If you've ever ended a long day thinking, this isn't who I want to be, then this one's for you.

Hello, friends, welcome to the Bright Morning podcast. I'm your host, Elena Aguilar. And in each podcast episode, you'll learn how you can lead conversations that build connection and spark change.

Today, we're exploring a question I hear all the time, sometimes spoken out loud and sometimes whispered quietly on the inside.

And this question is,

how do I stay true to myself as a coach?

Maybe you felt it.

You show up to school or to the office,

and before you can even hang up your coat,

you are slipping into someone else's

version of you. You are becoming the one who doesn't push back, the one who hides how tired

or discouraged you are, the one who tries to meet everyone else's expectations while losing track of your own.

If you've ever thought this isn't who I want to be, then this episode is for you.

So here's the truth. It is easy to drift. When we are constantly responding to demands, to emails,

meetings, teacher needs, student needs, we can start performing instead of living. And then one day

we look up and we think, wait, this isn't how I want to coach. This isn't how I want to lead.

This isn't how I want to feel. And the root issue is often that we don't have a clearly

articulated vision for who we want to be in the role that we're in.

And without a vision, we end up reacting instead of choosing.

We become untethered.

Now, many people skip over visioning, and they go straight into what do I need to do, and they forget to ask, who do I want to be?

We create to-do lists instead of a to-be list.

We borrow other people's goals.

...