Lauren Brabson

I firmly believe that when things are happening in my life, it is always because of me. Life is always trying to show us where we are not totally free yet, but where we have the opportunity to become more free. I think about the concept of extreme ownership - when we take extreme ownership over what is going on in our lives, in our classrooms, in our schools, in our career, it gives us the power to say, what are the things that I really love about this, and what are the things I'm not loving about this? If I take extreme ownership over all of it, that means I can reward myself and praise myself for what is amazing, and I also have the power to change what is not amazing. From that stems my greatest belief that things can always be just a little bit better. Wherever there is friction, wherever there is suffering, wherever there are situations going on that aren't working for me, and they're not working for you, and they're not working for our community, we do have the power to figure out why that is and how we can make it different.

One of the concepts that's been really powerful for me and for lots of other women that I have coached, both personally and professionally, is the concept of ikigai. It's the Japanese concept that when we find the intersection between what makes us happy, what the world needs, and what we can realistically get paid for, that is where we can find a great sense of success and purpose for ourselves. Within the field of education, especially when you're young, the greater idea is often like, oh, I want to get into the field of education, so I'm going to become a teacher. And yet, for so many other people like me, we knew that being a teacher was not it, and yet we just didn't know what it was. So have the bravery to say, what is really going to make me happy? And what role do I really want to play in the landscape of education right now? Do I really want to be in a classroom, working with kids? That makes lots of teachers happy, and that's amazing, because we need that. But for me, I knew that what was really going to make me happy, and what I also felt the world greatly needed, was someone to be a disruptor to the system. So very much consider those options.

One of my biggest underlying beliefs is that when things are happening in my life, it is always because of me. I firmly believe that life is always trying to show us where we are not totally free yet, but where we have the opportunity to become more free. I believe in extreme ownership - when we take extreme ownership over what is going on in our lives, in our classrooms, in our schools, in our career, it gives us the power to recognize what we really love and what we're not loving. If I take extreme ownership over all of it, that means I can reward myself and praise myself for what is amazing, and I also have the power to change what is not amazing. From that stems the greatest belief that things can always be just a little bit better. I've seen that perfectionism is a real struggle for myself and for educators in general. When we think about that things can always be better, that's not to be defeatist - wherever there is friction, wherever there is suffering, wherever there are situations going on that aren't working for me, for you, and for our community, we do have the power to figure out why that is and how we can make it different.