Empowered Educator Mom

As educator moms, we often pride ourselves on being “right”—about parenting decisions, classroom management strategies, and even our beliefs about what needs to change in education. Being right gives us a sense of security, control, and empowerment.  But what if empowerment can also come from wanting to be wrong ? In this episode of the Empowered Educator Mom podcast, we explore why our brains cli...

Have you ever thought about how your mood can empower or disempower you?  How it can make things easier or more difficult to handle? In this episode of the Empowered Educator Mom podcast, we explore four specific things you can focus on to improve your mood so you can be more empowered to handle life’s challenges. We’ll dig into why feelings matter, why you actually need some negativity in your li...

Adding is our natural default when it comes to solving problems and striving to improve our lives.  We add organizers to manage clutter. We add diet plans to lose weight. We add programs to help struggling students. And we add meetings to implement the programs. What if real empowerment comes not from adding…but from subtracting? In this episode of the Empowered Educator Mom podcast, I share why w...

Empowerment is like a magic pill that makes it easier for you to handle challenges and stress, find solutions to problems, push harder on your goals, advocate for what you want, strengthen your relationships, and positively impact all areas of your life.  But what happens when you don’t use it? In this episode of the Empowered Educator Mom podcast, Keri Martinez unpacks the hidden costs of disempo...

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...

This episode is a follow-up to last week’s episode on improving your relationships.  Everyone struggles with relationships at times, be they romantic, familial, friendship, or work.  If you’re not happy with a relationship but you don’t want to leave it, what can you do? In this episode, you’ll learn about another relationship concept: manuals.  Listen in to learn what they are, how they can cause...

Everyone struggles with challenging relationships at times, be they romantic, familial, friendship, or work.  If you’re not happy with a relationship but you don’t want to leave it, what can you do? In this episode you’ll learn three concepts that can help you shift your perspective and improve any kind of relationship – even if the other person doesn’t change.  You’ll also hear an important addit...

When we face unexpected challenges, it’s normal for our brains to spin out in worry and fear about potential outcomes. This mental “spin cycle” not only hinders our ability to accurately assess the probability and severity of these outcomes but also impairs our prefrontal cortex’s problem-solving ability. If you’re faced with an unexpected problem and want to stop your brain’s spin cycle, what can...

Outsourcing confidence is something all perfectionist women do.  While there is probably a biological benefit to our brains doing it, it can be quite problematic.  If you notice you’re outsourcing your confidence, what can you do about it? In this episode you’ll learn why we outsource confidence and self-worth and why it’s more useful to source them internally.  Listen in to hear examples of how y...

Cognitive flexibility has a big impact on your emotional health and wellness.  In a nutshell, cognitive flexibility is the ability to appropriately switch your thinking and your actions.  It may not sound exciting or glamorous, but it directly impacts your creativity, resilience, and quality of life.  The more cognitively flexible you are, the better able you are to respond to changes in your envi...

According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) , nearly 58 million U.S. adults live with mental illness like anxiety and depression.  In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month , I’m dedicating this episode of the podcast to a coaching tool known as The Model.  This tool helped me improve my mental health and learn to better manage my brain.  Can it do the same for you? Listen in to le...

Women face a host of physiological, neurological, cultural and other factors that inhibit their confidence.  Beyond the strategies discussed in last week’s episode, what can women do to overcome specific confidence blockers? Listen in to learn why confidence is especially challenging for perfectionist women, six confidence blockers all women should watch out for, and practical strategies to combat...

Confidence is foundational to accomplishing goals and dreams in life, but it doesn’t come easily to most women. This is due to a variety of reasons – some biological, some environmental, and some cultural.  So, if you’re a woman who wants to improve her confidence, what can you do? In this episode you’ll learn the challenges women face in developing and maintaining confidence, why confidence comes...

Most people struggle with difficult coworkers at some point in their career.  Conflict and tension are natural components of all human relationships.  What can you do when the conflict or tension undermines your ability to do your job or negatively impacts your mental state?  How can you handle a difficult coworker in a way that decreases stress and frustration? In this episode you’ll learn a vari...

Everyone experiences hard things in life.  Sometimes we choose the challenges (like when we go after a goal or try to learn something new) and sometimes we don’t (like when we experience natural disasters, job loss, or the death of a loved one).  Whether they’re of our choosing or not, what can we do to better handle them? In this episode you’ll learn a strategy I call “choosing your hard” that yo...

Every day our amazing brains automatically and subconsciously collect evidence from the world around us.  They collect evidence of what is and isn’t safe, what works and what doesn’t, and what’s important and what’s not – all to help us survive and navigate the world. Our brains are better and faster at collecting negative evidence than positive, though, and the over-collection of negative evidenc...

We always think we want quick progress and that slow progress is bad, but what if that’s not true?  What if slow progress is okay or even useful?  In this episode we’ll explore why slow progress isn’t a problem, and I’ll share six tips to help you handle slow or even no progress. If you’re working on a goal, trying to change or build a habit, or going through a challenging situation and things are...

Seeing others as God does can be challenging. Our brains are hardwired to make snap judgements of others based on their outward appearance and behaviors.  How can we go beyond "looking on the outward appearance" and get closer to "looking on the heart" as God does (see 1 Samuel 16:7 )?   Whether you’re Christian or not, this episode will help you be more open and accepting of o...

If you set New Year’s resolutions or goals in January, there’s a decent chance you’ve already slipped up or abandoned them completely.  But that doesn’t mean failure is inevitable.  In this episode, we’ll explore three common obstacles to achieving goals and resolutions and three simple strategies you can use to overcome them to make success inevitable. If goals and resolutions feel overwhelming o...

This episode is part three of a three-part series on the Lies of Perfectionism. Do you identify as a perfectionist?  Do you think perfectionism helps you do better work and be a better person?    Perfectionism pretends to be noble.  It pretends to help you improve and grow.  But for a lot of high-achieving women, perfectionism isn't helpful.  For a lot of high-achieving women, perfectionism c...

This episode is part two of a three-part series on the Lies of Perfectionism. Do you identify as a perfectionist?  Do you think perfectionism helps you do better work and be a better person?    Perfectionism pretends to be noble.  It pretends to help you improve and grow.  But for a lot of high-achieving women, perfectionism isn't helpful.  For a lot of high-achieving women, perfectionism cre...

This episode is part one of a three-part series on the Lies of Perfectionism. Do you identify as a perfectionist?  Do you think perfectionism helps you do better work and be a better person?    Perfectionism pretends to be noble.  It pretends to help you improve and grow.  But for a lot of high-achieving women, perfectionism isn't helpful.  For a lot of high-achieving women, perfectionism cre...

Have you ever found yourself thinking you’re not good enough, you don’t fit in, you’ll never be able to accomplish your goals, or that life shouldn’t be happening the way it is?  Most of us have limiting and painful thoughts like those that we automatically accept as true and feel powerless to change. But what if you didn’t have to accept them?  What if you could question your brain’s authority, c...