If you have come to this space to read my writing before, you may already know that my writing process is shaped by the ideas I encounter in books and articles, hear in podcasts, and gather through interactions across my personal and professional life.

I have developed a habit of writing down the quotes that resonate with me in the Notes app on my phone. I title each page with the name of the book, article, or podcast and add ideas as I encounter them. I may not always have the physical book nearby or remember precisely where I heard something, but I almost always have my phone with me when I need inspiration or want to return to an idea. I memorialized this process in an Edutopia article I wrote this year.

The quotes I save often meet me differently each time I revisit them. A line that initially makes me think about my own leadership may later help me understand a student, support a teacher, or approach a challenge with a new perspective.

This week, I am sharing five quotes I keep returning to and what they can mean for students, educators, and leaders. These interpretations are grounded in my own experiences, but I invite you to consider what each quote might mean in your context.

1. Create the Conditions for Change

In Forward, Together: Moving Schools from Conflict to Community in Contentious Times, George Couros writes:

“When we are trying to move people forward, you can’t change anyone. The only thing you can do is create the conditions where people are more likely to change themselves. That starts with you. Not only what you do, but what people see you do.”

We often speak about change as something we need other people to make. We want students to become more engaged, teachers to embrace a new practice, or teams to approach their work differently. But sustainable change rarely begins with telling someone else what to do. It begins with examining the conditions we are creating around them and the example we are setting ourselves.

What this can mean for students:
Students need environments in which curiosity, risk-taking, reflection, and revision are expected. Rather than simply telling students to participate, we can offer meaningful choices, invite their questions, and normalize the idea that learning includes uncertainty. We create conditions for growth when students know their voices will be heard and their mistakes will be treated as part of the process.

What this can mean for educators:
A teacher cannot force a student to care, but a teacher can design experiences that feel relevant and purposeful. Educators can model curiosity, acknowledge when a lesson needs to be adjusted, and show students what it looks like to remain open to feedback. What students see us do often communicates more than what they hear us say.

What this can mean for leaders:
Leaders cannot mandate trust, collaboration, or innovation. They can, however, protect time for people to learn together, respond thoughtfully to questions, remain present in classrooms, and participate in the same learning they expect from others. Before asking people to change, leaders can ask: What are people seeing me model? What conditions have I created for this change to take root?

2. Small Choices Shape Important Conversations

In Supercommunicators, Charles Duhigg writes:

“Every meaningful conversation is made up of countless small choices. There are fleeting moments when the right question, or vulnerable admission, or an empathetic word can completely change your dialogue. Because the right conversation, at the right moment, can change everything.”

The most meaningful conversations are not always scheduled. They happen in doorways, during transitions, beside a student’s desk, after a meeting, or in the few extra minutes someone chooses to stay behind.

In those moments, our smallest choices matter. We can rush to respond, or we can pause. We can assume, or we can ask. We can defend our position, or we can become curious about someone else’s experience.

What this can mean for students:
Students can learn that communication is not simply about speaking clearly. It is also about listening carefully, noticing how others respond, and choosing words that move a conversation forward. Before reacting, students might ask: What question could help me understand this person better?

What this can mean for educators:
A brief conversation can change how a student sees themselves as a learner. A question such as, “Can you tell me what you were thinking here?” opens a different door than, “Why didn’t you follow the directions?” The first communicates curiosity; the second may feel like judgment. The language we choose can invite students into the learning or unintentionally push them away from it.

What this can mean for leaders:
Leadership is carried through conversations. In difficult moments, leaders can slow down enough to listen beneath the words being spoken. They can ask one more question, name their own uncertainty, or acknowledge another person’s perspective before moving toward a decision. Sometimes one empathetic sentence can reshape an entire interaction.

3. Action Creates Information

On The Big Deal Podcast with Codie Sanchez and guest Robert Herjavec shared:

“An action today is better than the perfect plan tomorrow. I’ll make a decision today. If I’m wrong, I’ll know pretty quickly, and I’ll make another decision tomorrow…. By the time they’ve thought about it, I’ve already made three mistakes and found a better way.”

In education, careful planning matters. Our decisions affect people, and they deserve thought and attention. Yet there are also times when the pursuit of the perfect plan prevents us from taking the first useful step.

Action gives us information that planning alone cannot provide.

What this can mean for students:
Students can become so concerned about producing the right answer that they hesitate to begin. We can help them understand that the first draft, first attempt, or first strategy is not supposed to be perfect. It is something they can examine, learn from, and improve. Beginning gives them something to work with.

What this can mean for educators:
Educators do not need to redesign an entire unit to strengthen learning. They might try one new discussion protocol, revise one question, confer with one student, or study one piece of student work. Small experiments allow teachers to gather evidence, make adjustments, and develop practices that are responsive to the learners in front of them.

What this can mean for leaders:
Not every initiative has to begin as a large-scale rollout. Leaders can create a short learning cycle, invite a small group to pilot an idea, or test a structure before expanding it. The goal is not impulsive decision-making. It is thoughtful movement: take a step, study its impact, listen to the people involved, and determine the next step from there.

4. Make Decisions That Support the Story You Want to Tell

In The Pivot Year, Brianna Wiest writes:

“What matters is that, in the end, you can tell a story that you’re proud of. That’s the light to hold all of your decisions up to: when you’re old and retelling the stories of your life, what will you say?”

Education is filled with decisions. Some are significant and visible. Others seem small enough to disappear into the rhythm of a full day. Yet all of them contribute to the stories we are creating about who we are, what we value, and how we made people feel.

What this can mean for students:
Students are continually writing stories about themselves: I am a reader. I am not good at math. My ideas matter. School is not for me. Educators can help students recognize that these stories are not fixed. A difficult chapter does not determine the ending. Students can ask: What choice can I make today that moves my story in the direction I want it to go?

What this can mean for educators:
The story of a teaching career is not built only through major accomplishments. It is also shaped by the child who felt noticed, the lesson that was redesigned, the family who felt heard, and the colleague who was supported during a difficult season. Educators might consider: What do I hope students remember about learning with me? Are my daily choices helping create that experience?

What this can mean for leaders:
Leaders write their stories through the cultures they help create. Their legacy is not only found in programs, plans, or outcomes, but in whether people felt trusted, developed, challenged, and valued. Before making a decision, leaders might ask: Will this choice contribute to the story we say we want to create together?

5. Discover How You Are Meant to Spend Yourself

During an episode of the Evolving with Gratitude podcast with Lainie Rowell, guest Jim Collins shared:

“Encodings are these durable capacities that reside inside us, awaiting discovery through the experiences of life. Everyone has encodings. You have encodings. I have encodings. They’re different encodings from each other. The critical thing isn’t that I have to find what I’m better at relative to all other people in the world. The critical question is to discover what I’m more encoded for relative to other ways I could spend myself.”

This quote shifts the question from How do I compare with everyone else? to Where can my particular strengths, interests, and ways of thinking make the greatest contribution?

That is a question worth carrying into every classroom, team, and school community.

What this can mean for students:
Students need opportunities to discover what energizes them, not only where they earn the highest score. A student may be encoded for noticing patterns, building relationships, asking unusual questions, designing, storytelling, organizing, creating, or helping others persist. We can invite students to reflect on when they feel most engaged, useful, and fully themselves.

What this can mean for educators:
Educators bring different gifts to their work. One teacher may build extraordinary classroom community. Another may make complex ideas accessible. Someone else may see possibilities in student writing that others overlook. Rather than comparing ourselves with the person down the hall, we can become more intentional about understanding, developing, and sharing the strengths we already carry.

What this can mean for leaders:
Leaders have a responsibility to notice the gifts within others and create opportunities for those gifts to emerge. That may mean inviting a teacher to lead a learning lab, asking a student to help shape an initiative, or creating space for someone whose leadership has not yet been formally recognized. Leadership is not about asking every person to contribute in the same way. It is about helping people discover how they can contribute most meaningfully.

Return to the Ideas That Return You to Yourself

I began by sharing my habit of collecting quotes in my phone. I return to them because the right words often help me see an experience differently. They slow me down, challenge an assumption, or reconnect me with the kind of educator and leader I am still becoming.

Perhaps that is why these five ideas continue to find their way back to me. Together, they remind me to create the conditions for growth, choose my words with care, take thoughtful action, make decisions that support a meaningful story, and help people uncover the gifts already living inside them.

In The Leader Inside, I wrote: “Be the narrator of your story. Create what you want to be.”

That quote feels like the place where these ideas meet.

We are always creating something through our actions, conversations, decisions, and attention. Students are creating beliefs about who they are becoming. Educators are creating experiences that may remain with learners long after a lesson ends. Leaders are creating the conditions in which people either protect their gifts or feel safe enough to share them.

The story is shaped in the large decisions, but it is also written through the small moments we may be tempted to overlook. As I wrote in The Leader Inside, we do not have to search only for the big things to see something good happening; the small things matter, too.

So, perhaps the question is not only, What story will I tell one day?

Perhaps it is also:

What story am I helping to write today?

Try This as a Reflective Learning Experience

The structure of this post can become a reflective exercise for students, educators, or leadership teams.

Invite each person to select a quote they keep returning to. Then ask them to reflect through three lenses:

What does this quote mean to me?
Describe the experiences, beliefs, or questions the quote brings forward.

What might this quote mean for the people I learn with or serve?
Consider how the idea applies to students, colleagues, families, or the wider community.

What could this quote invite me to do next?
Identify one practical action, conversation, decision, or habit inspired by the idea.

Participants can write independently, discuss their thinking with a partner, or create a shared collection of quotes and reflections. A student might connect a quote to a learning goal. A teacher might use one to reconsider an instructional practice. A leadership team might select a quote that captures the culture it hopes to create.

The quote becomes more than something to post or admire. It becomes a lens for reflection and a small step toward creating the story we want to tell.