What You’re Moving Toward

We’ve spent a lot of time this season looking at what you’re leaving, or what you might lose. That matters — you can’t skip it. But at some point, the more useful question isn’t what am I giving up but what am I moving toward?

Most owners can tell you exactly what they don’t want. They don’t want the early morning call about a staffing gap. They don’t want to carry every hard conversation alone. They don’t want to be the last one out on a Friday night, again. Those feelings are real. They’re just too general to build a life around. They’re a compass heading, not a destination.

So let’s get more specific.

The Tuesday Exercise

Imagine an owner named Marisol. She’s run her preschool for fourteen years. When she thinks about the future, her first answer is “more freedom.” That’s a good start — but freedom doesn’t tell her what to do on a Wednesday morning, and it doesn’t tell her what to change this month.

So I ask her different questions: What does an ordinary Tuesday look like in the life you want? Where are you when you wake up? What are you doing with your hands? Who is around you? What are you learning, making, or caring for?

When Marisol works through those questions, her answer stops being a feeling and starts being a picture. She describes a slow morning with coffee and a book, not checking her phone for the first hour. She mentions a part-time teaching role she’s been quietly considering for years — one that puts her in a classroom again but without the budget meetings. She talks about seeing her grandkids on weekday afternoons. About finally taking the pottery class she signed up for three times and never attended.

Something shifts. She has a picture now. And a picture is something you can move toward.

Here’s a second example. Imagine an owner named Janine, whose first answer is “I want to stop feeling exhausted.” When she works through the questions, she realizes that exhaustion is mostly about her calendar — her days are fragmented, and she never gets two uninterrupted hours to think. Her picture becomes: a school that runs for a full week without her answering the phone, and her own schedule with one protected morning block for planning. Now she has something she can test against her current life.

Neither Marisol nor Janine decided on a sale in that conversation. Some owners do end up selling. Some decide to keep the school and change how they run it. For some, the future means a business that works without them at the center, so they can step back and still own it. For others, it’s a clear plan to hand off a role they’ve outgrown. The point isn’t the outcome. The point is that you can see it.

Your exercise: Take a sheet of paper and write “An ordinary Tuesday” at the top. Don’t write about a milestone or an announcement. Write about the Tuesday. Where are you when you wake up? Who do you see before lunch? What are you doing in the afternoon? How do you feel when you go to bed?

Go back through what you wrote and underline every concrete detail — a place, a person, an activity, a time of day. Those underlined words are your real target. Vague feelings fade when life gets busy. Concrete details hold up better.

Next to each underlined detail, write one question: What would have to be true for this to happen? You don’t need to answer them all today. You just need to see what you’re really working toward.

Who Are You to Want That?

Now let’s talk about the voice that shows up when you do that exercise. You know the one. You’ve got children who are counting on you. You’ve got families who trust you. Shouldn’t your life be about them?

Let’s take that seriously, because it’s a fair question. The guilt is real, and it usually comes from care. You wouldn’t feel it if you didn’t love the place. But guilt doesn’t prove you’re doing something wrong. It tells you what you value. It doesn’t tell you what to do with it.

Picture two owners who both run a thriving school with a loyal staff.

Teresa has decided that stepping back would be a betrayal. So she keeps every decision on her desk. She doesn’t develop her assistant director, because handing over authority feels like losing it. She says yes to every extra request, and every year she gets a little more tired and a little shorter with her team. She tells herself she’s doing it for the children. But the school depends entirely on her — and that makes the risk to the children bigger, not smaller. If she gets sick, everything stops.

Lauren starts from a different place. She knows she wants a future with more room in it. So she asks: “What would the school need in order to run without me for a week?” She starts writing down her routines. Over the next eighteen months, she develops a lead teacher into an assistant director, builds a system for enrollment follow-up, and sets a regular staff meeting that doesn’t depend on her presence. Her team gets clearer about their jobs. Her families get more consistent answers. And Lauren gets to make her own decisions about what comes next.

Which owner is stewarding the business better? Lauren. Not because she cares less about the children — but because she’s making decisions from choice rather than from a need to be needed. Teresa is acting from fear. Lauren is acting from purpose.

An owner who respects herself is more likely to plan, delegate, and communicate clearly. Self-respect says, “I deserve a life that’s more than this school.” That belief, held with care and honesty, produces better plans for everyone who depends on what you’ve built.

Finishing the Sentence

Try this. Finish this sentence in writing, three different ways: “I can care deeply about the children and still want…”

Write the first thing that comes to mind. Then a second. Then a third that feels a little harder to admit. The third one is usually the most honest. Look at it without judging it. You’re not committing to anything — you’re just letting it exist on paper.

Then ask: What responsibility do I have to the people in my school, and what does that responsibility actually require of me right now?

Sometimes the answer is that you need a plan, not permission to stay forever. Sometimes it’s that you need to say something out loud to your team that you’ve been avoiding. Your responsibility and your desire for a different life can live in the same heart. They don’t have to fight each other.

One Small Next Step

Pick one detail from your Tuesday exercise — just one. Maybe it’s the slow morning, or the protected planning block, or a conversation you’ve been avoiding. Write it somewhere you’ll see it this week.

Then do one thing with it. Schedule thirty minutes to write down what would need to change. Or tell one person you trust what you’re considering. It doesn’t have to be a decision, and it doesn’t have to be a plan. It just has to be a true sentence said out loud to someone who will hear you without judging you.

Small steps like that are how a life starts to move. They don’t require you to know the whole route. You can love the children and still want a life that feels like yours. That isn’t a betrayal. It’s a sign you’re taking the whole picture seriously — including your own future.

Go build the life you actually want, one ordinary Tuesday at a time.

If you’d like more to work with, my book From Passion to Payday goes deeper into the identity, guilt, and permission pieces that make this work so personal. Get it on Amazon here.