Blog
My Two Speeds
Jul 29, 2022
The concept of slowing down.
I say the ‘concept’ for a specific reason; when I was nearly at the point of burnout, I had everyone telling me to slow down. My parents would tell you I came out of the womb doing things at 10,000 miles per hour. Constantly doing everything fast paced and picking things up quickly during my childhood and my career.
During my career, I had people telling me to slow down as I was making others look bad. But my natural pace in how I talk, how I walk, how I breathe and do everything, is FAST!
Yet, I had people around me during my burnout telling me to slow down and I couldn’t get the concept of what slow looks like. If you are a naturally fast person like me, how do you find ‘slow’?
I burnt out and as part of my recovery I went full pelt into learning everything there was about burnout. I wanted to know what had caused this? How could I stop others experiencing the same? How could...
Be Seen, Be Heard, Be You
Jul 22, 2022
In 2014 I left corporate and started my consultancy, The Chrysalis Crew. At the time I knew that the organisation would be much bigger than me. In terms of the purpose and the work that we were doing.
Many people at the time asked me why I didn’t call that company Kelly Swingler, but I knew the company was much bigger than me.
I had this period when I first started the business of being able to hide behind the Chrysalis brand name and logo. This kept me quite small. It wasn’t until I started to recruit a team that they said I was the face of the organisation. The reality is, that I was. People wanted to ‘buy’ me. But at the time all I wanted was to hide.
If we think about some of the big brands; we can associate them to a person.
I didn’t realise this as quickly as I should.
Years went on, I then became comfortable being on stage, I’d recovered from my corporate hangover and burnout...
Respect Your Boundaries And Others Will Too
Jul 15, 2022
The challenges that many clients face is that they think that boundaries are all about saying NO. Whilst saying no is a part of that, we also know that boundaries are about protecting our energy, time, space, our intentions and goals.
In order to achieve your goals, dreams and ambitions, it’s important to maintain your boundaries. If you don’t, you can end up worn out, burnt out, struggling and not having enough time to get everything done.
When those boundaries aren’t in place, it’s our goals that fall by the wayside. We extend the time frame on our goals or even forget about them completely. We then start to feel like we’re not achieving, with imposter syndrome and self doubt creeping in.
I also see that we create boundaries, but only try them once and life happens and we give up. Then we find it more difficult later on and think that boundaries don’t actually work, or wonder why people aren’t...
Managing My Energy
Jul 08, 2022
In preparation for my Power Up event (that took place at the end of June), I took some downtime and alone time before the event and some reflection time after. I ensured that the weekend after was all about resting, reflecting, recharging, having a lot of time to myself and planning purposefully.
I talk about energy a lot. For me I do believe energy management is more beneficial and helpful than trying to manage time. We all have different lives, different priorities and responsibilities. We all have 24 hours in a day, but some of us have more free time than others. Time happens and carries on regardless of what we are doing and how much we have to get done. Regardless of what priorities we have or how we are feeling. Whilst some of us appear to manage our time more effectively, what they are actually doing is managing their energy.
Time is out of our control, so trying to manage it is useless. We can’t lengthen the warm summer days, as much as we...
What's your definition of success?
Jul 01, 2022
I have just delivered my annual Power Up event in London and I wanted to share some of the learnings that have come from that event.
When I envisioned my event and came up with the idea originally, it would now be very easy for me (a few days after) to see it as a failure in comparison to what I had in my mind.
It was during a coaching session with my own coach last June, where I was in the process of bringing forward Kelly Swingler as a brand. I was stepping away from my old consultancy that I started in 2014 and over the last year I have really put myself out there, flying the Kelly Swingler flag and brand. During my coaching session I said I wanted to reach as many women as possible, in person, in a room, being able to help women step into their core power.
My coach asked me to do a visualisation exercise, where we went into a brief meditation, to visualise ‘this thing’. I knew it was something that had to happen in person and as...
Mind The Gap
Jun 24, 2022
Mind the gap is the title of my next book and is now available on pre-order.
This book is the most difficult one I’ve written to date. This will be my 5th book and is released on the 13th July.
With the other 4 books, they have been commissioned by publishers in the first instance. So the publishers have asked me to write a book, they’ve given me the word count, the layout and a rough idea of what’s to be in the book. They’ve also edited it and published it for me.
But with this book, I had some challenges initially. The title had been going around in my head for months, but I had no idea what I was going to write about, I just wrote down ‘Mind the Gap’ in my notebook.
I started to write it and contacted a publisher and I was so excited because I not only had this book in mind, I also had 4 more. I knew the order they were going to be in and why, everything was in place and I was over the moon when...
My Success, My Way
Jun 10, 2022
Success comes in all shapes and sizes and is personal to each of us. I want to help you create your success, your way.
Have you thought about success?
What does it mean to you?
Are you on track?
Some of the women I work with are incredible and successful women, yet sometimes when I start working with them on a 1:1 basis, they don’t always feel successful. They say that other people label them as successful, but it’s not necessarily a word they would use to describe themselves.
I can relate to that!
So, have you thought about what success would look like and feel like for you?
I hear the word failing or failure a lot with women in my coaching, in my programmes and in my DM’s.
“I feel like a failure”
“I want to feel successful”
“I feel like a fraud”
“I don’t feel like I can celebrate my wins, as I don’t want to come across as arrogant”
...
What Happens When Women Speak Up
Jun 03, 2022
I recently watched the latest Davina McCall documentary- her second one talking about her experience with menopause. Whilst this post isn’t necessarily all about menopause, the impact that it has on women is something that we all need to pay attention to and talk about.
I was menopausal at the age of 33 with an endometrial embolization and found out at age 41 that I probably should have been on HRT at 33. I knew I had all of the symptoms and had been seeing the doctors over and over again and repeatedly told ‘you’re too young’.
After the first Davina documentary I found a private GP and paid thousands of pounds for lots of different tests and the only test that wasn’t done was the one for menopause, again because I was still deemed to be too young. Through a conversation with friends of mine, I was introduced to an organisation called Newson Health that is run by Doctor Louise Newson. I had 1 consultation with one of her...
Mind The Gap
May 27, 2022
This is the title of my next book which is launching in July and available on my website for pre-sale very soon. Very soon it’s going to transform from words on a page to an actual real life book and the feeling of seeing and holding months of your work in book form, is something I never tire of.
Mind the gap is the journey from balance to burnout and back again, my experiences and my journey in recognising that the gap between health and burnout, isn't always a big one. And if we're not doing what we need to do, we can fall through the crack quite easily.
Core-led living is what got me out of burnout. I had created this gap between the true me, (who I am at my core) and the façade version of me that was trying to live in a way that suited everybody else.
I was going after everyone else's level of success.
I was trying to fit into these leadership boxes that were just not me.
I was living in a way that wasn’t aligned to who I am...
Nourishment
May 20, 2022
For the last few years rather than creating a long list of resolutions (that quite frankly I never do), I instead have a word of the year. I still have my big goals and quarterly goals for the year, but I focus on a word rather than resolutions.
For example, my resolutions used to be, quit smoking, quit drinking, eat healthier etc, but I failed so quickly into the New Year and never quite managed to get back on track. So I created a habit and a focus on one word for the year.
This year my word is NOURISHMENT.
In previous years my word has been:
Focus
Permission
Kindness
Growth
Compassion
Success
Abundance
Before I came up with my word for this year, I’d realised that I had been writing down and talking about the word ‘nourish’. So I sat with it for a while and it just felt right for all Four Core-Ners of my life:
Self
Relationships
Work
World
For me, it’s more than just...
