The Number 1 Secret Behind How to Stress Less as a Principal
19 The Number 1 Secret Behind How to Stress Less as a Principal
===
[00:00:00] In today's episode, I'm going to share how you can start stressing less. That's all coming up next right here on the Less Stress Principle. Stay tuned. Welcome back. This is episode number 19. And today we're talking about the number one secret behind how to be less [00:01:00] stressed as a principal.
And I'm really excited for this episode because this is our first launch episode of the Less Stressed Principal Podcast. We rebranded from the Confident Principal Podcast, so I'm really excited that you're here for this episode. And I love talking about the topic of stress because I think it's such a popular topic among educators and it is easy to be stressed as a principal.
I used to walk around stressed all the time, thinking about so many different things in my brain and being stressed about them and not being able to shut off that stress when I went home from work. I would get home at night, and I would just be thinking about things that maybe I didn't do that I needed to do, and I would start working, or I would be critical in my mind about situations I handled, and I would start questioning if I handled it correctly and what I could have done different, which caused me more stress, and it was just this constant cycle of feeling stressed.
I never felt good enough at my job. I always felt like there was more to do, [00:02:00] and just going through all of this all the time It caused me so much stress, self doubt, and a lack of confidence in my role as a principal. And so I decided to start working with a life coach, and it completely changed everything for me.
Which is why I'm so passionate about helping other people learn to stress less, because stressing Over time will lead to burnout, and so I want to help educators learn not to be so stressed and learn to compartmentalize more. I think so often we spend so much time letting education take over our life, and when I learned to compartmentalize and, you know, be on 100 percent when I'm at work as a principal and then shut it off at home, it has helped so much with my levels of stress and just overall happiness in life.
And so that's why I want to share with you the number one secret behind how to stress less.
So principals face so many stressors that cause stress, and I want to start by talking about stress and what it is. And it's a [00:03:00] physiological shift that happens in your body when you encounter a threat. We were made to be stressed, and that was made to protect us. That was made so that we knew if a threat was coming and we could protect ourselves.
So that's how stress works. But stressors are the things in our lives. that activate that stress response and cause stress. So we're going to be talking about different stressors in a minute, but when we're stressed our body, it goes into fight or flight mode. So our bodies actually change and they shouldn't be under stress for a long period of time because it's not good for our bodies to be in that fight or flight mode for long periods of time.
But many times when we're super stressed and we're not letting go of that stressor, finding ways to relieve it. We are stressed for long periods of time, which lead to burnout, it leads to chronic stress, and it's really bad for our physical and our mental health. It can lead to things such as panic attacks, it can mess with your eyesight, you can have sleep problems, be fatigued and tired all the time, muscle aches, headaches, [00:04:00] chest pains, high blood pressure, indigestion, heartburn.
So many things. physical symptoms, and then the mental symptoms of anxiety, depression, and all that come with just being stressed all the time. So it's really not good for our bodies. So when we're thinking about stress and how we experience that as a principal, we have to think about the stressors or the things that cause us stress.
And there are two types of stress that we deal with or stressors. We have outward stressors and inward stressors. So our outward stressors are things that we don't get to control. It's things that other people do. It's situations that happen that we have to react to and handle, whether it's caused by a teacher and teacher conflict or a teacher and a parent, or it's situations with a student, whatever that situation, it's out of our control.
Also, state and federal mandates that we have to implement. We don't have any control over that, but we know that there's deadlines and things that we have to do that [00:05:00] causes us stress. Also, there's a variety of stakeholder expectations in our role as principal because we work with the parents. We work with community members.
We work with teachers. We work with students. We work with other administrators. And there's so many expectations between the different groups of people that we work with. And a lot of times, Those expectations might not align, and so that can cause stress. But again, those are things that we don't have any control over.
Those are outward stressors. So some inward stressors and things that we can control are things such as procrastinating on our work, how we navigate our schedules, so it could be over scheduling ourselves, balancing between being visible in the building and getting work done in our office, having unrealistic expectations on ourselves, and the other people in the building.
Trying to please everyone and being a people pleaser, being a perfectionist, navigating mind habits such as dramatizing situations or thinking of things as [00:06:00] the end of the world. Also having thoughts of dread cause so much stress. Think about that. If there are certain things in your job that you dread, It elevates your stress so much because it's like you're dramatizing it when you're using that word dread.
Even the word dread, when you think of it, it's such an extreme word to say you dread something. So these are all inner stressors, all things that we can control, but cause us so much stress in our role. So we have all these things that stress us out. Some of the problems we face is that we spend too much time focusing on the things that stress us out. We spend too much time talking about them and thinking about them to the point that, again, we get to that place where we're just dramatizing it.
We also spend so much time, like I said earlier, dreading things that we don't want to do. So we're dramatizing things. A thing I used to do that caused me so much stress is I thought if I read more and learned more, I'd be a better principal. And so I was always reading more and learning more and wanting to implement more things so that our [00:07:00] building was doing all of these cool things.
But all it was doing was causing me stress and teachers stress. Also. you know, using guilt to stop feeling stressed. If you think I shouldn't feel that way, or, thinking about what you should or should not do, that all causes guilt, and that's not going to help release your stress. That's actually going to cause more stress.
Another thing that people do is they think that stress goes away when we go on a break. So as educators, we get a nice long summer break, a winter break, a spring break, and that looks different, of course, for principals based on your contract and where you're at. But I know a lot of people think that stress just goes away when you take a break, and it doesn't.
Because stress is still there when you get back. When you get back, you're going to get right back into that stressful mindset and right into that cycle. So breaks alone don't fix your stress. I always say too, for people who are burnt out, breaks alone don't fix burnout. There's a lot more that needs to happen to help with that.
And then another thing that we do is we let other people's [00:08:00] emotions dictate our own emotions. So we see teachers are stressed and we go off that energy and feel stressed and feed off their energy. instead of flipping that and having people feed off of our energy. So thinking about these things and these problems that we have with stress are really important with knowing and being aware so that we can be able to fix the stress and manage it.
So I wanted to share today the number one secret behind how to stress less as a principal. And this is what I've learned has helped me the most to not stress and compartmentalize my work.
And that is managing my mindset. So you have to manage your mindset and you have to think about, is it perceived stress or is it actual stress? So are you just perceiving it as something that's stressful? Or is it actually causing stress in your body? What if we could change how we think about stress? I want you to think about what would it look like for me to give permission to myself for something to be easy?
So think about something [00:09:00] that you've always thought is hard. Just tell yourself, what would it look like if I said, this is easy? What would it look like if I didn't let situation stress me out? So thinking about when you handle situations, what would that look like if you weren't stressed in them?
Telling yourself you will be okay with the situation and how things turn out, even if it's not how you want it, you will be okay. Also having the thoughts of, if I can handle this situation, what else can I do? I also like to think I can do hard things.
I've handled hard situations, so I'm not going to get discouraged by the small things. So really changing what we think. about stress and how we think about ourselves when we manage stress, because if we walk around thinking about how stressed we are, thinking about how we're dreading something, it's just going to create more stress, which is why we have to manage our mindset.
And one thing I like to coach on to manage your mindset is what I call the T cycle. And I learned this in my coaching practice, and the T cycle is that your [00:10:00] thoughts dictate your emotions, which dictate your actions. So if we change those negative thoughts, those thoughts about stress that are not serving us into something positive and something encouraging, then we can change our emotions into something more positive instead of feeling stressed out, and we can change our actions into something more positive. So let's think about this.
If you go into a situation, Maybe you get a call that you need to go to the playground because there's a fight for recess. And if your instant thought is, oh my gosh, this is going to be so terrible, I keep telling these kids not to fight. You know, and you just have all these negative thoughts. It's going to create emotions.
You're going to feel stressed. You're going to start to feel dramatic about the situation, which is going to affect the actions that you take in this situation. It's going to affect the discipline that you have. It's going to affect how you talk to the kids, all of that. Instead, if you went into that situation thinking, huh, I wonder what really happened, was it a true fight?
Was it some kids arguing? Let's go investigate [00:11:00] this and figure out what happens, which is going to lead to more of an emotion of curiosity, and you're going to feel more calm, which is going to lead to better action and better conversations that you're going to have with those students. So thinking about that is really important and reframing your thoughts is critical to managing how you think about that situation and how you handle it and handling it in a less stressed way.
Also telling yourself that you're a person who doesn't stress. You're becoming a person who doesn't stress because you always wanna step into and act like the person you wanna become, and you get to decide who that person is. And so I like to step into a person who doesn't stress. I think to myself, I'm not a person who stresses.
And sometimes teachers will even make comments to me and say, you know, you handle that so calmly. You didn't get upset about that. How do you stay so calm? And I think the more I hear comments like that, it helps me have this identity of I'm a [00:12:00] person who doesn't stress. So you just need to keep telling yourself and you need to create your own identity of being that person.
Because sometimes we get labeled as the person who gets stressed out and as the leader in the building, we can't be that person. We don't want to be the dramatic one. We don't want to be the one who's stressed out, who comes in the situation upset. We need to be calm. And we need to be leading the staff, and so they need to see us in a calm manner.
So the more that you can tell yourself and create an identity for yourself, that you're going to become a person who doesn't stress, the more likely you will be that person. Also creating habits and routines that relieve stress can be really important for managing your mindset.
So for me, morning and evening habits are so helpful. So I have a journaling habit in the morning, and I exercise in the morning, and these both help with my mindset. Because journaling, I'm able to put out the negative thoughts that I'm having and take time to reframe and think about what thoughts I want to have instead.
And I do the same thing in the evening. And I also like [00:13:00] to, when I'm journaling, celebrate my wins. So in the evening, I'll think about what great things happened. You know, what three wins did I have for the day? What three wins am I going to plan for the next day? So having these mindset habits are really helpful for helping me manage my mind and manage my stress so that I go into situations feeling more confident and telling myself that it's not something to be stressed about.
I don't need to be stressed about this. So it's so important to think about, our thoughts about what stresses us out so that we don't get stressed. And I already said one because we're the leader in the building and we want to be that leader that shows we're calm, we're composed and lead others well.
But the other reason is because stress is a feeling and you get to change that. And you don't want the feeling of, the physical stress in your body. That's not good for you physically and mentally. You don't want to be walking around dramatizing everything. So we want to make sure that we have our stress under control and that we [00:14:00] are managing our mindset so that we are less stressed.
And I want to give an example. Of how this has changed for me in learning to reframe my thinking, when I used to walk into my office, I would see the light on my phone blinking, and it just caused so much stress for me. It was kind of like what I talked about earlier with dread. I just dreaded listening to that voicemail.
What was it going to be? Because in my mind, I would create this story that it was going to be an angry parent calling to complain about something. And so every time I saw that phone blinking, that's what I thought would happen. I'd get this pit in my stomach and I would feel stressed out immediately.
And if I had to do something before I could check that voicemail, I was stressed and all I could think about was what is the voicemail on my phone? Well, over time, when I've learned to manage my mindset, I now see my phone blinking and I think, OK, that could be a colleague, another administrator calling me.
That could be a teacher calling me. That could be a parent, but maybe it's a good call. Like there's so many calls that it could be. That it rarely is an angry parent. So [00:15:00] I've noticed just being able to reframe that, that if that negative thought comes up, I can quickly just switch it to a positive. And I no longer feel that sense of dread that causes me so much stress.
So being able to change your thinking, being able to reframe those negative thoughts and the positive thoughts is really life changing because that will help your, you stop your stress. Because whenever you notice those stressful thoughts coming up, you can just become aware of it and reframe and switch it.
So what I really want you to leave with and think about is how, if you manage your mind, you can feel so much better about stress because your thoughts create your emotions, which create your actions, which then create new thoughts, and it's a cycle that starts over.
So you have the ability to change your thoughts about stress to a more positive thought, and then you're going to take more positive action from that. you want to take the next steps in having less stress as a principal, I'd love the opportunity to work one on one with you.
[00:16:00] Like I said, I worked with a life coach and it changed me so much and it helped my thinking and it helped me to be a less stressed person and learn to compartmentalize, you know, where all the stress was going and be able to go home and not worry about work. And so I offer free consults to see if we'd be a good fit to work together.
And in one on one coaching, I help you focus on your mindset. so much. So we can work in depth about the thoughts you are having that are making you stressed. So reach out to me on Instagram at Barb Flowers Coaching or at my website at barbflowerscoaching. com. And if you love the show, if you're listening on Apple, scroll down in your app and leave a review.
In the next episode, we're going to be talking about navigating the multiple responsibilities and demands of being a principal. And this week, I just want you to keep in mind, you have the power to shape your life according to the mindset you choose. So I hope you have a great week and I'll see you back here next time.
