Ladies and gentlemen welcome to the show I'm Greg McEwan and I'm your host for

the What's Essential Podcast. I'm also the author of Essentialism, the

discipline pursuit of less and my goal is to decode exactly how to design a life

that really matters because if you don't prioritize your life, someone

helps will. If you're new to the show take a deep breath. Almost everything is

trivial. Only a few things are essential and that's what this show is all about.

My job is to interview, get deep really with authors, entrepreneurs,

psychologists and everyday people to help explore what's essential through a

process of listening, unpacking and going deep with each guest we turn each

episode into practical advice for intentionally planning and living in order to

move forward. If you don't do anything else just ask what's essential and

eliminate as much as possible everything else. Let's start from the beginning.

My name is Elena Aguilar and I am a writer. I'm a coach. I am an educator. I

founded my own small business. I work on topics that include team development

emotional resilience, racial justice, communication, but more than anything I'm

a writer. And what do you write? So I have written six books about the topics that

I just listed and those are specifically for educators. I live in Oakland,

California, and I worked in the public schools here for 20 years. I have written

for teachers, school leaders, school coaches for about a decade now. You emailed me.

What did you say? How did we get here? I just have to first thank you for your

work because when I first, I heard you first on a podcast and I remember

literally stopping in my tracks. I was doing something like cleaning the house.

...