19. The Secret to Empowerment
- Keri Martinez
- Aug 19
- 18 min read
Updated: Aug 26
ABOUT THE PODCAST:
Ever feel like life is happening to you, or like you're a puppet and other people are pulling your strings? If you want to feel more in control in your life, to feel more empowered, this episode will teach you the single most important principle you need to understand to do that.
Whether you’re a teacher or administrator, empowerment (or lack of it) is something that makes a real difference in how you approach your life, the different roles you play, and your relationships. It’s worth your time to figure out how to have more of it in your life, and this conversation will teach you where and how to get started.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:
The difference between agency and empowerment (and why it matters)
Why focusing on what you can’t control is a waste of energy and attention
Three examples of how to shift from disempowerment to empowerment
A simple formula you can use to feel more empowered every day
LINKS AND RESOURCES:
Quote from Byron Katie – “When you argue with reality, you lose, but only 100 percent of the time.”
Quote from Epictetus – “Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.”
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SEE FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Do you ever feel out of control or powerless in your parenting, your job, your marriage, your health, your finances, or just your life in general? Do you feel like other people – maybe your husband, your kids, your principal, or even your parents – are more in control of your life than you are?
One morning about seven years ago, I woke up with a sinking feeling that my life was not my own. I was a wife and mother, I was more than 20 years into a career in public education, and I felt like a marionette puppet with other people pulling my strings and controlling my life. My husband and kids pulled the strings at home, my boss pulled the strings at work, and I felt completely powerless to do anything different.
Even though I was in my forties, I didn’t feel like a grown up. Maybe that sounds weird, but I didn’t feel like I could really make my own decisions – at least not without a lot of anxiety over what other people thought. I just felt small and helpless, and I sat there and wondered, “How did I get here?” I used to think and act for myself. I used to have ideas and opinions and dreams. But that morning I just felt trapped by my life and the expectations of others.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but that day was a turning point for me. It was the beginning of a pretty major paradigm shift in my life – a paradigm shift that has been occurring for years, and is the impetus for the new title and focus of this podcast. Something small started growing within me that morning, and it started as an inkling that something was off. A hunch that something should and could be different. I didn’t know what, but I figured at the very least I shouldn’t be feeling like a little kid. Maybe you can relate to this, maybe not – but I wanted to feel like I had control over my life and my choices. I wanted to feel empowered in my life.
If you can relate – if you want more control in your life, if you want to feel more empowered, this episode and this podcast is for you. So let’s get into it.
Are you ready to feel more empowered and less overwhelmed at home and in the classroom? I’m Keri Martinez, and I’m a wife, mother of six, and educator-turned-life coach with more than 25 years experience. I’m here to offer you strategies, tips, and tools to help you increase your personal power so you can stop stressing and obsessing, and start enjoying your work and family more. I know that when you feel better, you do better. But it can seem darn near impossible to feel better when you’re handling two of the most demanding jobs on the planet – teacher and mom. Typical PD sessions, conference workshops, and self-help books on work-life balance aren’t cutting it, so It’s time for a different approach. Welcome to the Empowered Educator Mom Podcast.
Hello everybody. Welcome or welcome back to the podcast. I am so excited to be bringing you this episode today! It’s something I’ve been thinking about for several months, and I know the ideas I’m going to share can be really helpful for a lot of educator moms. Whether you’re a teacher or administrator, empowerment (or lack of it) is something that makes a real difference in how you approach your life, the different roles you play, and your relationships. It makes a difference in how you feel about and how you treat yourself and others. It makes a difference in how you show up in the world. So it’s a big deal. It’s worth your time to figure out how to have more of it in your life. And that’s what we’re going to address on this podcast moving forward.
On today’s episode, we’re going to talk about the secret to empowerment, and this secret is a key principle that you need to understand. This principle is the root or source of empowerment, meaning empowerment grows from this and you can’t have real empowerment without it. I’m also going to share some practical, specific ways you can apply this principle, and I’m going to give you a formula you can use to help you remember how to apply the principle to feel more empowered. Sound good? Alright. Let’s do it.
Let’s start with what I consider to be the most important and often overlooked empowerment principle – the secret to empowerment. And I know that may sound a bit dramatic, but this principle is foundational to empowerment. As I mentioned earlier, you simply cannot feel or practice empowerment without it, and all the empowerment tools and practices I’ll be sharing in future episodes are all rooted in this.
So, what is this important, foundational principle? It is … drum roll please … personal agency.
Personal agency, or just agency for short, may not sound that exciting, but it is critical. It is the innate ability to make choices about your thoughts and actions which then impact your life and outcomes. Agency is something you’re born with – I personally believe it’s a gift from God – and it grows with use and shrinks with disuse. I like to think we’re born with these little seeds of agency inside us and these seeds grow and develop throughout our life depending on the nurturing they receive. I also want to note that, of course, other people may try to limit our agency, but they can’t really extinguish it.
OK. So that’s what personal agency is, but how does it relate to empowerment? Why is it so essential for empowerment?
Well, let’s start by talking about what empowerment is and what it’s not. Broadly speaking, there are two types of empowerment. The first is where someone is given authority or power to do something or to act in some way, by another person or group of people. For example, teachers are given the power to supervise and teach students. School administrators are given the power to supervise teachers and other staff. This power comes from a state credentialing agency, a school district, or sometimes an individual school, but the point is that not just anyone can walk into a school and assume the role of teacher or administrator…at least not legally. They have to be empowered by an external organization or agency first.
You’ve probably also heard a priest or officiant at a wedding say something like, “By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you man and wife.” The power to perform the marriage was vested in that person by a church or government or some other agency, right?
This type of empowerment is not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about a second kind of empowerment which is becoming stronger and more confident in navigating and directing your life. It's believing that you have the power to influence your life, to make a difference through your choices. Let me say that definition again. The empowerment I’m talking about is becoming stronger and more confident in navigating and directing your life. It's believing that you have the power to influence, to affect change in your life, to make a difference through your choices.
Now hopefully you noticed a connection between personal agency and this type of empowerment. Both involve your choices and their impact on your life, but agency is the ability itself to make the choices and empowerment is the feeling that comes when you make the choices. Empowerment, or conversely disempowerment, results from agency. It’s a fruit of agency. That’s why agency is such a powerful principle and why I said earlier you can not feel or act empowered without it.
Now, because empowerment is rooted in agency, it inherits some of agency’s characteristics. For example, like agency, empowerment isn’t gifted to you by someone or something else (well, unless you count God, but let’s put that aside for now). My point is, you don’t need to wait for someone else to bestow empowerment on you or give you permission to feel it because it comes from something already within you, something you were born with. Also, empowerment grows as you recognize and appropriately use personal agency. It won’t grow if you don’t appropriately use your agency. In fact, when you misapply or ignore your agency, empowerment shrinks and it can even go dormant.
So how does one quote unquote “appropriately use,” or conversely, “misapply agency”?
To answer that, let’s think about what agency allows us to do and what its purpose is. Agency allows us to make choices and those choices then impact our lives and the lives of those around us. As we experience the consequences of our choices and the consequences of other people’s choices, good or bad, we learn about life and about ourselves. I, therefore, believe that the purpose of agency is to help us to evolve and grow, to progress.
Now, our agency, our choices, give us some degree of control in our lives, but they definitely don’t allow us to control everything, right? None of us is all-powerful. And I know that seems obvious, but sometimes we forget that and we spend a lot of time trying to control things or worrying about things that we can’t actually control, while simultaneously ignoring the things we can. Both of those – trying to control things we can’t and ignoring things we can – are misapplications of agency. They’re misapplications because, as I said earlier, agency is meant to help us evolve and grow, and those do the opposite. Trying to control things outside of our control wastes our energy and attention. It weakens our creativity and ability to see opportunities. It stops our progress and keeps us stuck.
Our energy and attention are finite resources we “spend” through our choices, and when we focus on things outside of our control, we spend those resources on things that give us nothing in return. It’s like throwing money in the trash. If we instead spent those resources on things we can control, we’d get a lot more in return.
Now, I’m not saying that focusing on what you can control is always easy, or that you’ll always love your options. What you can control is pretty limited compared to what you can’t control, and it is super easy to fall into the trap of wishing you had control over more things than you do. But to quote Shakespeare’s King Lear, “That way madness lies” (King Lear 3.4.24). It’s madness because wishing you had control over more things won’t actually give you control over more things, right? I mean I can wish I had control over what my kids or my husband or my principal or the state legislature or my neighbor does, but wishing won’t make it so.
Now look, I wish that wasn’t the case! But it is. And … one of the best and most empowering uses of our agency is to choose to acknowledge what is. Own what’s in your control and what is not. Choose to stop arguing with the reality of what is and is not in your control. Byron Katie says, “When you argue with reality, you lose, but only 100 percent of the time.”
Now acknowledging reality doesn’t mean you do nothing. It doesn’t mean you become a doormat or an uncaring robot. If something wrong or bad is happening in your life, I’m not saying you need to sit back and passively take it, although sometimes you might decide to do that. I’m suggesting you look at how you’re spending your emotional, physical, and mental resources and ask yourself if you’re spending them on things you can control or things you can’t. And what is that spending getting you?
Since 2021, my husband has been battling some pretty serious and sometimes baffling health challenges. It took three years, numerous doctors, so many ER visits, and I don’t even know how many tests to get a diagnosis for just one of his conditions – and he has several. This change in his health has limited his mobility, and understandably impacted our family in a lot of ways. It’s changed the division of labor within our family, it’s impacted our finances, it’s impacted family vacations and activities, and it’s impacted our participation at church, among other things. Most of these changes, actually all of them, were not things I wanted or even asked for, and I freely admit that I’ve spent a fair amount of time and energy over the years complaining and despairing and worrying about them. But here’s the kicker. None of that complaining, despairing, and worrying has changed my husband’s health. He still has the same health challenges. Me thinking things like, “He shouldn’t have these challenges,” and “This isn’t fair,” doesn’t change anything. The reality is he does have these challenges. Fair or not, this is what we’re dealing with.
Now, does this mean I think it’s wrong or bad for me to think, “He shouldn’t have these challenges,” or “This isn’t fair”? Is it wrong or bad for me to feel worried or sad or frustrated or angry about any of this? No. Absolutely not. I think those thoughts and feelings are normal and healthy considering the situation. I’m not suggesting that I or my husband or our kids or anyone else should be an unfeeling robot, and I’m not even suggesting that arguing with reality is bad or wrong.
Now if you’re like, “Wait, what? I thought you told us to stop arguing with reality,” just give me a minute. It is perfectly fine to argue with reality. We all do it from time to time. It’s a normal human response. I don’t know if we could stop doing it 100 percent if we tried. But even though it’s perfectly ok for me to argue with reality by saying, “My husband shouldn’t have these challenges,” I know it’s also disempowering for me to do so. When that is what I focus on, all I see is the problem. When I focus on how this isn’t fair, all my brain does is look for and find further evidence that this is, indeed, not fair. And how does that help me or him? It doesn’t. It keeps me stuck and spinning in worry, despair, frustration, even resentment. It keeps me disempowered because all of my focus and energy is being spent on things I can’t control.
But what if I choose to spend my focus and energy on something within my control instead? If I shift my focus from, “He shouldn’t have these health challenges,” to “OK. He has these health challenges. Now what do I want to do? How do I want to show up?” that doesn’t make me love that he’s suffering – that would be weird – but when I shift my focus like that, I feel much more empowered and I open myself up to other options.
So, what do I want to do? Well I’ve decided I want to keep taking care of him, talking to his doctors, and discussing treatment options. And sometimes I want to hide in my room and binge Netflix or go somewhere to be alone.
How do I want to show up? When I asked myself that recently, I decided I want to try to bring some light and levity to our situation. I want to find some humor in what we’re going through to ease the tension a bit. I want to be compassionate and caring when things are hard for him and for me and for our kids. And sometimes I want to cry and get mad about it. Sometimes I want to feel sorry for myself and the family and throw a little pity party.
But can you see how much more empowering that is when I accept reality and focus on what’s in my control? It doesn’t mean I’m happy and passive all the time – quite the opposite. I still flip flop between empowerment and disempowerment with this. Some days are much harder for me to stay out of “poor me, this is so hard, and I don’t want to do this anymore” mode. But I’m human, so that’s ok. I’m never going to be perfect at this, and I don’t have to be. I’m just trying to spend more of my time and energy focusing on what’s in my control than not…which, as I said, is a tall order some days. But when I am able to do it, it puts me more in the driver’s seat of my emotions, my life and my experiences.
I don’t want you to choose to stop arguing with reality (at least some of the time) because doing so is bad or wrong. I want you to choose to stop arguing with reality for your own sake, because you’ll be more empowered to create what you want in your life, to positively impact your life and your future. Arguing with reality is like putting your foot on a brake pedal. It stops your progress. It doesn’t allow you to move forward. And when you can take your foot off that brake pedal by accepting reality, that’s when you’ll start being able to move again.
OK. Let’s look at another scenario. Let’s say you are potty training a child. If you haven’t had the pleasure of experiencing this, you might not fully relate, but just hang with me. In potty training, there are things as a mom you can control, and there are definitely things you can’t. For example, you can control when you start the potty training process and the method or approach you use, but you can’t control how long the process is going to take. You can’t control how your child is going to respond to the method or methods you try. Certainly, you can do things to try to influence those, but you can’t dictate a completion date because you can’t control your child’s biology.
Let’s say the process is taking longer and is much more challenging than you expected (which, sidenote, is often the case). If you respond by thinking and saying things like: “He should be potty trained by now” or “Why is this taking so long?” or “I hate this!” or “This is so hard” – notice where you’re spending your energy and attention. You’re spending those resources arguing with reality, and you’re putting yourself in a very disempowered state. You limit your ability to respond to the situation in a helpful way. I totally get that you don’t think this should be taking as long as it is, and it’s hard, and you don’t want to change the bed sheets again. And you’re not wrong in thinking any of that. But the reality is it is taking this long, it is hard, and your child had another accident in bed. How does arguing with those things – thinking any of them should be different – how does that help you? For your sake, I want you to accept reality at least some of the time, so you can give yourself the opportunity to feel more empowered and more at peace.
Again, I’m not saying arguing with reality is bad. Nor is feeling frustrated, overwhelmed, or even desperate. Those would be natural and normal emotions in this situation. Complaining about it, crying about it, and even screaming about it might also be normal and appropriate at times, too.
Have you ever heard the phrase, “It’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there”? I think of disempowerment kind of in a similar way. It’s OK for me to visit it from time to time, but I don’t want to live there. It’s ok for me to argue with reality and fixate on things outside my control from time to time, but I don’t want that to be my primary focus. I don’t want to live in the land where I argue with reality all or most of the time.
Let’s talk about one more scenario. Something work-related this time. Let’s say your principal or someone in a position of authority over you is handling something in a way you don’t like. Maybe you don’t like the expectations they have around lesson plans or the amount of money they’ve allotted for your department or how they handle student discipline or how they manage the recess or bus duty schedule. Maybe you disagree with how they handled a parent complaint or you think they give preferential treatment to certain staff members. There are a lot of possibilities here, right? Our default human response is typically to say and think things like, “it’s not fair, they’re doing it wrong, they’re asking too much, they’re being ridiculous or unreasonable, they’re playing favorites,” and on and on. These are normal, understandable, totally valid responses. However, let’s consider what’s in our control here and what isn’t. Like it or not, we can not control what the principal does or says. We can’t control if they like some staff members more than others. We can’t control what they think of us or anyone else. And that’s probably disappointing, but something I find super helpful when I’m wishing I could control someone else is to reverse it in my head. Would I want that other person to be able to control me? My answer is always a resounding, “NO!” and then that helps give my brain a little perspective on them and me wanting to control them.
After that, we can ask, “What is in our control?” Well, we can control what we think, feel, do and say. We can control how we show up as an employee. So how do we want to show up? Regardless of what the principal does or says, what kind of staff member do we want to be? What do we want to spend our energy and focus on? Do we want to fixate and complain about what the principal did? Do we want to schedule an appointment to talk to the principal? Do we want to try and see things from their perspective, to put ourselves in their shoes for a minute? Do we want to involve a union rep or file a grievance? Do we want to accept whatever it is and shift our focus to something completely different? Do we want to acknowledge that we’re human, that the principal is human, and we’re going to have differing opinions about how to handle things – and that that’s ultimately ok? Do we want to consider there may be extenuating circumstances or outside factors affecting the principal’s decision that we’re not aware of? Do we want to apply for a transfer or look for another job?
The point is passivity and griping aren’t your only two options – you have MANY more possibilities. So what feels right to you? What feels like how you want to show up, like how you want to be as a person or staff member? What feels like you being your best self? Or what feels like the next right thing for you to do?
You can’t control the principal. Period. Full stop. Be that as it may, our brains still like to tell us that if we could just get them to see things or do things our way, life would be so much better, right? Believe me, I understand and can relate to that logic. But, remember – wishing doesn’t make it so. When you argue with reality, you lose 100 percent of the time. You lose all of the time and energy and attention you invest in arguing with reality. And is that helping you? If it’s not, decide what’s in your control that you want to spend your attention and energy on instead.
OK. Hopefully those scenarios were helpful in understanding how you can apply your agency, and how that affects your sense of empowerment. The last thing I want to leave you with is a formula I came up with for empowerment. It’s something I’m still kind of playing around with, but I like it because it shows the relationship between agency and empowerment, and it clarifies your role in your own empowerment. Now I love math, so I tend to love formulas, but if you don’t, that’s ok. This formula is pretty simple.
The formula is empowerment = choice (attention + energy). Empowerment = choice (attention + energy). And what this formula says is that the amount of empowerment you feel comes from your choice of or agency over how you spend your attention and energy. Anything in your control has a positive value, and anything outside your control has a negative value. So, if you choose to spend your energy and attention on things in your control, because those have a positive value, your empowerment value would be positive. If you choose to spend your attention and energy on things outside your control, because those have a negative value, your empowerment value would be negative (or we’d just call that disempowerment). In other words, the more you choose to spend your attention and energy on things in your control, the more empowerment you’ll feel. The more you choose to spend your attention and energy on things outside your control, the less empowerment you’ll feel, or the more disempowered you’ll feel.
OK. Let’s do a brief recap and tie this all together. Agency, remember, is your innate capacity to make choices about your thoughts and actions. It’s your ability to choose. Empowerment is directly correlated to how you use your agency. When you use your agency to devote focus and energy to things in your control, you empower yourself; and when you use your agency to devote focus and energy to things outside your control, you disempower yourself. And this is represented in the empowerment formula empowerment = choice (attention + energy).
One more thing I want to add is that your focus and energy, remember, are finite resources – you can’t focus on everything or do everything, so you need to decide how you want to budget those resources. If you don’t intentionally direct your attention and energy to things in your control, your default brain will most likely focus on things outside your control. I don’t know why this is, and maybe it’s not the case 100 percent of the time, but I find it to be that way most of the time.
So, when you’re facing a challenging situation, start by asking yourself, “What do I have agency over here? What is in my control and what’s not?” For your own sake, stop arguing with reality, wishing things were different – at least some of the time – and choose to direct your energy and attention to what’s in your control. Do as the stoic philosopher Epictetus recommends, which is, “Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.”
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Empowered Educator Mom podcast! To see show notes and a transcript, go to kerimartinez.com/podcast. That’s k-e-r-i-m-a-r-t-i-n-e-z dot com forward slash podcast. If you have a comment or a question you’d like to share, you can text me through the link in the show notes, and if you loved the episode, please share it with another educator mom. Grab the link and text it, email it, or post it on social media.
Have an amazing week everybody. I’ll talk to you soon.
