In this final episode of Season Two, I work with Sarah as she explores the impact motherhood has had on her self-esteem and her career. Trained, as many women are, to put others first she now finds herself with an increasingly empty nest, time to spend on creative projects but a part of her that seems to sabotage this time. She has a novel to write but a mind full of limiting beliefs that stop her from being able to sit down and write. 

With themes of co-dependency, empty nest adjustments and conflicting priorities this coaching conversation challenges the validity of the “shoulds” we live by and shows what happens when we start to see ourselves and our time in a new light.  

If you are struggling to give yourself time for creative projects here’s what I suggest:

1. Put creative time in your diary, tell your family what you’re doing and guard that time like you would a small baby

2. Do business with the part of your brain telling you that you’re wasting time - you’re a human being, not a human doing

3. Be accountable to someone for your creative progress - get a mentor, join a creative group etc.

4. Enjoy the process and remember this is far more about enjoying the experience of being creative than it is about the output.5. If you need to, take a class to improve your skills and confidence 

I defy you not to fall in love with Ruth when you meet her. Her ability to be honest, vulnerable and authentic inspires me and in this episode, we hear about her struggles with food, weight and body image. Her goal for our session was to learn to love and accept herself as she is now whilst still striving for weight loss and increased health & fitness. It’s a complex topic, one that millions of us can relate to. What Ruth discovers about herself during our conversation is life-changing and, if you listen carefully, can change your life too!

 Listen out for themes of self-hate, body image, binge eating disorder and grief. This episode is dedicated to Ruth’s mum, who sadly died at the very end of 2023.

If you are struggling with binge eating disorder I would highly recommend the 12-Step programme found in Overeaters Anonymous. 

To learn to manage your inner critic please check out my book, Flying for Beginners, available on Amazon or take a look at the courses on my website. 

Jonny is a young entrepreneur who started our session by saying he wanted to look at money blocks because he felt he wasn’t reaching his potential. Some digging revealed that his issue was that he didn’t know what he wanted to focus on in his career for fear that he’d give something his all and that thing would be a disappointment. He was looking for certainty in an uncertain world. This episode is for you if you or someone you know is lost in the wilderness of early adulthood, still trying to figure out your purpose in life.

Listen out for themes of risk-taking, passion and career frustrations in your twenties and thirties.

If you can relate to Jonny’s struggles here’s what I’d suggest:

1. Take the pressure off yourself! In my experience, we don’t find our passions in life but they find us.

2. Nothing is wasted. Everything I did career-wise before I became a coach feeds into the work I do today. So, go and explore what’s out there career-wise and build up your skills.

3. Accept that life is uncertain. Seeking certainty is a recipe for a boring life in which you feel frustrated.

4. Write down everything that excites you and do more of those things. The higher and more positive your energy is, the more positivity you have to give to the world.

5. Trust in the process. Life is not a race or a competition but a process of growth so give yourself a chance to grow.

Anthony seeks to raise his self-esteem and stop being so hard on himself. Last season we only heard from women so I’m delighted that two men have agreed to take part this time and Anthony’s story is so relatable. We’ve coached in the past and he’s one of the loveliest people you’ll ever meet. So, how does he start believing this about himself? Listen to the full episode as he bravely faces the death of his father when he was a seven-year-old and the complicated feelings he’s had about himself ever since.

If you’d like to build your self-esteem, here’s what I suggest:

1. Write down the messages you picked up about yourself when you were young. What old stories are you still dragging around with you?
2. Ask yourself, “Are these messages really true about me today?” 
3. Now ask yourself, “What else could be true?” 
4. Now, give yourself a day in which you only believe the new version of events about yourself and notice how differently you feel about yourself.

Meet Alice - a successful writer who came to me wanting to react less personally to feedback and criticism so that she could do better at her job and find life a little easier in the feedback culture at work. What she reveals in this episode will echo with you if you’ve become convinced that life is a competition. We explore Alice’s draining habit of comparing herself to other people and discover that this is rooted in an upbringing in which she always felt like the silly baby of the family.  

This episode is for you if you want to break out of a negative self-image and stop competing with everyone you meet.

If you are struggling with receiving feedback and defensiveness consider this:

1. If you believed that feedback was simply someone else’s opinion that you could choose to accept or not, how much easier would it be to hear it?
2. What are you allowing from the past to poison your life today? What negative self-image do you need to drop?
3. What are the things you don’t like about yourself? Carl Rogers told us that we can only change things in ourselves that we can accept first so maybe it's time to practice some self-acceptance.
4. Know this - you don’t have to be perfect to be loved. It’s okay to get things wrong

In this final episode of Season One, we hear Jo as she explores the impact three significant episodes of bullying have had on her and her confidence. We also explore magical thinking and how expecting other people to just be nice and behave in certain ways can seriously affect our self-esteem. If you’ve been mistreated by someone in the past and their words and actions still affect you please listen to this episode as it’s time for you to reclaim your power, as Jo decides to do during our coaching hour.

With themes of trauma, bullying, gaslighting and acceptance this coaching conversation also challenges the validity of the moral rules we expect others to follow. 

1. Know that their need to dominate you come from their own fear and deep insecurities.
2. Know also that their mistreatment of you is about their stuff and is no reflection on you.
3. Notice the part of you lost in the fairness fantasy and do business with that voice. It’s not up to you how other people behave so stop expecting them to be nice!
4. Listen to what they say and don’t interrupt.
5. When they have finished state your case calmly and keep repeating your case using similar language. Repetition builds a wall of protection around you.
6. Walk away if you need to and, if this is a professional environment, report the bullying immediately to your HR department.

Meet Daphne - a successful businesswoman who suffers with anxiety and a loss of confidence due to former workplace bullying and menopausal issues. For context, Daphne has been through two bouts of serious workplace bullying neither of which were dealt with appropriately.  Hear how the dusty ghosts from the past still linger in her life and how the power of coaching can send them packing.

This is another episode in which you can literally hear the psychological shift as Daphne starts to understand a new truth about her past.

Listen out for themes of menopause and workplace bullying.

1. Speak to HR and tell them what’s happening. Hopefully, this will nip things in the bud.
2. However, if this doesn’t work consider getting legal advice. Also, consider leaving - your sanity and mental health are far too valuable to risk going through any more bullying.
3. Know that bullies treat you badly because they are trying to offload their own intolerable feelings of self-hatred onto you.  What I’m saying here is that it’s not about you no matter how personal it feels.
4. Next time you come across a bully put an immediate boundary in place by calling out their behaviour. This way they will know not to mess with you again.

Vulnerability is the path we must walk to the truth and in this episode, Jo’s enormous courage to be vulnerable is rewarded with a huge shift in her mindset.  She suffers from social anxiety which has worsened since the pandemic to the point where she’s even been afraid to take a walk around her local park. During our coaching session, Jo starts to understand that it’s the fear of other people’s judgements of her that’s making her think she's not good enough and holding her back. We undertake a powerful coaching exercise to plug her back into her authentic self. This is an amazing, life-changing episode that you cannot miss.

Listen out for themes of fear, social anxiety and inner critic work. 

If you are struggling with a harsh inner critic, please know that you are not alone. My book, Flying for Beginners - a proven system for lasting self-confidence, takes you step by step through the powerful process Jo went through in this episode.  

I can also recommend Daring Greatly by Brené Brown and Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway by Susan Jeffers.

Whatever you do, know this: your inner critic is lying to you 99% of the time so unless you are in physical danger you don’t have to believe what it’s saying to you. 

Listen to other episodes in Series 1 of 'Tell Me Who You Really Are' here.

Bryony Gordon needs no introduction. A bestselling author and Telegraph journalist she has been a major player in changing the conversations we can all now have around our mental health. She’s also the founder of Mental Health Mates - a charity offering peer support for those of us struggling with our mental health. By anyone’s standards, she’s a success and yet she battles with her confidence on a daily basis. In this episode, she allows us into the nooks and crannies of her mind as she and I unravel the root of her core belief that she’s bad in some way. This is such a powerful episode, one of those coaching sessions I leave feeling overwhelming amounts of gratitude for the work I am able to do.

Listen out for themes of co-dependency, addiction, intrusive thoughts and shame.

If you can relate to Bryony’s core belief that there’s something inherently wrong with you, here’s what I’d suggest:

1. Write down the evidence you have for your core belief. All of it.
2. Now, ask yourself how you would feel about another human being if they presented you with this evidence. Would you show them compassion? Would you be able to contextualise their behaviour?
3. Ask yourself what life might be like for you if you dropped the belief that you are bad in some way.
4. Next ask yourself what you are gaining by believing in your own badness. Remember, all behaviour has some kind of positive intention.
5. Lastly, consider this statement: no one benefits from me believing that I’m bad.
6. Now, for the next 24 hours I want you to go about your life as if you are not bad but actually a really good person. Try on this new way of thinking about yourself for a day. If you like it, try it again for another 24 hours and another until you have formed a new, healthy thought habit. I promise you, you are not bad.

Meet Isabel - a successful middle-aged mother and coach who came to me wanting to speak about her diet. Isabel would like to eat less in order to shift a bit of weight and feel better about her body.  What she reveals in this episode will ring true for probably every woman raised during the era of ’thin is in’ and reminds us of just how pervasive and toxic diet culture has been for us all to live in. How Isabel’s mindset shifts during our conversation is quite amazing!

This episode is for you if you’ve ever struggled with your body image and perfectionism around how you look.

If you are struggling with a negative body image here’s what I suggest:

1. If you are at a healthy weight please consider how diet culture has programmed you to believe that you have to look a certain way to be accepted. How do you feel about this? Have you simply swallowed the idea that women have to be thin without actually questioning the validity of these beliefs?
2. Ask yourself this question - if I could no longer change my body through exercise and diet anymore how would I live? How would this change the focus of my day?
3. Find five things you like about your body and practice active gratitude for them. When I’m cycling up the hill every day I repeat to myself how grateful I am for my 50-year-old legs that they are fit enough to move me around.
4. If you think you’d like to lose some weight for your health then my suggestion would be to pack your diet with veggies and whole foods, find some exercise you enjoy and do it daily, and quit addictive foods like sugar and bread. When I started eating for health (rather than for weight loss) my weight stabilised and has remained the same for years.