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Power-FULL Boundaries

burnout wellbeing Nov 29, 2022

One of the first things I usually find myself working with my clients on, is setting and maintaining boundaries, because without boundaries, the people-pleasing, guilt, frustration and stress continues to grow, and we know that these things can lead to burnout.

POWER-FULL Boundaries are a promise to yourself and others where you clearly state what you will do, and won’t do, in a given situation. The purpose of setting POWER-FULL Boundaries is to set reasonable limits, protect your energy, your sanity and your time, so that you feel more calm, more in control and much more stress-LESS. POWER-FULL boundaries help you to become rich in time, energy, calm, and joy, BUT, you have to actually maintain them and enforce them in order for them to work!

Many of the clients that I work with say they struggle with implementing boundaries because they hate saying no to people, the trouble is, you’re already saying no, to yourself, ALL. OF. THE. TIME.

Many clients also...

Feeling Like An Imposter

burnout hr leadership wellbeing Sep 23, 2022

I’ve been getting a number of messages from women saying that the more senior they are becoming in their careers, the more they are starting to feel like an imposter.

I can relate to this.

When I got my seat at the table, that was when I really started to feel for the first time that I don’t belong. I started to doubt my abilities and whether I was good enough to be there.

Much like the Spiderman quote ‘with great power, comes great responsibility’.

It felt like that responsibility was too much to bear. It didn’t just feel like I had a responsibility for the role and in the organisation, it also felt like I had a responsibility for women, women my age (I was 30) and for young working mums (my sons were 10). I’d never had those feelings before, until I got that seat at the table.

If we don’t tackle this feeling, we reach burnout. That’s where I got to.

I didn’t have a big community of people...

Core-Led Confidence

leadership wellbeing Sep 16, 2022

As we know core-led women do 3 things:

They know who they are deeply at the core

They set and maintain boundaries

They take time for themselves

In doing these 3 things they are empowered individuals and they empower those around them. Core-led women role model empowerment for themselves and others. In doing this we can change the world and the world of work.

I am committed and passionate about creating a core-led woman revolution, where we will be ditching frameworks and coming out as our true core-led selves.

I sat down at the weekend to do my annual reflections and my goal setting for next year. I feel really excited about everything I want to achieve over the next 12 months. But I also noticed that my confidence levels have increased and I have a lot less feeling of fear and apprehension. So I thought, does that mean my goals aren’t big enough? But I know from my core that these goals feel right.

Back in 2014 when I was 33 I attended a women in...

What I've Learned From The Last Three Weeks

burnout wellbeing Sep 09, 2022

I’m reflecting over the last 3 weeks that I took off. I do deep reflections at the beginning of every calendar year, then again around March, then September and I look at goals, what I’m doing, how I’m feeling, what I’m learning, where I want to be. But these last 3 weeks I’ve had some unexpected lessons.

Let’s rewind to just over 3 weeks ago; I was looking forward to some downtime. I was thinking about taking time off social media and was in need of a digital detox. That was confirmed whilst I was scrolling through LinkedIn and seeing what only can be described as vileness. If you’re on LinkedIn I doubt you would have missed it, but there was this whole thing of the crying CEO.

The CEO of HyperSocial posted a selfie of himself crying, talking about how he had to let some of his team go. I’d seen the original post and personally I wouldn’t have gone for the crying selfie, but actually what I took from it was that he...

Goal Setting

leadership wellbeing Sep 02, 2022

I plan my year in quarters.

I have big annual goals and I break those down into smaller ones every 3 months. From those quarterly goals I work out what I need to do on a daily, weekly and monthly basis in order to achieve those goals.

2008 was the last year that I completed annual performance appraisals within the organisation I was working in.

I am deeply passionate about making things as simple and streamlined as possible. I genuinely believe annual goal setting is a thing of the past for so many reasons. Some companies still have 3-5 year strategies and annual goals, but if we look at the pace of change that is happening in our world today and in our workplace, we realise that it’s not as effective. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s good to have ideas and vision long term, but we have to look at what is going on in real time.

If the last couple of years has taught us anything it’s that we have no control...

Boundaries: More Than Saying No

leadership wellbeing Aug 26, 2022

This topic comes up all the time and I hear people often say “I’m rubbish with boundaries because I can’t say no”

Why do you struggle so much with boundaries and why do you think they are just about saying no?

Particularly for women, we have had it ingrained into us that if we have boundaries, then we are selfish. If we are not always available for other people, then we are selfish.

In my corporate days when I became firm with my boundaries, I would get told I wasn’t a team player, I was being selfish, that I wasn’t helpful enough, that I was cold hearted, or I wasn’t committed enough. What I came to realise was that was their issue, whilst some were personal attacks on me, most were because people weren’t used to women setting boundaries. If one of the men said ‘give me an hour’ or ‘I don’t start work till 10am on a Wednesday’, that was accepted. But not if a woman...

Manage Your Energy Not Your Time

burnout wellbeing Aug 19, 2022

I’ve had a number of new 1-2-1 clients come to me recently and all mention not being able to manage their time effectively. As I’ve introduced them to focusing on managing their energy instead, they’ve had some big lightbulb moments, Aha moments and made some quick changes for themselves.

No matter how much they try to plan their day and time more effectively, they are seen as successful but don’t always feel it, as they don’t think they have enough time to get everything done. They know they are lacking boundaries and this lack of boundaries is impacting how they spend their time. They spend a lot of time people pleasing and giving more time to others than themselves. They are spinning far too many plates at once. They are exhausted and their focus and energy is decreasing by the day.

All of these things are impacting all areas of their lives. When we focus instead on energy management, things can start to change. When we try...

Neuroscience Saved My life

burnout wellbeing Aug 12, 2022

Understanding how my brain worked quite literally saved my life.

In 2015 I found myself burnt out for the second time and mentally it hit me much harder than the first time. The first was more physical and I was in and out of hospital for 7 months and undergoing 2 operations in 48 hours. If the physical aspect hadn’t been so tough, I don’t think I would have admitted or been aware of reaching burnout again for the second time.

During the recovery of those operations I was numb after lying on the sofa for far too long and watching too much day time TV. My sons came home from school one day and my immediate reaction was to say to them “don’t worry, I’m ok and I will be back at work soon”, but then one of my sons said “but mum your job is killing you”

That was the wake up call I needed and led to me doing a lot of inner work to understand what had gotten me to that point and what I needed to do to...

The Great Resignation and Quietly Quitting, OR The Great Reflection, Boundaries and Balance?

burnout coaching leadership wellbeing Aug 08, 2022

When we hear about the Great Resignation and Quietly Quitting, we seem to think of our people as disengaged, unhappy or no longer committed to their roles, but, what if this is exactly the balance that we’ve been needing to create in the workplace for a long time?

When I first started my career, I worked my contracted hours. I worked in retail and I was either working when the store was open, or my contracted hours. I didn’t have a laptop or mobile phone to allow me to work from home, I worked at work. And when I wasn’t at work, I wasn’t working.

As my career developed I started to work additional (unpaid) hours, staying for longer in the workplace, but even then, when I left the workplace, I was no longer working.

I changed sector, worked in growing organisations and only in 2011 was I issued a work laptop and phone. Between 2006 and 2011, although I’d asked for the tech to allow me to work from anywhere at anytime, it wasn’t...

Don't Let The Critics Count

leadership wellbeing Aug 05, 2022

It can be really hard to not take criticism personally. The more visible we are and the more we use our voices, the more criticism we can face and this can be really challenging.

Very early on in my corporate career I was criticised for the speed in which I worked. A number of my colleagues would tell me to slow down as I was making them look bad.

That resulted in me dealing with a lot of backstabbing and bitching and in some cases people were trying to stitch me up and gaslight me.

This made me look deep into myself and wonder what it was that I was doing wrong, what could I change? How could I modify how I was speaking and behaving so as not to upset people.

In my late teens/early 20’s I didn’t have the understanding as to what it really meant to stand out in my own power, to believe in myself. If you have a lot of people telling you the same thing, particularly when you are growing and developing as a leader and in your...

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