer you because I was put on the earth to create it.

How can I not love that? How can I not appreciate that gift that I was given? And all of you have it too.

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.

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The Empowered Principal® Podcast Angela Kelly | A Teen's Guide to Self-Love and Authenticity with Kristi Simons

Do you ever feel like there’s a disconnect between your inner truth and the critical voice in your head? What if I told you that learning to navigate this duality is the key to unlocking your full potential and living a life of authenticity and joy?

In today’s episode, I sit down with Kristi Simons, a former teacher turned life coach who specializes in helping teens develop emotional intelligence and essential life skills. Through her own journey of self-discovery and transformation, Kristi has gained invaluable insights into the power of mindfulness, self-love, and embracing the full spectrum of human emotions.

Join us as we dive deep into the challenges teens face in today’s world and explore practical strategies for cultivating resilience, confidence, and a deep connection to one’s inner truth. Whether you’re a teen looking to navigate the ups and downs of adolescence or an adult seeking to reconnect with your authentic self, this episode is packed with wisdom and inspiration that will leave you feeling empowered and ready to embrace all that life has to offer.

 

The Empowered Principal® Collaborative is my latest offer for aspiring and current school leaders who want to create exceptional impact and enjoy the school leadership experience. Join us today to become a member of the only certified life and leadership coaching program for school leaders in the country by clicking here.

Ready to dive deeper into leading with confidence this spring? Join me for the Spring Training Series for School Leaders—an 8-session live program starting in March, designed to empower you through HR, testing, leadership, and more. If you’re not quite ready for the full Empowered Principal Program, this standalone series is perfect for you! Click here to register!

 

What You’ll Learn From this Episode:

  • Why teens struggle with self-love and self-acceptance, and how to cultivate a deeper connection to one’s inner truth.
  • The power of mindfulness practices in regulating emotions and navigating life’s challenges with resilience and grace.
  • How to distinguish between the voice of your inner critic and the voice of love and truth within you.
  • The importance of creating safe spaces and finding supportive communities where you can express yourself authentically.
  • Practical strategies for building confidence, embracing discomfort, and moving past limiting beliefs and mental blocks.
  • Why coaching is a powerful tool for personal growth and transformation, and how it can benefit teens and adults alike.
  • The role of emotional intelligence in navigating relationships, setting boundaries, and living a fulfilling life.

 

Listen to the Full Episode:

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Full Episode Transcript:

Hello empowered principals. Welcome to episode 374. 

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. 

Hello, my empowered principals. Happy Tuesday. Welcome to the podcast.

And I am so excited. I have a special guest for you today. We haven’t done an interview yet in 2025. So Kristi here is my first guest on the podcast for the 2025 school year. Her name is Kristi Simons. Is it Simmons or Simons?

Kristi: Simons.

Angela: Simons. Ooh, good catch. Kristi Simons. And she and I met through podcasting and coaching. She coaches teens and works with families with teens. And of course, education, school, coaching, kids, families, we’re here for all of it. So we met, we connected, we just, you know, had an instant connection. And I really wanted her to come on to the podcast and talk with you all about the things that she does and her approach and working with teens.

And I know a lot of you, people that I work with, clients have teens that you’re working with. I have middle school principals, high school principals, and not to mention if you are a principal and you have your own children who are teens and you’re double dipping into the teen development years, this is gonna be a juicy podcast for you. So Kristi, welcome to the podcast.

Kristi: Angela, thank you so much for having me. I feel honored also that I’m the first conversation of 2025. This is super exciting for me. Thank you for having me.

Angela: I’m so glad that we connected. And we really hit it off. I love her work. I love your content. So can you just introduce yourself, tell them who you are, what you do, your passions, your coaching, and really I wanna dive into your work with teens.

Kristi: Yeah, absolutely. I love answering this question or just this part of being on other people’s podcast because whenever they ask me to share about my story, I feel like I learn something new about myself every time as well. And just being able to go back in time and really see the progression, the progress, because that’s been the true highlight of this path for me that I am following now is just progress over perfection. And that’s really the state of mind that I hope that teens can really start to adopt one day as well.

So to tell you a little bit more about myself, I’m actually a former teacher. I taught in the classroom for well over a decade. It was actually my children, so having my firstborn in 2020, that really shook me, shifted me and broke me into a bunch of pieces. And at that time, I can actually remember hearing like this strong whisper telling me that, you know, something inside of me, like there was something in me that knew I needed to change, that I wanted to start creating change, but I wasn’t even sure how.

And a lot of this came back to becoming a mom for the first time and recognizing how much love I felt in that moment, like when they put that baby in my arms and like I felt like I had never felt a love like this before and then I feel like I started to connect these dots like I had never felt that love for myself and it was almost as if the more I tried to connect with him and love him like I was starting to realize that like that was something that I never gave to myself and it brought me back to my teen years and all of the things.

So moving forward through a second pregnancy I ended up having a series of mental health breakdowns, partially too because I suffered from addiction before having my children as well. And so, yeah, like I said, there were just a lot of moving parts during that time and I felt so disconnected from myself. And in hindsight, it’s actually really beautiful that my children were the ones to finally wake me up to that disconnect.

And yeah, so I hired my own coach. Again, when I talk about these whispers and following these breadcrumbs, like there was just this inner knowing within me that I was gonna need like outside support to really help me through this.

And to me at the time, the investment brought up so much, but I’m so grateful that I did because it literally, it changed my life. Having somebody in my corner who could see and believe in me and start to just like guide me back home to myself, it’s been an incredible journey. I’m still with my coach three years later.

And so through all of this, we have the pandemic. And so I was on maternity leaves and then kind of still teaching, but not in the classroom. It was virtual. So yeah, again, a lot of moving parts and there was just a lot of a lot going on at the time.

And I think this was actually in hindsight, again, such a positive thing for me, such a positive change because it allowed me to take a step back and really evaluate if this was still something that I wanted to do for myself. And the more that I was spending time immersed in this coaching experience, the more that I was recognizing that so much of what I was learning, like I wished I learned as a teenager. I wish that somebody was teaching this in the school systems.

And it’s not to say that teachers don’t do an incredible job, but I didn’t know what I knew back then. Or sorry, I didn’t know now back then what I know anyways you get me sure and so come full circle I left my full-time teaching position it’s been close to two years now I’ve been working full-time with families full-time with teens specifically is who I work with I usually connect with the parents but it’s the teens that I end up working with.

And I teach them all about emotional intelligence, essential life skills, and really at the root of it all, it’s to have that deeper connection to themselves. Because what I hear come out of parents’ mouths a lot is like how they really would love for their teen to feel more motivated, more confident, more motivated.

And to me, like the more I look back on my journey and thinking even like about my own motivation, motivation for me comes from that source within, of like deeply trusting yourself. It’s not that you can’t look outside of yourself to co-create and to ask for help and to connect with other people, right? Like we’re meant to connect and we’re meant to merge, but there’s also this really big part of us that desires to be autonomous.

And that’s the part that I really have been nurturing in myself over the last few years. And that’s the part that I helped them to come back home to as well and really building their confidence. So that’s a little bit about me. I could go on forever, but I’m going to stop there.

Angela: I love it. I love the story. I can relate to the feeling of the very first time that you held your son. I have one son who is now 25 and I remember that day as though it were yesterday. And the feeling is so significant.

There is no other experience like it, at least for me. And I love that you connected it back to the love that you felt for him was a love that you hadn’t given to yourself. And that was inspiring just for me right now. So thank you for saying it in that way. And I think we all are on a journey of true self-connection and self-love.

And finding that, whether we’re a teenager or an adult, no matter what age you are listening out there, there is opportunity to connect with yourself and love yourself even more to the point you love yourself as though you would love your own child. Oh, that’s so beautiful, Kristi.

Kristi: If everybody were to lean even just a little bit more into that, because at first, even for me, it felt intimidating. And it was also extremely emotionally uncomfortable even just to say that out loud, like why don’t I love myself? And then to start hearing all of those thoughts and those limiting beliefs and all the stuff that comes up and we can get into that later. But I just imagine a world where people start to lean back into this and when they start to come to that place where they do feel more at home within themselves and they do feel that self-love, like that ripple effect would just be, like it would change, it would change everything.

Angela: Yeah. The question coming up for me right now is, why do you believe that teens struggle with self-love and connection, self-acceptance basically. Self-acceptance, self-love, and I feel like the teen years developmentally, they are an extremely challenging time in terms of their connection with themselves versus their connection with their peers and their identity in the world. Who are they in the world? Who are they at school?

Kristi: Who are they going to become? They’re always asked, what are you going to go to college for? What are you going to do when you grow up? So what is your take on that? So for my podcast, one of my central questions that I ask every guest who comes on is if you could speak to your teen self, what would they need to hear? And so this is usually what I come back to. I feel like this is at the core of everything that I do. Like if I could speak to my teen self, what would she need to hear? And then I build on that.

And I know that back then I was placing a lot of my power outside of myself. So, you know, looking to the judgments, the opinions, the comparisons, all of those things. And I’m seeing this to be very true for my clients as well today. That’s not to say that their experience is the same. They are living in a completely different world, so I always like to acknowledge that.

However, in my coaching and what I do, I also center everything around how do you want to feel. Because for me we are energetic beings, everything comes back to our emotions and the feelings that we are desiring. So again, external stuff aside, they are feeling disconnected from themselves and because they are feeling disconnected and they don’t know how to put those pieces and parts back together, kind of like I didn’t know how to do it before I hired my coach and she taught me what I didn’t know yet, until they can figure out how to start connecting with themselves again, they are going to continue to look outside of themselves for validation, for approval seeking, whatever the case may be, to fill some of those, the word that’s coming up for me right now is like those voids.

And in my sessions, what I’m hearing so often with my clients is that they want to connect with other people, but they’re afraid that like they’re not enough, that their ideas are going to be the word cringy always comes up or that they’re going to look stupid or that people aren’t going to like them, that they’re not going to be seen, heard, understood or accepted. And it’s fascinating to me because I feel like they are so advanced compared to like what I felt like where I was at as a teenager.

And if they could just move past those limiting beliefs and those mental blocks. So I’ll bring it back here. I actually once had somebody tell me that like those thoughts getting trapped in that worry cycle can feel like an undertow. And once you like grab onto that, it just kind of pulls you down.

And so if they don’t know to lean back into love, if they don’t know how to connect with that source, that power that I speak of that they have within, just by way of connecting with, and these are four key areas that I teach in my coaching, it’s mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual energy.

And so going through all of this and really creating, you know, habits around how we want to feel because that’s going to in turn start to shift our beliefs and then we start to create a new reality. But again, it’s something that takes consistency. It takes consistent progress, not perfection.

But it’s really just about connecting with yourselves. And I know from past experience, that was something that I was really afraid to do until I started doing it. So there’s meant to be like that discomfort there, but if it doesn’t challenge you, it won’t change you. So yeah, that’s just some of the stuff that I’m seeing really come up with them.

Angela: Yeah. Yeah. What’s so interesting is how much our work aligns because I’m doing the exact same work with adults and they happen to be school leaders and parents a lot of times. But I noticed that there is a resistance or almost kind of what’s the word I’m looking for, like they kind of scoff at the thought of like self-love and self-care and self-acceptance. It almost, there’s such resistance to it.

And I’m wondering if you see that in your teens as well. Because school leaders, can you imagine if you work with middle or high school students and they have a life coach or even a percentage of them had these tools. Or even better, what I think is if this became a mainstream practice, exercises like just I don’t want to say curriculum, that feels a little too formal for me, but like a way of being part of the vision of the school, if this were a part of the conversation around the, like, dropping the resistance to self-love, self-care, self-understanding, self-deepening, self-acceptance. What do you think is, like, when there’s resistance to that, kind of like, oh, I couldn’t do that or that’s not cool. Like what comes up in the teen mind when you see the resistance come up to like self-acceptance and self-love?

Kristi: I love this question. My mind is firing off in so many different directions.

Angela: I’m sure there’s no one answer, right?

Kristi: Holy moly. I’m trying to reel it in because there’s a lot here. Resistance is just a really big topic. You could really break this down. The first thing that was coming to me is just that obviously resistance is normal. I still feel resistance in my own life towards the things that I have to do, but I have this awareness now and I have this toolkit. Having the wisdom, having the tools that work best for me, because this is never a one-size-fits-all. It’s really about discovering what works best for you.

And I do, as a life coach, I also just feel like I’m kind of just, again, they’re holding the beliefs, asking the right questions so they can come back home to the answers that they already have inside of them. But it’s the inner critic. The inner critic was the other thing that’s coming up for me.

I was working with a client, it was 2 weeks ago, and I just remember them saying, oh my gosh, I didn’t actually realize that there was another voice. Because I teach my clients to learn to think about what they think about, because that was never something I did when I was a teen. I just believed all of my thoughts. I thought all of them to be true. And so this was true for this client too.

I remember I had her write down a list of, okay, so what would your inner critic say? What are some of those things that do come up? Let’s allow them to be seen, heard, and understood in this moment without judgment. She was able to list off a bunch of stuff. Then when I asked her what her inner voice would say, so that place that comes from love, it was completely blocked. There was nothing that she was able to put on that side of her list.

And from like an energetic perspective, because I’m very good at reading people’s energy, like I could tell that her walls were completely up. And that to me is the resistance. We are so resistant to leaning into what an inner voice coming from love would say because we’ve been giving our power to our inner critic. So we’ve really been essentially building that muscle, right? That has become a comfort for us. Our brain also has a negativity bias.

So it’s always going to try to keep us safe, even if it reverts us back to something that is in fact, you know, not helping us to thrive or succeed in our lives. So in order to start creating change, like it’s going to feel uncomfortable, that’s where the resistance will come in. That’s where you’ll hear those thoughts that say, like, who do you think you are to start making these changes or why would you think for my clients?

It’s hard to hear them say that they don’t feel like they’re enough, that they don’t feel like anybody will care. And to me, that’s just, again, them feeling, well, unworthy would be one of them for sure, unlovable. And yeah, so what I have found really helps with this for myself personally and for the clients that do come to work with me is really incorporating mindfulness into this.

And I think that this is an area that would, and I feel like we are, I mean, at least here in Canada, I’ve noticed that there are more mindfulness practices like happening in the schools but that’s just like we’re just like touching the surface right like we really need to get them the information as well but yeah when I can actually have my clients like connect with themselves like settle back into their bodies get out of like the thinking space of just being so up in our heads.

We really need to connect with how our body is feeling. Oftentimes when the resistance shows up, you’ll notice different sensations. Maybe I get tightness in my neck, sometimes in my chest. My emotions will obviously change. I may feel some anxiety, overwhelm, whatever the case may be, and then I hear those thoughts start to spiral, those thought loops of who do you think you are, like you’re not worthy of this, you’re not good enough, yada, you know, those ones that come up.

And so for me, it’s always about just getting grounded. I have to reconnect. I have to ground myself and get those thoughts to just come away and just connect back with my heart. And that to me, I have found has been so helpful because once I’m in that space, that’s when I’m able to, like I’ve regulated my nervous system. If we want to speak to like a scientific perspective, you’re regulating your nervous system.

So you’re allowing, like I was talking about my client, you’re allowing those walls to come down. And then the other voice, the voice of creativity, the voice of love, the voice of abundance, bravery, whatever, you name it, that voice is able to come through and then you get your right next step. For me, oftentimes for resistance, it’s really about moving that energy. Sometimes this looks like going for a walk, taking a few deep breaths. Like there’s so many simple tools available to us each and every day. And yeah, it’s just about figuring out what works best for us. And then also just understanding, I feel like how, you know, the mind, body, soul, all of it is connected.

Angela: I love how you help kids separate out the two voices because I think all of us have a voice of love and I consider it like a voice of truth. Like universal truth. Like you are worthy, you are enough. There’s just like this love and truth that speaks to us.

And it’s a deep knowing, but on the surface of that is this inner critic. And what’s so interesting is we all have one. We all have the inner critic and we didn’t have it at birth. I think about this, right? Like babies are born, you know, straight from source and they get, like, I think about they learn how to walk and talk and play and they’re pure joy. They’re either in joy or they’re in pain and they’re telling you something, right?

It’s one or the other. It’s very all or none and they’re not criticizing themselves for needing milk or needing to sleep or needing a diaper change or learning how to walk and falling and all of those things. So that inner critic, it somehow comes from the experience that we have as humans on the planet and every single person has one. And just the awareness as a teen to know there’s a voice of truth and then there’s this voice of criticism and not enoughness and that’s coming from fear, right? There’s love and truth and then there’s fear over here and that’s protection.

That’s the brain’s way of protecting us, but just that one awareness could change an entire student, child’s life. Just that awareness.

Kristi: To your point, I also feel like when we talk about fear, I’m feeling like, for me personally in my life, and this is my own personal experience, but when I’m feeling like deep fear, it’s actually a fear of feeling its opposite, which is like deep love. It’s like how much more can I expand my capacity to love when I used to lean so heavily into fear? So my fear tries to pull me back and really it’s just a fear of like propelling myself forward into more love.

Like I even notice on a day-to-day basis for myself, right? I’ll have one of those thoughts come in that tells me like, you should try taking action on this. Like this would be such an amazing opportunity. And for a second I’ll be like, oh, I love that. And then the thought, who do you think you are? And then it comes in. And yeah, it’s just like being aware of that and understanding that, as you said, and I think that’s the connection that I made too.

When I had my son, I was just like, oh my gosh. He doesn’t view himself this way. And at one point I was a baby too and I was just as, I don’t usually use the word perfect but it feels right in this moment, like he’s just so perfect right now. Never wanting him to experience I guess the human experience. And then I realized that’s not logical either. We are all here to experience the highs and lows, the waves of life, so to speak.

And I feel like this is just a really opportune time to highlight that through this work that I do with them, we’re always talking about how the inner critic and that inner truth, I love that, I might start using that, how the inner critic and the inner truth can really also merge together and start to co-create. Because for my clients, what I’m seeing is that they will also get down on themselves for having that inner critic and wanting it now that we know it’s there. Like, why can’t we just completely get rid of it? And that’s just not how it works.

And so what I love to do with them, especially in terms of like mindfulness practices, so for that one client that I spoke of, and she’s given me permission to highlight her story if I need to, anywhere that I’m talking about it. But yeah, what I did for her when she was blocked on that list and she wasn’t able to fill in on the other side. I also work with Reiki, so I do energy healing and meditations for my clients.

So just a simple meditation, it was 10 minutes. I just allowed her to settle in her body, take a few deep breaths. We do like a body scan just so again it relaxes everything, really takes them out of their head and back into their truth. And I just guided her. I guided her through the things that had come through the session, again, giving and bringing awareness to that inner critic.

And I had her see herself, like visualize herself in her mind as the version of herself, her truth that she knows that she is, but then also meeting her inner critic there and just giving her a big hug, like just giving her a big hug because you’re right. It’s just so much external stuff that has come at us. It’s nobody’s fault. Everybody, I truly believe to my core, is well-intentioned. It’s just we don’t know what we don’t know, right?

And so we do. We absorb all of this information and then we start to think that there’s something wrong with us, when in fact there’s nothing wrong with us. We are born perfect and worthy. And so in that visualization, I had her hug and just really bring acceptance to understanding that this was just a part of her that’s trying to keep her safe, but that she could put herself in the creator role.

And then I had her ask herself, like, what is something that you would tell your inner critic that you believe are your actual truths? And when she came out of that meditation, she had three to add to her list, which I think is just, like, to me, that’s such a huge win. And I remember one of them was that like, nobody’s perfect. Like life’s not meant to be perfect and it’s okay to like love and accept herself. That she was a very empathetic person and that was one of her strengths and one of her gifts. And I don’t know if I’m going to be able to remember what the last one was. It might come to me as we’re speaking, but yeah, it was just, and again, from going from only being able to hear that one voice from then making the distinction and now she has three and that will anchor itself in.

Like now those have become new beliefs and it doesn’t mean that it’s going to override, but we just, we need to start nurturing that side more so that it can remind the inner critic that we are creating from this place now.

Angela: Yes, oh, that is so, so beautiful. And I do agree with you. I guess I think we babies, brand new babies are just a source straight from perfection. And, but it is the human experience to have the duality of life. And I think the duality of life is how we continue to know the truth. There has to be some kind of opposition, right? There has to be some kind of, what’s the word I’m looking for? Like a reflection or a balance of how do you, like if it’s always perfect and sunny out, you know, you never know, you know, what it’s like to have this cozy, warm, wintry day or the rainy days, or, you know, to enjoy that day.

I lived in California for 30 years and it’s almost always sunny and you almost take it for granted because there’s not a lot of dichotomy or there’s not a lot of difference. And so when you have a rainy day, you’re like, wait, what? You’re either annoyed by it or you’re like, I forgot how much I love a beautiful rainy day. Well, here in Nashville, I’m getting all seasons all at the same time. So it’s fun to think about.

But there is that duality in the human experience, which I remember wanting to bubble wrap my son and protect him from the world. I remember when he was little thinking, I don’t ever want to see him go through his first heartbreak, his first love heartbreak. Right. And then it happened and it was excruciating as a mother. And I thought he’s living, he’s alive. This is a part of the human experience.

And luckily, having the tools to hold space for him and be with him in that moment and not try to coach him out of it, but to coach my own feelings about how I felt with him and then allowing him to have his own feelings for as long as that took and for him to process that situation and that breakup, it really made me realize, no, I want him to have the capacity to handle any emotion that comes his way, to handle any experience that comes their way. And the gift of just having access to these tools can give kids so much more. We talk about in schools, we talk about grit, we talk about resilience, we talk about stamina.

And I’m going to say something that it may ruffle some feathers, but I believe when you said earlier that in Canada, they’re talking about mindfulness, but it’s kind of on the surface. I think this is true of all educators because we haven’t been having these conversations as part of the norm, as part of just the repertoire of education and human development, we as the adults are on the surface, and we can only teach to the capacity at which we’re willing to go below that surface of mindfulness and to, as teachers, as staff members, as administrators, talk about our own inner critic with ourselves, right? We don’t need to put it on blast in front of our colleagues, but to have the awareness and to have these conversations as adults with ourselves and with those we trust, but to be mindful ourselves of our own reactions of our own emotional regulation.

Because the number one thing that I coach on all week long around the calendar is principals and district leaders. And, you know, sometimes I work with state officials, but primarily its district and site administrators, and they spend their day with, how do I handle emotional regulation for myself, and how do I hold space, and how do I navigate the emotional experiences and the emotional expressions of other adults? I very rarely coach on kids. Like a situation with a kid, it’s more about their experience with the adults, whether that’s the adults on campus or the adults as family members, parents coming in and they’re highly dysregulated, or maybe it’s your boss or your supervisors who have their own emotional experience, their own human developmental experience. We’re all on this journey.

And being able to hold that space as a teacher for all of your kids and all of those parents and your grade level team or your department team and your colleagues, and then you go home and you have your family and you’re trying to hold space emotionally for your own children and your partner, your spouse, your friends, your family, that it can feel like a lot to hold on to.

Kristi: Yeah. I feel like it is like navigating it. Navigating it is definitely not a linear path. And I love when you talked about holding space because it’s so true. There is this depth beneath the surface. I feel like we kind of touch on the waves if we’re using the water as our metaphor here. But you have the waves on the surface, right? So maybe in the classroom, we see those waves and we’re like, perfect opportunity to throw in a mindfulness practice. Is this gonna benefit them? 1000% it’s going to, but like, what is the reason? Like what’s underneath it all? Like, why, you know, why are we doing this? Like, they really need to have a connection and an understanding to that.

It’s like what’s beneath the surface? What are we actually connecting with when we do these practices? And I feel like that may be the piece that’s missing. And you’re right. What I’ve noticed with myself over the last five, almost six years of doing this work is that even in order for me to hold space for other people and for me to be an active listener, I have to create space within myself. So in order to hold space for other people, you need to create that space within yourself. Otherwise, they’re just getting the surface level you and the surface level me can often also be irritated and feeling a little bit overwhelmed.

This obviously happens with my toddlers and so I’m very conscious of that now and there are still a lot of moments where I have to, you know, go back and repair because like I said this is not a linear journey. Even for me somebody who is doing this work like I still have my moments where I know that there’s just more space needed. My cup is empty, so to speak, so I have to fill that back up. I need to know how or which ways it works best for me to actually connect with myself, whether that be through journaling, like I said, going for a walk. It’s all of our energies. It’s paying attention to the mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual. Mental is our own limiting beliefs and our thoughts, our narratives that come up. And again, if we’re dysregulated, it means that we’re in our mind.

So if you’re trying to hold space for somebody, but you’re feeling dysregulated, you’ve got thoughts swirling. If you’ve ever had a conversation with somebody and afterwards, you’re like, oh my gosh, I have no idea what that person just said to me. I have no idea.

This happens with… My husband won’t listen to this, so that’s okay. He already knows this is true though, but this will always happen for us. He’ll tell me something and then like 20 minutes later, I’ll ask him, okay, so what are you guys doing at work tomorrow? And he’s like, I just told you. And I’m like, oh no, because I wasn’t fully there. I was not fully present. And so it’s just being aware of it. It’s always giving ourselves compassion too, as we do this work, because we are literally retraining ourselves. We’re trying to break old patterns that we’ve been following for so long.

And I love that you brought up the holding space. And I do believe that holding space starts with yourself. So the mental energy, then the physical energy. This comes back to how we are actually fueling ourselves, the amount of sleep, like the way we talk to ourselves, like our bodies, like what we’re putting into our bodies. And again, I never come at this from a place of like, there’s certain foods that you should or should not eat. It’s all about what feels good to you and not shaming yourself in that area of your life either.

Your physical environment, ever since I immersed myself in a community of women who are all holding this belief for one another that we can move our lives in this direction versus falling back to where we do not want to be anymore, that has made a significant impact on me because there are still other little containers of space in my life where those aren’t the conversations that are being had. And those tend to deplete me at this point. So it’s nice to have that space where I can come back to that language of self-love, confidence, and empowerment that I’m searching for.

There’s also emotional energy. So this is understanding your emotions. It’s emotional intelligence, teaching them about like the emotional guidance scale, just about gratitude, about hopefulness, about love, about abundance, about how their lives are actually limitless as long as they continue up that spiral. And again, it’s always okay to spiral back down into those feelings of overwhelming anxiety, whatever it is, sadness, fear. And it’s just that’s where the resilience piece comes in is knowing that you can get back up and keep going whenever you’re ready and whatever small next step you’re meant to take.

And then there’s spiritual energy. If spiritual doesn’t resonate, you can just call it self-energy. It’s really that deeper connection to yourself. Are you actually putting things on your calendar that are going to help you co-create the way that you want to feel?

So for me, I actually have a whole energetic with my planning process, but I do as a former teacher. It’s that concept of reverse engineering rather than having the expectation. The expectation for me is how do I want to feel today? And then I will just jot down some of the things that come to mind. Maybe for me it is going for a walk. Maybe for me it’s actually taking like 30 minutes to paint or draw because I love doing that. I always love doing that as a teen.

And what are we here for if we can’t still enjoy some of the things that we used to do when we were younger? Like to me, I’m just like, what the heck is the point? And I find when I do put those things on my calendar, even if it just is 30 minutes to sit down and color or draw for a little bit, it will 10X my capacity to be able to show up for the other things in my life that I need to show up for simply because I listened to myself.

And this is how I’m seeing that the confidence is being built, because you’re just compiling this evidence that you do trust and choose yourself. And then it opens up more creative flow rather than keeping you stuck in that mindset of lack and scarcity and fear.

Angela: That’s so, so beautiful. I love that you use the water as an analogy because there’s the surface and we have feelings on the surface. And the goal isn’t perfection. The goal, I think about school leaders who are like, or teachers who are like, one more thing, now I’ve got to be mindful, now I’ve got to add mindfulness and I’m going to add this to the plate. I don’t think it’s about adding to the plate. I actually think it’s about awareness. I don’t think the goal is perfection. We all know that we strive for that, but the actual goal is awareness.

So awareness when you win and acknowledging and validating the success or the win or what is working in your life and focusing on that, it’s awareness. But then the emotion when you’re feeling positive, that’s awareness. That’s an opportunity for awareness of what’s working and what you love and what’s happy.

And then when you’re not feeling if you’re feeling on the I think of, you know, like emotional bandwidth is like, you know, positive, negative, on the negative spectrum. That’s awareness. It’s like, oh, I’m not feeling great or this doesn’t feel good. Why? It’s the awareness. The emotion is the tool that we use to leverage what’s working versus what’s not working for us. And it’s the awareness of why we’re feeling the way we’re feeling to generate that because underneath that initial feeling is the momentum, it’s waves, it’s below the surface, the undercurrent that’s going on underneath the surface of the water is where how deep are we willing to go to find out what we’re feeling and why we’re feeling it?

I think those are the two most brilliant questions. It’s what am I feeling and why am I feeling it? Because you have to stop and you have to pause and you have to ask yourself like, wait, why do I feel this way? And then your thoughts are going to, I call it a brain drain where it just like all comes out, right?

So I have a question. You mentioned something about kids if they can stay in the spiral up. And I just was coaching a client on this. So I think it’s going to be very relevant for teens and families and adults.

When somebody is coaching with you and they are creating this awareness and they can see the difference between the inner critic and the voice of truth and love, and they’re starting to feel differently, and they’re starting to think differently, and they’re connecting to themselves, do they have moments where they’re like, now I feel more isolated? I feel more weird. Nobody’s talking like the way I’m talking, or nobody’s thinking like the way I’m thinking, or my coach and I can be real with my coach, but then I go back with my friends and they’re all talking about whatever, gossiping or boys or whatever kids talk about these days, TikTok and all of that, but how do you coach them through as they’re evolving themselves and expanding their awareness, how do they still feel connected to their peers who maybe don’t have access to the coaching tools or the awareness strategies?

Kristi: I love that. Oh, I love this because this is actually like you just brought up one of, I would say, the main challenges is once they start to have more awareness for how they want to feel, they’re definitely going to be more aware, even more so of what’s going on around them and their environment. And so this is where, and again, I always bring it back to my life too. It’s been like a game changer for me to have a container of space where these conversations are still being had. So I have that space where I feel seen, heard and understood.

I can express myself openly, authentically, and I still encourage them to do this in their own lives. And I can also understand how, like when they’re in their school community And if there’s nobody else that’s really understanding them on a deeper level, this is why I’m talking like it’s so good to have like those safe spaces or that group of people or that one person even. It really just takes one person in their corner that sees and believes in them. So that’s important to highlight as well. But yeah, it’s just continuing to have conversations with them, continuing to encourage them to not dim their light just because they’re afraid of the projections of others, and also just helping them to build a set of tools, something that will help them to move through those times in their lives.

I wish I could say that there’s a right answer and we can just fix it all. And the truth is that they’re going to come up against these blocks, these mountains in their lives that are going to challenge them, right? It’s like, do I in this situation continue to just trust and choose myself or do I dim my own light to follow others? And they’re also still growing and exploring. And a lot of this for them is still like their brains are still developing.

So a lot of this is new. So I think it’s just allowing them to just be very like open minded to everything and just allowing their experience to be what it’s going to be. But if as long as they have a safe space that they can come back to, where they can talk to somebody about what’s going on, I feel like that’s like the number one place to start right now for them, is just having that person that they feel that they can trust.

Angela: Yes, I coach on this with my principals who they get into, they start one-on-one coaching with me and now I offer group coaching and they’re in the group coaching program. So in that container, it’s just, it’s like a bubble of safety and we can talk about expansiveness and our feelings and really kind of push the envelope to the edges of how deep we’re willing to go with these conversations about how good life can get. And we really can play in that space and feel very safe and it feels very confidential and you feel trusting because it’s like-minded people.

So I do believe that like having those containers are really important. And that’s like the ideal. Like you wanna be surrounded by people who are like-minded. But when you’re first starting this, and I’ll just share my own personal experience for any teen who’s listening out there to this, happens to be listening to this podcast or a school leader or educator.

In the beginning, there is what my first coach ever that I had, Dr. Martha Beck, she called it the ring of fire, where there is a moment when you have awareness, there is a moment that you feel in the reconnection to yourself. You do feel a disconnect from those who are also disconnected from themselves because you’ve reconnected with yourself.

So you’re reconnecting and you’re learning and you’re creating this awareness. And when you’re in it, you’re like, I want to tell the world, I want everybody to know this. And then people are like, what? Because they’re disconnected, they can’t, they’re not on the same frequency as you. They don’t understand it. They can’t comprehend it. And then they’re like, oh, is she weird or different? And then it kind of reclose you back to like, wait, am I being the weird person or am I being the off person?

There is a moment of this decision that you make, but I want to say something to teams. Like if you’re working with Kristi and you are, and you feel this like truth and love and lightness that comes with working with her. And then you go with your friends and you’re not feeling that it’s okay to feel that discomfort. Number one, number two, it’s normal. You’re going to feel that discomfort. Three, it’s temporary.

And this is what I want to share with you, that you will kind of feel a chapter or a moment where all you can think about is this because it feels so good. And you go and you’re out in the world with other people and you might feel like, oh, they’re talking about things that aren’t as meaningful to me anymore. I don’t relate to or connect to anymore. But eventually what happens is you get yourself to a space where one, you start to gravitate and you attract more like-minded friends and circles. And that might happen for you if you’re middle school to high school or high school to college. So you will start to attract more people.

But the other thing that happens is your ability to engage with people who don’t understand you, your tolerance for that goes up because you won’t need them to acknowledge you and to validate you and to listen to what you need to say because you’ve done that for yourself. So you can actually go out and enjoy your circle of friends and love them just for who they are and appreciate them and be with them, while you still have this expansion and awareness within you, that will happen.

And it will, because you’re so young, through the course of time, it’s going to feel like you’re the one being isolated. But what’s really happening is you’re the one that’s reconnecting. And then you see them in a light where you can actually just love them for who they are and embrace them. And if you truly aren’t aligned anymore as friends, that friendship will run its course and you’ll meet new friends.

But I do think this, I am on social media, obviously to connect to people. And what I’ve seen is there is a trend. There is a wave of coaching coming down into from maybe the thirties and forties where people at midlife were like, I need a coach. Now to like 30s where I see parents embracing coaching for the sake of being the best version of themselves as parents for their children. And now you’re starting to hear teenagers talking about it.

I am personal friends with coaches who are barely over the drinking limit age, right? They’re in their early to mid-20s and they’re out there. I have a friend, I should actually have her on the podcast. She is a friendship coach and she teaches people how to make friends like post school and college. So I just want you to know that, yes, there are people out there who are in, they’re just a little bit older than you and they’re doing this work. You can follow them on your Instagram, your social medias, your TikToks, wherever you guys are on listening and following, there are people out there that can just remind you that you’re not alone.

It’s so much about shifting the language, like shifting the language, but kept coming up for me. And yes, like again, acknowledging that there

Kristi: There are going to be moments of discomfort. There still are for me in my life, especially now that I, like, I know that this is a direction that feels so aligned to me. My resistance tends to come up even more so than before. And what I wanted to say about that too was just in terms of like, you said the teacher, whoever would be listening and maybe thinking like, oh my gosh, another thing to add to my plate, right?

Before I could see and believe it for myself, like I really needed somebody to see it and believe it for me before I could see it and believe it for myself. And that’s who my coach was to me and still is for me. And so like to those people, if they’re having those thoughts, like I believe in you, I believe that you can move past those stories and those limiting beliefs, because to me, it’s not even about putting another thing on my plate at this point.

It may have felt that way in the beginning. Now, I feel like I’m being served a buffet on a daily basis. The more I fill myself up, the more simple things feel. Again, it’s just, it’s starting something new. It’s starting fresh. It’s leaning in a different direction than we’re used to leaning to. So yeah, there’s going to be discomfort. And again, you’re going to try to be pulled back into that safety zone, that comfort zone where you’ve always been doing what you’ve been doing. And if you feel like that’s working for you, then you can continue to do that. That’s your free choice and your free will.

But I’m just here to always remind you that the belief is there because somebody held it for me. So I will not stop shining that light now because if my coach would have stopped shining her light, I wouldn’t be where I am today. Well, maybe I would have found another coach, but she has been the reason for so much of the transformation in me. And so I’m always reminding myself of that. Like I would be doing others a disservice by not showing up and having these conversations and at least letting them know that when they’re ready, I believe in you and you can make some of these changes in your life too. It just starts with small habits and then just building on those habits over time.

Like this doesn’t have to look like tomorrow you wake up and your life looks completely different. It’s just, what’s one, like, how do I want to feel today? And what’s one thing I can do to lean into that versus its opposite?

Angela: Yes, so good. So yeah, educators out there, I just want you to know that coaching is just teaching. And I think about, you know, I could not have, none of us go through life without a teacher. I don’t know of a person who’s gone through life without some sort of mentor, teacher, or actual coach, whether that’s a fitness trainer or a spiritual, you know, counselor or mentor, parents, your, maybe your auntie or uncle, your grandparents had influence. There’s somebody out there in the world who was coaching, mentoring, teaching that, and you as educators, all of us parents, we’re all teachers.

Coaching is just teaching, teaching as coaching. It’s funny that people are like, well, what’s a life coach? What do they do? We help you create awareness around, I call them like the blind spots, right? We all, like when you’re driving a car, there are blind spots, which is why we have the mirrors and coaching provides the mirrors and the reflection into ourselves and to what’s happening around us from different perspective and angles, just like teaching.

So it’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s actually, I think it’s one of the most reassuring relationships that I have with my coach and I will never not have a coach. I’ll tell you that right now. I will never not have a coach. Yeah.

So Kristi, this conversation has been so enlightening and I want school leaders to know how to access your information and content so that they can pass it on to parents who might be interested in finding their teen coach. Because I think you’d connect with parents and teens, correct? Yeah. So how can the listeners connect with you, get your resource and information so that they can be passing your services along to families?

Kristi: I love this. Thank you. First, so much for having me. I knew that, well, when we first met, that first conversation that we had was enlightening as well and just felt so connected. And whenever I have these conversations and I truly feel energized at the end. Again, this is like a part of me showing up to fill my cup. So I just appreciate you for helping me to do that today and holding the space.

So Confident Teen Podcast is where I love to hang out. My podcast is my baby. So yeah, you can find it anywhere you listen to podcasts. And I also am fairly active, I would say, on Instagram so you can find me @ConfidentTeenTeacher. And what else did I want to add? My website is https://kristisimonscoaching.com. So that’s K-R-I-S-T-I-S-I-M-O-N-S. And yeah, everything that you need to know about my services, about me, all of that information is there, like bookings for speaking and all the things.

And lastly, I would just like to add, and this is something I’m wondering if you could just throw maybe into the show notes, but I do have a freebie right now. If parents are interested, I created what I’m calling The Truth List, cracking the teen code and I created this because I was noticing a through line with all of the teens that I was working with or have been working with and even back to like my days in the classroom that teens are just so connected.

Like I can literally see and visualize in my mind that like they’re all holding like the same golden thread and the golden thread is like all of like their deepest desires and then also you know like the entanglement of all of those limiting beliefs and stories that they tell of themselves that prevent them from really connecting with that and so The Truth List is to show parents like when your teen is telling you like I don’t know nothing’s wrong or you literally just get silence.

These are some of the things that they are thinking in terms of like the blocks that they have showing up for them. And then again, those desires that are coming up for them are. For me, it’s just, it always blows my mind because you would think it would be those material things that they want a new bike, a new video game, whatever the case may be.

And honestly, it comes back to connection. It comes back to acceptance. It comes back to just being able to feel like they’re free to use their voice, free to express themselves, free to be creative. So yeah, you can get that. I’ll give you the link for that and we’ll put that in the show.

Angela: Yeah. We’ll put all of that contact information in the show notes. No problem. And I think that these are the conversations that are going to really spark a resurgence in education. I think COVID actually did us a huge favor because it shook us up.

It shook an institution up to the point of no return, where we can’t unsee, we can’t unfeel, we can’t unknow that there is room for growth and room for awareness in the field of education. And doing things the way we did them a century ago might be time to bring up some awareness. And one of the things I think we do really well in education is we avoid talking about feelings. We avoid talking about emotion because of our discomfort with it as adults, and because of what we’re afraid will happen if we open Pandora’s box when we talk about emotions.

But what will actually happen is the process of awareness, validation of our feelings, and then the regulation of them, which cannot occur if we haven’t acknowledged the feelings or validated them and process them.

So this is just the beginning of beautiful conversations that can be had with your team, with your staff, and with yourself. So, Kristi, thank you for your wisdom, your insights today. This was beautiful. I couldn’t love this conversation more and I really appreciate you taking the time to be on the podcast today.

Kristi: Yes, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate you too.

Angela: You’re so welcome. All right, folks, that’s a wrap. Kristi Simons will put all of her information in the show notes, and I wish you a very empowered week. Take good care. Talk to you soon, bye.

Hey empowered principal. If you enjoyed the content in this podcast, I invite you to join the Empowered Principal® Collaborative. It’s my latest offer for aspiring and current school leaders who want to experience exceptional impact and enjoy the school leadership experience.

Look, you don’t have to overwork and overexert to be a successful school leader. You’ll be mentored weekly and surrounded by supportive likeminded colleagues who truly understand what it means to be a school leader. So join us today and become a member of the only certified life and leadership coaching program for school leaders in the country. Just head on over toangelakellycoaching.com/work-with-me to learn more and join. I’ll see you inside of the Empowered Principal® Collaborative.

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. 

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The Empowered Principal® Podcast Angela Kelly | Your To-Do List

As principals, we often find ourselves drowning in a sea of tasks, appointments, and responsibilities. But what if there was a way to transform your to-do list from a source of stress into a powerful productivity tool?

In this episode, I dive deep into the psychology behind our to-do lists and share my insights on how to create a list that truly serves you. Let’s explore the emotional relationship we have with our lists and how it impacts our ability to prioritize, delegate, and follow through on our commitments.

Get ready to revolutionize your approach to task management and discover how to create a to-do list that empowers you to take control of your time and energy. By the end of this episode, you’ll have the tools and mindset shifts needed to make your to-do list work for you, not against you.

 

The Empowered Principal® Collaborative is my latest offer for aspiring and current school leaders who want to create exceptional impact and enjoy the school leadership experience. Join us today to become a member of the only certified life and leadership coaching program for school leaders in the country by clicking here.

Ready to dive deeper into leading with confidence this spring? Join me for the Spring Training Series for School Leaders—an 8-session live program starting in March, designed to empower you through HR, testing, leadership, and more. If you’re not quite ready for the full Empowered Principal Program, this standalone series is perfect for you! Click here to register!

 

What You’ll Learn From this Episode:

  • Why your current to-do list may be holding you back from true productivity.
  • How to identify and manage the emotions that arise when interacting with your list.
  • The key steps to take your to-do list from a brain dump to an actionable plan.
  • Why prioritization, delegation, and calendaring are essential for an effective to-do list.
  • How to build a better relationship with time and honor your commitments to yourself.
  • Strategies for navigating end-of-year challenges like staffing decisions and holding space for emotions.

 

Listen to the Full Episode:

Featured on the Show:

Full Episode Transcript:

Hello empowered principals. Welcome to episode 373. 

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

Well, hello, my empowered principals. So happy to be here with you today. Happy Tuesday. Welcome to the podcast.

I want to dive right in. This is going to be fairly short and sweet. I was coaching one of my clients and we got into the topic of her to-do list. And I want to invite you, as you’re listening to my voice, to take a moment and think about your to-do list.

I’m sure that no matter where you are, whether you’re in your office or you’re on a walk or you’re driving or you’re listening to this and you’re far away from work, you can visualize your to-do list. Is it on your calendar? Is it on your desk? Is it on your computer? Is it in a notebook? Is it on a notepad? You know exactly what it looks like. You know exactly where it is. You know the pen you use to write with it. You know the to-do list intimately because you are so connected to it and involved with it every day.

Okay. Now think about that list and I want you to tell yourself what the purpose of that list is. What is the purpose of your to-do list? And if you think about it, for most people, a to-do list is a list that captures all of your thoughts. There are thoughts about things you need to-do, things you need to complete, things you’d like to get done, things you hope to get done, things you feel pressured to get done. And the to-do list captures the thoughts from your brain and puts them onto paper or puts them onto your computer screen.

So a to-do list for most people is simply a brain drain. It goes from the brain onto paper and this action that you’re taking going from brain to paper it’s a task or it’s an action line that I recommend everybody take, particularly if your head is spinning and your head is trying to hold all of that content in your memory, right? So the list is what helps you capture everything in your brain and it puts it down onto paper. And I’ll say paper, whether it’s computer, digital, or actual pen and paper, but it’s a placeholder for those thoughts.

It’s a placeholder for your desires, things you want to-do, actions you want to take, projects you want to complete, conversations you want to have, appointments that you want to make and then meet, people that you want to connect with, all of the things, right? Personal appointments, professional appointments, meetings, observations, conversations, check-ins, picking up your kids, getting over to the dentist, getting your best friend’s birthday present purchase, planning your husband’s birthday party, calling your mother, talking to your sister. I mean it’s on and on. This is why we create to-do lists because our brain wants to explode with all of it swimming up in our mind.

So the to-do list captures all of it and puts it down on the paper. I just call this a brain drain. So most people have a to-do list and it’s a brain drain of all the things that they want to-do, need to-do, would like to-do, feel like they have to-do. Okay? And the beautiful thing about our lovely brain is that as soon as we drain it out, there’s a moment of like, ooh, that feels good. I think I got everything. And then a few minutes or a few hours later, it fills back up. It’s like the cup that never empties. It will fill up the cup again with all new kinds of thoughts and things you need to-do, or it will recycle the water that was in the cup before and fill it back up with the same thoughts.

So you look at the list and you’re still thinking about the same things that are on the to-do list. And so we either add more things to the to-do list. Oh, I forgot this. Oh, what about that? Or we think further into the future. Okay, I’ve got this month covered. Now, what about next month? And then wait, what about six months from now? And all of a sudden, our to-do list is growing longer and longer and longer and longer. Now this to-do list might be helpful. It might give your brain some reprieve from trying to hold and memorize and remember all of the things you want to-do.

So it can give you some relief, but it can also, when you look at it, especially if you’ve been adding on and adding on and adding on, or you have the same things come up on your list over and over and they’re not getting done. So it either feels really good to be getting the things done and to getting it out of your brain, or it feels like crazy stress every time you look at it and it brings up anxiety, stress, worry, doubt, fears, resistance to having to get it all done. But the to-do list in and of itself tends to be simply a placeholder. And it doesn’t do a lot more than that as it stands, than just as a to-do list. Okay?

But what do we love to-do? We love to put things on the to-do list and then go do something that’s on the list and then check it off or cross it off. It’s incredible how addicting that is. Something as simple as checking a box or striking a line through that task. Have you ever done this? I’ve done this so many times. I did something that wasn’t on the list. So I wrote it on the list so I could write strike it off the list. Have you ever done that? It’s so crazy satisfying. I don’t know why, but something as simple as a check mark or a cross out, it feels so good. So good that we keep creating a to-do list.

But I want to go into the to-do list problem so I can help you create a to-do list that actually is productive. Because look, some things are on the to-do list day after day after day after day. Work out, work out, work out, work out, take a walk, take a walk, take a walk, take a walk, call a friend, call a friend, go to bed early, eat healthy, you know, whenever, get your newsletter done. There are things that are on the list that we’re like, we have such good intention, we really want to-do them. And then we don’t, and they’re on that list on repeat over and over, but we don’t really question it, why we’re not doing it or it shouldn’t be on the list. So there’s that. And then there are the things that we just keep adding, hoping that they’ll get done because they’re on the list.

Have you ever done that? Like, so we either get the things done on the list or we don’t, and they tend not to fall off the list. And the ones that we do get done, we feel super good about it, gives us this great big wave of dopamine, and we feel very productive on the days. The thing that we put on the list, it got done. We feel good about it. We get to cross it off the list and then it’s over. And then we look at the other things that were like, oh, and then the list feels bad again. Have you noticed that?

So because we stop at brain draining the to-do list, which is just like blurting everything out onto paper from your brain, here’s everything I need to-do. We blurt it all out and then we just leave it there. And it’s this kind of jumbled mess. It has no rhyme or reason. It has no value assigned to it. It’s just there. But when it’s on the list, everything feels important. Everything feels like a priority because it’s on the list.

I want you to consider the purpose of that list. Why do you create a list? And how do you feel about your to-do list? This really matters. Some people look at their list and they feel great about it. They know the purpose, it serves its purpose, it’s productive, they use it efficiently and to create the outcomes that they want. Some people, the to-do list is all they need to get things done.

So ask yourself, how do I feel about my to-do list? When I’m looking at it, does it feel good or does it not? It’s very clear and it’s very simple. You don’t have to make this complicated. It’s either going to generate feelings of like calmness, clarity, certainty, like productivity, or it’s going to generate feelings of anxiety and stress and doubt and worry.

So if your to-do list doesn’t feel good for you in any way, shape, or form, then it’s time to change the way that you approach your to-do list and leverage it in a way that maximizes your productivity and that feels good for you. So the to-do list is simply the very first step of proactively planning your productivity.

And what happens for a lot of us principals out there is that we don’t want to-do the remaining steps of the planning, which includes prioritization, delegation, and calendaring. We don’t want to-do that part. We don’t like it. We think it’s going to take too much time. We get stuck in indecision. We complicate it by making everything a priority, and we don’t want to delegate. We don’t want to give things up, and we don’t want to have to calendar it because it feels like now it’s set in stone and we get all squirmy if an emergency comes up or something happens and it’s on our calendar and then we didn’t do it.

When we don’t honor our calendar, there’s a feeling of disappointment or a feeling of guilt. We feel kind of guilty if we don’t honor what we ourselves put on our own calendar. Can you see it? Okay. So just notice how much emotion comes into play when you interact with your to-do list. The emotion is the biggest part of it. I know that sounds like insignificant but it’s the most significant.

And I teach an approach in EPC for task management that’s efficient and productive. And the technique itself, the process that I created, it’s not really rocket science but it does take the to-do list to the next level and the next level and the next level. It goes much deeper than just blurting everything out and doing a brain drain on a piece of paper. The technique itself is not rocket science, I promise you.

However, coaching your mind and managing your emotions around your to-do list and all the tasks you need to get done can feel like rocket science when you’re in the moment. Managing your time, managing your energy, managing your interactions, managing how much effort you put into a task or how much time you’re going to give to a task or what you’re willing to delegate, what you’re not willing to delegate.

The amount of time you spend just thinking about your to-do list but not doing the to-do list. Think about the minutes that you spend just thinking about the to-do list or looking at the to-do list or worrying about the to-do list or wondering how you’re gonna get the to-do list done. We spend so many minutes at work contemplating about the to-do list versus prioritizing it, delegating it, calendaring it and let’s go right.

It’s the emotion that’s holding you back or the fear of some anticipated emotion in the future. That’s holding you back. We have a lot of thoughts and feelings around delegation, around prioritization, around calendaring, around honoring. And we also have a lot of thoughts and feelings about the obstacles that come up. Things like interruptions, emergencies.

Now look, if everything is an emergency, if every single day you’re having emergencies and putting up fires, they’re no longer emergencies. We have a management problem. So there are true emergencies and there is a need for interruptions at times. But we tend to use them as an excuse, as the reason why we can’t calendar, we can’t plan, we can’t prioritize and delegate.

We think that school leadership is so full of emergencies and interruptions that it’s impossible to actually plan and honor the calendar. But I’m here to dispel that myth. What makes time management, balance management, planning management, what makes all of that so difficult are the threads of emotions and thoughts that we have and the relationship that we have with time, the relationship we have with ourselves, the relationship we have with others.

Those get intertwined into our ability to take a to-do list from a brain drain and prioritize it. And what can we delegate? And what can we constrain? What can we say no to? What can we put on the back burner? And then what needs to be on the calendar this week, next week, and then three months from now. And then when it comes time to-do the thing that we’re set out to-do, do we honor that? Do we actually do the thing when we said we would do it?

Are we in a relationship with ourselves where we have our own back, where we are honoring the very thing we said we wanted to accomplish. That’s a whole another level. This is why you can get the best time management system in the world. You can get the prettiest journal and planner. You can have multiple calendars on your computer, but if you don’t follow them or honor them or take the time to plan them proactively and really build up that relationship with time and planning, there is no system that will work.

There’s nothing external that you can implement that’s going to help you feel better around your time and to build a better relationship with your time. Okay? So in March, I’m going to be hosting my annual Empowered Principal Spring Training Series. I’m gonna teach how to develop a plan for the last months of school, all the testing, all the celebrations, all the graduations, all the promotions, all the end of year, yada yadas, all the hip hop hoorays. In a way that feels manageable and enjoyable for you.

Enjoy the end of the year, whether you end in May or you end at the end of June. Enjoy the last two months of the year. Don’t run yourself ragged. There’s a way to prep and plan for that now and to delegate more than you ever thought possible and to actually be present and enjoy the celebrations of the end of the year and looking at the accomplishments, focusing on what worked, focusing on all the hard work and the effort and acknowledging it, validating it, celebrating it, versus running on empty, not sleeping, overworking, overexerting, overscheduling yourself back to back, not eating, not getting any rest, feeling like you can’t even comb your hair, you know what I’m saying? Making sure that your shoes match, right?

So I hope you’ll join me in March. I’m going to be covering all things time management, planning management, balance management, but I’m also going to talk about the things that come up in the spring. March and April are heavy hitters with HR stuff. Things like making staffing decisions, how to tell people that you’re letting them go from a place of authenticity and love, and then how to hold space between the time that you tell them and the last day of school.

Because very few professions have this where we tell an employee, “I’m sorry, we’re not going to re-select you for employment next year, but we’d really like you to give it your best for the next three months, even though you know you’re not coming back to our place of employment. Have a nice day.” Yet here we are in education, having to tell people in March that they’re no longer reelected for next year. And then please do your best and get through testing and celebrate the end of the year and don’t be sad. Be happy and please do your best between March, April, May, and into June. Thank you so much for your service. Goodbye. That’s how it feels. We have to hold space for that.

Ourselves, for them, and the embarrassment or the shame or the frustration, whatever they’re feeling. So there’s how you’re feeling about it. There’s how they’re feeling about it. And then the whole staff has an opinion about it. So how to hold space gracefully for all of that. We’re going to talk about that in the Spring Training Series.

I have developed a very authentic, gentle approach to navigate this so it feels more comfortable for you, for them, and for everyone around you. And if you want more, come on in to EPC. You can get started right away at EPC. Doors are open in March. And the link to register for the Spring Training Series.

And by the way, when you join EPC, you get free access to all of my trainings, all of them. And I teach them in EPC. So you don’t have to-double down on your time. I will cover these concepts in EPC, but I also do trainings for people who are not in EPC who just want to a la carte purchase specific trainings.

So you can purchase Spring Training, you can purchase the Mastery Series, you can purchase HR stuff, you can purchase Emotional Regulation. I have the Mastery Series all separated out. You can purchase them a la carte. You can purchase them as a bundle and just join EPC because you get the best value. It’s only $19.97 and you get access to everything.

So for those of you who are new to me and you want to try something out, you can do a la carte or if you are ready to dive in, you get a full year into EPC for one price. Come on in, we can’t wait to meet you. Love you so much, thank you for the work you do. Have an amazing week. Talk to you real soon. Take good care. Bye.

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

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The Empowered Principal® Podcast Angela Kelly | Acknowledging Pain

Do you feel like people are actively trying to hurt you or criticize your every move? If so, you’re not alone. The emotional and mental toll of school leadership can be incredibly painful and isolating.

In this deeply personal and vulnerable episode, I share a raw and unfiltered message that I recently posted in my public Facebook group for school leaders. I dive deep into the struggles that so many principals and administrators face, especially when they’re new to the role or dealing with particularly challenging situations.

If you’re suffering emotionally and feeling like you’re not cut out to be a leader, this episode is for you. I offer validation, support, and practical tips for acknowledging your pain and moving through it with grace and resilience. You’ll come away feeling seen, heard, and empowered to keep showing up as the leader your school needs.

 

The Empowered Principal® Collaborative is my latest offer for aspiring and current school leaders who want to create exceptional impact and enjoy the school leadership experience. Join us today to become a member of the only certified life and leadership coaching program for school leaders in the country by clicking here.

Ready to dive deeper into leading with confidence this spring? Join me for the Spring Training Series for School Leaders—an 8-session live program starting in March, designed to empower you through HR, testing, leadership, and more. If you’re not quite ready for the full Empowered Principal Program, this standalone series is perfect for you! Click here to register!

 

What You’ll Learn From this Episode:

  • Why it’s crucial to acknowledge and validate your feelings instead of pretending to be okay.
  • How to identify and label your emotions to process them more effectively.
  • The importance of releasing emotions through crying, screaming, or physical movement.
  • How to ask your emotions what wisdom or insight they have to offer you.
  • Why making mistakes is a necessary part of the learning process as a leader.
  • How to prioritize and delegate when you’re feeling overwhelmed by your to-do list.
  • The difference between reacting and responding to challenging situations and emotions.

 

Listen to the Full Episode:

Featured on the Show:

Full Episode Transcript:

Hello empowered principals. Welcome to episode 372. 

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

Well, hello, my Empowered Principals. Happy Tuesday. I hope you’re doing well. I have a very different type of podcast for you today. This is something I have never done before. I have a public Facebook group for empowered principals. It’s a group where anybody who is in education, who’s an aspiring leader, who is currently a leader, whether you’re site leader, district leader, assistant principal, principal, director, coordinator, superintendent, whatever, you can be in this group. Anybody can find it. It’s a public group and it’s a Facebook group.

And in that group, I go in regularly and create comments and support people and offer Facebook Live videos. And recently, a new Principal had just found the Facebook group and she was struggling in so much suffering and pain. And I read her post or her comment and my heart ached because I remember what it feels like to be new. I remember what it feels like to be so overwhelmed, so deflated, so defeated, where you feel so behind that you don’t know how you’re going to get out of it. You feel like people hate you, and they’re actively trying to hurt you or come at you sideways or be ugly. And it’s a very lonely, it’s very isolating, it’s a very painful experience.

And hey, you don’t have to be new for this experience to happen. This happened to me multiple times over the course of my seven years in school leadership. In the beginning, for sure, it happened. But any time that a teacher or staff member was unhappy with something that they felt was impacted because of me, if they thought it was my fault, or they thought it was my decision or they just didn’t like me for whatever reason, because I’m short. Or I laugh funny or I’m super bubbly or who knows? I just annoyed them. I wasn’t their person. And there were people who found ways to be extremely hurtful and talk behind my back and say terrible things and tell the superintendent untruths. It was a very painful time.

I was thinking about this person and I just jumped on a Facebook live and I recorded from my soul, from my heart speaking to this person and to anybody who is suffering emotionally, who’s in pain, and how to handle that pain.

You are cut out for school leadership. Your brain is going to tell you that you’re not because the emotional and the mental toll can feel overwhelming. It can feel like you can’t handle it. I’ve been there. I totally get it.

And so today I thought I would share that Facebook live. It got hundreds of views within the group and I’m just offering it to you in case you or somebody you know is in pain and they’re suffering and they’re feeling like they’re not cut out to be a leader. That isn’t true. You are cut out to be a leader. And how do we know you’re a leader? You’re in the position.

So whether you’re a first year or you’re a veteran, the amount of time you’ve been in leadership doesn’t matter. When you’re in pain, pain is pain. The circumstances don’t matter. What matters is when you’re in pain, it feels like it’s never going to leave, it’s never going to end, and you don’t know how to get out.

And this Facebook Live, it’s pretty raw, it’s pretty vulnerable, and it’s here for you to acknowledge and validate these feelings. They didn’t come out of nowhere. They’re here for a reason.

So tune in, listen to this Facebook Live. If you’re on Facebook and you’re interested, you can always join the public group. And when you become a member of EPC, we have a private group where I upload all of my resources, all of the trainings, all of the webinars, everything that I teach, everything that I train, all of the resources, the workbooks, the guides that I have developed, they’re all in EPC, but this group is for the public.

So come on over, check us out. I hope this Facebook Live audio is helpful to anyone out there who is suffering. And if you want more support, please feel free to reach out and call. At the very least, we’ll do a free consult call. I’ll talk you through it. And if EPC isn’t in your immediate future, but you’d like to join us later, that’s great too.

So I wish you well, I wish you happiness, and I wish you peace and empowerment. Enjoy the show.

I want to take a moment and welcome our new Empowered Principles in the group.

A lot of people have been coming in looking for some reprieve, looking for some relief. And this message is definitely for you. If you are struggling this year, if you feel like you’re in survival mode, if you’re barely hanging on, if you feel like you’re not going to make it, if you feel like you’re being crushed or that you think that you can’t handle this, or you’re not cut out to be a school leader, or this is just too much, I want this message to be directed directly for you.

So the first thing I wanna say is that I can relate. I was there in your shoes in this job. I was a single mom opening a brand new school, my very first two years in school leadership. I had construction nightmares happening on my campus. I had a teacher who applied to the administrative position and did not get it. She was very bitter and hurt and upset, understandably. I had people who did not like me. I had been a kindergarten teacher. They didn’t feel that I was competent in upper grades. I had people who tried, actively tried, to get people to dislike me, to kind of group up against me. So I feel that burn.

I had parents screaming in my face, raging at me, refusing to leave the campus, refusing to leave the office, people threatening to go to the newspaper, people threatening to go to the superintendent. It was rough. And if you’re in, oh gosh, it makes me want to cry just thinking about it.

So first of all, I just want to say I relate to you. I know how painful that is when you’re having one heck of a tough year. So first of all, I’m so glad you joined the Empowered Principal group. This is a free group. It’s open to the public. I try to ensure that it’s aspiring school leaders, new school leaders, that it’s school leader related. I try not to let people solicit in here. Our team cuts that off. As soon as we see somebody marketing or salesy or trying to promote themselves, we delete that stuff because this is a safe space. It’s a sacred space for you. You get to say how you feel in this group. You get to be honest about it. And I want you to know that if you feel you need support in this group, all you have to do is just post how you’re feeling.

Do a brain drain, just get it all out onto this page. I will respond to every single person who hosts in this group. I keep an active watch on, on this. This it’s my group. Like you are my people and you are attracted into this group because you want to feel better. You want to feel empowered and you might feel desperate right now.

So when you’re in this zone and it feels like everything is overwhelming you and it’s crushing you and you feel like you cannot breathe, the first thing you need to do is you need to validate those feelings. You need to acknowledge them. Empowerment isn’t about pretending to be empowered. Empowerment isn’t about faking it till you make it. It’s the worst advice I’ve ever received because faking it till you make it, that is what creates imposter syndrome. That is what weakens your confidence when you’re faking it.

When you’re feeling your body’s in fight or flight, neurologically, your body is screaming at you to get out. This isn’t safe. It doesn’t feel good. Nothing about this is working. I can’t handle this. But ultimately, your body and your mind and your heart and your gut is telling you to get out, to flee. It’s not safe.

Or if you’re like me, fight. And by fight, what I mean is you want to get in there and fix all the problems and prove yourself. And you want to, you want to explain yourself and justify and argue and defend and not really retaliate, but you want to try and prove yourself to like force people to see that you mean well, you have good intentions, that you’re trying to do a good job. That’s a form of fight or flight.

When you, when you feel hurt, when people have wrongly accused you, when you tried to help and somebody turned it into how you were incompetent and didn’t know how to do your job and you failed and they’re pointing fingers and they’re blaming you and they’re accusing you, criticizing you, judging you, it is crushing to the soul. And there is a period of time on this journey. Ooh, I’m really feeling the feels for you guys today. Wow. Ooh.

So the first thing you can do is just acknowledge how you feel. Say it out loud. I’m hurt. I’m sad. I’m frustrated. I am angry.

I am pissed. I am devastated. I am overwhelmed. I’m exhausted. Say it out loud. Claim it. The feelings aren’t going away if you pretend that they’re not there. If you pretend to go in and fake it, and that’s what false positivity is, or toxic positivity, when people say, like, positivity is toxic, they’re talking about fake, faking it, faking positivity.

Especially on the weekends, guys. Here it is Sunday, you probably have the Sunday scaries and they’re probably bringing up some legit shit. I had to say it, it rhymed. But some, you know, it’s legitimate feelings here. And it’s coming to the surface and it feels horrible because what’s happening is you feel like you shouldn’t feel that way. I shouldn’t feel so this, I shouldn’t feel this, I should feel this.

So first of all, you add it to the flames by judging yourself, criticizing yourself, telling yourself you should feel different than you do, when instead the solution, the antidote, is to acknowledge the feelings. I feel this, I’m enraged, I am furious. Sometimes I have to look up emotion lists to kind of like nail how I’m feeling. There’s the anger, there’s all the spectrum of anger, there’s all the spectrum of sadness, there’s the spectrum of depression, there’s the spectrum of apathy, there’s the spectrum of hurt, grieving. There’s so many feelings out that we feel as humans. And seeing if you can label them, identifying them, is step one. Just acknowledge that they’re there.

And then you’ve got to validate them. There is nothing wrong with feeling the way you feel. When it seems like there are tens if not dozens of people upset at you judging you criticizing you it feels like you’re being ostracized. It feels like you’re being disconnected and when we feel disconnected as humans when we’re wired for connection, it’s very scary. It’s like being ostracized out of public and being isolated and alone. It’s a horrible feeling.

So I’m sorry if you feel that way. And I know school leadership is very isolating. It hurts because you are oftentimes the only administrator on that campus. You’re the only one. It feels like all of them against one of you. So I just want to acknowledge that for you.

And I’m sorry if you’re hurting and you feel that way, but I’m here to help. So, a couple of simple, simple things you can do is just to say it out loud. How do you feel? What’s the label? If you can label it, and if you can’t label it, what’s the sound? Where do you feel it in your body? Just scream it out, or punch a pillow, or go cry in bed. Do something that releases that emotion for you. Crying’s one of the best things that ever happened to humans because it is the release of emotion. It is the release of that energy buildup in your body. And eventually when you’re done with the tears, your body’s done, you’re going to feel like a, just going to be a moment of calm and some, just a temporary peace.

And in that moment, when you’ve acknowledged and you validated your feelings, you just said, it’s okay to feel this way, feel it, sit with it, breathe through it. Just take some deep breaths, ground yourself. I like to like, I either like to crawl into bed or I like to sit like on my floor, on my carpet, firm, just firmly sitting, whatever’s comfortable for your back and your backside and all of that. Whatever feels good, okay?

Then take a couple of deep breaths and there’s kind of this now what? I’ve had these feelings. Yes, I’ve validated them. I’ve felt them. I’ve processed them. I’ve let them kind of just rapture in my body. Like they just kind of take over and you just let them all out. Okay. And then you have a moment of like, what next?

This is the time when, this is what I do. I know this sounds kind of weird, but it works. You ask the feeling what it’s there for. Why am I feeling this way? And is there any wisdom? Is there any insight? Is there any knowledge? Is there information? Is there an awareness that I need to develop? What is the emotion here for? I have not met an emotion that I haven’t learned from.

So when I’m angry, oftentimes when I write it all down, here’s why I’m angry, I would write it down, down, down. And then I’ll say, anger, what are you here for?

What wisdom, what awareness do I need to gain here? There’s something here for me. There’s a nugget I need to learn or a skill I need to have or some insight or some information or knowledge. Is there anything you’ve got for me? Why did you show up at my door? I invited in for coffee. Let’s talk. Anger, what have you got for me?

Oftentimes, for me, anger tends to be there’s some kind of injustice happening, or I’ve been wrongly accused. That’s a form of injustice, right? Like there’s an injustice out there externally I’m upset about, or there’s an injustice I feel like has occurred, like, to me. And sometimes I’m just angry because I need to take action. Anger is a lot of energy and oftentimes it can be channeled into an action.

Now, if you’re angry with yourself, if you’re feeling like you are upset with yourself, you mishandled something or you didn’t know something, you weren’t aware of something, or you misspoke or you misstepped, some kind of perceived mistake or failure, you can feel that and validate that. And then what can I learn? You can’t get it right until you get it wrong. That’s the duality. That’s the dissonance required for you to know what to do.

So just know that when you misstep or misspeak or make a mistake, there’s an error, you were just not aware of something and something happened and it upset people. You can learn from that and take it away and then apply it forward and take ownership of it. You can repair it or apologize or whatever it is you need to do, but know that there’s no one on the planet that got it right. Always the first time they had to get it wrong in order to even know what right was. So there’s that.

If you’re feeling super overwhelmed, that’s normal. Every leader feels overwhelmed. And that’s a matter of like, we are thinking in kind of this ambiguous way. If you’re super overwhelmed, if it’s just too much to do in non-adjunct time, and everyone’s coming at you 100 miles an hour, and you’re playing whack-a-mole, and you don’t know how to, it just, it feels like you can’t handle it all.

That, I have a very specific program for. Come on into EPC, join right away, you’ll get time mastery, balance mastery, planning mastery. That’s all technique and skill that I’ve learned over my years in school leadership. That can be taught. That’s a skill. But if you’re feeling it right now, again, acknowledge it, validate it, and you can be overwhelmed. And then when you get to the part where you’re like, and now what? Okay. Then that’s when you brain-dare your to-do list, that’s when you start prioritizing, that’s when you have to start breaking it down.

And if that feels hard, the hardest things about planning is prioritization, delegation, right? And then saying no, like being constraining, basically. Being able to know what to say yes to and what to say no to, and making decisions through the lens of those priorities and what you value as a school leader. Okay?

Now, if you’re feeling hurt, if you’re feeling like people are mad at you or people’s behaviors out of control, a lot of newer principals will feel overwhelmed by other people’s emotions. People can be nasty, they can be mean, they can be sharp with their words, they can be nasty in their actions. And there is a gap from being a teacher and feeling included and belonging and significant and like you’re in a group, you’re in that group to feeling this isolation.

There’s a gap from learning how to handle being the leader, being isolated on your own, being the authority figure, but also having the capacity to navigate your own emotional experience and your own experience as a school leader while also holding space for everybody else’s emotions. And let me tell you people are spraying their emotions all over all over. Kids are spraying emotion. There’s emotional dysregulation in children and emotional dysregulation in adults.

And if that is a problem for you, again, come on into EPC. But my quick little tidbit for you to help you right now is if people are being nasty to you, again, state how you feel. Just acknowledge it. You don’t have to go above it. You don’t have to be walk on water perfect. Just acknowledge it. You’re human. Validate it. It feels terrible that people be so nasty and ugly. And when they’re coming at you sideways, it’s okay to have human emotions.

Again, we’re not faking perfection here. We’re not faking aloofness. We’re not faking that we’re bulletproof emotionally. No one’s bulletproof emotionally. We all have tenderness, tender spots because we’re human, because we care. We’re in the business of people. We’re in the business of human development. That’s what education is. And we are on a human development journey as a leader and as an adult.

Every person on your campus is on a journey of human development, personal development, academic development, physical development, social-emotional development. It’s all a journey, okay? Give yourself a little grace here. And I teach a program within EPC, which is the Empowered Principal Collaborative. It’s a group coaching program for school leaders. It’s called emotional regulation mastery. It’s how to understand and leverage your emotional capacity to be emotionally mature, emotionally responsible.

And by emotionally responsible, what I mean is emotionally responsive. You’re responding versus reacting. There is a difference. Most people react. They feel the emotion and they react. They say something, they do something in reaction to that initial emotion versus I’m feeling a feeling, I’m going to feel, I’m going to acknowledge it, I’m going to validate it. And I’m pausing any decisions and actions in the meantime. And then once I’ve cleared that energy, emotional energy, now I’m in a space to decide with intention how I’m going to respond.

So I know Sunday can be tough. Last week I talked about the Sunday scaries. If you’re still feeling the Sunday scaries, try validating how you actually feel. And you can definitely focus on what’s working, what feels good, what are you looking forward to. But if that doesn’t work, if you can’t tip into feeling good and you can’t bridge that gap, you’ve got to go in and stop faking it. Stop pretending you’re okay. Stop pretending that you’re not bothered by it.

That’s what I used to do. I used to act strong. I used to act resilient. I used to pretend that I was okay. I wasn’t. I feel for you. I’m here for you. I love you. I love the work you’re doing. I know the job, it’s so hard.

And I want you to share this with any school administrator who is struggling, who feels like the school’s against them or the world is against them or the odds are stacked against you. We can help. One, little by little, we can break away and break through and create a shift and we can bridge the gap so that you can get into feeling much more empowered, much calmer, much more grounded, much more peaceful.

So I love you so much. Take good care. If you want to talk to me personally, just DM me and we’ll set up a call. I’m here for you. I don’t want you to suffer any more than necessary. Okay? Breathe deep, acknowledge your emotions, validate them, feel them. And take a couple more deep breaths and then ask yourself, what can I learn from this? What is there available to me?

And then you can get into what’s working. What am I excited about? Is there anything that can give me some energy? Love you. 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. 

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The Empowered Principal® Podcast Angela Kelly | Blamed the Villain

Have you ever felt like you were unfairly cast as the villain in someone else’s story? As a school leader, it’s all too common to be blamed for other people’s unhappiness, discontent, and dissatisfaction. But the truth is, you’re not a master puppeteer controlling everyone’s lives and experiences.

In this raw and personal episode, I dive into what it feels like to be wrongly accused and labeled as the “bad guy” in leadership. I share my own experiences of being blamed for other people’s feelings, decisions, and actions – and how I learned to navigate those painful situations with grace and empowerment.

Join me as we explore the duality of leadership, the importance of emotional regulation, and how to stand confidently in your truth even when others misunderstand or attack you. You’ll learn practical tools for processing difficult emotions, discerning what feedback to take on, and maintaining your identity as a good person and leader, no matter what labels others cast upon you.

 

The Empowered Principal® Collaborative is my latest offer for aspiring and current school leaders who want to create exceptional impact and enjoy the school leadership experience. Join us today to become a member of the only certified life and leadership coaching program for school leaders in the country by clicking here.

Ready to dive deeper into leading with confidence this spring? Join me for the Spring Training Series for School Leaders—an 8-session live program starting in March, designed to empower you through HR, testing, leadership, and more. If you’re not quite ready for the full Empowered Principal Program, this standalone series is perfect for you! Click here to register!

 

What You’ll Learn From this Episode:

  • Why people tend to blame leaders for their own unhappiness and cast them as “villains”.
  • How to drop defensiveness and truly listen when receiving difficult feedback.
  • The importance of processing your emotions before trying to address a situation.
  • How to discern what feedback is yours to own and what is a projection from others.
  • Why your identity and self-perception must be stronger than others’ opinions of you.
  • How to stand in your power and let others be “wrong” about you when necessary.
  • The difference between being a “villain” and simply being human and making mistakes.

 

Listen to the Full Episode:

Featured on the Show:

Full Episode Transcript:

Hello empowered principals. Welcome to episode 371. 

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, my empowered principals. Happy Tuesday. Welcome to February. Here we are, trucking along, getting through that winter. I know for me, I am freezing here in Nashville. We have had extreme cold, as you’ve probably seen on the news if you don’t live in the South. It’s been colder here than my home state of Iowa. We’ve had more snow. It’s pretty wild. So I am adjusting and I am doing my best to embrace sweaters and sweatpants and warm socks and my Uggs and lots of layers and hot tea. So may you be warm wherever you are in the world.

All right. Today I’m going to talk about a topic that is very, it’s raw, it’s personal, it’s near and dear to my heart. And what I love about the work that I do is I create from a place of experience. The topics that I bring up, the work that I offer, the services I offer, the coaching that I provide, the content, the coursework, the programming, everything that I have created in my business and in the services through the Empowered Principal, they’re all founded in my own personal experience.

That is the only way that I can know that they work because I’m the one who experiences it. I’m the one who tests it. I’m the one who tries it. I find out what works. I find out what doesn’t. I do the workbooks and the workshops myself. I’m integrated into the work that I do with my clients. And I am always studying myself. I’m studying my brain, I’m studying how I feel, I’m noticing the resistance, the limitations that I have in my mind, and I work on them actively so that I can provide you with very real authentic perspectives and things to consider and alternate thoughts to think and using your emotions as your compass and leading your school in a way that feels very authentic and aligned to who you are.

Because you can take these tools and you can apply this coaching and you can customize it in a way that no matter what your values are, or what you want to prioritize, or how you feel, or how you want to feel, or the accomplishments you want to achieve, or the goals you’ve set for yourself, or the experiences you want to have in this lifetime, it works no matter what. Because you plug in your experiences, your thoughts, your feelings, your desires, your dreams, and you implement them in a way in your life that will translate into the same outcomes. Meaning, feeling more fulfilled, feeling more balanced, feeling more relaxed, feeling more empowered, feeling more fulfilled, more joy, and really loving and appreciating the opportunity to be a school leader and to have the balance and a full life outside of school leadership. To be one human who loves what they do while they’re at work and loves their life outside of work.

That’s what this is all about. We are in the business of human development, as I say. That’s what education is. It is the business of human development. And we don’t stop developing when we graduate from college and obtain that teaching credential. We will continue to develop until our last human days on the planet.

And this topic is near and dear to my heart because it’s happened to me in my own life personally and I have deeply contemplated this because it was such a profound impact on my life, on my identity, on my psyche, on my mental and emotional wellness, state of wellness, and I’m offering it to you here.

Now, of course, this is going to be like the outline version of it for the podcast. I’m actually diving deeper into this into a new program that I am offering coming in March. I’ll tell you more about it. It’s the Spring Training Series for School Leaders through the Empowered Principal Program. It’s a separate standalone program. So if you are not ready to jump in and join EPC, which is the full school year program, you can give this a try. It’s an eight session program that I’m going to be teaching live through the first two weeks of March. And I’m covering all things related to spring. So all of your HR, all of testing mindset and empowerment and creating a relaxed and confident environment for your testing, talking about hiring, firing, letting people go from love. We’re going to talk about setting things up for testing, and then we’re going to get into how to enjoy the last eight weeks of school. There’s a lot of celebrations, a lot of events, how to not get overwhelmed and overworked and overexhausted, how to learn how to delegate like a boss and enjoy and actually celebrate the end of the year, how to reflect and contemplate on what you’ve learned, how you’ve grown, the accomplishments you’ve created, really acknowledging and validating yourself.

And then we’re going to get into what I call vision forecasting, which is future planning, looking ahead, designing the experience you want to have. And finally, we’re going to talk about leadership identity. So it is a full program. There is a lot of content in these eight sessions that we’re going to do.

And I will have our producers put the link to register for that program in the show notes. And if you have any questions at all, feel free to just reach out to me on Facebook or Instagram or email, angelakellycoaching@gmail.com. You know where to find me and I will be happy to set up a phone chat with you and answer any questions that you have. Or you can ask them your questions to me directly on social media. So happy to connect with you in any way that’s most comfortable for you.

So let’s dive in to being blamed as the villain. As a school leader, there are going to be people who consider you to be the villain in their story. You’re the bad guy or gal. They’re going to blame you as the reason for their unhappiness, their discontent, their dissatisfaction.

They are thinking that you are the reason, whether it’s your decisions or your actions or your energy or just because you’re on the planet, because you’re in the position of authority, you must be the reason why they are not happy. Or that you’re the reason why life is hard for them, or they’re not feeling the way they want to, they’re not accomplishing what they want to. 

People get upset about master schedules, they get upset about the class list, they get upset about test scores, they get upset about the copy machines, they get upset about the number of copies, they get upset about the timing of meetings, they get upset about the content, the topics of the meetings, professional development, they might be upset about how long the maintenance waitlist takes or the technology people take, they might feel that you’re pressuring them to perform. People will have all kinds of thoughts and they like to focus their discontent towards the leader.

Now, this especially applies to the spring season because in spring, you know what happens. There is a lot of staffing conversation going on. This is the HR season for you. You are wrapping up observations, you’re having those evaluation conversations and post-observation conversations. You’re giving people administrative feedback and evaluative feedback. You’re making decisions about if somebody’s going to go on an improvement plan, if somebody’s going to be satisfactory or not, if somebody is going to be returning or not, or if somebody is going to be reassigned, you’re making a lot of staffing decisions and those do impact people. And when you make decisions that impact people, it is very easy for them to believe that you are the reason they are unhappy with your decisions.

Okay, so they’re going to be upset about performance reviews or tenure, getting tenure, not getting tenure, being invited back, not being invited back. Being reassigned, as I said, if there’s staffing changes, maybe somebody’s coming off of leave or somebody’s going on to leave or there’s, you know, just the numbers aren’t going to hold, you know, you’re not going to be able to have four third grades next year or you’re not going to be able to have five people in your English department and you need to downsize or you need to shift somebody around, right? They’ll get upset about that. Sometimes they get upset because somebody else is being moved around. Their best buddy got moved or reassigned or isn’t being asked back. And they’re just as upset about that as they are if it were happening to them.

Now, especially if you are a brand new principal, if this is your first year at your site, even if you’re not a brand new, but if it’s your first year at a site, this is their first go around with you in the spring season so they’re not sure what to anticipate and they can be very nervous. And they also see that there’s usually a lot of staffing changes happening at the site administrative level. APs, principals coming and going, getting reassigned, people at the district level, central office level, coming, going, getting reassigned, that kind of thing. So there’s a lot of nervousness around employment, around staffing.

So be aware of that if you’re brand new, it’s coming. And if you’re, this isn’t your first rodeo, you already know what’s coming. And you’ll want to be able to navigate that. This is one of the major things I’m going to be covering in the spring training series for school leaders.

So if this is an area you are interested in learning more about and feeling more confident and feeling more assured of yourself and your decisions and working on how to navigate and hold conversations without you freaking out and going into fight or flight, remaining calm, remaining assured of yourself so that you can hold space for those conversations. We’re gonna be talking about that when it comes to all things HR, staffing, firing people, hiring people, holding space that awkward time between when the day you tell somebody they’re not coming back and then they weirdly have to work and try to perform at their best for the next two or three months.

It’s crazy. You tell them in March they’ve got to work March, April, May, sometimes into June before it’s their last day of employment. So we’re going to talk about that. But there is a lot of spring fever anxiety that comes up.

One, they’re really nervous about their evaluations. Two, they’re nervous about staffing and employment, understandably so. And three, for the people who are in testing grades, usually grades three and up in elementary and then obviously middle and high school, kids are all testing. State testing, you know, season is coming and people get very anxious about what they’ve covered. They’re trying to cram it in. They’re trying to really hammer it in for the kids and test prep starts and people start getting a little irritable and school feels a little less fun for everybody during this season. So there’s a lot of tension in the air when people are nervous, when people are unsure, when they don’t understand what’s happening or why it’s happening or just the unknown of how the kids are going to perform and what that’s going to reflect on them as teachers.

Okay. So all of this energy is going around in the spring. There’s excitement because it is spring. You got spring fever, you have spring fever behaviors, both in students and adults. And then you have this nervous energy around HR stuff and around, you know, the testing window.

So I just have to say, this kind of energy, this really high buzz, but also anxiety driven, very anxious, worried, doubts, fears, all of it’s coming to the surface, it’s intensifying. This is why I have the dream of making the type of coaching that I offer, this empowerment coaching, a mainstream practice for everyone in our schools.

Because I’m starting with school leaders because you’re such a pivotal position within the district, right? You’re the ultimate middle manager and you have the capacity to create impact and a ripple effect up and out to your staff, students and community and also up towards your district.

So can you imagine if this type of coaching is available to everyone on campus, it’s part of professional development, personal development integrating into professional development, which becomes a mainstream practice for everyone. So once a person becomes aware of how to step into their personal power, and be able to maturely regulate and manage their emotions, their emotional state, and their reactions to their feelings, and they’re able to access empowerment through awareness and alignment, your teachers are going to feel so much more control over their professional experience in their career.

Paired professionals, support staff, if they had access to this knowledge, they would be able to regulate, they’d be able to make decisions from a more empowered place. Is this the right job for me? Is this the right school for me? How do I want to show up? I want to be the best version of me as an employee. What does that look like? What training do I need? Let me take responsibility for my career and ask for the things I need, get into alignment with what feels good and collaborate, get on board and coach myself when I am in resistance or when I do feel like I’ve hit an upper limiting belief.

Right. I can just imagine the difference in schools when adults have access to this type of coaching and this type of conversation and this type of content and information. It’s going to be so incredible when you as the leader are able to integrate this work into who you are and to model it for your teachers and eventually, I promise you, it will come in the Empowered Principal programming to extend this out to staff and students.

For now, we’re starting with site and district leaders because those are the people who make decisions about the vision, the future, the approach that we take, the mindset that we embody, the vision of who we’re becoming. So this work starts with us, always, internally first, in order to have it work its way into reality, into the existence of the program and of the vision that you have for your school.

So this is why people think that you are the villain. Number one, they don’t have this pocket. But number two, you are the villain because you are the leader. First and foremost, when you stepped into the leadership position, people immediately perceived you as having control and power over their career and over their situation, over their assignment, over their teaching experience, their grade level experience, the culture and climate of the school, all of it.

They see you as having this some kind of otherworldly power once you step into a leadership position and you’re kind of the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain making everything happen. And it’s determining how they feel. It’s determining how they experience things. They think you have this power over them to make them feel good or feel bad because they believe that you have the control to change things for the better or for the worse for them.

I know when I went into school leadership, my peers were like, “Bo, you’ve gone to the dark side” and teachers get really into this. There is teacher solidarity, and then there is administrative. Two teams. That’s how people view it. Some people. I like to bring this back together as one. But people told me, “Oh you’re going to the dark side.” I’m like, “The dark side?” That’s interesting that you think that.

And it does feel like that sometimes because you feel really isolated and alone. And it feels a little dark because you’re navigating in the fog sometimes. But I promise you, you’ve not gone to the dark side. You haven’t become an evil person or a bad person, and you’re not a master puppeteer who is now taking over control of people’s lives and careers and experiences.

Honestly, our teachers, they give us way too much power. They think we have way more power than we actually do. But because we have the positional authority, villains tend to be labeled as leaders and leaders are labeled as villains because in that scenario, they’re believing you possess the power and they are the opposite of that, which is a victim, which they have no power.

So unfortunately there are people who think you were the bad person, you’re the one who created an undesirable situation for them, they’re unhappy with you but they don’t want to tell you because they don’t want you to make life worse for them, so they talk behind your back, and the story they tell is through the lens of how you’ve hurt them, how you’ve made them suffer, how you’re negatively impacting them.

You’re the reason behind, get this, you become the reason behind their decisions and actions. And I find this fascinating where someone labels you as the villain, that because you did this or said this or decided this, now that’s the reason why they have to respond or react in this way. They had to make this decision. They had to say the thing or this is why they behaved the way they did.

And they justify their own behaviors, their own actions, their own words based on you, which is completely the opposite of empowerment. It’s saying you’re the puppeteer behind my decisions and actions and words and behaviors. That can’t be true.

But when people don’t want to take ownership or they don’t know how, they don’t have the tools or access to understanding their emotional experience and how to regulate those emotions, how to allow themselves to feel a certain way and validate that, and then take ownership of it and shift it into more positive energy when they don’t know how to do that. And of course they don’t because we’re not teaching it to adults and we’re not really teaching it to kids.

When they believe that they don’t have agency over their emotional experience, you do become the reason.

They can’t think of any other reason why they would feel the way they do. It’s got to be somebody else, right? And then they justify their less than beautiful behaviors because they think, it’s you. Well, that person made me feel this way, that leader made me feel this way, the principal did this, and I felt this, so I had to react this way. It’s just the way it is.

They don’t understand that they’re not experiencing life in school the way they want to, not because of you, but because of their own mindset. And look, I’m going to say something heart to heart. It hurts to be labeled as the villain. No one wants to be the bad person. We’re taught, do not be the bad person. Be the good person. It’s bad to be the bad guy, right? Bad things happen to bad people.

When we get labeled as a villain, the first thing we do is want to get back out of it as fast as possible and justify and explain ourselves or defend ourselves. We want to try and protect ourselves from the label of villain. And when somebody’s in like a villain victim mindset, it’s a very all-or-none approach, right? It’s either good or bad. It’s that person’s fault or it’s this person’s fault. And because it can’t be my fault because I’m the victim, then it has to be the villain.

So know this. Number one, it stings to be labeled as the bad person. And the first thing you’re gonna do is wanna defend yourself and protect yourself and try to explain yourself and back yourself out of it.

Number two, the next thing that you might do is, am I? And you might believe it and you might, instead of like trying to deny it, you might actually go down a rabbit hole and look for all the ways in which you messed up and did it wrong. And you can really go into a dark space yourself when you’re thinking, what did I do? When did I do that? And then you start to question yourself and doubt yourself. And you actually can convince yourself and talk yourself into believing that yes, in fact, you did do this horrible bad thing, or you made these decisions that hurt people, and it’s your fault they’re suffering, and now you want to grovel and repair and fix and apologize and try to mend and placate them because you feel like you’ve done something wrong.

But here’s the truth, here’s the middle, the land of Anne. We know that there is no such thing as all good or all bad. There is duality in every aspect of our world, in every aspect of our experience. And people are both. People have amazing attributes, positive attributes, and there are moments when we feel so good about ourselves and we’re so proud of ourselves and we feel in alignment with who we are. And then there’s moments where we’re like, oh, I can’t believe I just said that. Or, oh, I overreacted or, oh, I really let my emotions get to me or, oh, I did make that decision from a not very clean place.

Sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Sometimes we succeed. Sometimes we fail. Sometimes we get it right. Sometimes we get it wrong. There is duality in the experience. Whether you’re a leader, a teacher, a student, a parent, a district administrator, doesn’t matter what seat on the bus, we all have the duality experience in our careers. So we’re both.

So just know. Know you aren’t perfect, and they didn’t make a mistake every single time. And know you aren’t perfect and you get it right about half the time. And as leaders, what we want to do in our highest, most aligned self is we want to expand our capacity to hold space for when we get it right and have grace when people are wrong about us and be able to hold that and allow them to be wrong about us?

And we have to have the capacity to hold space when we get it wrong and know how to discern for ourselves what is our responsibility to take on and oops, we got that wrong, we need to repair, apologize, and get it right. Or when we look and say, hey, you know, my opinion of this matter is I feel like I handled it pretty well. I can see why they might misinterpret or maybe I miscommunicated, maybe I need to clarify something, but I do feel in alignment with that decision or that action or that choice of words or how I handled something. So oftentimes we allow people to tell us, you got it right or you got it wrong and just take that for face value.

Now, I’ve recently gone through some personal experiences where I was blamed for somebody else’s feelings, for their decisions, for their actions, for the outcomes that they’ve created in their own life. And I will tell you, it felt incredibly helpless. And the more that the person believed this story that they were creating for themselves, that they were a victim, and that I was their villain, the more that they would tell me, this is how you did it wrong. And this is who you were. And this is this and this and this.

My initial reaction was defensiveness. And then I sat with them. I thought, just stop, drop the defense. Just listen. Don’t get defensive and listen and listen for the truth. And when I listened, it was like, oh, there’s the other 50%.

And I’ll tell you something in those months, in the beginning, my younger self, that more immature version of me where I did not have these tools, the emotional regulation tools and allowing emotions and processing them before I speak and differentiating between reacting to my emotions and responding to them, my younger self would have gone into fight so hard. I would have gone into fight or flight, and I’m a fighter, and I would have been very defensive, protective, and argumentative.

The only time I’m not a fighter is if I’m very intimidated or afraid of somebody, or really afraid of an outcome that actually might not be safe for me physically, psychologically, financially, you know, career-wise, or professionally, anything like that. So before this work, internal work that I’ve done, like I definitely would have defended myself, I would have attacked right back, I would have thrown the blame right back at them, And I would have felt very justified in doing that.

So if that’s you, I feel you. And if you are a fighter, the hardest thing to do and the work that we do when we’re gaining emotional resiliency and regulation and maturity is that we drop the defensiveness. We don’t fight, we sit and listen, we don’t defend, we don’t explain, we don’t justify, we don’t argue, we simply listen, take it in. I have to typically, thank you for sharing, I have to go away and I have to process it in privacy. Because I’m gonna be emotional about it and I have to sit with it until I can come to terms with what I believe is true and decipher for myself what part of their feedback lands true for me and what part of their feedback does not feel like it’s my responsibility.

Now sometimes if you’re typically a fighter you might feel you don’t have the bandwidth. So when I was a principal and people were attacking me, oftentimes I just didn’t feel like I had the emotional bandwidth or desire to deal with all the blaming and the accusations. And in those moments, I would just shut down. I would let them do their thing, but I wasn’t really listening. I wasn’t receiving the feedback. I was just blanket. I kind of put it like a shield over me and I let them say what they were going to say, but I didn’t really engage in conversation at all.

And sometimes you need this approach, especially if it’s happening in real time and you can’t escape and get away, or you don’t feel like you can defend yourself, or you don’t feel like it’s safe to do that, you’re going to be in triage mode, so you might have to back down in that moment. But if you’re a person who tends to be flight risk, if you tend to freeze or flight, when you go, if you go into fight or flight and you’re a more conflict avoidant, I want you to realize that stepping away, but doing nothing with it is just the same as fighting and being defensive without listening.

It doesn’t create a long-term solution unless you’ve made an intentional decision to reflect, review, and then decide if that relationship is going to be cut off for good. You know, sometimes you step out, you freeze, you step away from a relationship, you analyze it and decide, this is the best course of action for me. I need to resign, or I need to move to another school, or I need to move to another school or I need to move to another district or personally you need to end a friendship or a relationship or something like that.

So my invitation whether you go into fight or flight is that there is a moment of pause. So for my fighters, when you want to defend yourself, you take a moment, you drop the defenses and you actually listen. You pause enough to listen and receive the feedback and then you take it with you and reflect.

My fighter flighters, if you are going into flight or freeze, like you just super conflict avoidant, you’re not going to engage in the fight, but you do have to engage in listening and receiving, just like the person who wants to defend themselves. You want to receive it and say, thank you for the feedback and then go into privacy, process how it felt, because it’s gonna feel really horrible, but then trust that you can decipher for yourself what’s true and not true about that feedback.

Because what most people do is they stay in fight or flight when somebody attacks or when somebody blames or accuses them and you’re the villain and they’re the victim. And you’re like, what the heck is going on here? You’re going to go into fight or flight and you’re going to react before you’ve had an opportunity to even contemplate whether the situation that you’re being blamed for is actually because of you or is half your fault or is even within your control.

There are things that people blame leaders for that leaders had nothing to do with. And there is something about creating a tolerance as a leader that requires you to let people be wrong about you or to misunderstand you or to think they know you but they don’t.

Think about it in terms of celebrities. There are people trolling celebrities on the internet 24-7, 365, and they say incredibly mean, hurtful, really shocking things. And those celebrities have to have the bandwidth, and I’m sure they have coaches and they have therapists and they have people to help them regulate emotionally, but they have to separate those person’s horrible, awful, ugly words from the truth of who they are. And they have to let that person hate them, let that person be wrong about them, let that person troll them.

Now, they can put boundaries in place and block the person, or if it gets really ugly, they probably could press charges. But I want you to think about that. Every level you go up, there is going to be more exposure to the possibility of being considered a villain.

And deconstructing the truth of what’s going on is really challenging because it means that you have to hold space for the duality of both the truths. You could be wrongly blamed and then you have to let people be wrong about you, or you could be accurately blamed for part of it and then you have to take ownership for that. That doesn’t feel good. Both are gut-wrenching.

So it’s hard to let people be wrong about us and continue to be confident in ourselves when people are out there falsely accusing us of something that we didn’t do or didn’t say or didn’t have power over, but they believe we do. And the flip side is super hard. It’s really hard to stand in our empowerment, in our role as leader, and say, you know what, as the leader, I got this one wrong. I did something or said something or I miscommunicated or there was an oversight or I did not take into consideration this impact, and it feels terrible.

Or perhaps you reacted to something emotionally and it impacted somebody. Or you were in your own state of fight or flight and said something hurtful, unintentionally or intentionally. And owning that and feeling the remorse of that is equally painful as to have somebody say negative things about you that aren’t true.

But here’s what I want you to know. This is the hard stuff of leadership. This is what we talk about in EPC. In EPC we hold space for you to be able to feel how you feel, to be that wrongly accused, or to have to feel the remorse, or the guilt, or the shame, or the regret of how you’ve handled something and coming up with a plan.

And let me tell you this, in either scenario, you cannot address the situation and respond with intention if you haven’t processed the emotions that come with it. You cannot regulate an emotion that you haven’t yet acknowledged and validated and processed. You just can’t. It’s still in there.

So if you avoid the feeling part and then try to go out and reconcile a wrong accusation, but you haven’t processed how you felt, it will come through energetically in your approach, and people will feel it. It won’t be a clean conversation in either way.

So, what I want to leave you with is, both are true, we have good days and hard days. We make mistakes, and we get it right.

But even when you have done something less than stellar, or something you’re not proud of, or something in hindsight you didn’t realize had an impact on someone and it was hurtful, it doesn’t mean you are a villain. There is the label, and then there’s you. Your identity is not an evil villain with the intention of waking up each morning and looking to go to school and cause all the harm that you can cause. That’s not your heart. That’s not your soul. That’s not why you’re in school leadership. So you’re not the identity of a villain. You simply are a human who made a human error or a misstep.

What they did was label you. They cast you as a character in their story. So you’re cast as a villain in their story. And when you think about it, oftentimes when you are blamed as the villain, as the bad person, it’s because they don’t feel that they have the power to be the hero in their own story. Because there’s the villain, and there’s the victim, and there’s the hero. And they’re not making themselves the hero and saying, look, I’m gonna create the experience I want regardless of this person, because I’m the star of the show. I’m the hero. No, they’re like the side character that doesn’t have a speaking part, and they’re just one of the nameless victims. They’re not even a main character in their own movie.

Because you’re the villain, you’re going around and hurting all the people, and then somebody else is going to come in and save the day and who that is in their story, I don’t know because it can’t be anybody else but them. And until they realize that and they label you, you have to see it’s just a label, it’s just a story. And it’s really a reflection of their lack of personal power and their lack of empowerment in their lives.

So you are good regardless of how other people perceive you. And your identity, your perception of you, it has to matter more than the opinions of other people. You need to learn how to discern for yourself what’s true and not true. And I will tell you this from personal experience, it’s very hard to do it in the moment. I actually don’t know how I would have done it on my own. I had a coach. I had a therapist.

I had a mentor. I had sponsors helping me. I had an army of people to help me unravel the accusations and to also take ownership of my part. And because of this intense work that I’ve done personally, I’ve developed a course on this work because I believe it’s such a profound experience of leadership. The course is going to be included in EPC, in the Empowered Principal Collaborative, so as a member of EPC you’re going to have access to this program.

But as I mentioned earlier, the spring training series for school leaders of 2025 is coming up in March. I’m giving you guys a month notice to get it on your calendars. This is a paid program. There are 8 sessions. It’s going to be held live so you will have the ability to ask questions and engage with me personally. The recordings are going to be all available and for those of you who purchase this program it will be accessible for life.

So I’m going to create a Facebook group just for people who register and I’ll upload all of the resources and all of the replays into that Facebook group and then I can engage with you in the Facebook group as you’re working through the modules. You can ask me questions, you can get coaching, but you’ll have access to that for life. So it’s a one-time fee of $555. You get access to all 8 sessions. You get access to the Facebook group and you’ll get access to me on the live training, or if you watch the replay, you can ask me questions in the Facebook group.

Okay. So for those of you who have been following the Empowered Principal podcast for quite a while, you know that I throw down my best content here, I don’t hold anything back, but I can tell you this, there is a difference between the podcast and coaching. The podcast shares overarching ideas, concepts, content, information, and it’s free because I want every principal, every district leader, every educational person on the planet to have access to these ideas. I think they’re going to change the entire experience of education. I really, really do.

So It’ll be free forever on the podcast, I give you my best here. And it’s content that you can consume, and then interpret on your own, and self-apply.

But coaching, being in EPC, or for those of you who are interested in one-on-one, it takes you deeper. It takes these concepts deeper. It helps you actively integrate them and apply them into your life daily, on the daily, and you have the support of somebody else who kind of helps you see around those blind spots.

I’m telling you, when I was going through this myself, there is no way that I could have self-coached during the intensity of the emotions I was experiencing. I couldn’t see through the fog of all of the confusion in my mind. And having a coach, having a mentor, having people to support me, having therapy, and they all serve different purposes. But the purpose of coaching, it takes the work down to a transformative level.

I believe that coaching is the processing of an expansion of your awareness, of your insights, and of your development as a human and as a leader. It’s a different experience than most people have ever experienced before. And because I believe in coaching so deeply and I believe in school leadership so profoundly, I’ve decided to start offering some of my courses in a more a la carte fashion.

So the Spring Training Series is an a la carte fashion. You don’t have to be an EPC to sign up for it. You can purchase it separately. And then if you decide, this is the most fun part. If you decide that you loved it so much, you want to join EPC, you can apply the $555 towards the cost of EPC. So you can take the Spring Training Program, see if you love it. If you love it and you want more, you can take the $555 and apply it to the cost of EPC. And then once you’re in EPC, you get access to everything.

So the link for the Spring Training Series will be in the show notes. If you have any questions, reach out. We can schedule a quick chat and I can answer any questions you have or you can just simply email me at angelakellycoaching@gmail.com. Find me on Facebook, find me on Instagram. I will be happy to message you and answer any questions that you have.

Have a beautiful week. I love you all and I appreciate the work that you’re doing. Take good care of yourselves and I’ll talk to you next week. 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.

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The Empowered Principal® Podcast Angela Kelly | Embracing Change

Do you ever feel like you’re constantly trying to create a calm and consistent environment at your school? As school leaders, we often strive for routines and predictability. But what if I told you that embracing change is actually the key to growth and success?

In this episode, we’ll explore why change is essential and how it can lead to innovation, creativity, and evolution in our schools. I share my own personal journey with change and how I’ve learned to embrace it rather than resist it.

Get ready to shift your mindset and see change in a whole new light. We’ll discuss practical strategies for not only accepting change but actually celebrating it. By the end of this episode, you’ll be equipped with the tools and perspective to lead your school through change with confidence and enthusiasm.

 

Sign up for the Mid-Year Reboot series here!

The Empowered Principal® Collaborative is my latest offer for aspiring and current school leaders who want to create exceptional impact and enjoy the school leadership experience. Join us today to become a member of the only certified life and leadership coaching program for school leaders in the country by clicking here.

 

What You’ll Learn From this Episode:

  • Why striving for constant calm and consistency can lead to stagnancy.
  • How change is a natural and necessary part of growth and evolution.
  • The importance of embracing change as a school leader.
  • How to reframe change as an opportunity rather than a threat.
  • Strategies for managing the pace and intensity of change in your life and school.
  • Why showing up for yourself and your emotions is crucial during times of change.
  • How to sell yourself and others on the benefits of change.

 

Listen to the Full Episode:

 

Featured on the Show:

Full Episode Transcript:

Hello empowered principals. Welcome to episode 370. 

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, empowered principals. Happy Tuesday! Welcome to the podcast. I’ve got a short and sweet one for you today. I’m going to talk about how to love change. Because nobody loves change, but yet change is a constant. So, why not embrace it? We’re going to talk about how you as a school leader can learn to love change and embrace it and help others do the same.

Because what we do as school leaders is we spend a lot of energy trying to create calm and consistent schools. And teachers try to spend a lot of energy and time creating a calm and consistent classroom. Calm and consistent feels amazing to our brains. We love calm. We love consistent. And look, it is very important to have routines and habits so that the brain can trust and relax into the knowing of what to expect and what’s to come. So creating calm and consistency is a beautiful goal. It’s one of my goals, personally and professionally.

But what I have noticed in my own life and with my clients is that any goal, even calm and consistency, too much of a good thing is not a good thing. I want you to imagine a world, a school, a life, where everything is calm and consistent. No changes, no surprises, no spontaneity, no dips, no twists, no turns, no change. Just imagine a world that stagnant, that calm, that consistent, that safe. At best, a world like that would be very boring. But at its worst, it’s stagnant. It’s actually death. Stagnancy is death.

When everything’s completely consistent, completely calm, completely expected, completely certain, and there’s no change, that is the start of decline. Everything on this planet was designed to experience change. The planet, as we speak, as you’re listening to this podcast, is changing. The universe is changing. The stars, the sun, all of existence is changing as we stand here on planet Earth. It’s changing all around us, everything. Our bodies, changing. Our children’s bodies, changing. Our school, changing. All of it. And yet our human brain wants to hold on to the belief that calm and consistency is the happiest place on earth, the safest place on earth. So we’re gonna play a little game.

What if for 5 minutes, for the next 5 to 10 minutes that you’re with me on this podcast, let’s just pretend that we decided that calm and consistent is not the only goal in life or with our schools. Let’s say it’s not even the main goal, the primary goal. And what if it wasn’t the goal at all? What if we threw that goal out the window? What if change was the goal? What if the goal was to be different, new, innovative, unknown, creative? What if change was the goal, what about you would be different? What about your life would be different? What about your school would be different? And what about your leadership would be different?

If change was the goal, what about you would be the same? What about your life would be the same? What about your school and your leadership would be the same? Change doesn’t mean everything goes out the window. Change means different, but it also means the same. Change doesn’t happen all at once. Like, your child doesn’t grow up developmentally, and they don’t get all their teeth at the same time. They don’t learn all of the letters and the sounds at the same time. They don’t learn to read all at once. It compounds. The change is slow and consistent and calm and it builds on itself over time, day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year.

So we don’t have to fear change. It isn’t as inconsistent and chaotic as we think it will be. There is a pattern and a rhythm to change.

When you think about how rivers have evolved the landscape, the planet, over centuries, thousands of years, perhaps, and how this earth has evolved and changed, you’re talking millions of years. When you think of it that way, it took a very long time to create those changes, time to embrace the change and to be able to get used to that change, to get comfortable with the change. And it just kept slowly eroding. Like I’m picturing the Grand Canyon, the Colorado River, and I’m assuming that’s how it was created but I know there’s more recent theories, but any river that’s evolved the landscape, it happened over time. Sometimes it happened in a storm and lots of change happened rapidly and it was messy and chaotic. And then other times it was just that trickle of a stream slowly, gently moving, changing over the course of time. But I want you to ask yourself, for this coming school year, how would it feel for change to be the goal?

How would you feel if you celebrated every time you made a change? A small change, a tiny change, or a big change? What if change equaled winning? And that change meant you were living. And that change was the solution to success. And that change means having fun. And that change is a part of evolution. What if change was a part of the equation to everything that we want?

And as I’ve shared with you guys, I’m pretty transparent about my life. Like my life is going through some significant changes. And I will be sharing more of those changes as the podcast comes out, as these events start to unfold in my life. Got a couple of big changes happening more recently, and I’ve got some upcoming changes within the course of next year that are coming up in my life, I can’t wait to share with you. But the plans are still in the works. They’re still tentative. So until I know a little bit more detail, I will hold off sharing them.

But life is all about change. It’s about evolving who we are, who we think we are, who we think we can be, what we prioritize, how we spend our time, how we spend our energy, and how we choose to believe in ourselves, in what’s possible, in the experiences we want to have and create.

Sometimes change is very subtle, but a lot of times change feels abrupt. This has happened to me in my life over the last year. And at first, I was very resistant to the change. I wanted a calm and consistent life. I wanted to stay in my happy place. Everything was curated. Everything had been designed to be efficient and effective and calm, routined, planned, scheduled, all of that.

I think there’s something brilliant about creating that type of life and I didn’t want to disrupt the stagnancy that I had developed in my life because it was so efficient and I felt productive and I liked the certainty of knowing what to expect. But life is meant to evolve and to change. No matter how hard you try to make it consistent, we are designed as human beings to experience change.

And so when resisting the change didn’t scare the change away in my life, then I detested it. I was upset and frustrated and angry and I wanted to control it and take it back to being not chaotic, to being stagnant and calm and consistent.

But I couldn’t do it because life is meant to evolve and change. And so what I finally did was sank into it. I let myself feel the fear of the unknown, the despair of the uncertainty, and the grief of letting go of my need for calm and consistency in my life 100% of the time. And I sat with the feelings that came up, all the fear, all of the uncertainty, and I just asked them. I asked my emotions, what do you want me to know? And you know what? They told me.

And sometimes along this past year, I have been very open to what they had to say. And other times I wasn’t as open. But one significant aspect that I want to share with you is that I never stopped showing up to feel those feelings and to ask them what they wanted me to know. I did not stop asking myself questions. I didn’t hide from my feelings. I didn’t buffer them. I didn’t push them away or resist them. I didn’t stop exploring the emotions and the thoughts that I was having.

I showed up every day for myself. I showed up in my life. I showed up in my business. I showed up as a coach. I showed up in my pain and in my grief and in my attachment. And I asked it, what does it want me to know? And in that showing up, I was able to see how change was not the enemy. I wasn’t a victim to change. It wasn’t the villain in my story, and it wasn’t taking anything away from me. Change ended up being the solution. It was the hero in my story. It was adding something into my life. It was offering me solutions, evolution. It was offering me exactly what I wanted. The only thing holding me back was the fear of the change when right here on a platter it was offering me everything I’ve said I’ve always wanted.

So I wanna offer this to you. Change isn’t a problem and change isn’t bad. No change is the problem. No change is stagnant. It’s stinky. It’s stuck. When you think of something that’s stagnant, I think of like stagnant water or a trash bin that’s been sitting there untouched for weeks. It stinks. It’s sticky. It’s stuck. If you’re not changing, you aren’t living. And if you’re not living, you’re slowly dying.

Change is life. Change is fun. Change is supposed to happen. And look, as school leaders, we ask our teachers to change. We ask our students to change. Change is embraced when we embrace it as leaders. So sell yourself on why change is the best decision or choice you could ever make. How does it change or enhance the quality of your life? How does it expand your experiences? How does it increase your capacity to have impact and contribute?

Embracing change doesn’t mean changing everything at once and creating a bunch of chaos in your life. Embracing change means accepting the truth of it. It’s a universal fact, at least in our humanly experience, in our realm of possibility, what we do know about life and about the planet and about the universe is that it’s changing and that change is constantly in motion. Embracing it allows you to manage it, to take the wheel, to steer it and control how often and when and how hard you push on the gas. And when you tap on the brakes, you do have control over the pace of the change.

Sometimes it doesn’t feel like that because things around you are changing, but you get to decide how much you engage with that change or how little you engage with it. You can have control over your level of engagement. If something in your life is changing, another person is changing, your job is changing, the district’s changing, kids are moving or changing, anything in your life, when all of this change is happening around you, you still have control over how you think and feel about it.

So I invite you that change is just change, it’s neutral. And you can decide that change is for the better, change is for the sake of evolution, and that we are school leaders who embrace change by loving it. We create change by inviting it in and I want to invite you to join us in EPC, which is the Empowered Principal Collaborative. It’s my group coaching program where it is safe to embrace change because we celebrate it, we honor it, we love it, and we leverage change to our advantage.

A brand new calendar year and for us, the mid-year reboot gives us six months to create change that we want to see within ourselves and with our schools. There is so much time, you have so much time, so much energy to make the changes that you wish to experience for yourself.

So come on in to EPC, doors are open in January. I invite you in, we would love to have you. I’ll see you there. And if you have any questions and you wanna talk to me personally about EPC, if you have any questions or concerns, you can simply schedule a 15-minute Q&A with me. I’ll jump on the phone with you and I will answer any questions that you have.

Embracing change and loving it, having fun with it, and not making it mean that something’s gone wrong is exactly what empowered principals embrace. So come on in, we’d love to see you. I’ll talk to you guys real soon. Take care, Have a great week. 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.

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