You Can’t Make Everyone Happy (And You Don’t Have To)

Episode Summary

Ever feel like no matter what you do—someone’s unhappy?
As a teacher, it can feel like your job is to keep kids, parents, admin, and coworkers content... all while your own needs take a back seat.

In this week’s episode of Teachers in Transition, Vanessa Jackson shares a powerful parable, a pop-culture reminder, and a personal story about a cup holder (yes, really) to walk you through three powerful gifts that every teacher deserves to claim:

• 🎁 The Gift of Joy: Why choosing joy doesn’t require permission—and how a Joy Bingo card can bring play back into your day.
• 🎁 The Gift of Learning: How to reclaim learning for yourself, not just for your students or your school.
• 🎁 The Gift of Adaptability: How every fire drill, tech glitch, and schedule change proves you're more career-ready than you think.

From Aesop’s fable of the man, the boy, and the donkey...
 To Monica Geller’s meltdown over mashed potatoes...
 To a water bottle rolling across a 4Runner floor...

This episode reminds you that you’ve already adapted, you’re allowed to laugh, and you deserve to build a future that gives back.

🔗 Links to the Free Gifts Mentioned:

• 🧡 Gift 9: Joy Bingo Card
• 📘 Gift 8: Learning Path Mini Planner
• ✅ Gift 7: Adaptability Checklist

🔗 Links to other things mentioned 
Teachers In Transition - Episode 179: The Four Rules
Teachers in Transition – Episode 250: Interview with Jenny Long
Happier in Hollywood – Episode 395 Hunting for Disproportionate Joy 

🧠 Keywords: teacher burnout, teacher transition, jobs for former teachers, emotional labor, transferable skills, classroom exit plan, teacher identity shift, joy in education, job search for teachers 

👋 CONNECT WITH VANESSA

• 💌 Email: Vanessa@teachersintransition.com
• 📱 Call or Text: 512-640-9099
• 📅 Book a Free Discovery Call: teachersintransition.com/calendar
• 🔗 Bluesky: @beyondteaching.bsky.social
• 📸 Instagram & Threads: @teachers.in.transition
• 👍 Facebook: Teachers in Transition
• 🐦 X (Twitter): @EduExitStrategy

 The transcript to this podcast is found on the episode’s homepage at Buzzsprout

Transcript

Hi!  And Welcome back to another episode of Teachers in Transition with me, Vanessa Jackson! I’m a former middle school teacher who left the classroom after 25 years to first work in the world of staffing, and now I work for teachers. I show teachers how to translate their skills and leave the classroom with a solid exit strategy.  I help teachers find their courageous inner voice that has been quieted after working in toxic environments. I am so happy you are today!  Today we are talking about the next three gifts in our 12 Gifts of Christmas series.  Today’s gifts are Joy, Learning, and Adaptability. 

So, quick honesty check: Have you ever felt like you’re carrying the weight of the whole world on your back, just to make everybody happy?  Yeah. Me too.  And it sure gets heavy at this time of year.  

This episode starts about joy — but not the kind sold on mugs or Instagram. We’re talking about the kind of joy that shows up when you stop contorting yourself to meet everyone else’s expectations and instead, give yourself permission to just be. Be tired. Be curious. Be joyful. Be you.
 
When I was 8 years old, people bought me a lot of books. One set of grandparents gave me a book of Greek Mythology. One set of grandparents got me hooked on mystery novels, and my aunt bought me a beautiful, fancy book of Aesop’s fables – had the gold filigree on the cover and a built-in bookmark ribbon.   

I read this fables when I was eight, but the older I get, the more it resonates and applies in so many areas of my life.  I’ve read it before on the podcast, but it is really good and bears repeating – especially at this time of year. 

Aesop's Fable - The Man, the Boy, and the Donkey]

A man and his son were going with their donkey to market, and as they were walking along by its side, a countryman passed them and said:

"You fools. What is a donkey for, but to ride upon?"

So the man put the boy on the donkey, and they went on their way.

But soon they passed a group of men, one of whom said:

"See that lazy youngster. He lets his father walk while he rides."

The man ordered his boy to get off, and he got on himself. But they hadn’t gone far when they passed two women. One said to the other:

"Shame on that lazy lout to let his poor son trudge along."

Well, the man didn’t know what to do. At last, he took the boy up before him on the donkey.

By this time, they had come to the town, and passersby began to jeer and point at them. The man stopped and asked what they were scoffing at.

One man said:

"Aren't you ashamed of yourself for overloading that poor donkey of yours? You and your hulking son?"

The man and boy got off and tried to think what to do. They thought, and they thought, till at last they cut down a pole, tied the donkey's feet to it, and raised the pole and the donkey to their shoulders.

They went along, amid the laughter of all who met them, until they came to the market bridge, where the donkey, getting one of his feet loose, kicked out and caused the boy to drop his end of the pole. In the struggle, the donkey fell over the bridge — and his front feet being tied together, he was drowned.

"That’ll teach you," said an old man who had followed them.

"Please all, and you will please none."

Even eight-year-old me knew exactly what that meant. 

I see this so much  around the holidays, but honestly, it’s year-round for teachers. We’ve been conditioned to think that if we just work hard enough, smile brightly enough, and give generously enough, we’ll finally make everyone around us happy. But at what cost?
 
 Sometimes the donkey drowns.
 
If you teach elementary school, you have a room full of students, their parents, and layers of admin to keep happy.  If you teach secondary school, chances are high that you have 150+ kids on your roster – with their parents and layers of admin.  Sure, in general the parents of secondary kids are a little more hands-off, but what the elementary classes lack in numbers, they make up for in sheer parental intensity. Parents carrying their own guilt over what they cannot do is often taken out on you, the teacher. 
 
You have to figure out which method of getting your donkey to town works best for YOU and remember that it’s impossible to make everyone happy all the time. 
 
You know who else tried to please everybody?

Monica Geller. Season 1, episode 9.

If you’re a Friends fan, you might remember the episode “The One Where Underdog Gets Away.” It’s Monica’s first time hosting Thanksgiving for the whole group. Sounds simple, right?

Wrong.  It all goes very wrong when she mentions the mashed potatoes that she, a trained chef, will make. 

• Ross wants mashed potatoes with lumps.
• Phoebe needs them whipped with peas and onions.
• Joey? Joey is a tater tot guy.

And Monica—bless her overly accommodating, slightly neurotic heart—tries to make all three kinds.

And she ends up frazzled, underappreciated, and potato-splattered.

Because trying to make everyone happy doesn’t lead to peace—it leads to burnout.  And while it made for great comedy in the moment, it’s also a cautionary tale for real life.

You don’t have to be the mashed potato martyr.

Sometimes you need to ask:

• What do I want?
• What’s enough?
• Who am I trying to impress—and why?
• Is this the best decision for ME in this moment. 
   
   

So next time you’re in the kitchen of life trying to whip up a version of yourself that suits everyone’s tastes—remember Monica. Remember the donkey. And maybe just make the potatoes you like.  Or… if you don’t like potatoes, make Mac & Cheese!

One of the podcasts I like to listen to – it’s called Happier in Hollywood – coined the phrase disproportionate joy. Or maybe they didn’t coin it, but that’s where I heard it first. Basically, it identifies those little moments where something makes you way happier than you think it would. 
 
 I had one of those moments recently.   OK, so I drive an old Toyota 4runner. An '06. I love that beast. But those ‘06 cup holders could never have imagined the 2025 obsession with hydration. I have my favorite one that I jokingly refer to as my emotional support water bottle. (maybe it’s only half joking.  I take that thing EVERYWHERE I’m allowed to.)  My 4Runner’s cupholders are absolutely useless for modern water bottles or cups.

For the longest time, every time I braked or turned, my cup fall this way or that.  A few times, it’s flown out onto the floor. I bought a cupholder adapter off of Amazon. It did not work. If anything, it made the problem worse because the holder was still too big but now the cup was higher up and more precarious. So I chucked that in the back of my vehicle and went back to the original, OG set up.  It was just a low-level, constant frustration every time I turned left or right. You know, one of those tiny erosions of your daily peace?  It altered my driving habits!  I instinctively reached over to put a hand on my cup in those moments. 
 
 At some point, I really stopped to think about this problem, and it occurred to me that I could not have been the first person to struggle with this. I could not be the only person to struggle with this. SOMEone had to have solved this problem.

And, finally, I found a little custom insert on Etsy that someone figured out with a 3D printer. I even got it in a color that went with my car! Game changer. Cups stayed put. Problem solved.  Now, every time I glance that thing, I get a little happy jolt. That’s an example of finding joy in the little things. 

But! The failed Amazon cupholder insert was still there. Rolling around the back of my car as a sad plastic reminder of money wasted. UNTIL!!!  I was enjoying Saturday of running around with my daughter and I noticed in her new-to-her car that her emotional support water bottle of choice didn’t fit either.  I very excitedly pulled out the holder that failed my car and it worked PERFECTLY in hers for her water bottle. My disproportionate moment of joy was having something I thought I’d wasted money become perfectly useful elsewhere for someone having a similar problem that she hadn’t yet addressed.

Now it lives in her car. Just this past weekend she pointed out that both she AND her husband really like it. It brings them both joy. 

And me? As I ruminated on why I had so much joy from all that. I realized that it reminded me of something important. Sometimes joy comes from letting things go to a place where they are valued more. And being weighed down by too much that literally doesn’t serve you just makes the everyday annoyances that much worse.
 
 If you know this is your last year in the classroom, take this as your cue to start offloading some of your teacher ‘stashes to others.

That brings me to the first of this week’s 12 Gifts of Christmas series: Gift 9 — The Gift of Joy. (Yes, I know these are landing out order.  I created the gifts before I wrote the podcasts.)

But this one is deceptively simple. It’s a bingo card. But not just any bingo card.

This is a reminder that joy doesn’t have to be earned. It can be chosen.

Things like:

• Watched a sunset
• Danced in the kitchen
• Ate something delicious and actually savored it
• Wrote a kind note
• Took a deep breath. That’s it. One.
   
   

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it: Earn a bingo.  
 Feeling up to a big challenge – try to get them all in before you go back in January.  
 Not up to that challenge that size?  Fill out one row, or column or the Four Corners. 
 If you’re barely getting through the holidays, aim to fill in just one box. 
 Or print it and post it as a reminder that your joy matters.

[SEGMENT: Gift of Learning - One Skill, One Step]

And because joy and agency go hand in hand, and also because teachers often find joy in learning, I want to shout out another gift this week: Gift 8: The Gift of Learning.
 
If you are choosing to leave the classroom, one of the things you need to do is a Skills Gap Analysis.  This is to identify the things in your new chosen career that you are interested in that you don’t yet have the official proof of skill just yet. (or maybe you are missing the skill, like a coding language). 

This gift is a mini learning path. Nothing overwhelming. Just:

• Pick one skill that you think you lack
• Choose your first tiny step 
• Decide when you’ll do it
   
   

And then? Celebrate it. Because reclaiming your learning isn’t just professional development. It’s personal liberation on your pathway out of the classroom!

 And as I scoot into the segment on Career Transition and Job Search, I remind you again that one of the most valuable teacher superpowers is your flexibility.
 Sidebar: this is why I don’t understand scripted lesson plans.  When has anything ever gone to plan. It’s like that quote from Captain Cold:
 
 “There are only four rules to the plan:  Make the plan, execute the plan, expect the plan to go off the rails, and throw away the plan.”
 
I actually dived into that quote very deeply and those four rules back in episode 179, and I’ll link to that in the show notes, or you can just search it on the podcast’s homepage. 

Because if you’re a teacher? You’ve already mastered this.

New curriculum with zero prep? Done it.
 Fire drill during testing week? Handled it.
 Sudden shift to remote learning? Survived it.

This isn’t just something you had to do — it’s something you excel at.

Let me offer a few examples to get your wheels turning:

• A department chair who managed chaos daily and now thrives in project management.
• A tech-savvy teacher who built a Bitmoji classroom in 24 hours and is now training as a digital learning designer. 
• A teacher-parent who juggled instruction and caregiving and now brings emotional intelligence and time management to coaching.
• An art teacher who reimagined her curriculum remotely and now works in creative strategy.
• An English teacher who differentiated for 30+ learners daily and now leads DEI initiatives in corporate spaces.
• The computer teacher and yearbook coach who uses her skills in design and organization now makes and sells art. (check out episode 250 for that inspirational story!!)
• Even your friendly neighborhood podcast cast host, once a band and orchestra teacher who, during the pandemic, was trying to teach beginning violin to students who wouldn’t turn on their cameras. I created instrumentless kits for the beginners to teach them the basics without passing out expensive school equipment before I knew them. With googly eyes. Because of course I did. I  wasn’t just improvising. I was using user-centered design. Innovating under constraint and displaying empathy-driven leadership. That was adaptability.

You have it too.  I promise you do!

Gift 7 (they’re out of order, remember?) is The Gift of Adaptability.  and the download is an adaptability checklist. 

The downloadable checklist helps you remind you to identify and name what you are probably already doing:

• Shift plans quickly when circumstances change
• Lead groups with wildly different needs
• Problem-solve in real time
• Stay calm while everything’s on fire (sometimes literally)
   
   

It also asks you to reflect on this very important question:

"How has your adaptability helped you succeed — and how will it serve you in the next chapter of your career?"

So here’s your gentle nudge:

Where in your life are you carrying a donkey? Or making too many different kinds of mashed potatoes?
 What would it feel like to set that down and create a boundary?
 And what tiny joy can you choose this week that is just for you?

You’ve given enough.
 It’s time to build a future that gives back.

Download your bingo card. Choose your learning path. Print your adaptability checklist and stick it to the fridge.

And for the love of coffee, get yourself a cup holder that fits your favorite water bottle..

I’m cheering you on.

See you next week where I’ll share the last of the 12 gifts Faith, Momentum, and Possibility