mental health

Strategies and Mental Tools for Carrying the Leadership Load

/ Liz Erwin / Leave a comment

Last week I kicked off our Leading W.E.L.L. series with a personal story of the struggles I went through my first couple of years as a principal and how I dealt with the stress in ways that weren’t exactly healthy. I promised that in my next post I would dive deeper into the “W” of Wellness by sharing strategies and mental tools for carrying the “leadership load.”

The Spiritual Anchor

The first thing I challenged you to do was to identify your spiritual anchor. By this, I meant a practice you would do every morning to connect with God or your spirit. For me, this was a devotion, for others it might be meditation, yoga, prayer, or some combination of practices. Doing this will maximize any of the tools and strategies that mental health experts recommend. It might sound like I am suggesting that you use your spirituality to get what you want. Like control or manipulation…I am not suggesting that at all, but finding techniques to make my spirituality tangible has been essential to handling the stress of leadership.

Starting your day with a spiritual practice is nothing new, but it can be difficult to get in the habit of doing one consistently. This is where a morning routine comes in. Check out Hal Elrod’s Miracle Morning, Michael Hyatt’s Daily Rituals for more on this. I found episode #33, Four Rituals That Make You Super Productive, in Hyatt’s Business Accelerator podcast incredibly helpful. This podcast addresses gives practical advice on how to make a morning routine work for any situation. I’m at a point in my life where I don’t have to go into work as early as I did when I was a principal so I can go through a 30 minute routine when I first wake up. However, when I was a principal, I had to be in work by 7:00 and had a 30 minute commute. I wasn’t about to wake up any earlier than necessary and was able to incorporate a morning routine without sacrificing sleep. Let me show you how it worked for me…

So, when I was a principal, my morning routine happened after I got to work and was only about 10 minutes. I would listen to my devotion (through the First 15 Podcast) during my commute and then my goal was to go through the same 15 minute routine every morning when I hit my desk. (I combined what Hyatt refers to as a morning routine and a workday start up routine into one routine. Listen to episode #33 for more info on this). So, I would get to school, sit down at my desk and open up a “daily page.” At the time, I used a bullet journal format and wrote out my mission statement, an intention, and my 3 most important things (MITs) for the day in that journal. I would end the routine by writing a positive note to 3 staff members. I did all of this before I touched my email. I very intentionally planned actions for my routine that would start me in a positive mindset. Regardless of how you can fit this daily ritual in, having a consistent morning routine allows you to prepare yourself so that you can bring the best version of you to do life that day.

Having a consistent morning routine allows you to prepare yourself so that you can bring the best version of you to do life that day.

Once you have your morning routine in place, I caution against making the same mistake I did: As I struggled in difficult situations, I wondered why God wasn’t helping me after I “put in the time” that morning. I would encounter tough situations and would either react in ways that weren’t helpful or feel completely powerless and personally victimized by the situation. I eventually realized I needed some mental tools and strategies to reconnect me to my anchor in the moment so that I could get out of my “fight or flight” mode.

Pausing and Seeking Help in the Moment

Reading The Universe Has Your Back by Gabrielle Bernstein was a game-changer for me. Bernstein offered me practical tools for what to do in the midst of those intense moments and also a way to mentally frame what I was going through. While many would consider Gabby’s tools to be self-help or new age, I applied them to my Christian perspective and found them to be helpful in nudging me to pray in the moment. Here’s what I came up with from her book:

My Plan:

  1. If I got triggered–a stressful or irritating situation would happen and I would feel anxiety, anger, or overwhelm.
  2. First, I would stop. I would pause and slow down my breathing. Then I would pray. (I would stop and ask for help).
  3. Next, I would surrender the fear or negative feelings I had, and asked for help in responding with love.

    I think the biggest challenge I had and still have is pausing–stopping myself in the moment and making myself use my tools, instead of just trying to escape the moment or making it end because it’s too uncomfortable or painful. Or lately, I don’t stop when I get triggered because I keep thinking I need to just “get the task done” and that I just need to push through, because I have too much to do.

I think that making yourself stop comes with practice. It’s like a muscle you need to exercise so that you create that muscle memory. Once you stop, you can use breathing exercises, get yourself regulated and then be open to returning in love. That’s my plan, anyway. Let’s see if I can put that into practice! Want to practice with me? Get your PAUSE Cheat Sheet HERE.

Adopting A Supportive Perspective or Mental Framework

I think there’s a lot of information available since the pandemic on self-regulation, breathing exercises, returning to the present, and getting out of fight or flight, but I still think that leaves the question, “Then what?? Once, I’ve calmed myself down, how do I get through it? Then, how do I keep from going home and comforting myself with food or alcohol to keep the worry at bay for what the next day would bring?”

This is where a way to mentally frame what I was going through came in. Bernstein teaches this as the universal lesson:

The world is your classroom and people are your assignments.

Gabrielle Bernstein.

She writes, “The first step is to witness that what may seem to be a terribly uncomfortable situation is actually a Universal Assignment.” Just taking on this perspective allowed me to step back and ask myself, “What I am I learning through this?” Sometimes that was very difficult to answer. As I used this mental framework to consider situations, I changed the questions depending on the circumstance. It might be, “What am I learning about myself?” or “How can I show up as a good leader/listener/supporter in this situation?” My work in therapy also supported this thinking. My therapist encouraged me to think about the future and how I wanted to coach and help principals one day. She said to see these situations as field research and I was learning strategies for dealing with them so I could help others later.

Feeling Your Feelings

Here’s the part that was and still is the greatest challenge for me, and I don’t think I’m alone in this struggle. I want to numb or comfort tough feelings with food or alcohol. I have a lot of theories about why I am like this including my Enneagram Type (7), family dynamics in childhood, yada, yada…but regardless, avoiding pain and tough emotions is my jam. Unfortunately, I am also concerned about my appearance so emotional eating and drinking do not serve me well.

I don’t have quick answers for this, because I still struggle with it. Recently, I thought I had gotten past those bad habits. My new position is much more supportive of employee wellness and has significantly less stress, so I thought that when the stress came, I would better be able to handle it without my old bad habits. However, I realized after I couple of stressful weeks, I still default back to my old patterns of stress-eating and drinking.

Here’s where I think the answer lies: I have to see the the strategies of Pausing and Seeking Help in the Moment, and Adopting a Supportive Perspective or Mental Framework as ways to feel my feelings, process them, and stay with them–NOT just get past them so that I can respond the the situation effectively and efficiently and move on. I think that when I feel the urge to turn to external sources of comfort, it’s a signal that I haven’t processed my feelings and need to stop. I think this involves tools like journaling, affirmations, self-talk, etc. Those aren’t always possible in the moment, but I need to incorporate some type of processing at some point, before I head to the kitchen–if I don’t want to engage in that behavior anymore.

Obviously, I haven’t mastered these tools. I had been posting and podcasting consistently once a week since the first week of January then the last two weeks of increased stress and busyness went by without a post or podcast — how ironic. I can blame my lack of publishing content on the busyness, but I think it was more about feeling imposter syndrome. Who am I to try to help people with something I haven’t mastered myself?

I had a little epiphany today.

As I went about my morning routine, I came across some content in The Fabulous App related to self-love…

“ Self-love creates space for you to be exactly who you are, rather than the carefully curated version of yourself you wish you were.” 

I need to practice what I am preaching regarding Adopting a Supportive Perspective or Mental Framework. I don’t need to wait until I have all this figured out. We can help each other by going through this together. I would like to adopt the supportive perspective that I can help others through my struggles and my journey, not by having all the answers. I don’t have to walk out front with the answers–we can walk alongside each other with the struggle.

So, to close this, I am extending an invitation. Let’s learn to carry the leadership load together. Let’s start a community of education leaders who are trying to thrive while doing hard things. I don’t have all the answers, but I am happy to share what I have learned and invite you to do the same. We can learn from our successes and missteps. If you want a partner on your journey, please follow me on Instagram: lizerwinimagine or on Facebook at Imagine Believe Achieve.

Carrying the Load of Leadership

/ Liz Erwin / Leave a comment

“It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.”

Lena Horne in Wisdom for the Soul

When I first took the principal’s seat I remember thinking on quite a few days, “Why did I want to be a principal so badly? This is awful!” I remember, in particular, a conversation with my superintendent. He called to check on me one day, and I said, “Well, let me tell you how great my day was. I had to go to the gynecologist, and that was the highlight of my day.” I think it’s hilarious now that I said that, but oh my gosh…it really was a cry for help… wanting someone to understand what I was going through.

My first two years, I never knew what chaos each day would bring. I was dealing with several very difficult emotional/behavioral situations with students and mental health issues with their parents. Each day I would never know if I would get spit on or kicked by a student, sued, or cussed by a parent, or maybe just be defamed on the local news. (All of these happened way too frequently those first years). I had no assistant principal or behavioral support, so I had to have direct involvement in every behavior escalation while trying to figure out how to lead a school. The intensity and frequency of these situations consumed me and took a toll on my mental and physical health.

After my first two years, I had stopped exercising, found myself “eating my feelings,” drinking a bottle of wine each night, and as a result, gained almost 40 pounds with my cholesterol level skyrocketing to over 300.

So. that was the load–the load of leadership–and how it weighed me down, almost crushing me.

My third year, we had a new special education director who provided “boots on the ground” support for my school through the creation of a Highly Structured Program environment and the allocation additional staff. We hired an incredible special education teacher for our students with moderate to severe disabilities and a new guidance counselor who lead our school in creating MTSS structures and supports. So, we finally had systems in place to both prevent behavior escalation and effectively manage it, if it did happen.

Then that March, just as I was getting my feet under me, with an afternoon’ s notice, we sent all of our students home for what turned out to be the rest of the year because of the Pandemic. It was clear that if it wasn’t one thing, it was going to be something else.

I felt a lot of shame in how I let my health go.

It seems really strange to write that now, but it really was shame…I was very ashamed of myself. I felt like the way I was handling or not handling my stress was on display for everyone. I had “let myself go” and everyone knew it. I could just hear what people were saying about me in all the self-hatred that I inflicted. Even now I am embarrassed about (at least my language is more gentle towards myself–embarassed instead of ashamed, thank you, Brene Brown) how much my appearance mattered to me and still does. I feel very superficial to be so worried about it, but that’s a conversation for another day. Bottom line is the self-judgement needs to stop. I finally recognize that fact.

This shame came out in conversations with a therapist. I started seeing her about midway through my first year. I’ll never forget, our first appointment was the evening that our school was on the local news after a parent felt the need to share a stream of lies regarding our handling of a situation with her child. When asked what I hoped to get out of therapy, I remember sharing that I had to be successful in this job. I couldn’t quit, but I couldn’t continue with the misery I was feeling. I needed help liking my job so that I could continue in it. No matter how I badly I wanted to find ways to deal with the stress that were healthy, like exercising and not consuming junk food and wine, by the end of the day I was spent. I had no room for discipline and just sought comfort. I needed help with carrying the load.

During my time as a principal, I felt like there was very little attention given to the mental and emotional support leaders need. Especially during the pandemic, I felt a sense of responsibility for making sure my teachers were taken care of, but that no one was taking care of me.

“What about the principals?” I wondered, “What about us? Does anyone care how this is affecting us?”

Every once in a while I see something about the importance of supporting school leaders, but it seems like those instances are the exception more than the rule. Now that I am no longer in the principal seat, I want to try to change that. I want to share ideas tools, and strategies that I sought out and learned from a variety of sources. This post kicks off my Leading W.E.L.L series. Today we start with the “W” which, you guessed it, stands for WELLNESS. My next post will dive into this topic, but I’d like to leave you with homework.

If this post resonates with you–if you need strategies and mental tools for “carrying your leadership load”– the first thing I challenge you to do is to identify your spiritual anchor. By anchor, I mean that spiritual element that gives you strength. Is it God? Your higher power? the universe? Jesus? This job is way too hard to go it alone. Personally, I need me some Jesus. every. single. day. So let’s say you are on board with this. You are all in and you have identified your spiritual anchor.

Next, you will want want to figure out a way to anchor yourself every morning. I anchor myself with a devotional. Just doing this may not be enough to get you through your day on those super tough ones when you get kicked in the shins non-stop (metaphorically or literally). It wasn’t enough for me just to have a morning practice, but it provided the foundation (anchor) for dealing with stressful situations. I also found it helpful to include meditation in my anchoring time and found a great resource that incorporated the devotional and guided meditation: First 15. This podcast/app provides a different short devotional each day l followed by a guided meditation/reflection, and even an uplifting song. I would listen to this on my drive to work and then take just a minute or so when I got in the office to write down an intention for the day.

So, go do you your homework. Figure out or identify how you are going to anchor yourself each morning, then meet me back here next week for what to do next.