Explore every episode of the podcast The Positive Pants Podcast
| Title | Pub. Date | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What Would You Do Differently? | 20 Nov 2023 | 00:10:11 | |
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What Would You Do Differently?
This week’s episode comes with a little trigger warning, talking about themes of death so if that’s sensitive for you right now then come back to this when you feel ready.
It can be hard to talk about, and sometimes feel a bit morbid, to think about our own or loved ones' mortality but I feel like this is an important conversation to have, and a perspective to potentially live by that can actually lead to some really positive changes.
And I know that’s what you want for yourself, because you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.
As you’ll know by now I’m a big believer in sharing things that impact you and the way you think, in case it can have the same impact on someone else and might make a big difference to their day, week, month, life…you get the idea.
So let’s start with a little context for why I'm talking about this today.
Full credit goes to a friend of mine who I caught up with this last week. Someone who played an unexpectedly big role in my own healing this summer for which I'm hugely grateful for.
We were just catching up and talking about all the big things still going on in my personal life and big decisions I still have to make and he just said to me, ‘Can I give you some advice? Just be happy. Do what makes you happy. Tomorrow isn’t promised.’
Now, him saying tomorrow isn’t promised isn’t new, he already thinks that way.
But it hit particularly hard because his best friend had recently been killed suddenly in a road accident.
Sometimes things happen, to you or other people, that just put things into perspective. Context matters.
He also said that he’s not even thinking about the future right now and just living in the moment and taking every day as it comes, which is an easy thing to talk about, a lot of people do.
To the point the message gets lost I think. But again, I think it hits different within the context of the words and the situation they’re said in.
If you really lived like that, knowing that you might not get tomorrow and to totally be in the moment, even if it was just for a day, what would you do differently?
How might you think differently?
What would you just drop because you realise it’s just not important.
What would you let go?
What decisions would you make?
What would you make sure you did?
What would you want to experience?
Who would you reach out to?
What would you say?
How might you throw caution to the wind?
What would make you feel like you’re really living, not just existing?
Pay attention to your first answers to these questions, they’ll tell you a lot. Maybe pause, grab your journal and write them down.
How different might it feel to live by that?
Perspective really is a wonderful thing.
The other side to this conversation I think was also important.
How can you channel the thoughts, feelings and behaviours that come from something negative, into something positive?
I’ve talked a huge amount about this before, the idea that some of the worst things that happen to you can lead to positive things if you allow them to.
It doesn’t take away the pain but it channels it into something good. Something that you can be proud of.
I always find huge comfort in that way of thinking and I've not been proved wrong yet. Amazing things have always come out of my worst moments. Always.
He then told me that he’s been looking after his friend’s son and he’s going to be running a marathon with him to raise money for him to get a bench installed for his Dad so he has somewhere to go and talk to him.
I thought this was such a beautiful example of that.
So if you’re in the thick of it right now, like I know a lot of you are, 2023 has been an annus horribilis for so many people. If that’s you, or someone you love, what could you do that could channel that pain and energy into something positive?
Again, it’s not ignoring the pain, it’s not putting on a brave face or wishing the pain wasn’t there.
It’s alchemy. It’s turning something into something else. Taking lead and turning it to gold over time.
Also, it’s worth saying, be open to where and who your healing and your lessons might come from. It might surprise you.
The same friend also said to me pretty soon after we met that people come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime. You can’t predict which one that will be and one is not better than the other.
So, with all that said, what would you do differently if you knew today might be your last?
Stay open. Stay humble. Live more. Do what makes you happy. Focus on what really matters.
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| Adulting 101 | 13 Nov 2023 | 00:11:51 | |
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Adulting 101
I’m always talking about how the things I love to teach most I consider ‘humaning 101’.
But I want to talk about the elephant in the room that comes along with that.
And that is, ‘Adulting 101’.
Why?
Because in one week I had a total of 7 people say the same words to me. ‘I really thought I’d have my sh1t together by now’.
These people, some of my favourites, beating themselves up because for some reason they believe that by a certain age we’re supposed to have everything clicked into place and know what we’re doing.
And in all honesty, nothing could be further from the truth.
I saw a quote that I loved recently and I'm sorry I can’t give credit to the original creator because I can’t find it but it was ‘I used to think adulthood was one crisis after another. I was wrong. Multiple crises. Concurrently. All at once. All the time. Forever.’
Yes it made me lol but I actually think this can spark a really important conversation.
I’ve said it 1000 times that so much of ‘the work’ is simply learning how to deal with the inevitable stuff that life throws at you, and how reframing each of those things as growth opportunities can hugely help.
To live a happy and fulfilling life we MUST let go of the notion that that is what life is supposed to feel like all of the time.
It’s just not.
So much of the healing work is about breaking the patterns of historic triggers, recalibrating and rewiring neural pathways and your nervous system and constantly creating a new baseline of safety in your body and increasing your window of tolerance.
Literally increasing your capacity to cope with what life throws at you.
Life IS going to throw things at you.
You ARE going to be tested.
I believe that learning to not see challenges as big, bad, scary things but things that we breathe through and grow through.
I’m so grateful for the work I do and the knowledge I have around how to do this because it genuinely is easier than most people think, which is why I'm always hammering home to go back to basics and prioritise the basics.
I’m definitely not saying it’s always easy, especially at the beginning, but it is simple.
Learn to regulate your emotions and your nervous system and your life WILL get better, easier, happier, more calm.
That’s what I believe our priority is when we’re talking about ‘adulting’. It makes all the difference.
Think about the level of responsibilities that grow as we get older.
You might have kids, elderly parents, friends or family who are unwell or struggling, mortgages, our own health and wellbeing, job security…or lack thereof. The list really is endless.
And because life crises really don’t tend to follow a predictable or linear pattern it can sometimes feel like it’s one thing after another.
We also love to attach our age to this. Like I said, 7 different people uttered the words ‘I thought I’d have my sh1t together by now.’
That’s just a big fat lie. We think as kids that the adults in our lives have it all together. It’s interesting to consciously look back, or have the conversation with parents or grandparents and ask their perspective on where they were at your age. You might be very surprised at the answers you get.
This is one of the things I've actually loved as an adult. The dynamic can shift with your parents and you can have totally different conversations and ask the hard questions.
If you feel like you can, I wholeheartedly recommend doing it, it can be incredibly cathartic.
So, from my perspective, ticking the boxes you think you ‘should’ have ticked as an adult really means nothing.
I thought I had ALL the boxes ticked, I’m turning 40 next year and life turned completely on its head.
I did not think I would be nearly 40, nearly divorced, living with my parents and all the other things that have happened over the last 12-18 months.
It was not my plan.
I had everything I thought I ever wanted on paper.
But you know what…I couldn’t be prouder of myself.
Even though there’s a long way to go still and some pretty horrendous next level adulting coming my way over the next few months, I can genuinely say that I am the happiest, calmest, most peaceful, confident, solid version of myself.
I did that.
No one else.
And I did it through my own bravery and gumption to do the big, hard, scary things I needed to do to get there.
To stare uncertainty in the face and say ok, I’ve got this.
To put myself and my own wellbeing above anything else.
And I know there’s lots of you out there doing the same right now and might not be recognising that this is the adulting stuff that matters.
Removing yourself from situations that aren’t good for you and don’t make you feel loved and respected is a huge act of self care.
Making big decisions that might go against the grain or against what you had hoped for yourself and your life.
Staring fear in the face and doing it anyway.
Respecting yourself enough to say no, I deserve better, I’m worth more.
That’s huge.
Leaving the relationship, getting out of a toxic situation, changing careers, starting or quitting the business, leaving the situationship.
Yes it can feel like one thing after another.
But the thing you think you should have done or be ‘at this age’ is not the right version of adulting to focus on.
That’s not the important stuff at all.
Do you like yourself? Do you respect yourself? Are you proud of yourself?
If the answer is no to any of those things, are you working towards it?
That’s just as brave!
I promise you no one has their sh1t together.
No one.
Doesn’t matter how old you are, or what you know. No one has it all figured out.
But knowing you’re going to be ok in the process is what matters.
Consciously living according to your values and belief systems is winning at life!
Making hard decisions and doing the right thing by yourself and other people is winning at life.
Knowing that you’re going to mess things up and get things wrong but you’re still a good person is winning at life.
Don’t focus on the material or societal things you think you should have by now.
Don’t focus on the notion that life should be rosy all the time.
You’re probably doing way better than you think!
Fx | |||
| Proud Of You... | 11 Sep 2023 | 00:11:20 | |
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Proud Of You
In the most non patronising way possible, I want to get a message across today.
I’m proud of you.
I’m proud of me.
For so many things.
Sometimes you have to take stock of what we’re all working against to really acknowledge that we’re doing a great bloomin job…even if it doesn’t feel like it right now.
There are so many phrases that teach us from little kids to be modest. To not shout about our achievements. It’s undesirable to think, let alone say, that we’re good.
Good people, good at our jobs, good looking, a catch, good at something.
We’re taught to play it down.
Don’t you dare think or believe you’re good enough for what you want. It’s unattractive.
Don’t be arrogant.
Don’t talk about the things you’re good at.
Don’t think you’re funny.
Essentially, don’t like yourself too much…or at all!
This is by proxy what we’re taught.
No wonder we have generations of people who can’t acknowledge their achievements or worth!
But this also serves to make damn sure we don’t notice the little things that we do that are amazing.
So we’re going to change that today because you deserve it.
I’m proud of you for getting up this morning.
I’m proud of you for making hard decisions.
I’m proud of you for every time you’ve pushed yourself beyond your comfort zone.
I’m proud of you for every time you’ve done something you know is good for you.
I’m proud of you for every time you haven’t but you’ve noticed you WANT to!
I’m proud of you for every hard thing you’ve done.
I’m proud of you for facing things you didn’t want to.
I’m proud of you for every time you’ve let yourself rest.
I’m proud of you for every day you’ve kept going.
I’m proud of you for trying!
Some days…that’s more than enough!
I added a little prompt into my daily journaling for the non dear diary type (as a recap, go back to episode one but every day it’s writing down 3 things you’re grateful for, 3 good things that happened that day, something you’re looking forward to tomorrow, I also added a challenge that you overcame or learned a lesson from, and nice things you did for other people - As a reminder what this is doing is training your neural pathways to see these things as a default every day. To see the positive every day. To see your progress every day. It’s magic.)
The prompt I’ve added is ‘what am I proud of today’. Hopefully you can see exactly why this would be so valuable.
When we think about increasing our self worth, which SO many of us want to, it’s actually a lot easier than you think.
It takes a little time, effort and energy to rewire those neural pathways but it’s beyond worth it.
It starts with learning for it to be safe to acknowledge our good points, the good things we’ve done and the ways we’re growing.
Learning that it is absolutely ok to acknowledge and celebrate yourself and your wins, no matter how big or small they are.
The last 12 months has been the biggest rollercoaster for me and I am SO beyond proud of myself.
I’ve made heart wrenching decisions. I’ve made decisions that are the right thing for the short term and the long term, even though they were all painful and I could have easily looked at myself as a failure in SO many different areas. I’ve done what’s right for me and prioritised my health, wellbeing and peace every day.
I can look back on this time in years to come with tremendous pride.
This attitude is beyond helpful in tough times, it’s something I've worked on and cultivated and allowed myself to learn over time.
I’ve had confronting things to unlearn.
It’s not been easy every step of the way but I can safely say I'm proud of myself and I really am my own best friend inside my own head.
The way I talk to myself in my own head now vs most of my life is unrecognisable and that’s all available to you.
It starts with allowing yourself to acknowledge your smallest of wins every single day.
Learning to see yourself in a new positive light, every day.
Learning that the smallest of steps are still steps in the right direction, and that if you take a step back, there will STILL be another step forward.
Learning to be KIND to yourself.
Learning to have compassion for yourself.
Learning to understand that YOUR opinion of you is the most important thing and something you have control over. What other people think of you is up to them.
Understanding that it’s all possible and that it’s possible for you!
I’m proud of you.
I’m proud of me.
You deserve to feel proud of yourself!
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| Do You Know How To Listen To Your Intuition? | 15 Nov 2021 | 00:13:26 | |
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Do you listen to your intuition?
Do you listen to your intuition? Do you even know what it ‘sounds’....or more accurately ‘feels’ like?
I call my intuition my Spidey senses and they’re pretty strong to be honest.
Listening to them and obeying them however, I do sometimes fall down on. Old patterns will sometimes cause that.
BUT I've definitely learned over the years that if I DO ignore them, or override them...there will be consequences.
Your spidey senses are VERY important.
Particularly when making decisions. But if you’ve got used to ignoring them or haven’t listened to them in a while you’ve got to start getting ‘back in touch’.
Your spidey senses, aka your intuition, is essentially your brain and your nervous system communicating with you. That lovely little gap between your conscious awareness and unconscious programmes, memories and patterns.
You sense something somatically before you have a cognitive knowledge of it.
It’s a survival strategy that we’ve always had as a species, protecting us from the tiger waiting in the bushes!
Think about it. If we didn’t get that little ‘tingle’ (or whatever it shows up as for you) we’d put ourselves in danger.
We wouldn’t have our wits about us.
We might potentially get eaten.
Or in this day and age...go down that dark ominous alley or into that room of people we don’t know.
It’s absolutely one of my ‘super powers’ in my business. I see a problem before it’s a problem.
If something pops into my head, there’s usually a reason so I like to call it out. Clients and friends are very used to this now.
People aren’t surprised anymore if I say ‘the spidey senses told me to message you’ or ‘the spidey senses said to say X, Y, Z.’
I always do it with no attachment to it, particularly when it’s with clients, I always say to take it or leave it just in case it’s useful, but 99% of the time it’s exactly what was needed at that moment. So I’ve learned to roll with it, even if it might feel silly.
I don’t look at intuition or spidey senses as anything ‘woo’ at all. It’s something that’s been studied scientifically for years, although difficult to quantify.
We all have this in us.
I mean it’s pretty cool and can feel a little bit magical for sure but really It’s our bodies way of communicating with us. Steering us, if you like.
It’s an incredibly important skill to master. And it is a skill.
Like I say, we all have it, we’ve had it for millennia as a protection mechanism, it’s just that the danger has changed and these days may not actually be life or death..but it might FEEL that way to our nervous system. And also a way to steer us towards what’s good for us too.
We often feel something before we think it. That sense to do, or not do something.
You’ll have a spidey sense for a yes and a spidey sense for a no. You’ll have a spidey sense about saying something or going somewhere, or a particular decision that you have to make, or a person.
The challenge comes with getting to know each signal. So you know what it’s trying to say, or the direction it’s trying to steer you.
Pay attention to the senses.
What is your gut telling you?
Is there a slight feel of unease telling you to keep your guard up a little bit?
Is there a DEEP sense of unease telling you to run for the hills?
Is there a deep knowing it’s just the right thing for you?
Can you get in touch with it around what to launch for your business?
What to keep and what to let go of?
And the people you let in or let go of?
What are your spidey senses trying to tell you?
Is there a familiar feeling that you can pin point in another part of your life from the past? This could be for good or bad. We just need to tune back in.
When Dawni and Abi approached me to go in with them on The Mentorship it was my intuition that said a hard yes.
There were a lot of reasons not to. At the time, I really didn’t know either of them very well.
It was also a 3...of women! I had NOT had good experiences with that situation in the past at all.
I could not have trusted them. I could have said, ‘ooooh a 3, nope, not going there again’ and robbed myself of the healing that has occurred just from saying yes.
I just had a good feeling. I felt it in my gut. My heart said yes. My intuition said yes and it was the best thing I could have done for myself.
They share my values. They share the way I look at business. They share my deep desire to help people and not let them get in their own way.
It’s no joke when I tell you how much it’s changed old patterns for me around female friendships. Around allowing myself to trust and open up in that way. It really has been transformative and I'm so excited for the work we’re going to do together and the way we’re going to work together to give the amazing people joining The Mentorship a transformation. To help them heal old patterns and belief systems. We all deeply believe in people’s capabilities.
And I owe it to them being in touch with their intuition and spidey senses around bringing me in, and my spidey senses just knowing it was right.
The more you hone this skill, the more it will point you in the right direction.
Remember we’re 95-99% unconscious and the brain LOVES you to repeat familiar patterns. Where might you be falling into one that doesn’t serve you so well? Where might it be trying to steer you TOWARDS something that’s right for you?
Also remember there’s a reason it’s called a ‘gut feeling’.
The clues of what to pay attention to comes through in our language. The gut, heart and the brain are connected. The brain, the heart and the gut all have their own neurons and neural networks.
Here’s another example. ‘What does your heart tell you’ or ‘what does your gut tell you’.
And ‘I’ve just got a good feeling about this’.
If you’ve ever said any of those things, you’ve connected to your intuition.
Nothing woo about it. It’s there all the time, communicating with us. We just learned to stop listening.
We learned to suppress emotions. We learned to do as we’re told.
So just start to tune in. Check in with what you feel in your body at certain times of the day. Or when you’re doing certain tasks. Or around certain people.
You might want to do it in meditation. You might want to do a body scan. Just ask yourself the question, ‘what am I feeling right now, where am I feeling it and what might be driving it’
Get curious.
Make the unconscious, conscious, so you can choose to do something with it.
It’s such an essential skill when you can learn to trust it. It’s visceral. You feel it.
If you read the autobiographies of some of the most successful people in the world they’ll talk about having ‘hunches’ or use language like ‘I just knew’ even in the face of evidence to the contrary.
Your intuition usually has far more data points than you on something. It gets to scan all the reserves of your memory banks, past experiences, familiar patterns etc. It’s working with a LOT more than simply what’s right in front of you at that moment.
So have a think about where you might have been ignoring your spidey senses. And how you might start to get back in touch with them.
And if you’ve been considering joining The Mentorship, now is the time. We start orientation on the 22nd November.
6 months of real business mentorship with me, Dawni Baxter and Abi Hugo and all the experience that brings. Dawni being the legend of branding, social media, audience attraction and so much more.
Abi of @thewhitethistle the legend of instagram growth and monetising your account even if it’s small!
And Moi to tame the inevitable mindset gremlins that get in your way. Helping you overcome stress and self sabotage so you can get your time back and feel more in control.
We bring a wealth of experience in relationship based selling, podcasting, messaging and SO much more and making sure your business is set up based on what YOU want for your life. With YOU at the heart of it. Taking away the shoulds and the things you’ve been told you’re supposed to have and tuning back into what you actually want.
If it’s calling to you then we’d love to have you. You can find all the details at https://bit.ly/thementorship21
So check in with yourself, your gut, your heart, your spidey senses... what are they telling you?
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| Why Do You Struggle To Ask For Support? | 08 Nov 2021 | 00:11:39 | |
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Why do you struggle to accept support?
Why do so many people struggle to accept support?
This is a biggie and one I can certainly relate to myself.
Not when I was younger, then I usually felt like I COULDN’T do anything without someone’s help.
I learned pretty quickly that I would be labelled ‘needy’, or ‘weak’ by other people.
Quick trigger warning, I'm going to very briefly talk about my first real relationship which was emotionally abusive. I won’t give any specifics but I want to talk about it to help you frame the behaviour. (and if you DO resonate, I really hope it shows you that change and healing is so possible!)
I definitely learned that no one was coming to rescue me during that time. I’d been pretty isolated from my friends and relied on him for everything.
In the year it took me to leave him, I learned that I needed to be strong, that no one else was going to take responsibility for me and I had to build up my own confidence. That happened slowly but it absolutely happened.
But while I can see now that relationship taught me independence and that I was way stronger than I ever gave myself credit for...in the end!! For that I’m grateful.
But the issue was I then wore that fierce independence as a badge of honour and sense of identity. It was something I was very proud of.
But it stopped me ever asking anyone for help, with anything, because it would trigger those feelings of helplessness. Of weakness. (notice I say ‘feelings of, not that I was those things!) Of going back to that younger version of me who felt incapable or even a burden.
The desire to feel supported and frustration that you don’t. At the same time causing that very to happen by thoughts like ‘urgh, i’ll just do it myself’ or preempting that someone will let you down so you do the thing anyway and then resent it, even though you actually haven’t given the other person a chance to prove you wrong and actually let them support you. That’s how it would show up for me. It might be different for you.
So it’s something I've definitely worked on over the years and was an important behaviour to pick apart, because in many ways it held me back.
This is why awareness is important. The behaviour of not asking for help made total sense to my nervous system, it was the ‘safer’ option because the alternative was being controlled, manipulated and feeling awful about myself on a daily basis and living in a constant state of hypervigilance...and it’s always going to prioritise survival and doesn’t have a moral compass about what’s good or bad, so I don’t judge myself or beat myself up for it one bit.
But that awareness helps me make the changes I want and need to so I can create behaviours that DO serve me now. And to do that, it has to feel ‘safe’ in your body.
When there’s an unconscious programme running around not asking for, or even just accepting support it’s a sure fire route to burnout, things taking longer than they need to and you feeling unsupported...even though that’s of your own making!
It can be like you’re desperate to feel supported...and yet not allowing anyone to support you because you won’t ask...and if they offer, your go to reaction is ‘no i’m fine’.
So if you can relate, let’s unpick it a little shall we?
Think of this from the frame of asking for support. That might be about outsourcing and delegating. It might be about emotional support such as a coach or a community that you’re in. Or NOT joining something because you think you won’t ‘use’ the support available. It might be about being able to express your needs for support to your loved ones. Or it might be all of the above!
There are many reasons we might not ask for or struggle to accept help and it will be different for all of us. So grab your journal and we’ll go through a few common ones and you can find the awareness you need to be able to make a different choice, should you want to.
So here we go...
You see asking for help, or accepting it, as a sign of weakness, it might even conflict with who you think you are at an identity level. If you identify as the strong, independent one it might feel pretty vulnerable and confronting to ask for help.
But also...You worry about what other people may think. How it might ‘look’ if you ask for help. What are you making it mean? And what story are you telling yourself about what THEY might make it mean? (This is a particularly big one if you have access to a community and don’t want to/feel you can’t use support that’s available in there)
You don’t trust people. Or don’t trust people to do things as well as you.
You believe people will let you down so you don’t give them the chance to try.
You’re used to overachieving and feeling no one will do as good a job as you. Again here it might be a concern around what other people think if you were to ask for help.
You’re a people pleaser who struggles to ask for help because you’re always focused on others. Or you may feel like you’re inconveniencing someone else.
It might make you feel like you’ve ‘failed’ in some way.
You might have seen the same behaviour from your primary caregivers and you just learned that you don’t ask for or accept help. You will have assigned meaning to it then. What might be that story?
So what might it be for you?
Where does the behaviour make sense?
What could change for you if you accepted help and support?
Would you be able to outsource more? Have a team? Therefore freeing up more of your time. Taking the pressure off.
The bottom line is. It’s a learned behaviour. It made sense for your nervous system and brain to wire itself that way based on your unique set of experiences. But good old neuroplasticity means it can be Re-wired. But you have to start with the awareness piece of the puzzle first so you can bring it into the conscious mind and OUT of unconscious autopilot.
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| What Other People Think Of You Doesn’t Define You! | 01 Nov 2021 | 00:11:14 | |
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What other people think doesn’t define you!
What other people think of you doesn’t define you. So why do we care so much?
I’ve not done an episode on this for a little while and it’s something I get asked all the time so I thought I would do a little recap on this one.
When I tell people how I used to be, someone who had zero self esteem. Someone who validated themselves by other people's opinions. Someone who was the most negative person in the room, catastrophising, always looking for ‘acceptance’...yeeeeesh it was an exhausting existence.
...they don’t believe me.
Which is nice!
BUT, if I can heal from it, you can too.
So how do we go about this?!
Firstly it’s worth saying, you are absolutely not alone. This is something I see come up time and time again when people are starting or uplevelling businesses or trying to achieve big things.
These common phrases start to rear their ugly heads.
‘Who am I to do this?’
‘What will people think of me?’
‘What if people don’t like me or say mean things?’
‘What if people tell me I'm wrong...publicly!’
‘What if my friends and family laugh at me?’
‘What if everyone else is better than me?’
‘What if people don’t accept me?’
‘I don’t want to feel excluded.’
The way you feel about yourself is shaped before you’re 8 years old. You’re an unconscious sponge, taking on everything you see and hear. This could be from parents, siblings, friends, family, teachers, anyone in charge of your care. How attuned you were, how seen and heard you felt, what was going on in your environment. For the positive and the negative.
Remember, understanding this is never about judgement or blame and always about curiosity and knowledge that you have the power to heal and change should you choose to.
It’s important to note this though because this is the stuff that will have a big factor in how resilient you are when it comes to other people’s opinions of you. How resilient you are to not being ‘included’. Or caring where you are in the ‘pecking order’ of who’s more successful than who.
Again, it’s not about blame or shame, it’s about helping you make sense! If you’re not aware of something, you can’t change it.
School has a LOT to answer for in the way we feel about ourselves too.
Rejection registers in the brain as physical pain. It’s very easy to be triggered by the thought of someone not accepting us, or rejecting us, or telling us we’re not good enough….or saying it behind our backs. It’s as if your inner child comes right to the surface and you are that younger version of you, feeling it all over again.
So, it makes sense why we might try to avoid it, right?
Until we get curious and pick it apart that is!
First it’s about taking a look at whose opinion actually matters?
Something worth mentioning here is that sometimes, someone who is close to you whose opinion matters in many scenarios, might be somewhat less valid in others.
An example might be your parents or a spouse. Their opinion on what you do and who you are in many cases may be important. But their view on your sales page or website with no prior experience or knowledge in that area...less so!
Does the opinion of a stranger on the internet, who is unhappy enough in their lives to comment negatively on yours, really matter?
Does it really have clout?
It’s about starting to care what YOU think of yourself. The more yourself you are, the more you live by your values, the more you’re not going to care about other people’s opinions.
When we understand our own behaviour we can start to understand other people’s. The reality is, we can trigger other people. We can unconsciously hold up a mirror to other people.
We can highlight that we might be doing something they wish they could but aren’t.
Our success can trigger other people.
What we ‘have’ can trigger other people.
It’s worth asking if that person’s opinion has any validity too. Is what they’re saying sounding true? Is there some potential helpful feedback in there? If not...discount it! Worth checking in though.
It’s being able to discern that sometimes, other people’s opinions have nothing to do with us and everything to do with them.
We also need to appreciate it’s evolutionary to be accepted. If you weren’t it could be life or death.
We can unconsciously cause our own rejection too. If we believe that we will be rejected, or not accepted...that will create certain feelings that will drive our behaviour.
That might be, hanging back. Rejecting before we’re rejected. It might be not getting involved in communities but watching other people make connections.
We can essentially create ourselves a fun little self fulfilling prophecy of rejection, thus reinforcing everything we thought about ourselves or what was going to happen through our own behaviour.
Try not to project your thoughts onto other people’s opinions.
By hanging back or not getting involved, we become not involved. We’re not giving off the message that we want to be involved right? Therefore saving ourselves from what we believe to be inevitable rejection, and creating it at the same time.
The trick is to start to become aware of these things. Again, not judging ourselves for it but being curious about it.
Where does this behaviour make sense?
If you feel tension or anxiety bubbling up, use an emotional regulation technique to wake up the part of your brain that has conscious, rational thought, choice, decisions. From that place you get to talk back, but you have to regulate your emotions first.
If you’ve been uncomfortable in groups before, how can you find groups to feel safe in and break that cycle? Dip your toe in the water and allow yourself to be accepted. It’s even more important if you have this pattern running that you surround yourself with people who support you and have your back. But you have to allow them to.
It’s like I said in the episode ‘isn’t it time you backed yourself’...allow other people to back you until you learn to back yourself. You will care FAR less about other people’s opinion that way.
Remember, opinions and thoughts often aren’t truth. Other people’s and your own. People will always have an opinion on you, the one that matters is your opinion on you.
Fx | |||
| Is It Time You Backed Yourself? | 25 Oct 2021 | 00:12:59 | |
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Is It Time To Back Yourself?
Is it finally time to back yourself?
Sometimes that can feel really hard. Particularly when you’ve spent most of your life believing you’re not enough. Good enough, clever enough, pretty enough, skinny enough, enough enough!
We wait and wait to feel ‘ready’ to do certain things or to take certain opportunities.
We don’t back ourselves, often for fear of judgement, failure, rejection, getting it wrong.
We unconsciously feel like those things are just not worth the risk.
But I'm not sure you ever really feel 100% ready to do something you haven’t done before.
Something that’s the next level.
We’re not wired that way. We’re not wired for change to be easy because it’s doing something thats unrehearsed and unfamiliar so we need to give our brain and nervous system the evidence that it’s safe and ok to take action.
Can you think of times you have backed yourself, felt the fear and done it anyway, and it’s paid off?
It might be going for a promotion. It might be leaving a job for your own business. It might be saying yes to an opportunity. Anything where you weren’t absolutely sure it was going to work out but you put your hat in the ring.
Hopefully you’ve got a couple of those examples. Equally important is those times you backed yourself and it didn’t work out as you’d hoped.
Did you learn something important along the way? Did you get some feedback you wouldn’t have had you not put yourself out there? Did you learn something valuable?
The other thing I’m always getting clients to do is play through the fear.
What actually happens?
We often have these big fears, these worst case scenarios...but we actually stop short of thinking, what would REALLY happen if that happened?!
If you make a mistake, what happens? Play it through, is it that bad?
Or if you get rejected with a no, what actually happens? What are you making it mean about you?
But the confidence to REALLY back yourself comes from you constantly delivering for yourself. In other words, actually putting yourself out there to get a result.
I did this recently. An opportunity dropped in my lap where I definitely felt the initial ‘i’m not ready’ tension.
I felt all the stories around why other people were better for this opportunity than me. All the reasons I wasn’t qualified or good enough. That’s what our nervous system does.
It’s like….hold on a second, this is new, unfamiliar, unrehearsed, therefore it’s unsafe and you could literally DIE...so...NOPE! Have all these negative thoughts right here to stop you going for it.
You see this is why i’m always saying the goal is not about never having these thoughts it’s about knowing how to navigate them. Understanding why they’re there. That they aren’t necessarily true the vast majority of the time.
Knowing that this is a growth opportunity.
I promise you those thoughts and feelings hang around a LOT less and don’t come up as often when you do this work.
So I felt the fear and did it anyway. I didn’t even give myself time to think about it...or think myself out of it, I just said yes!
I just put my hat in the ring. And it’s a HUGE ring I have to say.
I backed myself.
I backed myself with the knowledge that even if it was a hard no and they laughed in my face, that was ok.
It didn’t mean anything about me, i’d just try again in the future, while being proud of myself for backing me.
But it did pay off.
I sent in my information and got the email saying they wanted to talk to me.
Still feeling the activation, those momentary feelings of ‘oh god, they’re going to find out i’m not good enough for this’. Remembering they will have had hundreds of options but they wanted to talk to ME!
Again, even if it went nowhere further than that, that’s an achievement in itself and absolutely wouldn’t have even got that for without backing myself.
But, it paid off. They loved it. They said it was the best they’d seen and they want to work with me.
It still might not happen, budgets and plans change all the time BUT...because I backed myself I know that I AM good enough. For the things I onced believed were wildly out of my reach.
Even if it goes nowhere I have that.
And I wouldn’t had I not backed myself.
BUT, I didn’t start there. I’ve learned to do that. I’ve learned to back myself. As someone who struggled with hugely low self esteem and lack of confidence, i’ve learned this.
But I also surrounded myself with the right people.
I know there are people in my life that don’t ‘get’ what I do. That’s ok, they don’t have to. They are people who have a different way of thinking to me, that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be in my life.
We just don’t really talk about work and that’s ok. We have a different relationship. I don’t want their fears or ideas of what life ‘should’ look like to rub off on me and they don’t have to.
But the people who DO get it, or want to...cling onto them because they’re gold dust!
They are my hype team.
You NEED those in business.
You need those in LIFE!
You may be sat there thinking, I don’t have those people right now. That’s ok. We go against the grain running our own businesses and not everyone can wrap their heads (or conditioning!) around that.
You go find them. I did!
And I’m in their hype team too.
Be around people who will back you when you don’t back yourself, until you do!
Create your own hype team.
You’ve met some of mine. Some i’ve interviewed on the podcast. Some I talk about in episodes, my emails or social media.
They are hugely important to me and i’m incredibly grateful to and for them.
One is my hubs, Mr T himself. I’m incredibly lucky to have my hype team so close to home. I know not everyone has that.
Even if he sometimes doesn’t ‘get’ everything i’m trying to do...he backs me.
Most of my hype team are other business owners. They get me, I get them.
They’re the ones who will be in a crowded room singing my praises and vice versa.
But I created that.
I didn’t start with it.
It makes the HUGEST difference. We all have the odd wobbly day, you need those people that hold the mirror up, remind you who the heck you are. That help you keep going. That help reframe your thoughts and get you back on track. But will equally challenge you!
I’m SO flipping lucky with the ones I have and couldn’t be more grateful.
2 of my hype team and I have actually created something together with all of this in mind.
Abi Hugo of @thewhitethistle and Dawni Baxter of @beyond_thedawn have teamed up to create a 6 month mentorship programme. Literally called ‘The Mentorship’ and we couldn’t be more excited.
That’s how much we believe in each other and back each other. We’re literally in it together now!
We want to create the hype team we wish we’d had for other people.
3 heads are better than one. It’s a 6 month programme where you have access to all 3 of us and get to draw on all our expertise to get your business running with YOU at the heart of it. AND have the support of the rest of your cohort too.
Cheerleading, butt kicking, hand holding, the lot.
Stripping away the things you’ve been told you ‘should’ be doing or have and getting to the core of what you REALLY want for your business and your life.
We’re tired of seeing people struggle. Work themselves to the bone and feel like they’re in it alone.
Plus there’s a 4 day cosy retreat with us in January to boot!
So if this sounds like a hype team you’d like to be a part of you can find all the details at https://bit.ly/thementorship21 We start on the 20th November so you've only got until then to decide. It’s an absolute maximum of 20 people and some of the slots are already gone so if you want to see if it’s for you you’re welcome to book in a call so we can make sure it's right for you.
Whether it’s with the mentorship, an accountability buddy or a group of friends, you deserve your own hype team. You get to back yourself.
It’s definitely time to back yourself!
Fx | |||
| Are You Exhausted? | 18 Oct 2021 | 00:10:10 | |
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Are You Exhausted?
Are you exhausted right now?
I’m seeing sooooooooo many business owners feeling it right now.
This lingering ‘funk’ where you kind of just want the world to stop for a month so you can have a proper break.
But you feel like you can’t.
It seems like it’s everywhere right now.
I’ve felt it too at times.
If you’ve been listening for a while you’ll know I'm always talking about your mental checklist.
That little list you go through when you’re in a funk before you decide the problem is YOU and have an existential crisis.
So, on mine is, what time of the month is it? What’s going on outside my business right now? Have I drunk enough water? What have I been eating? Have I been boozing? How have I been sleeping? Have I been taking my supplements?
But there’s one big thing we all need to actually recognise and take stock of at some point.
The covid exhaustion is REAL!
The social media exhaustion is REAL!
The last 18 months have been utterly bizarre and we can’t deny that. Just because some of us loved the slowing down that Covid created, doesn’t mean we weren’t in a perpetual state of some level of fight, flight or freeze stress response.
Our brains crave certainty. We haven’t had a whole lot of that recently.
Our brain and nervous system doesn’t like change and we’ve had TONNES of it recently.
Increasing costs of living, not being able to get away, feeling nervous to have a break (whether you’re in a job or have your own business!) because it could impact financially.
We’ve lost relationships because of distance. In some cases that may be positive, in others not so much.
Many of us have lost people.
Many of us haven’t known what to do next or what the future holds.
Many of us have been way more sedentary than we would have been before.
Many of us have eaten more than we would have before and have gained a few covid lbs.
Many of us aren’t feeling great about ourselves going back into the big wide world.
Many of us are still anxious about being in the big wide world in general!
As much as we slowed down temporarily it has meant in many cases we’re working HARDER now. We’re on our screens more.
Social media became our method of connecting even MORE and that addiction is now running even DEEPER.
We’re all navigating this incredibly weird time. That’s going to take its toll!
On your brain, your nervous system, your energy!
And it’s entirely possible it might make you feel a little in a funk.
I was talking to Mr T about social media earlier, which kind of inspired this (Thanks Tobes!) We have a difference of opinion on social media for sure.
He’s VERY anti all of it. Which makes sense because one of his core values is connection but to WHERE and WHEN you are. I see social media as connection, he sees it as the death of it.
We’re probably both right and both wrong.
It’s no secret that I can’t stand Facey B. I’m only on there for my paid for programmes, in and out, serious discipline not to scroll but I see things sometimes and so much of it hurts my heart.
I feel people’s anger. I feel people’s fear. I see the bad behaviour that comes from those things. It’s toxic in my eyes.
But I enjoy instagram. I know it has it’s dark corners for sure, particularly for the younger generation but I find it very easy to curate what I want to see. So I have fun there and can see it as a force for good, if that’s what you choose to make it.
But he’s definitely right in that people are spending way more time on social media, amplified by Covid I imagine.
We’re in there comparing ourselves. Looking for external validation. Getting lost in mindless scroll holes.
Facey B, Whatsapp and Insta went offline for an evening and I saw so many people panic. Or talk about how they used the time, on a Monday evening, to work distraction free.
Something just doesn’t sit right here, no?!
Are you ever taking the time to actually allow yourself to switch off?
There’s no denying we are addicted to social media, they know that, we know that. I catch myself in it too.
We have to find some self discipline and awareness to listen to what our mind and our body needs.
I can’t bang on about this enough.
Even if you’re working like a dog, how can you get some balance somewhere?
Mr T and I last weekend literally planned to do NOTHING and it was so needed and glorious. It’s so easy to just work, work, work.
Especially if you enjoy what you do.
On top of all this people are beating themselves up for being in a funk!
But people are exhausted and it’s no surprise why!
How can you break out of the cycle?
What could you do to even make a 1% difference.
Is that time outside, connecting with someone in person, who can help you get what you need. It’s very easy to say ‘I can’t’ but how about reframing that to ‘how can I’ and check in with yourself to see if that ‘can’t’ is really true. It might be! But it’s worth checking right?!
Fx | |||
| How Do You Handle Pressure? | 11 Oct 2021 | 00:10:07 | |
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How Do You Handle Pressure?
How do you handle pressure? This is actually a big question because most of us don’t really know and there can be some big clues in there around how we self sabotage and why.
There’s a couple of ways to look at this.
What behaviours do you exhibit when you’re under pressure?
And how much of that pressure is self imposed and why?
So let’s start with the behaviour piece of the puzzle because that’s what started me wanting to do this episode.
You know I love calling out certain behaviours and trying to reframe it for the people on the receiving end but also make the people doing it maybe think twice next time!
I put a lot of the unkind, underhand, douchey behaviour that you unfortunately see some people do, whether this is in business or at work, as a direct reaction to pressure.
An ego response. Think of it as an I will harm to avoid being harmed vibe.
I will lash out to protect myself first.
I will make someone else look bad to make myself feel better. Notice the distinction between look and feel there...it certainly never makes anyone LOOK better!
As an example, you’re feeling the pressure on a launch, or to hit a certain level of revenue, so you might go steal someone’s clients, or badmouth them to others. I call it trying to stand on someone else’s head to make yourself taller.
Unfortunately it happens a lot. Which makes me super sad.
Thankfully I haven’t heard of it happening to me yet (that’s not an invitation thank you...plus you know i’d just call it out as your drama not mine ha!) but I see it happen to my friends all the time and I've also been on the receiving end of people bad mouthing others too. Does nothing for the vibe and you’re just left thinking….geeez if they’re saying that about them what might they say about me!
There’s lots of ways and different strategies that we use to handle pressure but we need to look at them for what they really are, which is internal protection mechanisms. Adaptive responses from childhood or our early experiences.
This is one of the reasons I often liken the online business world to school. It really is wounded inner child stuff being played out on the internet everywhere you look! It’s behaviour we might have used at school and sometimes it’s as if we haven’t learned.
For some people the adaptive response might be to hide and avoid or numb out, some it might be to stand on someone else’s head to make themselves taller, it might be to pile on MORE work thus reinforcing the idea that perhaps you’re not good enough by creating yourself a near impossible situation where you’re juggling too many plates.
I can be very guilty of that one because I've learned I can handle a LOT so I’ll keep taking more on and I need to be aware of it and catch myself in it.
Hence why I have 8 qualifications, a full rebrand and website build, app build and launch, 6 month mentorship programme launch with 2 other people...i’ll tell you more about that soon, 3 new presentations to create and trying to get the positive pants planner sorted...all happening at the same time. Because I know I can handle it. Doesn’t mean I should. But it DOES mean I have to balance that with some serious rest and relaxation. I can do that because i’m aware. I have choice and agency. That makes a very big difference.
So what are your strategies. No judgement. Just curiosity. How do you handle pressure?
It’s worth noting that It can also sometimes feel as if the lack of pressure itself, causes pressure.
Which leads me onto the next point. Pressure itself as a self sabotage strategy.
We can be addicted to chaos.
We also may have been rewarded by putting pressure on ourselves when we were younger, think back to exams and revision. Did you cram at the last minute and work your butt off and get good grades and therefore praise from your caregivers? Did you make a connection that the way to get results was to work that way?
We might have piled the pressure on and it all worked out great, thus reinforcing that as something to be repeated into adulthood.
It may be that there’s an unconscious belief that if we’re NOT busy and under pressure then it means we aren’t successful, or people might THINK we’re not successful, and therefore not good enough, and therefore unworthy of love.
Phewf!
We do like to go to some deep places in our unconscious programmes don’t we.
If we don’t cach ourselves in these patterns of behaviour...ooooh we can get ourselves in a pickle.
We can reach burnout.
It might backfire and then the very thing we feared (not being liked) becomes reality because we’ve been caught out in bad behaviour.
Pressure may show up as perfectionism. Comparison. Overworking. Avoiding. Dissociating from our feelings.
What do you notice?
How do you recognise pressure in your body?
Alternatively it’s worth noticing how you feel when you’re NOT under pressure. What does that look like for you? Are you able to relax? Or does it make you feel twitchy and anxious?
The important thing is to create the initial awareness. You can’t do anything about a pattern you aren’t aware of.
Start to notice what you do when you’re under pressure. Do you create the pressure yourself? Is someone else creating it?
When do you remember first feeling pressure? Can you think of a time in your life when you didn’t?
What might the pressure itself, or the behaviour be allowing you to avoid?
What does it make you want to do?
What DO you do?
Think to yourself, what am I protecting myself from right now?
It may not seem like it’s that important but the ramifications for not figuring this stuff out can be BIG. Personally and professionally.
Having curiosity and awareness means you can do something about it and create a different outcome.
Fx
| |||
| How Do YOU Get Validation? | 04 Oct 2021 | 00:11:27 | |
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How Do YOU Get Validation?
How do you get validation? What are your markers for feeling validated?
The reason I want to talk about this today is because it’s something I talk about ALL the time with private clients and my friends in the industry. I haven’t had a rant about it on here for a while.
I’m so tired of the completely random and quite frankly ridiculous metrics that have been plucked out of the air for business owners.
Ohhhhh yes i’m talking about the ‘£10k months’ and the need to label yourself by your income.
Urgh.
Why does it incense me so?
Because it causes people to feel less than. Not just before they’ve hit six figures, but at every step of the way!
So you feel not good enough before you make six figures. Then for a minute you get to say ‘yeay i’m a six figure business owner!’
Then what happens?
You STILL compare to the next level and feel not good enough until you get THERE!
Then it’s the ‘oh, but i’m not a multi six figure business owner’. And of course you can’t be happy until you get there.
Then what?
‘Oh but I'm not a seven figure business owner.’ So you’re not happy until you get there! Then onto the multi seven figures and the cycle continues.
When does it stop?
It doesn’t...unless you get a hold of this unconscious pattern of validating yourself by what you earn and remind yourself that metric didn’t come from you in the first place.
I would LOVE to find the person who picked these numbers out of the air and give them a good shake.
You are valid whether you make an extra £5k per year from a side hustle or you’re at multiple seven figures.
You’re doing hard things. You did something yourself, and someone paid you for it. THAT’S AMAZING!
If we all stay in this cycle of not feeling good enough until we hit certain milestones you’re never going to live a happy and fulfilled life.
You need to let go of other people’s ‘stuff’ and work from your OWN success metrics!
The amount of people I’ve spoken to who are earning around £20-30k and are crying because they feel so awful about that is not ok.
Let me put this into perspective...you went and started a business, by yourself, and grew it to a place that a huge amount of the population aren’t earning in a job.
You get to feel AMAZING about that because it IS amazing! This stuff is HARD!
The fact that people will feel anything short of amazing because they’ve earned £99,999 is also bonkers to me!
Would you be earning that in a job right now? Would you have been earning that in your previous profession?
You might have...but the likely answer is no. And if you would have I would like to add in, did you make your own schedule? Did you get to work from home around your family?
We have to stop the madness.
For me my success metrics are can I rest when I need to? Can I work when I want to? Can I work the hours I want to? Can I work where I want to? Do I have flexibility? Can I work only a few days per week? Can I switch up my schedule when I want to? Am I doing something I love? Can I look after my own wellbeing? Can I spend time with the people I want to?
Of COURSE the money is nice. There’s no denying that. But you have to look at the bigger picture.
But I also validate myself. I don’t allow other people to do that. If they want to, that's up to them and none of my business.
I validate myself by living by my values. By always trying to be a good person. Being kind. Being empathetic. By being human.
You have to understand this random metric for success isn’t real.
There are plenty of people who might look down on people who aren’t making six figures yet. That’s unfortunate. But I promise you, if you’re listening to this...those people are not your people. Those people are A holes.
Would people behave like that in salaried jobs? Probably not...it’s way more taboo to talk about money in that way. But those people might validate themselves by their job title too.
It’s all about hierarchy….but no one gets to tell you where you ‘rank’.
Ask yourself what happens when you hit the magic six figures or £10k months?
What actually happens?
Do you get let into some sort of club?
Are you automatically accepted into the cool kids gang?
What changes in your personality?
What changes in terms of how you see yourself?
Will you automatically feel successful? Good enough?
The work needs to be around how you see yourself. Not how you’re allowing external things to validate you and your worth.
You’re worthy at any level. You deserve happiness at any level. You can find it at any level.
So my question for you is can you recognise how far you’ve come? Can you allow yourself to objectively take a step back?
It’s so easy to get caught up in the hype. Don’t allow other people to tell you you aren’t valuable until you hit some made up level of success.
What is success to you?
What does it actually look like?
Why do you have the financial goals you have? If you hadn’t heard it peddled to you constantly in the online space, would that still be your goal?
It’s great to strive for things. It’s great to know what’s possible.
But it’s not ok to shame yourself until you get there.
And also recognising that sometimes not having it can actually be a choice!
As an example, you can know that a seven figure business is absolutely possible for you. But is it what you want based on what you want your life to look like?
At the end of the day you’ll sabotage yourself anyway trying to get to a goal that really, unconsciously, you don’t want...but the funny thing we so often do is beat ourselves up for not being there...even though we actually don’t want to be!
So please, grab your journal and really think about why you want that goal. What are you making it mean if you get it, what are you making it mean if you don’t.
Can you allow yourself to enjoy the journey and celebrate all the beautiful milestones along the way? Knowing you’re working towards something that is totally possible for you, but you’re doing it around your life, your values, your rules and not being there yet does not validate you.
You get to want whatever goals you want. No one else gets to judge them as less than. No one else gets to judge them at all, they’re yours!
Keep going, but enjoy the journey.
Fx | |||
| When Small Changes Mean Big Changes! | 27 Sep 2021 | 00:08:59 | |
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Small Changes Mean Big Changes!
Small changes really do mean big changes. The issue we have though is that we often don’t notice them to start with.
With any kind of mindset work (by mindset I mean brain and body, nervous system level work) it can feel REALLY frustrating to start with.
You’re putting the effort in (and it really DOES feel like effort because you’re going against your rehearsed and repeated familiar patterns that the brain likes you to follow, you have to be conscious a lot of the time instead of running on autopilot 95-99% of the time) but you’re feeling like the changes aren’t coming quick enough.
I’ve been there. It drove me mad to start with because I felt like I was doing ALL the things and not really reaping the rewards just yet.
But when you think about what you’re ACTUALLY doing, it makes sense why it would take a hot minute.
You’re rewiring new neural pathways. You’re going against what your nervous system believes is ‘safe’ and going into danger territory. You’re trying to work against autopilot which your brain is trying to keep you in to conserve energy.
It’s a lot!
But also when we have more of an ‘end goal’ in mind all we’re looking at is the fact we’re not there yet. But we’re doing all the things!
What gives!
Firstly a big thing I can’t bang on about enough is that there really is no ‘end goal’ there’s always another layer of the onion to peel and that’s a GOOD thing because you’re constantly getting better and better and growing every day.
But when you start to really tune in to the seemingly SMALLER changes that are happening for you it makes a HUGE difference about how you feel about the journey and how you feel about yourself.
And that really is half the battle with all of this working on yourself. The way you talk to yourself, the way you understand yourself, the way you find empathy and compassion for yourself and just stop the self blame and shame cycle.
You have adaptive protection mechanisms built into your system. They served you once, they don’t now.
But they are ‘warning’ systems. They are systems of self protection. Essentially they have your best interests and very survival at heart.
So of COURSE that’s going to take some time. BUT, the trick is to really consciously start to look for those small changes and I bet you’ll see you’ve already come WAY further than you think you have.
Start to look out for when you might have blamed or shamed yourself in the past, and you didn’t.
Look for the moments where you catch yourself in negative self-talk and course correct it. You start with ‘Urgh you’re so stupid!’ You catch yourself…’Hang on, no you’re NOT stupid, you can do this!’ Yes your natural instinct was to blame and shame yourself but you caught yourself in that unconscious pattern and didn’t stay in it! Don’t underestimate how much of a big deal that is in itself. You may have talked to yourself that way for multiple decades and you just talked back! KUDOS!
It could be that you notice something that would normally trigger you, didn’t!
It could be that you recover more quickly from being triggered. Or there’s more time in between instances of being triggered.
Your good days may start to outweigh the bad ones. Your good moments may start to outweigh the bad ones.
It might be that you notice you’re just a bit calmer than you normally would be. Or you catastrophise less.
You may notice an increase in your ability to regulate your own emotions.
You might feel more capable of setting boundaries and do less people pleasing.
You may say NO! When before you would have ALWAYS said yes.
It may be that you’re being a bit nicer to yourself in your own head.
Or maybe you’ve been able to stick to a new habit for longer than you’ve been able to before.
You may just feel slightly more self assured.
You may just notice you’re less ‘reactive’ than you were.
You might have more capacity to just ‘cope’ with what life throws at you.
All of this can be difficult to see when you’re not looking. So start looking. Start noticing.
I bet you’ll find you’ve made WAY more progress than you’re giving yourself credit for.
These seemingly small changes are actually HUGE. They all add up to that moment in the future where you realise how different everything is for you.
When you realise you’re not that person with low self esteem beating themselves up believing they aren’t capable of doing the things they see other people doing. Looking at them thinking ‘why not me!’
You’re not that person anymore. You’re the person who is confident in themselves and their own abilities. That knows that even if you have a bad day it doesn’t mean ‘you’re’ bad. That person who is curious to what negative thoughts, feelings and emotions might be trying to tell you rather than judging them or yourself for being there.
We love instant gratification as a society. We’ve been conditioned to expect it. I want to champion the small steps and the small changes that happen over time. They’re the most sustainable, life changing ones!
So, have a think. What small changes can you notice? Can you see how they add up to the big ones?
Fx | |||
| Why You Need A Personal Philosophy For Success | 20 Sep 2021 | 00:13:33 | |
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Why You Need A Personal Philosophy For Success
Having a personal philosophy is so important when it comes to your success, living a happy life, achieving your goals and all that fun stuff.
WAY more important than you might think.
So why do so few of us have one? Or have one but don’t realise and then they run around being ‘bothered’ by things or people and not really understanding why.
What even IS a personal philosophy?!
Your personal philosophy is basically your own personal guidelines. Life rules you choose to live by.
Your personal philosophy also incorporates your boundaries. The things you’re prepared to put up with, and the things you’re not. This is with other people but ALSO, importantly, with yourself.
Your personal philosophy is also made up of your values. It’s about what is most important to you.
When you’re not aware of what it is you can get yourself in a pickle.
You might say yes to things you don’t want to, or worse, things that you actively know aren’t good for you.
You might make a decision based on someone else’s map of the world rather than your own.
Having, or knowing, your personal philosophy gives you clarity over what you actually want to get out of life.
It’s a commitment you keep to yourself. How you want to show up, who you want to be.
A personal philosophy gives meaning and direction, it's what you live by, what you stand for.
Hopefully you can see that having something like this in place helps you make plans and set goals, with YOU in mind.
It takes away the unconscious programming that might usually dictate decisions based on what you’ve learned as a child, or from society and replaces them with ones more aligned to you. Without all the layers of other peoples ‘stuff’.
Being aware of them really helps you understand your triggers and where you should limit your time.
I’ll give you a few of mine as examples so you can see how it fits into life and business.
First up, always be curious.
To me this means not just blindly accepting things. Looking for alternative perspectives to get a well rounded view of something. Not just taking something someone says as fact. It’s a little bit ‘take it with a pinch of salt’ a little bit ‘there’s usually 3 versions of a story, one person’s, the other person’s and the truth….which is often somewhere in the middle. Curiosity also means not judging people for their views.
They’re entitled to their view, it may not match mine but they are entitled to it. It comes from their own conditioning. It certainly doesn’t mean I have to be around them. It also doesn’t mean I can’t have a conversation with them about it.
Doesn’t mean I have to agree. It’s a very ‘seek to understand’ kind of vibe and one of the reasons you don’t often hear me giving controversial opinions that are hard and fast and unbending. There are some things I feel that way on of course BUT, Even if it’s staunchly against my values I can see empathy for someone else’s point of view and where it may have come from. Certainly doesn’t mean I have to agree, or be around them. I can share my point of view in the hope it might make them think differently for sure but I can seek to understand even if I don’t agree.
I don’t need to be a part of call out or cancel culture thank you very much.
I can see someone behaving a certain way and think ‘hmm, I wonder what X, Y, Z has triggered in them, I wonder what their ego is saying right now’...without the need to get angry or triggered myself. I can also unfollow and block, hooray! As much as we’d like to, we can’t change other people unless they want change for themselves.
It also means that I don’t judge myself in my business, or in anything else really. As someone who used to beat myself up all the time this is pretty big. I’m always curious as to what might be going on for me. The vast majority of my clients come to me constantly beating themselves up and berating themselves. They’re stuck in the self blame, shame cycle so incorporating curiosity is a game changer.
Strive for continuous self improvement and personal growth.
What this means to me will probably make a lot of sense considering what I do and something I say a lot of the time. Stop striving to be a finished product because there really is no such thing. When you always aim for growth, but without it meaning there is anything ‘wrong’ with you that you need to ‘fix’ Your Life is just ALWAYS going to be improving and getting better.
That’s magical to me! That i’m always going to be better than the day before...even if that’s from a good place to start! I would NOT be where I am not without this philosophy.
I would still be the most negative person in the room. I’d still have no self worth or self esteem. I’d still be spending time with the wrong people hoping to be accepted and always coming up short.
I wouldn’t have this deep level of compassion and acceptance for myself.
I wouldn’t constantly be learning and understanding myself and others more every day.
I wouldn’t know how to navigate what I do now, for myself and for others.
When you aim for growth and improvement from a space of just getting better all the time rather than a judgemental I need fixing or I'm ‘wrong’ place then it’s a lot of fun.
I’m literally NEVER bored.
Next philosophy I have is, there can always be a positive to come from a negative if you choose to look for it.
I know some people struggle with this one but I wholeheartedly believe it and live by it.
It may take a little time to appear but I can always find something positive that wouldn’t have happened without the negative.
I’m grateful for the challenges life throws at me now because of the other philosophies I've just given you. I approach it with curiosity over judgement and an opportunity for growth.
And my final one, that is probably the one I talk about the most. And I haven’t found an elegant way to say it yet so i’m just going with it so if you have kiddos around make sure you put me on mute.
My last personal philosophy for you today is simple, don’t be a d*ck.
This goes for me and others. I’m human and sometimes I might feel the tendency to react from ego from time to time. This philosophy helps me in those moments ha! I remind myself that I am not that person and I like to leave people a little better than I found them. Sometimes that’s not possible. But in those times this helps me decide to walk away and remove myself from the situation.
I have a pretty low tolerance for meanness and nastiness and rudeness. I just don’t see a need.
BUT, For the people who are, I don’t judge. It’s coming from their ego and their conditioning so I can find empathy for the inner child that needed that strategy to get by in life. BUT, I don’t need to be around it and I don’t need to react to it.
This isn’t about being the nicest or the kindest, like I say I'm human. It’s about recognising when it could happen and making a better choice.
So those are a few of mine, I'm hoping that my sharing has given you a few nuggets to start you off on figuring out yours, and seeing why it’s important!
I had a lot of fun creating this episode so I hope you enjoyed listening.
So when you’re thinking about your personal philosophy, think about what's important to you in life?
What is it that you really care about?
What is absolutely non negotiable in your life?
What really gets your goat in other people?
I would actually LOVE you to share yours with me so tag me in on Instagram @imfranexcell or DM me if you want it to be private of course!
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| Why Do We Wait Until There’s a Big Problem When We Could Prevent It? | 13 Sep 2021 | 00:09:25 | |
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Why Do We Wait Until There’s a Big Problem When We Could Prevent It?
Why do we wait until there’s a big problem to do something about it?
OK, in theory it makes TOTAL sense why we might do this. We might be plodding along happy as larry, or not but not really realising it and not realising we could be feeling better.
We just think things are ‘fine’. Until they’re not.
Which camp do you fall into in this scenario. The camp who eats well and exercises for the health benefits and longevity. Or the camp who realises, fudge, i’ve got myself in a pickle, i’ve gained weight or i’ve got health issues...I should probably do something about this.
No judgement to be made either way. I used to be in the second camp for sure. It’s only in the last couple of years i’ve done a big switcheroo.
I have mental health tools and techniques...because I had mental health problems. I only found them because I was trying to change something that wasn’t working for me anymore.
Now they are tools and techniques I use everyday, so I feel good, to continue healing and to prevent issues in the future.
I only found out about my adrenals and thyroid issues because I went to a functional medicine practitioner because I wanted to be healthier. I didn’t really realise there was a problem, but because I went down the preventative route I found the issues WAY earlier than I would have by going to my GP because there was a real problem. Which MEANS, I can do something about it now, without it getting to the stage where it’s FAR harder to reverse the damage.
But it got me thinking. Where else in our lives do we simply wait for there to be a problem without doing some simple things to stop there being one in the first place?
I often hear from people who were doing all the things that make them feel good, start feeling good and then stop...because they don’t ‘need’ to do it anymore. Then they wonder why the old patterns come back.
The brain will always follow the path of least resistance. The path of least resistance is the neural pathway that has been rehearsed and practiced the most.
So what do you know makes you feel good?
What do you know causes you to spiral and not feel so good?
What keeps you in a good headspace?
Is it journaling? Meditation? Breathwork? Yoga? Is it singing and dancing round the kitchen?
When you figure out what that is, would you wait until you had an issue to do it? Or would you do it to make sure you didn’t get there?
It’s easy to think we have to do ALL THE THINGS when it comes to a personal routine but that can be overwhelming in itself. So what would you pick that you know would make a difference for you?
How do you feel if you haven’t moved in the day?
If the answer is ‘ooooh actually not great’ thrn incorporate that into your day. Yoga, dancing, exercise.
How do you feel if you’ve been caught in a thought loop all day?
Most people would answer ‘not great’ to that one to be fair so you might want to incorporate a simple journaling technique into your day like gratitude journaling or using prompts.
How do you feel when you’ve spent a week eating rubbish?
How do you feel when you’ve not drunk enough water?
How do you feel when you’ve been isolated for too long?
Why not do something before it becomes a problem?
Some of these make up what I call my mental checklist.
I have a reminder that flashes up on my phone 3 times per day so I can course correct.
Notice if i’m feeling isolated and reach out to a friend.
Notice if i’ve been on a slippery slope of comfort eating and decide to eat some veg.
Notice if i’ve missed a couple of days of journaling or meditation.
But essentially it keeps me doing all the things that I know are amazing for my mental health.
It also means I never get stuck in self blame or shame or frustration with myself. If somethings going on and I can’t put my finger on it then i’ll grab my journal.
But it keeps me in a really good mental headspace. AND has long term benefits. Lots of the tools I use work with the nervous system so it increases my window of tolerance and capacity to cope with day to day stuff.
It makes me calmer.
Less reactive.
I’m human it still happens sometimes of course, BUT if one of these things are off it usually tells me why!
So instead of getting to the point where you’re forced to do something about your mental, physical or emotional health, what could you put in place right now to make sure that doesn’t happen?
Fx
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| Nobody Has It Together All The Time! | 21 Aug 2023 | 00:11:20 | |
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Nobody Has It Together All The Time
Without exceptions, nobody has it together all the time.
So why do you think you have to?!
What does it even mean to you to have your stuff together?
That’s going to look different for everyone.
For me it’s about resilience. It’s not necessarily about having everything you ever wanted but it’s knowing you’re working towards it, even if there are a few bumps and bruises along the way.
What is it for you?
Grab your journal and really get into it and write down what ‘having your stuff together’ really means and looks like for you.
Feel free to pause, I'll wait.
Now look at what you’ve written.
Is it actually realistic?
Do you know anyone, personally, not on the interwebs, who meets the criteria?
I wonder, what would they say if you told them that’s how you see them?
These are the day to day assumptions that wreak havoc on our self esteem, self worth and mental health that NEED to be challenged and picked apart.
If we can remove the immense pressure we put on ourselves, how different would things look?
Do you think you might be more accepting?
More forgiving towards yourself?
Kinder?
I describe myself as someone who has their stuff together, even when they don’t have their stuff together.
What do I mean by that?
For me having your stuff together actually means knowing and recognising when you don’t! Then being able to do what you need to do to prioritise yourself and your own wellbeing. To do the things that you know are good for you and know that everything is going to work out just fine.
So really I see it as not having your stuff together at all ha! Quite freeing when you think about it.
Right now, on paper I do NOT have my stuff together.
Pretty much every key area of my life is in flux, or limbo as i’ve been saying.And i’ve been doing a tremendous amount of #adulting.
There are so many things I DON’T have control over right now because you can never have control over other people…no matter how much you might like to. Being accepting of that is a skill you can learn. Trust me on this ha!
The amount of huge things I've been through this year is bananas and unpredicted.
BUT, so many people have said to me things like, 'How do you have such a positive outlook on this?’ ‘How are you so calm, you seem in a really good place?’ and ‘You’re handling it really well!’
Because I am…most of the time. I’m very very honest that there are many MANY human moments along the way.
There have been days where things have seemed hopeless and even when I've said that, I knew I didn’t really mean it and I was just having a human moment…and they are allowed!
But there are days where all I see is possibility.
All I see is the opportunity and the growth and potential and I find that magical.
It tends to be out of the hardest things that come the best things and I hold on to that.
I’m very self aware and always approach things with curiosity over judgement. Sometimes other people have a harder time with my emotions than I do because they don’t know how to handle them.
But that doesn’t matter, I don’t judge them for that. But I also don’t take on that opinion just because it’s theirs.
I don’t push away my emotions because I know that’s the quickest way through them and to process them.
Most of society have been trained to shun their negative emotions and panic a little in the face of someone else’s. Big emotions can make other people uncomfortable and that’s ok.
But never, ever tell yourself that they shouldn’t be there because they are all clues and messages for something that needs to be dealt with head on, or it’s just going to stick around and get louder until you pay attention!
Gotta feel it to heal it!
It’s FAR too easy to look at the curated versions of people on the internet and make huge assumptions that they have it good all the time. They don’t.
They’re dealing with the same amount of humanity as you are! They are lying if they say otherwise.
It’s about how you look at and recover from these moments that is the difference that makes the difference and that’s what you’re looking for.
Not the absence of them. Or to have your stuff together all the time.
It doesn’t matter how much you know you will always have human moments, thoughts, beliefs, reactions.
We’ve just been programmed for far too long that these things are undesirable.
And it’s, as always, completely nuanced.
Because we all have different unconscious programming and experiences.
So how could people with all of that going on ever look at things in exactly the same way?
They don’t.
There’s always ALWAYS nuance to it.
This is where values, opinions, beliefs all come into play to make you the beautiful, perfectly imperfect, flawed and nuanced individual that you are.
And that should be celebrated.
All of this unconscious stuff that we add on top is what causes the issues and when you can look at that with honesty and curiosity about what’s there. What stories, beliefs, thoughts and attitudes are underneath the feelings that’s where you can create huge change.
So much of what we really want in life is about acceptance. We have to accept ourselves, in all our glorious humanity first.
Be kind to yourself today and see what happens!
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| What You Should Have Been Taught In School! | 06 Sep 2021 | 00:10:20 | |
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What you should have been taught in school
Following on from last week’s ‘what you didn’t realise you learned in school, this week i’m talking about what you should have been taught in school.
Because if you had been, you wouldn’t be beating yourself up for some of the things you struggle with now.
One of my biggest passions is helping people get out of that self blame, self shame cycle. That need and habit of beating ourselves up.
I’ve been there, it’s not pretty!
I spent most of my life wondering why I struggled with certain things. I thought my personality was this fixed, immovable identity. I didn’t understand that so much of my personality was built around protection mechanisms that I'd learned along the way from other people and my own experiences.
That actually, I could change anything I wanted to with a little work. To strip back the layers of the onion to be who I always have been at my core.
That the things I struggled with, patterns I repeated and beliefs I had about myself aren’t ‘who’ I am.
And of course the same goes for you.
And really I do believe so much of this ‘stuff’ that we accumulate over the years starts as school. If you haven’t caught last week's episode please do go back to that one because it might be a bit of an eye opener.
There are things, I believe, that if we had learned in school would have definitely prepared us more in knowing how to ‘human’.
That regardless of whether we learned them at home, regardless of our background, conditioning, or circumstances, these things are essential knowledge that could have been very helpful in navigating the world!
First up is emotional awareness. We are emotional beings, we should know that it’s normal and natural to feel and communicate our emotions. Decoding emotions is actually a whole module in my SOS! Success Over Stress course because of this reason.
We just don’t understand them. When you break them down you have more power over their power so they stop ruling your life and behaviour.
When you can feel them in the moment and know it’s ok rather than judge yourself for them. To allow yourself to be curious of them.
How different is that experience vs what the majority of us do which is suppression, denial, numbing behaviours. We aren’t taught the consequences of doing that and there are many.
Emotions get stuck in our body and cause all sorts of issues. That energy needs to discharge...which is another thing I think should be taught in school too. How to process big emotions.
So many clients, and I struggle with this myself sometimes too, are disconnected from our feelings. We find it hard to even name them let alone understand why they might be there.
How to handle relationships is the next one. Oh my goodness. I’ve healed a lot of things in my life but healing in relationships is the ultimate. Imagine if we’re taught attachment theory. If I had known in my teens and twenties what I know now I would have saved myself SO much heartache.
I would have understood why I was attracting certain types of guys. I would have known that, yes they were avoidant butt heads but I would have been able to look at myself and say, ‘hang on, where’s my responsibility here’ and realise I was attracted to them because I was avoidant myself!
Relationships to be fair deserve an entire episode or 20 to themselves, but a lot of that is BECAUSE we don’t understand how to operate in them. We follow what other people in our lives have taught us unconsciously.
Financial management is a BIG one! I know it changes all the time so it’s difficult but knowing things like where to look for current legislation and changes on it’s own would have been great!
Teaching about bills, tax, money in general. Making it ok to talk about. Understanding money stories. Understanding investing. It’s actually a HELL of a lot easier to teach kids investing than it is for adults. As adults our emotions cloud our decisions and self doubt creeps in.
There are people teaching this to kids now outside of school if you seek it.
Emotional regulation is the next thing. Understanding our emotions is one thing but how to regulate them is another. Sef regulation and co-regulation. This is one of the top 3 super powers I believe every entrepreneur needs. When you can regulate your emotions you have SO much more control over your behaviour and the ability to operate from the parts of the brain you need to be able to do what you need to do.
Things like journaling, meditation, EFT, yoga, breathing techniques.
Can you imagine as an adult knowing this in advance? Most people that seek these answers have got to such a point that it’s necessary. It’s usually not idle curiosity. Usually it comes from a need for change. It’s the wrong way round!
The next thing is, imagine being taught as a kid that you have choice and agency. Imagine knowing you don’t have to follow this rigid path or set of rules. Imagine knowing that there is a big wide world FULL of opportunities.Imagine being taught there’s another way.
That you can run your own business, that you could actually only have to work part of the year. To know that you can make a living from investing, SO many options we don’t know about.
And I'm still useless with my geography and do not know the square root of pi!
There’s a TONNE more i’m sure but these are what I wanted to talk about today.
This isn’t about judgement of others and how unfair it is or anything like that. My aim is to help you understand yourself more. Your behaviour. Your conditioning. To not judge yourself for not knowing things you know now because you had to seek the answers.
You can’t berate or judge the previous version of you who didn’t have this information.
I hope it helps you make sense of some of the things you may have struggled with, without judgement!
BUT there are some fundamental things that I think, I hope, are perhaps starting to come into the curriculum now if you’re lucky. I’m definitely hearing more parents talk about how meditation is coming into schools which is amazing.
I’m hearing more about kids doing yoga and journaling too.
So, knowing that most of this stuff is NOT something you were taught, how can you beat yourself up for not knowing it?
It makes total sense why we would self blame and self shame ourselves and get frustrated with ourselves. But really, when you think about this
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| What You Didn’t Realise You Learned In School | 30 Aug 2021 | 00:11:40 | |
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What You Didn’t Realise You Learned In School
What you didn’t realise you learned and also weren’t taught in school that you might beat yourself up for not knowing today is something i’m pretty passionate about.
So I'm going to make this a 2 parter. In this episode I'm going to talk about all the unconscious lessons you might have learned. Next week I'm going to talk about the things you ‘should’ have learned.
Fundamentally what I want for every single one of my listeners is to understand themselves, not beat themselves up for certain patterns of behaviour that they feel are intrinsically ‘wrong’ with them and also know they have the power to change those patterns of behaviour. To know that they make perfect sense.
To understand their own self sabotage and overcome and be able to handle their stress.
Every single one of us is so capable of that, we just haven’t been taught the things we need to know to be able to really make that a reality.
There are so many things you DID learn in school that now need to be UNlearned.
It’s an important topic that I love a good debate around but I really think it explains so many of the struggles we often come across running our own business.
Entrepreneurs are the definition of going against the grain of what we’ve been taught we’re ‘supposed’ to do.
No wonder it causes so much tension and internal conflict when we try to step into a totally different way of being, not just for ourselves but the fear it creates in those around us too.
Marry that with all the things we learned through our family and friends and society on top it’s an unconscious recipe for getting in your own way and not having the life you want.
School days can be a big trigger for a lot of people. I certainly learned a lot of lessons outside the classroom, some that I'm grateful for, others I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
But I find the key to so many things we unconsciously struggle with can be held there. The beliefs about ourselves and the world. What we ‘should’ do to be loved and accepted.
I had a great school life until I was 11 actually.
After that point, as well as pythagoras theory, through various experiences I learned not to trust people.
I learned that how I looked determined how likeable I am.
I learned that my emotions were inconvenient and shouldn’t be expressed.
I learned that it’s not ok to make mistakes or get things wrong.
I learned that ‘failure’ is something to be feared and avoided at all costs.It’s not acceptable and if you do...then YOU are not acceptable.
I learned to ask permission before acting.
I learned that you have to do things you don’t want to do.
I learned there was a certain path you had to follow to be successful which involved getting good grades, going into higher education, getting a job and working your way up.
I learned you would be judged and validated as a person on your achievements, mainly academic and financial.That success comes from the approval of other people.
That other people set the standards, not me.
I learned to seek validation from other people, not myself.
I learned that doing what I loved wasn’t as important as academic subjects I had little interest in.
I learned that questioning things and being curious was ‘naughty’ or ‘disruptive’.
I learned ‘do as I say’.
I didn’t learn that there was any other option.
And I know these aren’t just my lessons. I see so many of these things coming up in my work with clients.
When you make these unconscious programmes conscious, that’s when you can do something about it.
That’s when so many of your struggles make sense! So instead of beating yourself up for having them you get to do the work around changing those beliefs.
Sometimes that can be SO quick. Literally making it conscious can be enough to go, hang on, that’s ridiculous!’ and for it to be gone.
Some things cut a little deeper and need a little more work.
Remember it’s an internal protection mechanism.
Your brain, your ego and your nervous system are saying ‘hang on, this is the truth here and that’s intolerable so you can’t do that!’
‘If you do that, that means you’re unlovable so we can’t have that’
Then in comes the procrastination, the overwhelm, the confusion...all the mindset gremlins to stop you doing the thing.
Whether you’ve been bullied, were told by a teacher you’d never amount to anything. Whatever it might be, your school years have a huge effect.
Most of us are walking around completely unaware of all these programmes and all this conditioning that we need to break down.
But hopefully what you’re seeing here is making you go ‘ohhhh that’s why I do that, it makes so much sense!’
When you can see a pattern for what it is, rather than something that’s ‘wrong’ with you you might feel like you almost dissociate from that pattern.
It means that you become the observer of it. You get that zoom out function I talk about a lot. You’re not IN it anymore. Not consumed by it.
That’s a gift.
The more you uncover the more you get to throw away as unhelpful and un useful to you now.
You get to challenge it with curiosity. If there’s something that needs some healing, you know what you’re dealing with and can get specific about what to work on.
Oooooooh I LOVE this stuff. It might feel overwhelming at first but then it becomes SO freeing.
With anything it’s about going step by step, or layer by layer.
Find someone to work with 1:1, whether that’s me or someone else. The work is worth it.
So hopefully this week we’re starting to figure out some of the ‘stuff’ and next week I'll be talking more about the things we all should have been taught in school to fundamentally help us with being human!
Remember, it’s not your fault, you aren’t broken, you don’t need fixing. You just learned some lessons that are now out of date and you have amazing internal protection mechanisms. I remember when I truly realised and understood that, it changed everything.
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| Do You Feel Like A Misfit? | 23 Aug 2021 | 00:12:03 | |
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Do You Feel Like A Misfit?
Do you feel like a misfit?
Humans have a basic need to feel like they belong. That they are accepted. So why do so many of us not?
This episode was sparked by my recent trip where we all confessed to always having felt a little on the outside of things. How when we were younger that felt like such a problem. Like not being accepted, or feeling not worthy unless you were ‘part of the crowd’ whereas now, it feels like a positive to be absolutely ok to stand up and NOT fit in.
It almost feels like a bit of a super power. Of course it’s nice to be accepted and it’s nice to be liked. But how amazing to not feel like you HAVE to be. To know that if you don’t...it doesn’t mean anything is ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’ about you. It just means you march to the beat of your own drum. What a gift.
Stop feeling like you need to hide parts of yourself to be ok. To be accepted.
Maybe someone told you when you were young you ‘should’ be a different way to ‘fit in’.
Maybe you were told you were too quiet, too loud, too much!
Find the people who ARE like you.
Spend more time with the people you feel amazing around.
Be clear on your likes, dislikes, values, non negotiables. Often we don’t do this. So how are we supposed to know that we feel like we don’t fit in because people actually don’t share the same values. Or have the same interests. The trouble is when we make that ‘our’ fault. Rather than it being theirs, OR, heaven forbid, that you just have different viewpoints and interests and it’s as simple as that.
It often stems back to school. The focus on the cool kids and whether you are or aren’t one.
I have always been on what feels like the outskirts of everything.
At school I definitely felt this. I was friends with some of the cool kids. But I definitely wasn’t ‘part of the gang’. I never felt fully accepted or in the right place.
I had some lovely friends but THEY weren’t cool kids. So in my desperate need to fit in, I focused more on what I lacked than what was right in front of me.
I also had such low self esteem that unconsciously someone really liking me and wanting to spend time with me made me think THEY weren’t good enough. That if they like me then there must be something wrong with them.
This got me in so many pickles. I was constantly in situations where I just felt uncomfortable. I didn’t trust the people around me not to be mean. Or talk behind my back and say ‘what’s SHE doing here’. It was horrendous.
Now you’ll usually find me on the outskirts building relationships or having deep and meaningful conversations with people.
When you don’t care what bullies think, they can’t bully you!
When what you think and what people you love think about you is more important than the cool kids, what they say doesn’t phase you.
You stop respecting their opinion in the same way.
Don’t be blinded by shiny people. Don’t buy into the club unless you genuinely like the people and they make you feel good too.
In marketing it’s called the halo effect. When I was in media I worked at a very well known upnarket glossy celebrity magazine. Brands that wanted to reposition themselves as slightly more upmarket then their current positioning, would want to advertise in the title because just by being in there they would have the halo effect of being more bright and shiny themselves.
Don’t fall into this trap. I know it’s easy to have your inner school girl triggered and wanting to fit in.
I know it makes you feel like ‘if i’m seen with them it makes me look better’. Don’t fall into the trap.
You will be 10 times happier being friends with people who share your values than you ever will be feeling like you’re faking it, or you’re going to get found out. Or that they have control over you because you feel like they could drop you at any minute.
When you’re honest with yourself, do you really WANT to fit in?
Who do you follow just because other people do so you feel you should?
How do you feel when you’re trying to vs when you’re with people you feel good around?
Awkward? Like you’re always searching for the ‘right’ thing to say? Feeling like you’re hiding yourself?
It’s not nice. I’ve been there. If I feel that now I will make polite excuses to leave or pull a houdini and just go. It’s so strange to think back to all those times in my life that I felt out of place. Uncomfortable. Anxious. Full of tension. Making decisions that didn’t feel right because I felt I ‘should’.
Genuine connections will honestly bring SO much more into your life.
Remember it’s ok to feel like you don’t fit in. It doesn’t mean there’s something ‘wrong’ with you.
Also, think about it for a second. Where would we be without the misfits? The people that challenge the status quo. The people that stand up for what they believe in even though it’s against the ‘norm’. The misfits are the change makers. But they were comfortable in their own skin. Comfortable being different, unique, not fitting into a mould. How many people do you follow online that fit that description? What is it you love about them? Is it that they’re the same as everyone else, or is it that they stand out?
Stop feeling like you have to hide your uniqueness. Embrace it. Find your people. Be happy.
Here’s to the misfits!
Fx
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| Do You Have An Upper Limit Problem? | 16 Aug 2021 | 00:14:00 | |
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Do you have an upper limit problem?
Are you struggling with an upper limit problem? What IS an upper limit problem?
It’s a term coined by Gay Hendricks in one of my favourite books, The Big Leap. It’s the idea that we all have an upper limit of what we believe we deserve, or is safe to have, so we will unconsciously engineer something happening to bring you back down.
I had my very own one of these last week.
The irony was I was also listening to another of Gay Hendricks’ books and it was talking about upper limit problems WHEN it happened.
We all talk about having an inner voice. We usually know it to be in the form of the inner critic.
That nasty piece of work that thinks to protect you it has to send nasty thoughts of self doubt, the ‘who am I to do this’ or ‘you’re so stupid’...that one.
But do you listen to, or do you even notice, the subtle little inner voice that tells you when things aren’t right, or not to do something? The one that tells you what’s a good idea and what’s not.
It’s quieter but the more you tune into it the more it can help steer you, often in the right direction.
My little voice talked to me and I ignored it because I was tired. The more you do this the more you’ll notice yourself overriding it...whoops!
I was walking to the train station after an amazing 4 days away with my glorious friends and colleagues staying at various 5 star hotels around Manchester because the 3 of us live in different parts of the country.
We had spa treatments, dinners, great conversation and mapped out an incredibly exciting, and what we believe will be game changing programme that will be launching October/November time.
I was tired but I was feeling REALLY good.
Now, I'm aware I have an upper limit when it comes to joy and happiness and it’s something I have to be conscious of.
We all have this to an extent. Whether it’s joy, love, happiness. Mine is linked to a deep trauma from when I was 11 years old and I was away at a new boarding school and my best friend from back home passed away unexpectedly.
I was happy, full of joy, feeling accepted and having a great time. I got the message that my other friend was on the phone for me. Back then we had 2 phone boxes that you used with little cards and a code you could type in to dial. I’m feeling very old now.
I was overjoyed when someone said ‘Frankie, your friend Ellie is on the phone for you’.
I was even more happy and felt loved that my friend had thought of me to call me.
Then my world came crashing around me and I now recognise the deep profound effect this one moment of trauma had over many areas of my life.
I got on the phone, happy, joyful, excited to speak to her, telling her I had just written a letter to Damian. She cut me off and said ‘I don’t think he’s going to get that Frankie.’
I said ‘oh no why, has he moved?’, to which she said no and stayed silent for a moment and then I said something strange because I couldn’t find the words, i’m not religious or anything but I just said ‘Is he up’.
She said yes.
Now, what happened in my young unconscious mind was to connect the dots that if i’m too happy, pain follows. If I'm too happy, the rug will get pulled out from under you. If I'm too happy, something bad will happen.
And it’s only upon doing the deep work I can now see how many times that pattern has played out in my life so it’s something I have to be conscious of and allow myself to sit in the tension that joy and happiness unconsciously creates.
You wonder why I'm always saying awareness is the number one skill you need in life!
The experience doesn’t have to be that dramatic either. It could be you were having a great time riding a bike and then you fell off.
Or playing in a tree and hurting yourself. It could be any number of things but you can see that if you have a deep unconscious belief that it’s unsafe to feel those emotions, your nervous system, your ego, your brain….will step in to protect you from it.
Until you become conscious and aware of it and know how to regulate your emotions and know how to give your nervous system and brain the cues of safety. Then it will expand your comfort zone and window of tolerance. Which is essentially your capacity to deal with life.
It takes practice and you won’t always catch yourself in it. You’re human. I’m a human and I didn’t catch it this time but I still learned a valuable lesson in the process so I won’t beat myself up for it.
So there I was happy as Larry on my way home and excited after these few days. I was about to come to a curb with my wheelie suitcase.
I had the thought of ‘oooh i’m not going to be sensible and let the suitcase stop rolling at the curb and pick it up’ No no, I thought i’d have way more fun, be cocky and try to swing it.
I heard that little ‘don’t do it, that’s not a good idea’ voice and ignored it.
If you’re squeamish or haven’t seen my instagram stories I apologise in advance and you might want to skip forward a few seconds and we’ll just say I caused myself an injury.
Skip now.
In swinging the suitcase It didn’t go where I thought it was going to, I tripped over it and my toes hit the curb and while I turned round on my butt sitting on the floor and thought, oooh that hurt. (thankfully, things like falling over in public doesn’t phase me at all, i’m the first to laugh at myself) but as I looked at my foot I saw a lot of blood and it turned out I had ripped off and out one of my toenails. Along with some skin.
It was a mess.
It bled...a lot. I didn’t know a toe could bleed that much. (Hopefully you’re glad I gave you the warning now!)
I’m now feeling rather sorry for myself and hobbling around everywhere and sad that my beautifully pedicured toe is not going to be wedding ready for our friend’s wedding in a couple of weeks… DOH!
But this was a stark reminder that if you don’t stay aware these unconscious come downs will happen.
This could be around happiness, success, love, money, closeness in relationships, the ability to relax. We may have common behaviours where we sabotage this. That could be drinking, binge eating, avoiding, saying something we don’t really mean and causing an argument. But we can also unconsciously cause illness, or injury. Another great example is lottery winners that blow it all and end up in a worse position than before they won.
It’s our ego’s way of bringing us back down to the baseline. The safety of the familiar, inside our comfort zones.
The more aware of these sabotaging patterns you are the easier it gets to recognise it and do something about it.
The more aware you are and the more you have the ability to regulate your emotions the less this will happen. You’ll be able to see it for what it is rather than feeling like the victim of it.
This is why I’m always saying not to try to go from 0-100 in 60 seconds flat. Allow yourself to take baby steps. Allow yourself to dip your toe in the water and then another and another as your nervous system catches up to the fact that it’s safe for you to take action and it’s safe for you to feel a certain way.
If there’s something you want in your life, think about where your upper limit problem may have come into play.
What might be the experiences and beliefs, whether yours, parents or society that have shaped the notion that it’s not ‘safe’ to have.
The more you recognise it, the less you’ll beat yourself up for it or continue to believe that you’re a flawed individual.
And…don’t wear flip flops with a wheelie suitcase!
Fx | |||
| How Do You Learn To Love Yourself? | 09 Aug 2021 | 00:10:19 | |
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How do you start to love yourself?
How do you start to love yourself? I mean, for many people I think starting with liking yourself feels like less of a leap so let’s start there.
Why am I talking about this today?
I’m seeing left, right and centre people with big dreams AND capabilities, struggling.
They’re struggling with low self esteem and low self worth and when you’re trying to start or run a business that makes it very tricky.
You’re going to second guess yourself at every turn.
You’re not going to trust yourself or your decisions.
You’re always going to have that niggling, often very loud, self doubt running in the background telling you you can’t do it.
The gremlins get in your way ALL the time. You beat yourself up for it. You make it something ‘wrong’ with you on an identity level.
It does not feel good!!
So, as someone who’s very much been in the trenches with this in the past I thought it was worth me doing an episode dedicated to it.
So where to start? I used to not be able to list anything I liked about myself other than...my feet.
Yep, that's where I started with one of the exercises I'm going to talk you through.
I was FULL of self doubt. One of the most negative people you would meet. I was the energy vampire in the room. I always saw the worst possible outcome on things. Never looked at the positive. You will have heard me refer to myself as Eeyore on a bad day and that isn’t an exaggeration.
It’s safe to say I had a very low opinion of myself...and that person wouldn’t have been able to start this business.
Certainly wouldn’t have been able to start a podcast, let alone be nearly 200 episodes in. Or be able to do silly reels on instagram.
Wouldn’t have been able to put myself out there with the chance of criticism, judgement. It was ‘scary’ to be myself. I was hiding. I was a social chameleon who felt I needed to change who I was depending on who I was with because whichever group of people it was it felt like I didn’t fit in. It felt like I wasn’t supposed to be there. That I was lucky to be and needed to be a certain way in order to stay there.
I have so much love and empathy for that girl. But that wasn’t who she really was.
The more of this work you do the more you peel the layers of the onion away to be the core of who you really are. And that’s a beautiful thing. Yes, it can feel daunting to start with, sure. But it’s so worth it for the calm. Clarity. Peace.
I’m not a finished item because there really is no such thing. We’re always peeling back these layers of ourselves and I LOVE that. Life would be very boring otherwise. I love a bit of polarity.
But I thought I would share some of the exercises that I found super helpful. They may make you feel the ick...or a little tension...but that’s a GOOD thing because growth comes after tension.
The first exercise is to really allow yourself to write a list of all the things you DO like about yourself. When you’ve practiced and rehearsed the opposite for a long time it can feel tricky at first but that list really does start to grow but more importantly, it shifts your focus and helps create new neural pathways through neuroplasticity for you to notice and really acknowledge the positive.
That can only be a good thing.
Now, this can be physical stuff, which is a big part of it but also the inner stuff. Your values, your qualities.
Allow yourself to list them. I’m giving you FULL permission. Not that you need it...but your unconscious might. See, many of us were raised to believe that saying good things about ourselves was BAD. It meant you were arrogant, and therefore not a good person.
Don’t show off, don’t talk about your accomplishments, don’t be conceited. It’s literally used as an insult, it definitely was throughout my teens and twenties. ‘Urgh, she just loves herself so much’.
We’re taught to dim ourselves and not let ourselves shine too bright because it might mean people don’t like us.
So we learn to be self deprecating. We learn to put ourselves down.
Compounded by mean things people say to us as we’re growing up.
Add all that together in one big self doubt low self esteem smoothie and you have a recipe for things feeling difficult when you have to back yourself.
But it’s not your fault. It’s other people’s ‘stuff’ that you’ve borrowed and taken on as your own.
Next thing I'd love you to do is accept ANY compliments that come your way. If you have a tendency to bat them away or return the compliment straight away, stop. Let the person giving you the compliment feel good for giving you the compliment and making YOU feel good.
If you’re feeling brave, choose 3 close friends who you trust and ask them why they love you or why they’re friends with you. Say you’re doing a challenge if that makes it easier. What do they value about having you in their lives. What do they think your strengths are?
It’s such a powerful thing to know.
It’s starting to give your brain evidence to the contrary of what you’ve been telling yourself. It deals in evidence...so the more you provide it the less it can deny that you’re a good egg!
List out your achievements too for good measure! Lastly, a little something I always try to do, that forms part of my journaling for the non dear diary type method and will be in the Positive Pants Planner too when that comes out, is ‘nice things I did for people today’ and how many people I made smile.
It’s like my mission to do kind or thoughtful things for other people. I mean double whammy because it makes me feel good of course. But that’s half the point. It helps you feel better about YOU. Who you are as a person.
So, there’s a few things to get you started.
Just remember when you’re having a wobbly day...If I can heal, so can you.
No doubt in my mind.
Fx | |||
| Who Have You Got On a Pedestal? | 02 Aug 2021 | 00:10:03 | |
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Who Have You Got On a Pedestal?
Who have you got on a pedestal right now? I’ve been thinking recently about how funny it is that we do this as humans.
We look at people, who at the core are very ordinary and just like us in SO many ways, but we idolise them in some way because they have a particular level of achievement, status, accolade, whatever it may be.
Movie stars, successful business owners and entrepreneurs.
Isn’t it funny how we feel like these people are super human in some way. Almost god-like?
Why is that?
If you can’t tell, I'm feeling pretty philosophical about life at the moment.
A healthy questioning of unconscious behaviour if you will, it’s how I'm wired these days. It’s how I encourage other people to be.
When you start to catch yourself in those moments it’s as if you become a fly on the wall to your own thoughts.
A curious child to why we do the things we do.
Often I think money is at the core of it.
We make a lot of assumptions about people and their lives.
We look at this filtered version of what that is on social media and fill in our own gaps.
But, are we valuing the right things?
What is it specifically about those people that you admire so much?
What makes you feel they are so different from you?
How does it make you feel when you do it?
It’s one thing to inspire hope and motivation. It’s another if you’re looking at this person and thinking ‘I could never get there’. Or ‘I wish I was them’ or ‘It’s easy for them, not for me’.
All these thoughts and beliefs we allow to run through our heads making us feel less than.
Watch out for that.
Watch out for the stories that you tell yourself around what’s possible because really, most of the time the only real difference is a piece of knowledge you might be missing, or they’ve taken action that you haven’t.
They didn’t give up when it felt hard.
They didn’t let the gremlins take over and kept going.
That’s it.
Listen for the stories of the journey they took to get there.
They didn’t start where they are now, but they started.
I wholeheartedly believe that anyone can do what they really want to.
We have to clear out some emotional gunk first.
We need to do the work on ourselves.
We need to learn to regulate our emotions.
It’s what’s driving your behaviour.
We all have our own emotional ‘baggage’ that we’ve picked up along the way from family, friends, school, society, things that happened to us, things that were said to us.
This stuff rules your behaviour. It rules your thoughts. Until you choose not to let it. And you get to do that. You really do.
I’m living proof that you get to say ‘not anymore thanks’ to this stuff.
It’s not permanent unless you don’t look at it.
We are such changeable creatures. We can rewire our brains and nervous systems through neuroplasticity. We do this by first creating awareness about what we don’t want. What we do want. What our healthy patterns of behaviour are and what our less healthy patterns of behaviour are.
What are those common thoughts, beliefs and stories that get in your way?
Break them down one by one.
Because you really are far more capable than you give yourself credit for. I know I say this all the time, but I really am talking to YOU right now.
It’s never too late to start. It’s never too late to make changes.
These are all stories we make up based on our own maps of the world.
But if you change the map, you change the world!
If you change how you look at something, it has to be different right?
So what do you think the people that have what you want, have that you don’t have? That’s a mouthful!
What story do you have around their journey to get there, is it true?
Realise you’re not comparing apples and apples when you look at someone who is where you want to be.
Don’t put them on a pedestal, take a look back in time, they were YOU at one point!
Someone with a dream and a vision who just took the action to make it happen. But while I was going down this little rabbit hole of existential thinking I had another thought.
What if we put ourselves on our own pedestals?
What if you actually took a minute to acknowledge the things you’ve done in your life. The things you’ve got through. The trials and tribulations and actually acknowledged THAT person in the same way we would be inspired by someone else who had done the same?
What if you really take a moment to acknowledge everything you’ve achieved.
There can be so much of that emotional gunk running around doing an exercise like this.
We might have been taught that acknowledging achievements is bragging. That admitting you love, or even just like yourself, is arrogant. WHO MADE THIS STUFF UP?!
Look how many people are having to mentally try and un do some of these things we were taught.
Liking yourself, trusting yourself, fundamental to a happy life and creating success. Why weren’t we taught that?
What stories have you made up about yourself and what’s possible for you?
You deserve to be on your own pedestal! Because you are more than capable.
Fx | |||
| What’s Your Relationship With Time? | 26 Jul 2021 | 00:09:57 | |
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What’s Your Relationship With Time?
What’s your relationship with time like?
Are you in a committed relationship...or is it complicated?
When people first start out in business, time is one of the biggest reasons I see getting in the way. The funny thing with time is, the more you say you don’t have enough of it, the more that’s going to be true.
The more you train your brain to send you all the evidence that’s true, the more you’ll create things to do for yourself that you might not need to.
I’m a big believer that time bends to our will. If it’s in the diary you find a way to make it happen.
We’re often really blissfully unaware in all the ways that we unconsciously ‘waste’ time.
But I also see a lot of people thinking they can’t TAKE time. Particularly for themselves. This doesn’t do us any good.
Especially if the whole reason we started a business in the first place is more freedom!
So what do we do about this?
First of all we analyse how we’re spending our time. Be more consciously aware of what you’re doing with it throughout the day. A good way to do this is to track it.
Second, we start blocking it. How long do we spend every day on email, or on social media, client work, our own business work, creating content. You can time block anything...including time for procrastination!
Next, we look at batching. Batching is essentially putting the same or similar tasks together. This could be social media content, writing emails, creating content, errands. Whatever you do every day or week that could actually be done together while you’re in the ‘zone’. This was a game changer for me when I started my business alongside my job. Batching things and scheduling things meant that my business could run even if it wasn’t me specifically doing that thing at that time.
We start looking at what we can delegate. This is a biggie. I don’t just mean in your business, I mean in your life. What can you delegate? Social media scheduling? Design work? Editing? The shopping? The cleaning? The gardening? All those things where you’re like ooooooooh I need to do that thing and I don’t wanna! All those things you kind of wish you didn’t have to do but are necessary. They just don’t necessarily have to be done by YOU! My VA when I started was a life saver. So many things just wouldn’t have been done without her.
My favourite way of looking at this is based on the big leap by Gay Hendricks. In there he speaks about a lawyer client of his who was battling with setting up a printer (or something like that, I can’t quite remember!) He spent days getting stressed out about it and Gay asks ‘what’s your hourly rate? It was somewhere in the region of $350. Then he asked ‘if you add that up how much have you ‘spent’ on this task?’...The lawyer did that terrifying maths and went and paid the kid next door a few dollars and it was done within minutes.
The point is, you shouldn’t be doing things that are outside your zone of genius ideally. The first things you outsource are the things in your zone of incompetence. We all have one. Mines tech.
Then as soon as you can outsource things in your zone of competence. Those things you can do but someone else can do just as well as you.
Then you spend your time in your zone of genius. Where you are the absolute BEST person for the job.
Next we get conscious and honest with ourselves when it comes to time. So many of us grew up feeling like if we had time for things, that meant we weren’t successful. Many of us grew up believing success meant no time!
So many of us feel validated by being ‘busy’, so even if we don’t have to be, we will create it.
Those busy being busy tasks come out to play.
So if that unconscious programme is running, why on earth would you want to find time? Wouldn’t that look like or mean you’re not successful? It’s SO important to pick this stuff out.
What did you grow up seeing, hearing, modelling around time? Was everyone around you busy?
Did they have time for you?
Did they have time for themselves?
Did they have time to do the things they loved?
That doesn’t have to be your story.
The reality of time is we always find the time for the things that are the most important to us. Consciously or unconsciously. That’s closer to the truth, right. Sometimes ‘I don’t have time’ is actually just ‘it’s not a priority’.
The important thing here is that we recognise that hustle culture is something that has been created and isn’t something to be glorified.
Burnout isn’t something to be glorified.
Not feeling able to spend time with our friends and family isn’t something to be glorified.
Feeling gui;ty about spending time on yourself isn’t something to be glorified.
So is it time to clear up your relationship to time yet?
Fx | |||
| How To Not Stop Before You Start! | 19 Jul 2021 | 00:12:06 | |
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How to not stop before you start!
When we have SO many mindset gremlins running wild and having a party in our heads, how do you make sure you don’t stop before you start?
Last week the tech gremlins were wreaking HAVOC with me, but it ended up being a really good thing because I got the opportunity to show lots of people that...tech happens! Things can and will go wrong, all the time in your business. But the thing that stops people is the fear of it happening, without realising they’re the ones in control of how they react to it.
Because the ‘thing’ happening isn’t actually the scary part.
The scary part is what we unconsciously make that mean about us.
That’s the scary part of MOST things in business...and in life!
If this happens, then that happens. How many times have you created a story around something like that?
When you don’t have awareness, you can’t challenge it. So it stays. As a fact. Running the show!
So here’s a few things that happened to me last week. I must add I'm a complete technophobe. That’s not strictly fair, once I've learned I'm pretty good but the learning piece for me is excruciating and I stay consciously incompetant for far longer than I'd like. But I'm aware of it. So now I outsource pretty much all of my tech. Which makes me very happy indeed!
So...first up, my email system went haywire and wouldn’t let me send my Wednesday email to my list. Every week they get my nuggets of ‘wisdom’ into their inboxes and last week...computer literally said NO!
I was trying to create it and it was doing this weird thing where you couldn’t type into the body of the email. You also couldn’t type into the help chat box. A nightmare for a technophobe!
I just want you to take a second to think about how you’d feel and what you’d do in that moment.
We’re hammered with ‘consistency is key’ a lot in the online business world, and to an extent it’s true. But if you miss an email, or you miss an episode, there won’t be a revolt!
People might wonder where it is, some people might not notice. But it DOESN’T mean that everyone is going to unfollow you and you’ll be dead to them.
It doesn’t mean anything about you.
It doesn’t mean this is the end of your business.
It doesn’t really mean anything other than you didn’t get an email, or an episode, or an instagram post out.
I still don’t know if it will let me send an email this week...but really, what can I do?
I can let people know and bring them along the frustrating journey with me.
I can try to see the funny side and let them laugh with me at the ridiculousness of a technophobe not being able to do the most basic of things and send an email.
Sitting there wondering if I'd pressed a button on my laptop, or I'd locked something by accident.
AND, guess what...by talking about it on my stories one of my lovely audience members messaged me and said ‘are you with X CRM software’, which I was, and she said ‘I’m in a group and lots of other people are talking about the same thing’!
Cue instant relief. It wasn’t me. It was a ‘bug in the system’ which happens!
I’ve now joined that helpful group so I can go there next time to see if it’s just me.
Don’t let something paralyse you, or allow you to make up a negative story in your head that just isn’t true. If something happens, ask yourself, ‘what could I do right now that could help me figure this out?’ Tech is SUCH a biggie that holds people back...but if I can do it, you can do it I promise. Don’t let it intimidate you. There are courses, memberships, communities for all the softwares out there. There are also usually amazing step by step, click along with me tutorials on youtube. Just make sure you type in the year so you don’t get one that’s outdated.
PLUS...you can OUTSOURCE it YEAY!
There is a steep learning curve but you won’t stay there forever.
The other tech gremlin I had is one that would have sent the fear of god into many.
Facey B was playing silly beggars while I was live to 1200 people.
And I'm SO glad it happened.
Let me tell you why.
So, I'm the mindset mentor inside Lisa Johnson’s One To Many programme. Every Thursday I put in a post to see what gremlins are bothering people and how I can help. Then I’m supposed to go live and answer all the questions.
Sounds pretty simple.
It is when Facey B isn’t being glitchy. So there I am mid flow, getting into my vibe and I see all these messages popping up saying the video keeps pausing...uh oh!
It’s doing it for some people but not all.
I look at my internet connection, full bars, all good. So what the fudge is going on?
So I keep chatting, then people say it’s all good now, so I continue.
It happens again!
So now I've got two choices. Totally abandon ship or improvise.
So I stopped the live and said hold fire. I messaged Lisa and said are you ok if I post a zoom link, she said yes...so that’s what I did!
No glitches, no pauses, totally fine. It’s up in the membership area for people to see.
No harm no foul.
It was GREAT that happened because there are SO many people in there who fear tech, who fear things going wrong so they had the opportunity to see exactly how I handled it and that it really wasn’t that bad.
That you can laugh about it with the audience together and it can actually create more relatability.
The tech isn’t going to be perfect. Things are going to go wrong. One person said ‘I loved seeing how you handled that because I didn’t think ANY of the things I assumed my audience would if it happened to me.’ What a gift!
This is also why I encourage you to find safe spaces that you can practice. And think about what you’d do if the tech doesn’t play ball in advance.
So, if you’re listening in and feeling like the tech, or things going wrong is holding you back. Go a little deeper.
What are the assumptions you’re projecting onto your audience?
If these glitches were to happen to you, what story are you telling yourself around it and what would happen?
What are you making that mean about your business, and about you?
Sometimes it can be really simple things that are holding us back that if we dig a little deeper we can work around quickly.
Don’t keep them in your unconscious mind, get curious so you can challenge them!
I hope if you’ve been struggling with this at all that it inspires you to take a leap of faith and give it a go.
Fx
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| Why Your Health Needs To Be A Priority! | 12 Jul 2021 | 00:16:11 | |
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Why Your Health Needs To Be A Priority!
Do you think of looking after your health as a priority? Or does it tend to fall to the bottom of the list?
This episode is kind of twofold, you’ll see why. I want to talk about how as business owners we’ve kind of been trained into this ‘hustle’ mentality that puts looking after yourself waaaaaay down on the list of priorities.
But it also encourages us to ‘hide’ certain things that might be going on in our personal lives for fear of judgement or ‘putting people off’.
So you’ll see why they’re linked in a moment, all will become clear! But I feel like they’re both important points to make and things to think about.
Do you ever get the feeling that when you're creating content or running your business that you need to 'hide' certain things about yourself?
This idea that 'If people knew that they would judge me'
Or 'not buy my stuff'
Or WORSE...UNFOLLOW!
YIKES!
That can be pretty exhausting. Feeling like you’re kind of living this double life where you can’t fully be yourself. It can massively add to that good old feeling of being an impostor too...because you kinda are being a little bit, right? You’re hiding something on purpose because you don’t want people to find out!
I see it all the time with people at the start of their business, feeling like they need to hide the fact they still have a job or are only just starting out.
Where does that idea come from?
That you’re not good enough if you have a job or if you’re new at something.
Who do you relate to more...the seemingly 'perfect' people out there on the interwebs?
The people where everything seems cool but something just seems...'off' and you can't quite put your finger on what!
The people who are taking you on the journey with you and being honest about where they're at?
I know which one I relate to more! Trust is a BIG thing in business. And it's something that's harder and harder to find these days.
In my opinion, if someone judges you for being honest...they probably aren't your people...so you may as well be yourself...far less stressful!
So recently I had some health news I wasn't expecting (now you’re going to see why i’ve linked the two!_
I have stage 2 adrenal burn out.
Meaning that my poor little adrenals have pumped out SO much cortisol over the years that they've flatlined and aren't producing it anymore.
There was a split second when I got the results of my DUTCH test back where I was like...yikes...I help people with stress and overwhelm and I'M burned out?
That's not great! HA!
But actually, now I think it IS great!
Because I can bring you along the journey to healing it with me. AND hopefully inspire you to take better care of yourself before it happens to you!!
I had the initial...'how has this happened to me? I meditate, I journal, I use heart math, I'm busy sure but I don't feel stressed!' I use ALL the tools!!
but...here's the important part, that also weirdly made me feel a little better ha...the damage had already been done a LONG time ago!
It’s easy to go to, oh fudge, have I failed? How have I got this wrong? (I’m human too but also thankfully these kinds of self-doubting thoughts don’t hang around long at all anymore, it definitely would have in the past!)
Turns out, this is from DECADES of high functioning anxiety from about 11 years old. Decades of pushing myself in my studies and my career. Always needing to ACHIEVE, ACHIEVE, ACHIEVE! Burning the candles at both ends. Always jumping to the next thing and not recognising when I need a break or a rest.
(Plus...I'm an Enneagram 6wing5 meaning I'm ALL about the need for 'safety' and planning out every single eventuality which can be stressful in itself if you aren't aware of it! ha!)
BUT...
They said, 'I'm actually really surprised you don't feel worse than you do' because in theory I should want to be asleep ALL.THE.TIME! It might be expected that I feel depressed or anxious or more irritable, lacking focus.
But it turns out the tools and techniques that I already use have been supporting me, making me not feel as bad as I could.
It also highlighted something that had been low level Bugging me recently, which is brain fog. Walking into a room and forgetting why I was there. Which now makes so much sense.
I'm lucky because I'm a productivity ninja and always know what I'm supposed to be doing in the day so it also makes sense why I hadn't noticed it so much.
Another thing it got me thinking, how many of us are walking around feeling like the way we feel is 'normal'.
This baseline of actually not feeling that great. Of being tired, not able to focus, lacking in motivation?
And how many of us are also making that a mindset issue, or something that's 'wrong' with us on an identity level when it could actually be a health issue?
You have to look at the whole puzzle, not just the pieces.
You can't look at the mind as separate to the body. They're not separate!
Your health affects your mind, your body affects your mind, your mind affects your body and your mind can affect your health.
What you eat, drink, if you don't drink water and fuel on caffeine, if you eat processed food vs organic, how much sleep you get. You have to look at the whole picture!
It’s not saying you have to be ‘perfect’ at living a wholesome life...i’m certainly not! But it means you have more power of choice.
I've found out about my poor little adrenals now because I have a functional medicine doctor and naturopath because I know how linked the mind and body are, it’s important to me now. I've always been into the more natural side of things and I had a complete DUTCH test. I'm also currently having my thyroid tested.
Your health needs to be a priority.
How do you want to feel day to day?
What might be causing you to NOT feel that way?
I'm obviously not a health practitioner in any way so I can't give you any advice, but I CAN tell you that I'm now on a mission to look after my health in ways I never have been before, and it's easier than it ever has been before, because there’s more at stake.
I've always taken my health for granted, eaten badly, drunk WAY too much booze in my twenties and early thirties, not exercised enough....and now I have advanced arthritis in my knees, leaky gut and stage 2 adrenal burnout. Yikes!
I've been looking after my mind for YEARS but I ignored my body for most of it.
But here's the thing. Habits are hard to break and start...UNLESS you have some major motivation behind it. (this is why it's always super important to really know why you want to do something!)
Now I'm looking after myself in ways I never have before. Some small, some big.
Here's what I'm doing...
Concentrating on how I want to FEEL.
I always feel good when my skin feels good so I've been moisturising daily and turning into something lovely instead of a chore. I’m using the fancy stuff you usually keep for ‘best’ and acknowledging that so many of us do that but it’s actually bonkers when you think about it. Why do we deny ourselves the things that make us feel good? Make us feel fancy!
I've cut out all gluten from my diet (I've been told several times in the past I needed to cut out gluten because my body just can’t process it and I was a petulant child about it every time...until now!)
Eating organic food. To be fair we were already doing this where we could but it's more of a focus now. We buy an organic veg box and organic meat box that gets delivered to our door. I always thought this was going to be a way more expensive way to eat but it’s actually working out cheaper!
I'm using the Revitive zappy knee thingy that my parents got me after my (rather cold to be fair ha!) diagnosis from one of the top knee experts in the country that I just needed to deal with it and there was nothing that could be done until I'm old enough for a double knee replacement...which by the way is in your 60s usually...I'm 37!
I'm not accepting that and researching natural alternatives.
I'm taking certain supplements under the direction of my naturopath.
I'm researching cook books so I can learn to cook healthy, whole foods (that are still delicious and don't feel like a poor substitute)
I'm listening to my body and resting when I need to. I just took 4 days off and I regularly take naps during the day and I'm saying no to opportunities that I would normally say yes to, even though I was super busy.
I'm looking at ways to make my business even more flexible.
I'm researching movements that I can do without damaging my knees further. Tai chi, certain types of yoga, pilates (that isn't boring!), Qigong, certain types of dance. I'm concentrating on having fun with it and enjoying it.
If ever I was trying to do a diet or lifestyle change before the focus was usually on losing weight, I wouldn't bother otherwise. Now it's a far stronger motivation and it will be SO worth it and I'm sure the lbs will melt off ;-)
It’s also been a great thing because I have a bit of an obsession with wellbeing, things that make you feel better. It means I'm going to be able to bring this into my business more. I love it ALL but now it makes perfect sense to include it! I’ve already got an Amazon link where i’ve curated a load of my favourite wellbeing bits and bobs that you can find in my Instagram bio @imfranexcell and i’m SO excited at the prospect of combining this with my work in stress and self sabotage and helping you understand why you do the things you do.
It’s more pieces of the puzzle I get to give you as I research and learn myself.
The bottom line is, that thing you think you need to hide for whatever reason, could it actually help someone if you talked about it?
Could it help people connect with you more?
Could it help you feel less stress and anxiety and less like a fraud for talking about it?
Worth pondering, right?
Fx
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| Why It's Hard To Sell Yourself | 05 Jul 2021 | 00:10:18 | |
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Why It’s Hard To Sell Yourself?
Why is it so hard to sell yourself?
I sent an email to my list last week essentially thanking them for sticking around while I was doing my One To Many Partner launch.
It got SO many responses and so many people thanking ME that I felt it warranted it’s own episode because the exact same message goes out to you my glorious listener.
I so appreciate you and it really did lead to what I think, id a really good point!
So I’m going to read it to you and expand on it a little so you can ponder what you might want to take from it. And if you’re not on my list, go pop yourself on there by downloading my stressed to success guided meditation to get you out of stress fast. You can find it in my Instagram bio @imfranexcell. You can find it in the show notes, on my website franexcell.com, all the places!
So here we go...
I know I've been ALLLLLLLL up in your inbox lately (slash, in your earbuds talking about OTM!) and you're still here :-)
So I want to say a huge thank you! Even if One to Many wasn't for you this time, I hope you still got some value from my emails (slash interviews!), or even better, are coming back next year. I don't take you allowing me into your inbox (slash earbuds!) lightly, I see it as a massive privilege so thank you for being here!
BUT...I think it leads nicely onto a good point...
It's really easy to fear selling to your audience so I wanted to give you a little reframe today. (this also easily applies to selling yourself in job interviews too!)
When you have a solution to someone's problem...what's worse. Telling them...or not telling them?
The way I see it, if you have a way to help someone out of pain, why would you NOT tell them about it?!
It's up to them if they want to buy or not. You’re not forcing them. But they do need the information to be able to make the right choice for them.
I was selling my friend Lisa’s programme because (having been through it myself, led an accountability pod, been the mindset coach and led my own cohort of people through it and seeing it from all angles!) I KNOW it can change lives and I KNOW it's not like other courses out there. I KNOW Lisa holds herself to the highest standard of integrity so I wholeheartedly trust that she will do right by my audience. I KNOW she prioritises people's results rather than just the money in the bank (I mean that's nice too of course...she made £2.5m in a WEEK!) I KNOW her and her team will do everything they can to get MY audience results. Easy sell for me!
How easy do you find it to sell yourself, your products or your service?
Sit with that for a second.
I feel the same confidence nowadays when I'm selling my own products and services. I 100% believe in them. I 100% believe in the transformation it can give people. I KNOW I do everything in my power to help people get results. I KNOW I prioritise people over pennies. I KNOW my unique combination of skills, knowledge, training, education and experience changes lives and is unique to me, I'm not a cookie cutter dime a dozen.
So I will do my best to let people know how I can help them. Because I KNOW I can help them! (For context, I want to change nothing more than people walking around believing and feeling like they are the way they are and do the things they do because there’s something wrong with them. Something inherently flawed. That the things they want are out of reach for them but not for other people. I spent the majority of my life believing that about myself and it’s incredibly painful. It’s also not flipping true! So if I can help even one person understand it’s not their fault. That they can rewire their brian and nervous system to live a full, rich life doing exactly what they want then I will do everything I can to help that person know that. When the penny drops and they know they can make huge changes, that they aren’t stuck, that the things that hold them back make sense, helped them at one point in their life and can be healed now...then I shall let them know!)
It wasn't always that way, I get how hard it is at the beginning, I've been there. Doubting your ability to give someone transformation. Doubting your ability to deliver. Questioning yourself at every turn.
The confidence I have now wasn't there to start with. I THOUGHT I could really help people because I'd helped myself, but I didn't KNOW it like I do now. So I discounted my rates until I got my 'reps' in.
I didn't start HERE....but I did START!
So if you're reading (slash listening to!) this thinking you'll never be able to sell. Worrying about people who unsubscribe, worrying if people will judge you or not like you for selling...stop.
You're still here aren't you?
I sent you a lot of emails (talked about OTM a LOT!), Maybe you didn't read them all, maybe you did. But you're still here.
And those that unsubscribed...probably didn't need my solutions! And that's ok, it's not a judgement on me or who I am as a person if they don't want my emails anymore!...same goes for you!
The bottom line is, the more you believe in yourself and your product or service the easier it is to talk about it. That's all selling really is, it's telling someone you have a solution to their problem and helping them make a decision.
We sell to people all the time without realising it. To our loved ones, friends, family. We help them when we know there's a potential solution to their problem right?!
It's really not that different!
So if you have a fear or belief around selling I hope this little reframe helps.
You can also find all my current 'solutions' for in the show notes, on my website, over on Instagram ;-)
We often fear sales because of how we’ve felt when being sold to. But the thing people don’t realise….is you don’t have to sell that way!
But also, because we don’t really believe in our own products or services. The confidence lies there. So that’s the piece of the puzzle to work on. You can have all the sales skills and strategy in the world but you’ve got to believe in what you do first!
Selling to someone thinking ‘I need to get this sale’ or ‘I need the money’ or thinking that that sale ‘validates’ you in some way has a VERY different energy to ‘I know I can help this person so i’m going to make sure they know how so they can make the best decision for them’
So just remember that the next time you’re in a launch, or on a discovery call, or in an interview. Do I believe I can solve this person's problem? If so, tell them!
Fx
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| The Power Of One Conversation | 14 Aug 2023 | 00:12:15 | |
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The Power Of One Conversation
The power that just one conversation with the right person can have can be so underestimated and undervalued and under utilised.
So I wanted to talk about it today, consider us in a little (one sided) conversation right now.
There are far too many people bottling things up for fear of judgement from others, their own self judgement of what reaching out to someone ‘means’ (for example, you’re weak or can’t cope yourself)
And that behaviour usually makes perfect sense when you take a little look back over various dynamics when you were growing up.
It can be parents, siblings, teachers, peers.
We learn reasons that it’s not ‘safe’ to talk about our issues. It’s incredibly common.
It might be that you were always the one looking after people so you de-prioritised your own issues. It might be that you were taught you had to be the strong one for whatever reason. SO many things where it would make perfect sense why you’d learn to not share.
If you take a look back please, as always, remember to do it with compassion for yourself and not from a place of judgement, blame or shame. Curiosity is your friend here over judgement.
Now, for context, sharing my problems was something that always came very easily to me.
I’m an Enneagram 6 and I would always talk through any problems I had with other people because it helped me work it through in my mind and it always helped to say it out loud and hear other people’s perspectives.
This is why you always need to look at the nuance of any situation or behaviour because the same behaviour could be a result of totally different circumstances. We’re all individuals and we have to figure out OUR reasons for our programming. You don’t even have to KNOW the reasons to be able to identify the behaviour and change it. I just have found that to be the quickest route to self compassion and shifts in perspective for me, and my clients too.
It can also shift based on your experiences later in life too.
I was in a situation for a long time where I felt like I couldn’t share my problems or what was going on for me.
I couldn’t share what was going on for me for shame, embarrassment, fear of judgement, various stories around how I ‘should’ be able to handle it myself, all the things!
So I didn’t share, I kept it in.
Guess what.
It was the worst thing I could have done and I honestly feel like I lost myself in that way for a number of years.
I’d keep everything to myself and that stress and anxiety would build and build until the inevitable moments where you feel broken and like all hope is lost.
Not fun.
I’m sure lots of you can relate to this.
It’s easily done.
So for me it was a behaviour I unlearned due to circumstance and had to RE-learn.
I had to change my stories around it and I had to put myself out there to change the pattern and make sharing ‘safe’ again.
If it’s a brand new behaviour for you too it will absolutely feel tricky at first to put yourself out there and say, ‘Hey, can I talk to you, I have some stuff going on.’
The people on the other side create stories too.
So this really does work both ways.
You might think that your strong friend not reaching out means they’re totally fine when they might not be.
You might think the person NOT reaching out to you might be being selfish when actually they have their own stuff going on.
So don’t allow the story to take over, ask yourself what else could be going on.
We tend to protect ourselves and assume the worst, but more often than not there’s an explanation and being vulnerable yourself to say, ‘Hey,are you ok?’ instead of going straight to anger, hurt or cutting someone off.
There are also moments where we might isolate ourselves. Sometimes it can feel like you’re incredibly lonely, but you also don’t want to talk to or see anyone.
If I ever feel like this, like I did recently because there’s still quite the roller coaster going on in my world where it feels like limbo at every turn sometimes, I make a conscious effort to reach out to people who feel safe to me because I know how quickly something can turn around with one conversation.
So that’s what I did.
I reached out and said, ‘Hey, I’m struggling a bit at the moment, do you have any time to talk or meet up?’
The trick is to know who your ‘safe’ people are.
It’s easy to find excuses as to why you can’t. When you’re in self preservation mode you’ll always find a really good, rational reason.
That’s the trick sometimes…overriding what our unconscious patterns are telling us are good for us vs consciously knowing what’s best for us.
In the words of Brene Brown, there’s immense power in vulnerability.
You’re 100% allowed human moments!
But as with anything, you have to start small and allow the pattern of safety build up in your brain and nervous system.
That might be reaching out to one friend. It might be a counsellor or therapist, it might be a free service offered by charities like the Samaritans.
Allow yourself to build up the experiences where being honest and vulnerable with someone helps.
The worst thing we can do is allow it to sit there and grow when it doesn’t have to.
One conversation has the power to completely shift your mood, your emotions, your perspective.
One conversation can find you a solution when you couldn’t find one.
One conversation can make you feel validated.
One conversation can help you breathe a sigh of relief or have a much needed release.
One conversation can change everything in an instant.
One conversation can bring you an opportunity.
You just have to be brave and vulnerable and take that first step.
One conversation can create new possibilities that weren’t there before.
One conversation could get you everything you’ve ever wanted.
One conversation can ease your pain.
One conversation can show you all the stories you created to fill in the blanks in your head aren’t true.
One conversation can bring you closer to someone.
I’m sure listening to this you’re thinking of a tonne of conversations you’d like to have and for whatever reason may have stopped yourself.
Communication is everything. It really is the key to having what you want. Yes it won’t always go your way. Yes there might be a little heartbreak or disappointment to contend with from time to time.
But you will learn hugely valuable lessons along the way.
And be honest with yourself, what’s the alternative? What is not reaching out or being brave going to get you?
Probably not much better than more of the same right?
Honesty and communication is a winning combination and it really can just take one conversation to shift everything.
Fx | |||
| Why Collaboration Over Competition Is SO Important, With Mindset Coach Kirsty Raynor | 28 Jun 2021 | 00:41:37 | |
Show note links: To Find Kirsty on Instagram head over to @kirstyraynor or @mindsetandmepodcast Kirsty's website: https://kirstyraynor.com/ Freebies: Sign up for the Race To Recurring Revenue FREE challenge with Lisa Johnson starting June 14th!
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For more, head over to: www.franexcell.com/ Why Collaboration Over Competition Is SO Important, With Mindset Coach Kirsty Raynor I absolutely LOVED this episode because it's with a dear friend from my 'former life' in media but it also my partner in crime, my biggest cheerleader and gentle but firm butt kicker. We talk all about the power of collaboration over competition in business. We talk about how important it is to find your people when you run a business because it can feel really isolating. Particularly if your friends and family aren't supporting you. We also talk about why that may be, and that it's entirely possible that it's absolutely nothing to do with you. We also talk about when life throws you a curve ball and you need a major pivot. I really hope you love it too. Fx | |||
| Client Series: Carla Shohet, Founder Of Wild Mother | 21 Jun 2021 | 00:53:23 | |
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For more, head over to: www.franexcell.com/
Client Series: Carla Shohet, Founder Of Wild Mother Today I'm joined by the wonderful Carla. Carla is sharing her inspirational journey of life pivots, finding her soul purpose and creating a 1.6k strong community of mums. She has a devout following in her community wild mother, where she supports mothers in rediscovering their full identity, restoring their self-esteem and empowering them to create the life of their dreams. She has an impressive resume and is a counselling psychologist, a certified trainer and a mentor for mothers. With almost two decades’ experience guiding thousands of women to reach their full potential, Carla studied under world-leading mentors such as Tony Robbins, T.Harv Eker, Robert Kiyosaki, Blair Singer, Alex Mandossian, Laura Markham, Selena Soo and Lisa Johnson. She's now an award-winning entrepreneur and philanthropist, taking four businesses from concept to launch, and she volunteers in non-profit organisations that help mothers reclaim their lives from abuse, ill mental health and poverty. She does all this from her home in London, UK with her doting husband, their three children, and their two dogs. I really hope Carla's story inspires you to see what's possible. Fx | |||
| Client Series: Danielle Hone, Creator of The Real Mee Box | 10 Jun 2021 | 00:44:07 | |
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Client Series: Danielle Hone, Creator of The real mee box I loved doing this interview because I wanted to bring you some real stories. Real stories of what's possible for YOU. Danielle has spent many years working in health and wellness with women who have reached the most exciting time of their lives – they just didn’t know it. Bringing together her knowledge and personal experience of being a mid-life woman, she has worked online with women to help them discover their personal Real MEE – the person they know they can be.
Recognising that many women neglect their self- care, she is currently working on The Real MEE Box -a monthly book subscription with added wellness extras. The box will encourage women to take much needed time out for themselves and lose themselves in the joy of reading.
Originally from Birmingham and having lived in several places around the UK, she can now be. found in a small village on the edge of The Lake District with her partner and son. When not walking the hills, you can usually find her with her nose in a book or trying to persuade her partner they really do need to get a cat. Make sure you go give her a follow and stay in the loop for her box launch! Instagram @Danielle_therealmee www.therealmee.com I hope you love this episode! Fx
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| Client Series: Sally How, Jewellery Designer and Pinterest For Creatives Expert | 10 Jun 2021 | 00:39:49 | |
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Client Series: Sally How, Jewellery Designer and Pinterest For Creatives Expert I loved doing this interview because I wanted to bring you some real stories. Real stories of what's possible for YOU. Sally came through Lisa Johnson's One To Many programme with me. It was amazing to watch her go from fearing going live to being able to go live to 26,000 people. I watched her grow in confidence, not only in herself as a person but in what she offers. She now knows exactly what's possible, for her, and for you! So she's sharing her story with you now. Sally How creates sustainable jewellery collections using eco silver at her workbench in Harrogate, North Yorkshire. She also creates bespoke one of a kind jewellery using Fairtrade Gold and sustainably sourced gemstones. She made the decision to use recycled eco silver and sustainable making methods wherever possible as part of her commitment to creating an ethical business. Sally like many of us used lots of social media platforms to promote her business, but increasingly frustrated. She made a decision to go all in on Pinterest. Sally noticed it was a lovely positive platform which because it’s very visual enabled her to sell her jewellery and have more balance as a maker. She is launching her new Pinterest course for creatives very soon. You can find her over at howfinedesigns.com and in the pinterest for creatives facebook group. I hope you love this episode! Fx | |||
| Replay Series: Lisa Johnson, Changing The Game Of Business! | 10 Jun 2021 | 00:34:21 | |
Replay Series: Lisa Johnson, Changing The Game Of Business!
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Lisa Johnson is a multi 7 figure business owner and the queen of all things recurring revenue. She also happens to be my friend. We had a chat back in October about changing the way we look at business. The idea of trading time for money. IT's time to diversify and protect our businesses so they can be sustainable. Provide the lifestyle that we want and the freedom we deserve. She teaches you how. Fx | |||
| Why You Aren't Doing What You Want To! | 07 Jun 2021 | 00:21:31 | |
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Why You Aren't Doing What You Want To?
There are probably a bazillion little reasons why you aren’t doing what you want to in your business or your life...or perhaps you feel like it’s just one big kahuna of a reason.
Either way, I'm going to go through a few of the most common reasons I see in the hope that it may make you think slightly differently and perhaps even make you realise how gloriously capable you are of doing the thing you want to do!
Whether you want to scale your business to a particular income level, start a business from scratch or even just believe that you can be doing something that you actually enjoy instead of being ‘trapped’ by the rat race that doesn’t really suit you anymore.
There will be tonnes of stories your brain and your nervous system will be telling you around why it’s not possible.
We’re fed (or brainwashed, whichever way you want to look at it ha!) so many messages of you go to school, you get qualifications, you get a job, you work your way up, you retire, you die.
You learn to validate yourself by your job title or salary. I fell into it too! But, I remember being 26 years old in a really successful career in media and advertising thinking to myself.
There must be more. I know I'm capable of more. The truth was I'd got to a great position, was respected in my profession and by my bosses, all good. But there was a sense of just not doing anything ‘meaningful’. I’d stopped feeling that sense of achievement or purpose. I’d ticked a lot of the boxes.
But it took me to my 30s and through a little anxiety ridden existential crisis to figure it out. Mainly because I was telling myself so many things that weren’t true, but accepting them as truth.
Plus, I didn’t know anyone who had their own business, I'll talk more on that in a minute. It felt like an impossible hill to climb in terms of even having a clue where to start.
The biggest message running round my head was that it’s highly unlikely that you’re going to love what you do, almost like you’re not supposed to. The work to live vs live to work mentality.That was only reserved for people who’d been born into wealth. Not for us muggles.
The next message was that even if you do end up doing something you love, you’ll pay for it in terms of ability to earn good money.
So the ONLY way to do what you love, was to in my mind, struggle for money. Then you’re trying to balance different levels of happiness.
Which one is less painful, more financial freedom to do what you love in your spare time, or do what you love and NOT be able to do what you want in your spare time because you can’t afford it.
There’s also the live for the weekend and wait for retirement mentality that’s rife through society.
If these are running in your noggin as truth, and we’re all run by our unconscious programming 95-99% of the time...you can see how that’s never going to change, right?
BUT...so many people have that little niggle in the back of their minds about what they’d love to do...quickly followed by all the reasons they can’t.
Write a book, work for yourself, have an income you could never dream of achieving in a corporate job, to not be stressed and overwhelmed all the time, to actually HAVE time and freedom to choose what you do with.
What is that ‘thing’ for you. What’s that ‘niggle’?
Whether you’ve started your business or not. What’s that thing that if you weren’t ruled by paying the bills (and your stories around that), or if you knew you couldn’t fail, that you would LOVE to be doing?
Now we’ve got that...i’m going to give you some of the biggest reasons so many people DON’T go after it, if what i’ve already said isn’t reason enough ha!
One of the biggest reasons is you genuinely don’t think it’s possible for YOU. What I'd love for you to do is grab a journal and start to draw out those stories.
What makes you think that’s true? Why NOT you? What makes you believe THOSE things that come up? Who’s beliefs are they really? Yours? Someone else’s? Based on how you were brought up, or what a teacher said to you? Or the strong opinion of a parent or sibling? What is the reason you believe it’s possible for other people but not YOU?
That leads me nicely onto the next biggie. Your friends and family’s opinion. Ohhhhhhh this is a big one. The number one way people often find me is often through an episode I did called ‘why your friends and family don’t support your business’.
I know from google search stats and analytics this is HUGE. It’s SO common. If you want to go deeper into this one go have a listen to that episode.
But essentially, what was modelled for you growing up in terms of doing something you love?
You’ll often find with a lot of entrepreneurs that their parents, or someone in their family ran a business, or someone they were close to.
For those that weren’t modelled that, you usually have to break through a few unconscious beliefs first, but that’s totally normal.
It’s about creating awareness around what was modelled and what was taught to you about the way things ‘should’ be with regards to earning an income.
What was ‘prized’ by your primary care givers. What did they value? What did THEIR parents value? It’s not about being right or wrong, good or bad, most of us just don’t really know we can challenge these ideals for ourselves as adults because it’s unconscious...but you know now :-)
Next, what’s modelled for you now? Are you around people who own their own businesses? Or are working their way towards it?
It’s SO fundamental to have people who are working towards the same goal, or have already achieved what you want. It’s giving your brain and nervous system the evidence that it’s possible AND that it’s safe! Plus it gives you motivation and encouragement to keep going. It’s hard to just muster that for yourself!
That leads me nicely onto the next reason...You just haven’t had the hard and fast, brain can’t argue with you evidence that it’s possible. You need that. Don’t underestimate the importance of it. Seek it as much as possible. Join groups, memberships, communities, go to events.
Your self esteem and the stories you tell yourself, about yourself.What are they. We touched on this already but it’s worth repeating. What are the reasons you’re telling yourself you can’t have it? They may be surface level reasons, but they could be a lot deeper than that. Self sabotage is a biggie!
Next up is that you don’t know where to start. This is the more surface level reason, but a powerful one nonetheless! I mean...there’s a LOT to take in and a lot of different messages that can just leave you in a state of confusion. TOTALLY understandable. It’s about finding that person that has done or is doing what you want to do and learn from them. Step by step. Do this, do that!
And lastly for today, you might actually just don’t want to do the work that’s required to get it. AND...guess what...that’s ok!
There’s a BIG difference between telling yourself you can’t do something because there’s something inherent in you that means it’s not possible vs not actually wanting to do the work.
BUT there is a very different emotional charge from ‘I can’t do it because I'm not capable and I feel guilt and shame about that’ to ‘I’d love that but I can’t be bothered to be honest.’ So just be honest with yourself.
Also check that your story about the work that’s required is true.
Check that there’s not another way, stay curious about the possibility that comes with ‘how can I’ vs ‘I can’t’ It’s always going to require one or the other of time or money. Usually a bit of both. But this is one of the reasons I think it’s far more sensible and easier on the noggin to start your business, alongside your job and look at your job as your venture capital investor.
But so many of these aren’t true. They aren’t reality. Pick out those stories and challenge them! Reframe ‘I can’t’ to ‘how can I’. You’ll be amazed at what comes up.
So if this has made you feel even the slightest bit different about what you’re capable of achieving that makes me do a happy and I 100% encourage you to find yourself a TONNE of evidence for that lovely brain of yours that money, freedom AND time is achievable when you’re working for yourself...go to bit.ly/franandlisa or hit the link in the show notes, or on instagram, whichever way is easiest for you and join Lisa Johnson’s Race To Recurring Revenue free challenge.(recurring revenue is things like courses, memberships, subscription boxes, drop shipping, ebooks, print on demand. So many options where you do the work up front and then keep making money from the knowledge already in your head...even if you don’t think you have any of that, trust me you do, i’ve helped enough people through this programme and my own to know that to be absolutely true!)
You’ll learn ways that you don’t have to trade time for money, you can have the security of knowing what’s coming into your bank account every month, you’ll be around people who’ve been there, done it and got the T-shirt. You’ll find THOUSANDS of people who want what you want so you’ll find the evidence AND the community.
I’m going to be doing some bonus episodes with some very special people for you in the next couple of weeks to show you what’s really possible.
I want to give your brain as much real, tangible evidence that it’s possible for YOU. Without all the mind gremlins whispering ‘that’s for them not for you, you can’t do that, who do you think you are!’
Hopefully you will see, or hear, how passionate I am about people truly understanding that this option for your life reality exists. You can go into it with the mindset of scaling your existing business past that income ceiling you hit.
You can go in with the mindset that you KNOW you’re starting a business and you KNOW the recurring revenue model is what you want because that certainty is important for you before you take the leap.
Or you can go into it with the mindset of I want to start a business but I haven’t got a clue where to start and i’m just going to surround myself with some like minded people, take on some hugely valuable information, maybe dip my toe in the water with a side hustle and generate some extra income.
Or...I'm just curious!!
Lisa’s been on the podcast a few times, has been my friend for a few years and I'm a partner because I fully believe in her work...and I don’t recommend people lightly, I certainly don’t partner with them lightly but she’s the real deal.
If you’ve even listened to just one episode of the podcast I hope you can tell integrity is high on my values list and she’s the same. I’ve watched her over the last few years go from just about hitting the 6 figure mark to £3 million per year, 90% of that is passive or semi passive income. I’ve seen it, I've done it, I know you can do it too if I can just get you to believe in yourself.
I’m living proof of what’s possible. Going from a negative, anxiety ridden, sleep deprived mess with zero self esteem to someone who’s had almost quarter of a million downloads of a podcast teaching people how to change their businesses and their lives. To creating a successful business that I love, in the dream home and launching my own signature group programme teaching people how to overcome stress and overwhelm and live a calm, balanced, happy life not being ruled by your emotions. I mean...that’s some magic to me right there and if I can do it, you absolutely can!
There’s just a few pieces of the puzzle you’re missing right now and the challenge will help you fill in some of those blanks...and so will I, I'll absolutely be in your corner every step of the way. If you sign up through my link bit.ly/franandlisa then my DMs and emails are FULLY open to you. I want you to see that you can do it and one of my super powers is seeing the money generating ideas and I want to do that for you. It’s an easier process than you think!
Let’s call out the elephant in the room now! The challenge will of course lead into her telling you about her amazing One To Many programme, which i’m a partner for and I talked a lot about last year, but she is NOT one of those people that will give you the what but not the how, and I wouldn’t recommend something for you that did because it’s a HUGE bugbear of mine and I’m grateful to you for having me in your ear buds and leeting me share my message. I absolutely don’t want you to waste your time. I want you to see your potential.
You can get results just from the challenge if you take action! I just really want you to have this information, whatever you choose to do with it!
You can absolutely do this.
You get one life and I fully believe we’re supposed to live it doing what we love. So go to bit.ly/franandlisa it’s free, you have absolutely nothing to lose and SO much to gain! I can’t wait to support you!
Fx
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| Why Do We Overcomplicate Things? | 31 May 2021 | 00:14:22 | |
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What Are You Overcomplicating?
What are you overcomplicating in your life or business right now?
I just did a reel over on ‘the gram’ about how all too often we overcomplicate getting what we want.
We look at something simple and think ‘that’ll never work’ or ‘it can’t be that simple’. It’s as if, the more simple something is, the less we trust it.
We often know the answers. Let’s take weight loss, we know I love a weight loss analogy because it’s so easy to relate to.
We know ‘eat less, move more’ is always a winner. But we might seek a more complicated solution like restricting certain foods. Or complex meal prep like macros or doing something that requires research, like cutting out wheat or dairy.
I used to get lost in those labels.
It’s often the same with mindset work. It’s as if you’ve been told what works a hundred times but there’s something you don’t trust because it seems too simple.
Same with business. I think there is SO much that's overcomplicated in business. It wasn’t until I cut out the noise of all the millions of strategies that, according to the messaging, if I ‘didn’t have in my business then I really didn’t have a business’ that things took off.
It made everything harder. It’s when you strip things back. Simplify and take action from that place that you’ll start to see the results.
Confucius said “Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”
And it’s SO true. I see it all the time with clients. One of my favourite things to do is help them see the simple. Often met with a ‘why didn’t I think of that’ or ‘Oh my God that’s so easy’ and a frustrated little laugh.
I used to do it myself too, because I'm a human!
I had a year where my ‘word’ of the year was simplicity. I LOVED that year because I had it next to me all the time. I had it flash up on my phone. I really intentionally lived by it for that year so it’s now just a go to way that I think.
If ever I start going down a thought loop it’s straight away ‘where am I over complicating this’.
Very helpful, I thoroughly recommend it!
So why do we keep going to the overly complicated ways of getting what we want?
What is that?!
Well, it’s actually a ‘thing’.
In psychology it’s known as ‘complexity bias’.
Complexity bias is where we can look at something fairly simple and think there’s more to it than it is. We can confuse ourselves over it. We LOVE doing this when we’re already overwhelmed too...just for kicks!
We don’t look for the obvious answer that might be staring us in the face.
The area I do this with is tech. All my emotional regulation tools and techniques come out to play when I'm around tech.
Sometimes it can feel like the most basic of things is impossible to follow.
If we go back to the weight analogy again, you might have gained weight and you start researching thyroid function or hormone imbalance. It might be that.
But it might also be the entire box of chocolates that you ate or the fact you haven’t exercised in months.
I’m talking to myself here too guys ha!
This is definitely something advertisers take advantage of too. After 15 years in advertising and doing my dissertation on the way marketers make women feel terrified of ageing it’s rife.
It could be confusing language that doesn’t really mean anything. I remember back to my dissertation and it was a beauty brand marketing their brand as better because it contained ‘aqua spheres’. Think about that for a second. I mean, does an aqua sphere sound like it could be a drop of water to you?
The same goes for marketing of courses or programmes. People will make you feel like if you don’t have THEIR specific thing that you’re missing something.
They’re intentionally letting you over complicate it so you feel like you NEED it!
We unconsciously make ‘more complicated’ mean ‘better’.
We just see things as more complicated than they actually are.
This is another sneaky brain shortcut.
It means you won’t do the thing that’s going to require a burst of energy, and it wants to conserve energy.
I see it often when making personal development changes. People don’t trust the easy options. Which is interesting because they often over complicate by looking for instant gratification.
It really can be way more simple than you think to make HUGE changes in your life, which is what my first cohort of SOS! Ladies have been learning with me over the last 5 weeks.
The tools and techniques that work are SUPER simple. Using your breath, meditation, journaling.
You just need a little more information and context for your brain and your nervous system to trust it!
It’s so easy not to trust the simple option. It’s often not until you have the complicated or more complex knowledge as to why something works that you have the motivation to stick with it and trust the process.
Ask yourself questions like, ‘how could I simplify this?’ or ‘where am I over complicating this’. ‘What is making me not trust the simplicity’.
Seek someone else’s opinion who isn’t as close to it as you. Often other people can see the things we don’t yet because they have a different way of viewing the world, or different experiences and different beliefs coded into their system.
Seek the evidence of other people who have done the thing you want to do.
LOOK for the easy way.
The more you look for it the easier it will be to find. Funny how that works!
You’ll also be giving your brain the instructions that this thing is important to you so your reticular activating system will be on the hunt to deliver the people and opportunities that you might ordinarily miss.
But when you have this complexity bias running, AND you’re delivered marketing by people who KNOW this all mashed together it’s easy to see how you can get discombobulated and confused over your next step!
So you just don’t take any and things don’t change.
So, It’s entirely possible that having the business, and the life that you want is entirely less complicated and far more in reach for you than you’re making it!
I see SO many people wanting to start businesses and not doing it because it becomes this big complicated mess in their heads because there’s so much NOISE out there, so it’s easier to decide you’re just not cut out for it.
But, in my opinion, that couldn’t be further from the truth!
You’ll hopefully remember my friend Lisa Johnson. She's been on a few episodes of the podcast before so go check those out if you haven’t because she thinks very the same way I do.
So together we make quite the combination!
It’s time we stop over complicating things, particularly business. We can take away so many of the things we complicate about business. Like growing an audience, creating content, funnels, email marketing, how to actually make money.
But also stop believing things like having a business means having to live hand to mouth or feast or famine in terms of clients and revenue.
This uncertainty that can come with being your own boss...which your brain does NOT like.
There are SO many ways it doesn’t have to be like that.
Having done what feels like a bazillion different courses before, feeling like there was always a piece of the puzzle that I was missing to actually make it work for me in the way I wanted to. Based around what I wanted for my life.
I fell for it, and wish I knew then what I know now. It absolutely, categorically doesn’t have to be that way.
Lisa’s not here for it either. Simplify, simplify, simplify….step by step.
She simplifies everything, and fits the pieces of the puzzle together of having the business that you want, all in one place. She’s known as the queen of passive income and recurring revenue. So think, courses, memberships, subscription boxes. BUT, think about what having that as a business model gives you!
Freedom. More certainty. Not trading your time for money, Knowing the ballpark amount that’s going to be coming into your account every month. I mean...how many of you would start a business now knowing that’s possible? It absolutely is with a recurring revenue model or at least one stream of passive or semi passive income being generated.
So I’m SO excited to be partnering with her again this year on her One To Many course which is coming up SOON!
But first things first she’s running her FREE challenge from the 14th June, I talked about it last year and she's only going to be doing it once this year.
It’s called the race to recurring revenue, and over the space of a week you’re going to know with certainty if a recurring revenue model is for you.
It’s totally free and it’s NOT one of those challenges where you won’t get value from the challenge to be able to go off and start things for yourself. You absolutely will. But if you decide you want to go all in and join one to many after having a week immersed in the training then you’ll also get the opportunity to work with yours truly too.
More details on that in due course my friend!
The link to sign up to the race to recurring revenue challenge is in my bio on instagram, it’s in the shownotes and you can type out http://bit.ly/franandlisa and sign up from there and if you’re on my email list i’ll be talking about it plenty so you can’t miss it.
If you’ve ever wanted to start a business and this is speaking to you, just do the challenge. You have NOTHING to lose and everything to gain by exploring it. It can work for pretty much anyone, in any niche and it works for people with established businesses and if you don’t have your idea yet.
So let’s stop overcomplicating having the life that we really want. We only get one of them, right?! Why not TRY!
Fx | |||
| Wellbeing Series: Stefan Chmelik, Inventor of The Sensate | 24 May 2021 | 00:56:13 | |
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For more, head over to: www.franexcell.com/ Wellbeing Series: Stefan Chmelik, Founder of Bioself technology and inventor of The Sensate I HUGELY enjoyed this conversation with Stefan all about the importance of emotional regulation when it comes to behaviour. How so many of us are wired for the stress response to be a baseline of 'normality'. This is a really important conversation in my opinion! Stefan has a huge amount of knowledge and experience under his belt. He's the founder of BioSelf Technology and the Inventor of Sensate, which I have been RAVING about! He's also an integrated healthcare physician and wellbeing technology visionary. The founder of New Medicine Group (London), Thrive Health and Zen Now. He's a traditional Chinese Medicine authority, food alchemist, cook. A breathing Coach & Mindfulness Mentor. A Fascia & Bodyworker and an Author and educator dedicated to global impact. It's safe to say he knows his stuff! Stefan kindly gifted me my Sensate and I've been using it for a couple of weeks and It's safe to say I'm obsessed. I genuinely believe this is a game changer in emotional regulation. Fx | |||
| Reframing Looking After Your Mental Wellbeing! | 17 May 2021 | 00:13:19 | |
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Reframing Looking After Your Mental Wellbeing!
I want to talk about reframing your mental wellbeing, or ‘mental health’ today.
I kind of just want to change the conversation up a bit if i’m honest.
Last week in the UK was mental health awareness week and I have a bit of a love/don’t love relationship with these awareness days and weeks.
I LOVE the fact that they start the conversation and they get people sharing their stories or struggles and start to normalise it and that’s great.
But I kind of feel like it’s a big thing for people to actually talk about it in that week.
People struggle to put themselves out there for that week.
It’s a big stretch and it’s uncomfortable.
It’s seen as a big, brave, bold move...which it is of course...
So why do I see that as a potential issue?
I see it as an issue because It shouldn’t have to feel that way in the first place. It shouldn’t have to feel like such a big thing to talk about.
We should be able to talk about these things ALL the time. Not just in that week.
People shouldn’t have to feel any sort of shame, embarrassment or ANYTHING like that because the reality is, it IS so normal, it’s just not been NORMALISED!
It should feel NORMAL to talk about it as if you’re talking about the weather. It shouldn’t feel hard.
I talk about things I've struggled with in the past to people as if it’s as easy as breathing.
I talk about eating disorders, anxiety, the intense paranoia when it came to people abandoning me that I struggled with through my teens and twenties, I talk about my struggles with emotional eating.
I talk about depression.
I talk about the crazily low self esteem I struggled with for most of my life.
I’m here for it all!
We should all be able to.
There’s so much shame over ‘mental health’. So much stigma around it and i’m SO pleased how much more mainstream it’s becoming but there’s a really long way to go.
A huge reason I'm able to is because I've done so much work on myself, this is my obsession, understanding how we tick and why we do what we do.
Struggling with these very things is what has led me to right here, being in your earbuds and able to give really practical tools, tips and strategies to help you. To normalise it.
Doing this work and having the qualifications that I do, the biggest thing I've learned and want to pass on to you is how much we all make total sense.
It may not feel like it at the time, It may not be ideal when you’re in a pattern, but you can stop beating yourself up. Know you make sense, you aren’t broken and you don’t need fixing.
It’s just maladaptive responses that had their place in your life at one point!
So I want to try and reframe the conversation a little bit today.
The way I see it is your mental health is JUST as important as your physical health.
But here’s the thing, EVERYBODY is on a spectrum here.
EVERYBODY.
We can see physical ailments, often, a lot more easily right?
There’s the hidden struggles for sure. I’ve had osteoarthritis in my knees since my 20s and used to get so frustrated because they would assume I was lazy when I didn’t want to walk places and the first thing I'd do in a bar would be try and find somewhere to sit.
BUT, that’s by the by, the point is, often we can see if we haven’t been looking after ourselves physically. We can see if we have a broken bone or a cut.
Mental health issues are harder to spot sometimes.
Even that, ‘mental health issues’ sounds wrong to me.
Mental well being is more accurate in my opinion. But our mental wellbeing is a spectrum, just like our physical wellbeing is right?!
So let’s normalise this stuff.
Everyone has their ‘stuff’ in one way or another. I know this because I know how we’re wired as humans!
We all have ego, we’ve all had our little T traumas as kids and throughout our lives that have led to nervous system deregulation which affects how we show up as adults.
We all have our own individual foibles.
Some of us are more aware of them than others.
But so many of us try to hide them because someone, somewhere has told us we shouldn’t have them.
Whether it’s a parent, sibling, the mean kid at school or something you’ve picked up from society that stigma is there.
That idea that it’s something ‘wrong’ with you.
But really, the biggest issue in my eyes is that people just don’t have the information they need to be able to understand themselves.
So we deal with these things quietly, beating ourselves up behind the scenes, hiding.
The negative self talk is loud.
The self doubt, the procrastination, the overwhelm, the stress, anxiety, depression and other (not so) fun forms of emotional dysregulation.
We only really get the information when we start to seek it. Probably part of the reason why you’re here listening to me. Trying to find another way because you KNOW life isn’t meant to be such a struggle.
But it’s so accepted and normal to do things to look after our physical health. We can follow a programme, hire a personal trainer, go on YouTube and follow along. We know we don’t have the information, find it and follow it.
So why isn’t it the same for our minds?!
The relief I see on someone's face when i’m open and honest about something and they go ‘me too’ and know there’s zero judgement. Or the other way around where they kind of sheepishly tell me something as if they’re giving me confession and I say ‘me too’. Being able to visibly see someone’s shoulders drop in that moment where they can just be 100% themselves is magical.
It’s a gift for me to be able to give to other people and I'm so grateful for it. But it wasn’t an easy journey for me, it was a long one!
Because I identified as the ‘strong’ one, the ‘capable’ one. The one that could juggle a million things at once. At work at least I identified that way. The people closest to me knew I was an emotional wreck most of the time. It felt like I was living a double life.
But the more honest I am about things, the more I aim to understand myself and other people, the more myself I become.
I want that for you. Because I know how possible it is.
But the thing that’s also important here when i’m talking about emotional and mental health being just as important as physical health there’s something that needs to be highlighted and it’s an easy parallel to make.
There is no ‘destination’ to get to. There is no moment where you go ‘yeay i’m fixed’ and that’s that.
We all know this. Any diet, when you start eating the way you were before, the weight comes back on!
Any gym or exercise regime, when you stop training, you lose muscle mass!
It’s the same for your mind.
This is life long.
This is constant improvement but in the BEST kind of way.
It’s about a lifestyle change.
Sustainable weight is the same right. We all know to eat less and move more. That sounds super easy but when we try the instant gratification route of cutting things out of our diet, or going all in at the gym but in an unsustainable way...we all know what happens right!
It’s the same with your mental wellbeing.
Softly, softly, catchy monkey! Gently does it.
When you try to go from 0-100 in 60 seconds flat it causes more issues than it solves. Your nervous system is NOT gonna like it! Unfamiliar = unsafe.
Let’s realise how normal it is to have struggles...BUT, let’s also realise it doesn’t have to be that way.
It’s about figuring out what works for you and committing to it.
I’ve been LOVING teaching this stuff in the SOS! Programme. People have been understanding themselves and why they do what they do, or don’t do on a deep level.
I keep saying, don’t beat up that previous version of you who didn’t have this information.
The brave thing is starting the journey knowing it’s not about a destination.
So let’s start talking. Let’s start to understand we’re not on our own. Let’s change the narrative and seek the knowledge and the answers that we just don’t have yet.
Fx
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| Why Emotional Regulation Is So Important! | 10 May 2021 | 00:12:00 | |
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Why Emotional Regulation Is So Important In Business!
Why is emotional regulation so important in business?
It’s fundamental because your emotions are a HUGE piece of the pie in terms of what drives your behaviour.
It’s not just fundamental in business, it’s a skill that is fundamental in your whole life.
This is what I'm going to be talking about in depth in this week's SOS! (success over stress) group programme module. It’s HUGELY important to understand our emotions and how it shapes our behaviour and our results.
Your emotions create physiological, hormonal and psychological changes. These influence your thoughts and behaviour!
Big news!
We’re not actually taught how to handle our emotions, or that we can really have any influence at all.
We kind of just accept them or learn to suppress them.
We only really know what parents and primary caregivers taught us about emotional regulation. But what if THEY weren’t really taught by their primary caregivers.
The important thing here is to note the generational differences. We’re essentially being taught emotional regulation of ‘the time’.
Taking into account what was and wasn’t acceptable in society at that time.
A huge amount of unconscious bias comes into the way we’re taught to be humans.
If you want to understand more about unconscious bias I did an episode specifically on that in 2020.
So you can see how this cycle continues.
We kind of go through life suppressing emotions or letting them take over.
We might learn as children that it’s not ‘ok’ to feel or express our emotions.
But even if you suppress them. They’re still there. They will come out in other ways.
But something that’s also important to know is that you can’t make good, conscious decisions in the midst of an emotional hijack.
Making decisions is something we need to do all the time as a business owner.
Not ideal.
Now, to be abundantly clear, ALL emotions ARE welcome. They are not to be demonised. They are helpful indicators.
BUT, if you don’t know how to regulate them, you can get in a pickle.
Think about a time in your business when something happened that made you feel anxious, or scared, or frustrated.
How did it feel?
How did it affect your ability to do things?
If it was a sympathetic nervous system response, it might cause you to speed up, make mistakes, go into fight or flight, say something you don’t really mean, make rash decisions.
If it’s a parasympathetic nervous system response, it might cause you to freeze, people please or not be able to do much of anything.
The Limbic system in the brain is your emotional brain.
Home to the amygdala (fear centre), the hippocampus (memory centre) Hypothalamus (regulates the Autonomic Nervous System and controls endocrine, or hormone system. So responsible for releasing Adrenaline and cortisol. And for the fight/flight, rest/digest response.) They’re all talking to each other.
There’s something called ‘going limbic’ which is where your limbic system totally overrides your prefrontal cortex which is your higher level, executive functioning.
Your IQ literally lowers.
How do you think this affects your behaviour in those moments?
So, as a business owner, or in a high stress job, where you’re reacting all the time to potentially ‘threatening’ stimuli.
What do you think is going to happen?
Some common things might be snapping, shouting, crying, lacking focus, taking things personally, blaming.
Emotional regulation is self control and the ability to be able to bring yourself back into balance at will.
So how do you regulate your emotions?
There are a tonne of ways! I put 55 tools and techniques in the members area of the first round of my SOS! (Success over stress) group programme. I know I'll be adding more in as we go along.
But think about what calms you down and gets you back on track?
There are cognitive tools like reframing, labelling and journaling.
There are somatic tools like breathwork, heartmath, movement.
My favourites are always singing and dancing. Singing helps tone your vagus nerve and the dancing helps the emotions to move through you too so you don’t get stuck in an incomplete stress cycle.
It sounds so counterintuitive to be in the midst of ‘going limbic’ and dancing or singing but trust me it works!
This is why that programme even needs to exist.
How does it feel to be hijacked by your emotions? You do things you wouldn’t normally. You can feel in a heightened state of panic or anxiety. Everything feels harder!
But we don’t have to be ruled by them in this way.
Meditation is another amazing emotional regulation tool. Mindfulness.
It’s operating that ability to command yourself.
So taking you out of the limbic brain and waking up your prefrontal cortex so you can rationally think things through and make better decisions.
Sounds much better right?
The other thing we need to be aware of is that emotions are contagious.
You’ve probably been around someone who’s super stressed, how do you feel?
You’ve probably been around someone who’s super calm and patient, how do you feel?
It’s emotional intelligence, right? Being able to recognise yours and other people's emotions.
Self awareness and self regulation are two huge pieces of the puzzle.
Think about it, if you have the ability to regulate your emotions how different would it feel when you have setbacks? When people let you down? When a client doesn’t treat you well? When you have to give a refund? When you feel like you’re trying all the things but not getting the results you want yet? When you get a no? When something happens you were totally unprepared for?
Think about what your normal reaction might be in those situations and compare it to what it might be like if you were able to regulate your emotions.
Big difference right?
I believe the ability to recognise and regulate your emotions is paramount in living a life that you love, especially in running a business.
By its very nature it’s stressful because to do it, usually we have to go against so many of societies ‘norms’ about what’s safe and what’s not.
We go head to head with our own trauma.
Our brain and our nervous system will fight us the whole way if we don’t know how to help create ourselves a new base line of safety.
How many times have certain thoughts come up for you and stopped you in your tracks? The comparison, the i’m not good enoughs, the beliefs of it’s for them not for me. Our ego playing hard ball to try and keep us in the familiar.
If you don’t know your way around this stuff, how to be present with your emotions. How not to demonise them and see them as messengers and indicators rather than something to be suppressed or denied.
How not to blame and shame yourself for your own emotions when it’s part of being human.
THIS is the work that’s important in business...and in life.
You can have all the strategies in the world and that’s great, but not in isolation.
You need to know you can, and learn how to work with your emotions and self regulate.
BUT, this IS a skill you can learn. It’s not your fault you haven’t been taught it. It’s absolutely something you can learn. Make that your priority for a while and see the changes unfold!
Fx | |||
| Are You Able To Spot The Metaphors Under Your Nose? | 07 Aug 2023 | 00:09:43 | |
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Are You Able To Spot The Metaphors Under Your Nose?
There are powerful metaphors everywhere.
Metaphors have the power to completely shift and change how we see a situation.
Let’s start by defining what a metaphor actually is.
The dictionary defines a metaphor as a way of describing someone or something by showing their similarity with something else.It’s making a point or explaining something by comparing two things that on the surface might not look the same.They can help us connect dots that we aren’t seeing by mapping one experience onto another.
So some common examples might be ‘Time flies when you’re having fun’ or ‘He’s as slow as a snail.’
Metaphors in stories are particularly powerful in helping us understand complex ideas or see how our experience could map across and help us see things in a different way from a more helpful perspective and break down old ways of thinking.
Metaphor is used in so many different healing modalities and therapies, particularly ones that work with language patterns such as hypnotherapy and NLP.
The bottom line is they can be incredibly powerful. And they are everywhere, if we look for them.
So what’s making me want to talk about metaphors today?
I had my own little live action symbolic metaphor moment that made me stop in my tracks, and lol a little bit.
And I wanted to share it with you because I think it can be applied to so many things and in all honesty, this little moment sparked joy for me.
I’m going to tell you about it and also see how many metaphors I can get into my story about my metaphor ha!
If you’ve been with me a while you know i’ve been going through some big, complicated life changes for the last year.
It’s been a rollercoaster.
I’ve been feeling recently like i’ve been a little bit stuck in groundhog day and the light at the end of the tunnel of my situation has been feeling further and further away with setback after setback.
I’m not complaining…it’s been awful but there’s a lot I'm grateful for and I feel like I'm so close to being able to share all my stories and lessons with you and I for one cannot wait for that day.
Anyhoo.
It’s safe to say I've been in the weeds and often feeling like I'm wading through treacle.
Every day I'd wake up and I'd open my curtains. Nothing new. Nothing really to notice.
I have a few plants on my windowsill.
I’m a serial plant killer so I only allow myself to have practically indestructible plants like succulents and I still manage to over or under water.
I’ve also had a white orchid for a number of years and in all honesty, it had seen better days.
The leaves were yellowing and dry and the once proud stem looked like hay with a dead and dried flower at the end.
I had been told more than once that it was dead and I needed to throw it out.
It didn’t look good.
The other day I opened my curtains as usual, nothing different.
And I notice there’s an entirely new stem, as long as the original one, with 7 buds on!
Every single day I had looked directly at it, this thing that looked pretty much dead and hadn’t even spotted the life and the growth that was right in front of my face and it was about to erupt into beautiful flowers.
How could I have not spotted an entire foot's worth of stem when I'm looking at it every single day?
And I realised, how often am I (or we) doing that?
Seeing something every day, thinking it’s dead or on its last legs but actually in the background it’s growing something new and beautiful?
I know I know, I’m feeling existential but it’s true.
How often do we just run on auto pilot and not notice something incredible right in front of our faces?
How often is something amazing happening and growing in the background when all we’re seeing is the doom and gloom or the pain of what isn’t going right for us.
So what can we take from this glorious little piece of symbolism that brightened my day and created an instant shift in what was going on for me.
Can you be patient?
Can you trust that there are positive and beautiful things happening alongside the pain b?
What growth are you not seeing?
What could be blooming where you’re not paying attention?
The funny thing was, and take from this what you will, literally the day after the discovery of me not spotting an entire foot of new growth and 7 budding flowers on my seemingly dead orchid that I look at every day, there was a huge breakthrough in my own life of something that had been growing very quietly and invisibly in the background of something where on the surface all looked lost.
Keep the faith.
Just keep swimming.
Look for those metaphors.
You got this!
Fx
There are powerful metaphors everywhere.
Metaphors have the power to completely shift and change how we see a situation.
Let’s start by defining what a metaphor actually is.
The dictionary defines a metaphor as a way of describing someone or something by showing their similarity with something else.It’s making a point or explaining something by comparing two things that on the surface might not look the same.They can help us connect dots that we aren’t seeing by mapping one experience onto another.
So some common examples might be ‘Time flies when you’re having fun’ or ‘He’s as slow as a snail.’
Metaphors in stories are particularly powerful in helping us understand complex ideas or see how our experience could map across and help us see things in a different way from a more helpful perspective and break down old ways of thinking.
Metaphor is used in so many different healing modalities and therapies, particularly ones that work with language patterns such as hypnotherapy and NLP.
The bottom line is they can be incredibly powerful. And they are everywhere, if we look for them.
So what’s making me want to talk about metaphors today?
I had my own little live action symbolic metaphor moment that made me stop in my tracks, and lol a little bit.
And I wanted to share it with you because I think it can be applied to so many things and in all honesty, this little moment sparked joy for me.
I’m going to tell you about it and also see how many metaphors I can get into my story about my metaphor ha!
If you’ve been with me a while you know i’ve been going through some big, complicated life changes for the last year.
It’s been a rollercoaster.
I’ve been feeling recently like i’ve been a little bit stuck in groundhog day and the light at the end of the tunnel of my situation has been feeling further and further away with setback after setback.
I’m not complaining…it’s been awful but there’s a lot I'm grateful for and I feel like I'm so close to being able to share all my stories and lessons with you and I for one cannot wait for that day.
Anyhoo.
It’s safe to say I've been in the weeds and often feeling like I'm wading through treacle.
Every day I'd wake up and I'd open my curtains. Nothing new. Nothing really to notice.
I have a few plants on my windowsill.
I’m a serial plant killer so I only allow myself to have practically indestructible plants like succulents and I still manage to over or under water.
I’ve also had a white orchid for a number of years and in all honesty, it had seen better days.
The leaves were yellowing and dry and the once proud stem looked like hay with a dead and dried flower at the end.
I had been told more than once that it was dead and I needed to throw it out.
It didn’t look good.
The other day I opened my curtains as usual, nothing different.
And I notice there’s an entirely new stem, as long as the original one, with 7 buds on!
Every single day I had looked directly at it, this thing that looked pretty much dead and hadn’t even spotted the life and the growth that was right in front of my face and it was about to erupt into beautiful flowers.
How could I have not spotted an entire foot's worth of stem when I'm looking at it every single day?
And I realised, how often am I (or we) doing that?
Seeing something every day, thinking it’s dead or on its last legs but actually in the background it’s growing something new and beautiful?
I know I know, I’m feeling existential but it’s true.
How often do we just run on auto pilot and not notice something incredible right in front of our faces?
How often is something amazing happening and growing in the background when all we’re seeing is the doom and gloom or the pain of what isn’t going right for us.
So what can we take from this glorious little piece of symbolism that brightened my day and created an instant shift in what was going on for me.
Can you be patient?
Can you trust that there are positive and beautiful things happening alongside the pain b?
What growth are you not seeing?
What could be blooming where you’re not paying attention?
The funny thing was, and take from this what you will, literally the day after the discovery of me not spotting an entire foot of new growth and 7 budding flowers on my seemingly dead orchid that I look at every day, there was a huge breakthrough in my own life of something that had been growing very quietly and invisibly in the background of something where on the surface all looked lost.
Keep the faith.
Just keep swimming.
Look for those metaphors.
You got this!
Fx | |||
| So, How Do You Heal? | 03 May 2021 | 00:19:44 | |
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So How Do You Heal?
How did you heal yourself was a question I had from a lovely listener. It’s not a quick and easy question to be fair but i’ll do my best ha!
I’ll probably give more of a focus on what I did wrong so you can learn from my mistakes and not have to do it the hard way like I did.
I suppose the journey started back in 2014 when things got really bad.
I don’t talk about this too much in public because it’s not just my story and I don’t think it’s fair so i’ll give you the cliff notes.
Essentially, LOTS of things went very wrong in a short space of time.
We lost our business, my husband had a pub/restaurant, lost our home and had to move in with my mother in law.
Then I flipped and rolled my car into a ditch.
Then I had knee surgery which didn’t go well so I was always in pain and pretty immobile.
I had been working with my husband in the business (he was my fiancee at the time) and then I'd gone back to my media job to do a maternity contract part time too so was commuting into London.
I decided I couldn’t do the 2.5 hour each way commute so I didn’t extend the contract and took a local job.
Things had been really difficult so I wasn’t in the best place mentally.
Then I got sacked after 3 weeks in this job...for being too negative. Whoops!
My ego, self esteem and hope were pretty much on the floor at this point.
On the same day I got sacked I went to the doctors about my pain in my knees and came out with antidepressants.
THEN I went home and basically stared at them, day drinking by myself, and wondered what had happened.
There’s a LOT lot more to each of the threads of this story but you get the gist.
It wasn’t quite the plan I had in mind for life at this point.
I felt like I'd given up on myself.
But it ended up being a major catalyst for change, and all of this is what got me here, so I can’t complain really!
Now, you’d think the story started here but the truth is that all of these things weren’t simply a ‘cause’ to how I was feeling.
They essentially amplified who I already was.
Not who I was at my core. We need to be clear about that. That’s what this work does, strip those layers of the onion that have been built up over time by your traumas, experiences and the judgements you make on yourself and other people about how and who you ‘should’ be.
This work gets you BACK to who you really are.
So it amplified this high functioning anxiety that I’d had my whole life. I remember it starting around age 11.
I was paranoid. Didn’t trust the world or other people, or myself.
I always thought people were out to hurt me.
I catastrophised EVERY little detail I possibly could.
I had incredibly low self worth, particularly around the way I looked.
My confidence was super low so I would drink for confidence and get myself in a pickle and not make the best decisions with boys.
I didn’t trust friends to not abandon me and would often wonder why they were friends with me in the first place.
I had so many protection mechanisms built around fear but I actually had no idea this was ruling my life.
A lot of this was masked because I was confident and high achieving in my career. But I didn’t really have any self awareness. I’d lie to myself on a daily basis.
So as much as I have the big traumatic year that led to me finally doing the work to heal. This unconscious programming had been dominating my life for as long as I could remember. And knowing what I know now, made the big traumatic stuff so much worse.
It all makes perfect sense to me now, but I really just felt like a victim of the world at the time.
So, there were lots of things I did ‘WRONG’ in my healing journey, which everybody does at the start because there’s certain knowledge about how we work as humans that you just won’t have, until you seek it.
So it took me a really long time.
And I beat myself up for that.
A lot.
I blamed myself, shamed myself. I had zero patience.
I either suppressed my emotions or they were wild and unruly. I had a complete lack of control.
Life felt like constant chaos. It felt like it was one thing after another after another.
One step forward, 3 steps back. I know WHY this happens now.
I held on to my victim mentality and didn’t take responsibility for my part in where I was.
All of this sounds super negative but without knowing a lot of the stuff I teach, how would you know another way to be?
Particularly when all the unconscious programming and beliefs that are driving your emotions and your behaviour are negative, without knowing how to be conscious, or even that you have to be, how would you NOT just reinforce that loop?
If you’re trying to make changes or heal some old wounds the biggest thing I want you to know is that you make sense. You’re not broken and you don’t need fixing.
You’re just missing some key information.
I was trying to go from zero to ‘fixed’ in 60 seconds flat. I wanted instant gratification.
It doesn’t work like that.
I sought out ‘quick fixes’ and fake promises because I was being led by instant gratification.
I felt like I was trying everything but nothing was working, which just triggered my shame and self judgement more.
It wasn’t until I decided I would strip it back. Instead of just absorbing information and not really knowing how to DO anything with it I decided I was going to just start small and find one thing every day that I could hold in my mind for that day.
So that’s what I did. One thing per day. So i’d find a question or a quote or something inspirational that I would kind of run my thoughts through as a filter for the day.
Then I started noticing the sorts of things that were working for me.
So it started with curiosity.
This is where my prompts for the Positive Pants Planner, my journaling for the non dear diary technique, came from.
I had no idea why they were working at the time.
I didn’t know most of them were positive psychology interventions.
I didn’t know about neuroplasticity, or trauma, or attachment theory or anything along those lines.
The things I did then I still do today because this is a journey without an official destination.
There isn’t a day where you think ‘oh yeay, i’m all fixed’ and totally enlightened.
You need to accept that you’re a human and human emotions are a very natural thing.
There is always another layer to uncover. Some in areas you never knew there was an issue!
The areas I'm working on at the moment are around eating and intimacy.
So I’m going through the same processes in those areas that I did with the others.
But the biggest difference is, there’s no shame, no judgement, I see it as a GOOD thing because there’s growth happening. I know exactly how to navigate it and it doesn’t feel like a negative thing at all.
I get excited when I find a negative pattern. I honestly do. Yes it may not be fun them being there, the work may not be pretty but I know how worth it it is, because I know what’s on the other side.
Healing is not linear.
But it also doesn’t need to take you as long as it did me. It doesn’t need to cost you as much as it did me!
I would jump from training to training, course to course but not really implement anything along the way. I’ve invested well over six figures into my own development.
Some have been better investments than others.
I would say that finding that person who you feel will really understand and ‘get’ you to help you on this journey is a MUCH quicker way to get you to where you want to be.
I kept trying to do it on my own, the biggest shifts came when I asked for help.
Asked for help, but also allowed myself to accept it. That’s a big distinction to make.
The more I did the things I felt the most resistant to, that felt hard, the more results I got.
Learning to regulate my own emotions probably took me the most time, because I didn’t understand I needed to or could. So that wouldn’t have come with a quick and easy google search. I’ll do an episode on why that’s so important for you next week.
I just didn’t have the information I needed to make lasting change, and didn’t know where to find it.
The biggest ‘mistake’ I think I made was not asking for help and blaming and shaming myself for things that were just not my fault.
That made perfect sense too!
The more you can understand how we tick as humans the better.
It’s a huge reason I launched my SOS! Success Over Stress course.
It’s the information we all should have been given in school.
The information that helps us learn how to be human in the most efficient way.
Why we may feel the things we feel and do the things we do without blaming or shaming ourselves. Without beating ourselves up.
That’s honestly half the battle. The stuff we internalise in the process can make it feel so much harder than it needs to.
Also not giving up too soon. Don’t jump from modality to modality and not allow any of it the time and consistency it takes to work.
Patience, commitment, consistency, curiosity, self compassion, communication and trust.
That’s what it takes.
And you’re more than capable!
Fx
| |||
| How Can I Change My Money Mindset? | 26 Apr 2021 | 00:15:08 | |
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How Can I Change My Money Mindset?
How can I change my money mindset? It’s something I’m asked ALL the time by clients.
I’m also always asking for the kinds of episodes you’d like to hear and one request made me realise...it’s been a LONG time since I did an episode around money mindset.
If you scroll down the episode list you’ll find ‘how to charge your worth’ which is a really good insight BUT I thought i’d do a fresh little update on the subject as it’s something that comes up with all my clients at some point.
Everything that I’m always talking about around self sabotage applies to money too.
We have to make the unconscious conscious, and start to do things differently.
Give yourself ‘disconfirming experiences’ in order to make real changes.
Experiences that prove the opposite of your current beliefs.
We also need to be able to recognise when we’re running an unconscious programme and bring it into our conscious awareness and allow the CEO of our brain, the prefrontal cortex to help you make some better decisions.
So how do we start to do that?!
With the first stage of my NICER framework that I run everything through.
We have to NOTICE we might be running an unconscious programme.
We do this by being intentional and curious and asking ourselves some really good questions.
So when it comes to money what are your common thoughts and behaviours?
How are you with spending money?
You might be great at spending it on things you don’t need?
How are you with receiving it from others? Do you allow people to buy you things or get awkward, say no, or ‘get the next round’.
How are you with spending it on yourself? I don’t mean buying material things with this one, I mean interesting in your own development in some way. Something that will improve you or your life?
You may already be unearthing some things as we go along here.
Identifying the pattern itself is super important, but we need to start going a little deeper.
For example, in my glorious listeners question, it was specifically about how to stop associating an increase in money (as in, more clients) with having LESS time.
So firstly here you can see the story. The unconscious story is that having more in one area means having less in another.
So to start unpicking this we need to have a little time walk back to before we were about 8 years old and ask ourselves a few questions.
What did I see growing up?
So here you want to think about things like, did your parents struggle to make ends meet? Did they work super hard and not be available to you? Did promotions mean ‘less’ of them for you?
What did I hear growing up?
What common phrases were said in your family? Money doesn’t grow on trees is a common one. Or you have to work hard for money.
What did I model?
Were there any instances of a big loss, or being secretive around money?
There’s tonnes of different things that can show up here. And we need to be clear, they aren’t ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’, and there is no ‘blame or ‘shame’ or judgement that should be going on here.
Understand everyone is doing their best with the resources they have, based on their own conditioning. Some of this stuff is GENERATIONS old.
But you get to break that cycle by making the unconscious conscious.
Once it’s conscious, you get the conscious choice to challenge it and change it.
We can’t expect to get different results by thinking and doing the same things so we have to seek out a new lens to look through.
It can feel hard to do that by yourself at first but you can either get help with it by going through it with someone else. Or you can allow yourself to sit with it and seek different answers.
So how could having more money and clients NOT mean you’ll have less time and head for impending burnout?
I’m going to let you sit with that for just a moment then share where I would go with it.
Got a few ideas?
And what’s one more thing you could do?
Letting you sit with it again.
So...for me, more monies means more ability to outsource. Which means MORE time.
It’s about being able to catch yourself in an unconscious story and starting to challenge it.
Thinking this way helps you set your goals too. We can so often look at something and not plan for it because we think it’s out of reach. For other people, not for you.
But you get to change that narrative.
Just because it’s not something you’ve had before does not mean it’s not for you.
An example in my life is having gardeners an hour per week. It’s a major luxury BUT it’s also a lifesaver.
I don’t have the time, nor do I want to, mow the lawn. But I like it and appreciate it being done. So why not pay someone who loves doing it to do it?
Paying the extra to have your food delivered instead of having to go get it is another one.
Funnily enough, it’s actually saved us time AND money now.
We have organic veg delivered once per week on a subscription. We get pipers farm organic meat boxes and then just the essentials like cleaning stuff and dry goods from the supermarket. You’d think that would cost more but it’s inadvertently saved loads AND created time.
There’s so much in life you can outsource and create time when you think outside of what you normally do, or what your family has ‘always’ done.
Money allows you to do that.
There is ALWAYS another way to look at something, you don’t have to accept your first thought as fact. They’re usually not!
Time and money are precious commodities. Often our relationship with both will have some big similarities.
Spending on things you don’t need when you’re tight on cash could look like scrolling social media when you have a big presentation to make.
Hoarding money could show up as telling yourself you don’t have time when if you were to step back you’d see all the ways you could use time more efficiently.
It’s amazing what goes on in our noggins seemingly without our conscious knowledge.
Grab your journal and go a little deeper on some of the questions I've asked and see if something pops up for you that makes total sense in terms of your behaviour...and see how far you can chanllenge it.
A scarecity mindset shows up in more ways than just money.
Time, resources. If you’re operating from that place right now then do the work to shift that around. It’s more important than you think.
It will affect your behaviour and your progress. BUT, it’s something that CAN be changed!
What do you value more, your time or money?
What would you do if you had more of either?
Whatever that thing that just popped into your head was...is possible for you!
Fx
| |||
| Why Do Some People Never Reach Their Full Potential? | 19 Apr 2021 | 00:15:25 | |
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Why Do Some PEople Never Reach Their Full Potential?
Why is it that some people create huge success, seemingly effortlessly...and others never quite reach their full potential?
Now, this is not a quick answer, it’s very nuanced. But at the same time, fairly simple to see.
Same thing, different ways it shows up.
Our behaviour is governed by so many different things that are going on, mostly unconsciously. If you’ve been listening to me for any amount of time you’ll know this.
95-99% of everything we do is done on an unconscious level. It’s how we conserve energy. Autopilot.
But it’s not just physiological things. It’s not just walking, the way we brush our teeth, the way we do our hair, the way we do everything that requires no thought.
It’s also the emotional and behavioural patterns we follow.
Those behaviours we’re not conscious to but wonder why the same things keep happening.
The learned behaviours that may have served us and protected us once...that now, aren’t quite so helpful
Like procrastination, comparing ourselves to others, black and white thinking, over working, not resting, avoiding, overwhelming ourselves to the point we just freeze, perfectionism, analysis paralysis.
These are some of the big ones.
But think of all the smaller, more subtle ways we do this to ourselves that we aren’t conscious of.
When we have to get someone else’s opinion before making a decision.
Creating confusion for ourselves by listening to too many voices and not taking any action.
Not listening to that niggle in our gut.
Buying more and more courses without anything to make it easy for you to actually implement them.
Judging other people while fearing judgement ourselves.
Collecting qualifications (SOooo have to watch myself on this one!)
Needing to control everything. Needing to please everyone.
Saying yes when you want to say no.
Suppressing emotions.
Being competitive.
Not trusting OR being too trusting of others.
Scattered thinking trying ALL the things instead of sticking with something long enough to see progress.
Needing to be liked.
Blaming and making excuses.
These are all protection strategies in one way or another that stop us reaching our full potential...even though many of them do sneakily look like achievement.
Or like we’re the ones in the right.
Some of the behaviours might even look ‘good’ or ‘positive’ on the surface. But they DO hold you back and there’s a pay off in other areas.
For example, you might feel good and reward yourself for your drive and ambition, but it might also show up in taking too much on and burning yourself out because unconsciously you believe if you’re not ALWAYS in achieve mode...everything will fall apart around you.
It also stops you challenging anything.
Your thoughts influence your physiology and your emotions influence your thoughts. There's constant messaging going on via your vagus nerve in your autonomic nervous system. 20% brain to body, 80% body to brain. You often FEEL it before you think it, all unconscious.
This stuff is wired into our nervous system at a deep level!
So no WONDER it can feel hard to change sometimes. Even when you consciously REALLY want something.
We create these thoughts and messages, and the baseline of safety in our nervous systems through our experiences.
How our needs were or weren’t met as children. Our attachment style, our traumas, genetics, epigenetics, what worked for us in the past to get us out of some sort of painful situation...even if we were only a small child at the time, it stays with us and affects us into adulthood.
The teacher who said you’ll never amount to anything or called you lazy.
The parents you saw work themselves into the ground and weren’t available to you.
The sibling who said you were ‘stupid’ or made digs at your appearance.
And all the stories these experiences created. All the things they made you believe about yourself, others and the world.
All the ways you created ‘safety’ for yourself.
We create stories about who we are and what we’re capable of throughout our lives based around ALL of this.
But we don’t consciously question it. Or even know that’s an option.
I see potential in every single person. Every single one.
Some people may feel like they are having to go harder against the grain than others but I wholeheartedly believe that everyone is capable of doing what they want to.
Achieving what they want to.
I believe every person is WAY more in control of their lives and outcomes than they think. They just don’t KNOW they’re walking around with all this potential bubbling away inside of them.
They don’t know how to access it, but it’s there.
So many of the reasons people don’t achieve their potential follow a very similar pattern.
Even though it’s TOTALLY different for each person in the way it might show up and the reasons why, there are many similarities.
So I thought I would share a few of the most common I see, so if any of them resonate, you can decide to take action!
Not making the unconscious conscious. Believing your own negative hype. This is the BIGGEST one! Being ruled by unconscious programming.
Not seeking a support network. Co-regulation is SO important when you want to make any change, or do things wildly outside your comfort zone. I’m so grateful for mine which is a mixture of friends who have businesses too. Mentors and coaches. Group programmes. I’m always surrounded by what I affectionately like to call ‘lifter uppers’ and ‘caller outers’!
Trying to do everything yourself. I mean, does this require any explanation? This has always been a big one for my unconscious programming so I watch out for it. When you find a good VA, don’t let them go!
Being afraid of change. Yes it can be scary, challenging, frustrating sometimes. But it’s also the most freeing thing you can do to do the deep work. You can never unlearn this stuff...in a REALLY good way!
Not seeking out mentors who’ve done what you want to do. If you haven’t had what you want for your life modeled for you, how can you be expected to know what to do?
Believing in a lack of resources. Time, money, support are the core ones. We always find the time and money for the things that are the most important to us. Even if it might take a bit of time, there is always a way. It just might not be obvious just yet. We can actively seek out resources!
Vague and fluffy reasons for why you want what they want. If you don’t have honest clarity over what’s driving you, motivation and focus can be elusive.
Not taking responsibility. This can be a hard one to swallow at times but fundamentally you’re the one that’s in control of your situation. Even if you’re telling yourself you’re not. Give yourself some credit. It may feel hard, but it’s incredibly empowering.
Surrounding yourself with people who don’t want them to grow. Sometimes we can’t escape these people, I get it. You CAN limit your conversations around specific subjects with these people so they don’t get the opportunity to drag you back. BUT, more importantly it’s about surrounding yourself with the people who DO want you to grow and are invested in their own growth.
Being unwilling to do the deep work. Stop chasing and prioritising the strategy. You will save yourself SO much time, money and energy if you do this bit first! I can promise you that. You can have all the strategy in the world, but if you don’t have your emotions and your unconscious programmes under control and don’t have the tools and techniques to manage them then you’ll keep butting up against them.
So, to reiterate. I 100% believe that EVERYONE has the ability to live up to their full potential. I believe people are capable of SO much more than they give themselves credit for.
But you have to know that you’re the one in control of that.
Fx
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| Changing The Narrative Around Having A Job AND A Business | 12 Apr 2021 | 00:13:31 | |
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Changing the narrative around having a job and a business
Today I want to start changing the narrative around having a job.
If you’ve been with me ANY amount of time you’ll know I love to challenge an unconscious narrative or two...ooooh it’s a goodie!
It’s a goodie because it is RIFE in the online business world.
The narrative I’m talking about is the one that suggests that having a job is a bad thing if you’re running or trying to start a business.
That it’s this dirty word that’s not to be talked about.
The narrative that if you have one it MUST mean you’re unsuccessful.
It’s time to call BS on this utter rubbish.
It’s all made up, it really is.
It’s simply in our psyche because that’s the messaging we’re sold the most often.
I don’t know who came up with it or how it stuck but I want to invite the conversation today so we can start changing this.
I see too many businesses struggle.
I see too many people trying to start a business in a scarcity mindset. Trying to bootstrap everything...I promise you this will NOT work and will cause you a HUGE amount of heartache in the long run.
I see too many people feeling like they have to leave their job too soon.
OR, that they can only do one or the other.
That they have to let something go.
So I want to see how we can just start to break this down a bit.
I want to change the narrative to it meaning you’re not successful to meaning that you’re smarter and more savvy than most!
I genuinely believe that having both a job and a business is an incredible place to be.
I think it’s a smart place to be.
If my industry and job hadn’t had changes that meant I wasn’t going to enjoy it as much anymore, then I would probably still have both.
I actually loved having both.
There was a time I didn’t, and I started a business because I had a difficult boss.
But I realised that was NO way to start a business.
Built on a foundation of running away from something, rather than towards something.
But also that I was allowing a difficult work environment to stop me enjoying something that, being honest, I enjoyed!
I had a great time! I worked in media for big brands. I got to go out for lunch with clients, or for nails or getting our makeup done in Charlotte Tilbs. I had tonnes of autonomy, worked from home a lot. When I wasn’t working from home I'd be in cafe’s and in my agencies around London.
I mean...why would I be in a rush to give that up!
Now, it wasn’t always like that, there were times I was chained to my desk BUT, I shaped it so it ended up this way!
So I worked on my relationship with my boss by working on my responsibility in that area. Where was I behaving in certain ways unconsciously to exacerbate the situation.
Where could I make changes that could change the interaction.
Magic when we do that, take responsibility for our part and watch the changes happen.
This is a conversation for another day but so many of us have this drive and desire to change other people, but we focus on changing THEIR behaviour...but the funny thing is, the way you change someone else’s behaviour is actually to look at and change your own!
I kept my full time job for a LONG time AND had a full time business, because I enjoyed it!
I enjoyed it and it made sense for me and what I wanted my life to look like.
But that’s the key, knowing what you want YOUR life to look like.
Not someone else’s version of what makes you ‘look’ successful.
No one gets to tell you what that looks like or SHOULD look like.
No one gets to dictate that but you.
That’s why I think this conversation is really important. No one gets to make these decisions for you, or gets to put these ideas in your head without you challenging them and going, hang on, what makes sense for ME?
I know TONNES of people with successful businesses AND jobs!
So what is important to you, and what do you enjoy?
I enjoyed the perks of my job. I loved working with my clients.
(For transparency there was zero conflict of interest between the two and I was honest with my boss about having a business, so you get to make that call but always check your contract and if you can have an off the record chat with HR first then great!)
I enjoyed the fact that it meant I could invest in my business and reinvest in my business with abandon and always know there was more coming.
I enjoyed the fact that I could invest in my own growth, education and the highest level qualifications without worrying about it. I didn’t have to compromise.
I enjoyed the fact it meant I could play around a bit with my business, experiment, find my feet, have complete clarity on the direction I wanted to go. I’ve talked about this before, how do you know exactly what you want to do and who you want to work with until you’ve actually DONE it?! You need that feedback.
I enjoyed that I felt safe in both directions! As an enneagram 6 with a 5 wing where safety and security is paramount (if you don’t know about the enneagram DM me on instagram because I could talk about this for DAYS so let me know! I talk about it with all my 1:1 client so I know at least they will have understood what i’ve just said ha...but anyway, I digress!) it was an amazing place to be!
I didn’t worry about redundancy, in fact I welcomed it and waited for it...might as well get paid to leave ha!
I didn’t worry about turning the ‘wrong’ clients down. By the ‘wrong’ clients I mean, the ones we get the spidey senses about, that we can tell are going to be a bit of a nightmare. Where every fibre of our being is saying don’t do it. You won’t walk away from those in a scarcity mindset I can assure you!
I looked at my job as my business investor.
I looked at my business as my job safety.
You can see how that’s a nice place to be!
You can see how that’s a smart place to be!!
So with this in mind, can we please change this crazy narrative that having a job ‘means’ you’re not successful?
It’s simply not true.
Can we stop feeling shame if we take on full or part time work while building up your business?
Can we acknowledge it’s so much smarter than trying to build on a foundation of scarcity?
Can we acknowledge you might actually enjoy doing both? Can we acknowledge that there are almost 50% of the workforce in the UK that currently have a side gig, side hustle, run a business as well as a job?
Let’s let go of the narrative and we can figure the other stuff out.
Like how you can manage your time having both a job and a business. There’s an episode on that if you just scroll through the list list of episodes!
How to shape your business so it works for you, your clients AND around your job.
It’s possible.
I did it.
So can you.
Yes I was crazy busy at times. But I loved it. Having the business, I believe, is what made me enjoy my job again!
It gave me that sense of purpose. That sense of achievement. I’d got to a level in my job where I could do it standing on my head while running through a hedge backwards, it was part of my DNA. But having all these new things I needed to learn and investigate was exciting.
I didn’t put the pressure on myself to do it overnight (I did at first because I bought into those messages we’re peddled with too...until I stopped myself and said HANG ON...this isn’t right here!)
So...this is just the start of the conversation and the start of changing this narrative.
I would LOVE you to email me or DM me with any thoughts, comments and challenges.
And if you’ve been feeling like you have to hide your job, or that you need one and have felt ashamed so haven’t got one, if not leaving it is making you feel unsuccessful in any way, STOP!
You’re smart.
It takes balls and guts and gumption to start and run your own business. Many people wouldn’t. You are!
Give yourself the time and grace to get it where you want it to be on your terms and remember what’s important to YOU.
What YOUR version of success is, not what someone else tells you it should be!
Fx
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| What Do You Really Need Right Now? | 05 Apr 2021 | 00:12:17 | |
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What Do You Really Need Right Now?
What do you really need right now?
This is going to be super relevant for everything that’s going on right now, by that I mean lockdown in the UK specifically STARTING to ease.
We have a few more options becoming available to us.
A little more choice back in our lives.
BUT, this question is close to my heart. It’s something I use all the time myself and with clients so I invite you to think about it in the context of right now, but to use it whenever you need to.
Anytime you’re feeling anxious, stressed, having a wobble.
In a bit of a funk you can’t seem to shake.
Feeling overwhelmed or out of control.
I find it helpful in any of those situations so I hope you do too.
So what do you need right now?
We don’t often ask ourselves this do we?
We don’t tend to tune in on what NEED, emotional or physiological, is under our feelings that’s not being met.
We don’t tend to connect to this on a day to day basis, if ever.
Why would we, we’re running off autopilot most of the time, it’s how we’re wired.
So our communication with ourselves can sometimes fall a little...flat!
So I invite you to tune in just a little bit and ask yourself what you need right now?
I’ve been talking to so many people recently, clients, friends, my community on Instagram, who are actually feeling pretty anxious about coming out of lockdown.
They aren’t ready, or don’t want, things to go back to how they were.
Or perhaps they don’t want them to be different!
It’s very individual.
We might be feeling the pressure of not quite being where we wanted to be with the time we were ‘given’. Perhaps feeling like we didn’t use it to its full advantage.
Forgetting the fact it’s a GLOBAL PANDEMIC and all rules for what we get done in what time frame kind of leave the building.
We create these stories around what we ‘should’ be doing. What’s good enough and what’s not.
But according to whom?
Who says?
Who says we should have launched a business, mastered banana bread, learned jiu jitsu, piano and the russian language in this time?
There are many people looking forward to getting back to some semblance of normality, whatever that was!
But there seem to be the same number, if not more people who DON’T want that.
Who have enjoyed being at home.
Who have enjoyed a different pace.
Whose inner introvert has been having its own pajama party.
The people pleasers who have been free from obligation.
The perfectionists who have been able to let themselves off the hook a little bit.
The people who struggle with family who’ve not had to see them.
The people with the toxic friend they just can’t say no to.
There are alot of people just simply not wanting to fill up their diaries again!
Not wanting to feel like they ‘should’ or ‘have to’ make plans.
There is no right or wrong way to feel. There’s just how you feel!
You get to be curious about that and if it makes total valid sense, or if there’s another perspective that would be helpful and more beneficial to you, if there’s any self sabotage going on. But it’s for you to challenge. Not other people.
That’s not helpful and can just leave you feeling invalidated.
I’m not saying blindly follow your feelings, it’s kind of against everything I teach in terms of making the unconscious conscious so it doesn’t rule your life.
It’s about being conscious and curious to what’s really going on for you, without judgement. Curiosity is the opposite of judgement.
But operating from that place creates some serious magic and can lead to profound changes for you.
You get to set boundaries.
With other people AND with yourself! It’s an integral part of the reparenting process.
The only way you can do that is to tune in to what it is you really need?
Those plans with friends who want to all get together...you can say no, thank you.
You can be honest and say you don’t feel ready.
That anxiety you feel. You can befriend it.
Understand it’s there to protect you!
Get curious about it instead of trying to push it away and try to hear what it’s trying to tell you.
Where do you feel it in your body?
Could it be you want to be quiet.
Could it be that you want to be on your own.
Could it be that you just want more time with your family.
Could it be that you need to change your environment.
Could it be that you need to be in the company of another person, even if you still can’t hug.
Could it be that you need a bubble bath and to meditate.
There’s absolutely no judgement to be made, whatever comes up for you. (as long as it’s legal!!)
You don’t have to try and be or do anything other than listen to your body.
What feels heavy, what feels light?
If ever a client is having a wobble. Or they’re stuck in an emotion. Or in a spiral, this question is incredibly grounding and the answer can be surprising.
But you have to ask.
And you have to listen for the answer.
It’s amazing what your unconscious mind will deliver us when we just ask!
When we’re not used to talking to ourselves in this way, or listening for the answer, it can feel a little foreign at first.
Some ‘stuff’ can come up around worthiness, being good enough, deserving.
If it does, just notice it.
The more your brain and nervous system knows you want to listen and give it a bit of a voice, the more it will let you.
Almost every client thinks I’m a fruit loop when I say these things...until they see the changes and see them quickly. They see how much EASIER life becomes with these tools that we should be taught in schools.
Basic, how to be a human!
So, instead of feeling consumed by anxiety. Feeling like you can’t tell anyone because you SHOULDN’T feel anxiety. Try this.
Get clear on what it is you’re feeling.
Share with people because there will be more people than you know feeling the same.
I asked in a poll on my Instagram and the majority of people said they were feeling anxious about things changing.
So you’re not alone!
If you want access to some of my favourite emotional regulation tools and techniques, to understand what really goes on in your body and brain when you’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed, why you go there in the first place and the tools to be able to change that in the moment AND how to rewire your brain and nervous system over time for resilience then I will be looking for beta testers for my new 6 week group programme SOS. Success Over Stress.
Now, I’m literally mentioning it on here in this episode because you guys are my inner circle, I won’t be doing a big launch because I want it to be small and the beta round will be a whopping 50% off in exchange for your feedback throughout the programme, which ALSO means you’ll get extra attention and be able to tell me what you need throughout ;-)
So if you want to be on less of an emotional rollercoaster in your business and your life then all you have to do is email SOS to hello@franexcell.com or DM me SOS on Instagram and I will give you all the details and answer any questions you have!
This is distilling all my been there, done it, got the T-shirt personal experience, my training and qualifications in multiple mind and body modalities and knowing what ACTUALLY works for me and my clients. I wholeheartedly believe it’s going to be a real game changer so I’d love for you to join!
I plan to start mid-late April but I won’t be mentioning it on the podcast again so if it’s calling you all you have to do is just email me hello@franexcell.com or DM @imfranexcell. Notice if there’s anxiety bubbling up in you even thinking about it, notice if there’s any resistance, be curious and press send.
For things to change, they have to change.
So ask yourself, what do I really need right now?
Fx
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| Do You Know How To ACTUALLY Rest? | 29 Mar 2021 | 00:12:03 | |
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Do you know how to REALLY rest?
Do you know how to rest? I mean REALLY rest?
The kind you actually get the benefits from as opposed to the kind where you TELL yourself you’re resting but really your mind is racing, you’re scrolling social media, online shopping (GUILTY AS CHARGED!) and you’re feeling guilty about this imaginary ‘rest’ all at the same time!
Not the kind of things we ‘pretend’ are rest but actually end up using MORE mental energy and making us feel worse!
If you think you’re ‘resting’ but still exhausted...this could be why!
Rest will INCREASE productivity and focus.
Rest allows your brain and body to repair itself.
Rest allows your memory to be optimal.
You need it to be able to formulate ideas and listen to your intuition.
Basically...you actually NEED rest to be able to get anything DONE!
When you DON’T rest, you will procrastinate more as your body and brain’s way of trying to force you to take a break.
You’re more easily overwhelmed.
Your memory and cognitive function are impaired. MEANING...you do a worse job at the things you’re trying to do so you may as well take the bloomin rest!
You ignore the physical symptoms that might be SCREAMING at you!
The headache, the backache, the illness...
Also your ability to problem solve and think on your feet are impaired. Your brain feels foggy!
How much harder does everything feel when you haven’t had some proper rest in a while?
How are you with decision making? Problem solving? Handling things you hadn’t planned for? How do you show up in relationships? With your kids? How innovative do you feel?
If you struggle to rest, stop, switch off, there could be more at play that might need delving into where it could feel ‘unsafe’ to your nervous system.
Or you could need to ‘DO’ all the time so you don’t have time for the quiet, where the thoughts creep in!
We also have to be honest about the societal glorification of ‘work’. ‘Beast mode’. Push, push, push.
Rest can be seen as ‘weak’. Or ‘slacking off’ in some way.
It’s also worth mentioning how often it’s reinforced too!
‘You’re doing such a great job’, ‘you’re working so hard, you must be doing SO well!’ ‘I really appreciate all your hard work, thank you.’
Validation and praise indeed!
It’s craziness when you really think about it.
There’s so many reasons it could feel like a struggle to rest because you’re working against all of this. Hence the guilt!
You know you need it...but all the unconscious pressure takes hold.
You could be following a parental or primary caregiver pattern.
Lots of potential things that once you make conscious, can be healed and changed.
It could be a coping or protection mechanism that can be helped with some emotional regulation tools and techniques.
There could be some unconscious beliefs of ‘i’m not good enough’ at play causing you to over work and feel ‘guilty’ for taking time off. Perhaps you think you don’t ‘deserve’ it, or haven’t ‘earned’ it!
We need to challenge those thoughts pronto!
What are you telling yourself resting means?
You’re wasting time?
You’re not successful?
Who told you that?
Where did you pick it up from?
Sometimes it can even be something totally misguided from when we were young where we were told we were ‘lazy’ when we were resting or ‘doing nothing’or sleeping in late.
We actually learn that it’s a BAD thing to do!
So no WONDER it comes with guilt and can feel hard sometimes.
Look how much we’re up against unconsciously.
Pick it apart and see where the truth really sits.
So, we’ve assessed that rest is important.
What next?
If taking a week or even a day off right now feels too much, how could you start to train in little bits of rest in your day or week?
It’s part of the reparenting process. Figuring out these little ways in which you can do things that are good for you.
That benefits you.
Wire treating yourself well into your brain and nervous system.
That starts with challenging the narrative.
Then it’s the small ways that we can start looking after ourselves and start keeping promises to ourselves. (watch how your self esteem and self trust starts to grow with this too!)
So what REALLY helps you mentally and physically switch off?
I’m a BIG fan of a power nap. I’ve talked about this a lot. It really is a reset for your brain.
Walking or sitting in nature and being mindful is a great way to give yourself some rest from the whirring thoughts and to do lists.
Meditation is of course a biggie for this and you can grab my free stressed to success meditation as a starting point. It’s in the shownotes and my bio on instagram...it’s everywhere...go get it! I also have some meditations available in the shop on my website franexcell.com/shop
What could you do to make sure you’re getting more REAL rest?
For me rest is really about listening to my body and setting some boundaries.
We can probably all agree it would be easy to fill all our hours with work as a business owner.
Firstly, hopefully because we love what we do.
But also because the agenda is yours...you’ll never get to the bottom of a to do list, it just evolves over time.
Boundaries like, no computers after 9pm. Finishing around 5 every day. Not working weekends. No ‘work’ before 9am.
I set my phone to ‘do not disturb’ between 9am and 9pm every single day. So the only way I see notifications is if I intentionally decide to do it. Which becomes my choice rather than an unconscious draw of a dopamine hit when you see the little pings pop up like little temptresses trying to steal your attention!
What do you like to do to unwind?
How can you do more of it?
The bottom line is, if you don’t take this seriously and you get to the stage of burnout where you’re REALLY forced to rest...is that a better alternative??
Probably not!
Don’t allow the hustle culture to suck you in. You set the rules!
Fx | |||
| How To Have More Fun In Your Business | 22 Mar 2021 | 00:16:16 | |
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How To Have More Fun In Your Business
Do you actually have any fun in your business?
Hustle culture has been glorified for too long.
The idea that if you’re not working all hours, if you’re actually seeing your family and loved ones, getting some sleep, eating well and taking time out...then you’re clearly not doing it right and don’t want success enough!
We need to call time on this and bring it into our conscious thought how actually ridiculous this is rather than buying into the narrative.
AND bring a little fun back into business if you feel like it’s a little lacking!
We’ve forgotten to enjoy the journey!
We need to trigger our brain’s pleasure centre a little more. Get the dopamine and endorphins running around a little more!
Increase creativity and motivation. This is more important than we think!
Burnout is not sexy.
Stress is not sexy.
Getting ill is not sexy.
Being able to run a business YOUR way, around YOUR life is sexy.
Being clear on your boundaries and non negotiables is sexy!
Being able to actually DO the things that bring you joy is sexy!
Most people don’t actually know what that looks like.
The hustle has been normalised and celebrated and glorified to the point that we don’t consciously question it anymore.
This is something that comes up with ALL of my clients at the beginning.
We have to pick apart what’s been created, or what they’re trying to create and get back to basics of what do you actually WANT and how can we fit or tweak their goals around what’s most important to them.
The whole point the majority of us start businesses is to actually GAIN something back in our lives.
Freedom.
Spending time with your sproglets.
Some sort of work/life balance.
Doing more of what we love.
So when did that go out the window?
When did we decide having a business wasn’t meant to be fun?
So let’s have a think about how we can inject a little bit of life, a little bit more FUN into your business...you’re allowed!
Grab your journals!
Firstly, what do you want MORE of in your life in terms of fun?
Get clear on what that looks like.
Secondly, what do you actually really love and find fun about business?
Get clear on that!
What did you want MORE of in your life when you started your business?
How do you think you can incorporate even little things into your business that make it more fun and enjoyable?
For me a lot of it comes into my daily routine.
I start the day with The Class by Taryn Toomey.
Now, it’s no secret I used to struggle with actually enjoying exercise but i’ve found my jam now. I love jumping around and dancing, even though the squats and burpees nearly kill me, the fact it’s intertwined with something that I find really fun is a game changer.
The freestyle, the hopping the star jumps...I actually find myself smiling.
There’s also a great nostalgia for me for some of the movements...which I suspect is not a mistake! It’s amazing, check it out.
I also have a playlist that I dance around the kitchen or in my office too. Songs that bring me joy and just make me want to move.
Not only is it fun but ‘i'm getting the endorphins running round my body, it can break me out of a funk by shifting my state. It helps process and move emotions. It’s a no brainer really!
Singing is also one of my FAVOURITE things to do so I always incorporate that into my day.
The great thing with these so far is they really do double up as emotional regulation techniques which will also give the benefit of training a new baseline for joy and pleasure into my nervous system!
If you’re constantly feeling stressed or anxious, in all honesty you need to make time for these sorts of things.
The brain benefits you get from movement, fun, creativity, novelty, play are HUGE too so for me, this has become part of my non negotiables.
I won’t master it every day because I’m human, but it doesn’t stop me making the effort and being conscious of what the signals are telling me when I feel ‘off’ or resistant to these things.
Relationships can be a huge part of bringing more joy and fun into your business.
Relationships with peers, clients, friends.
I’ve had pajama parties with clients in different timezones.
I make it a priority to talk to my business friends and lift them up as they do me.
I have friends I talk silly nonsense to on Instagram that breaks up my day.
I have a lot of fun in my stories on Instagram. Stories are one of my favourite things. Partly because i’m nosey but also because i’ve curated my instagram to be a happy place so I see things that I know more often than not are going to be good for me. (I’m also conscious of being disciplined around my time there ha!)
I absolutely don’t take myself too seriously, even though I need to talk about serious subjects. I mean...the name of my podcast is The Positive Pants Podcast! I talk about overcoming self sabotage and how trauma affects how you show up in your business, how experiences you may have had as a child have given you deep routed protection mechanisms that get in your way.
I talk about some heavy things, some deep things, some triggering things but I always do it with a sense of humour and genuine caring for the people who choose to listen. Hopefully I make the heavy stuff feel a little lighter.
So it’s a combination. It’s being able to mix the fun with the serious.
Think about what are the things you really enjoy doing in your business?
It’s time to think outside the box.
For example, if you love collaborations and conversations with friends, how could you bring that into your business?
Launch a podcast together? A live series? Launch a programme together?
I have a HUGELY exciting collaboration coming up in the second half of the year with two other incredible entrepreneurs and actually a conversation we had is what sparked me to create this episode.
We were talking about how we can bring more fun into business in general. The fact we can be on a call for 5 hours together and feel seen, heard, laugh, put the world to rights and get passionate about what we’re creating and what we’re going to be giving to people all in one go!
That’s fun for me.
I have another business owner friend, who was actually a friend when we were both working in the media industry and have come ‘back together’ in the last year, and it’s a similar thing.
We know we’re going to launch something together...we don’t know what it is yet and that’s ok...but it’s going to happen. It’s all about letting these things percolate and marinate until they feel right! You’ll know in your gut when that is.
But we support each other, we can be silly together, we can moan and reframe in the same sentence together and laugh about our foibles.
When we’re out of this covid situation we’ll meet up in London for mini mastermind days...with food and wine. Fun! Doesn’t mean we won’t be doing serious businessy stuff and talking about issues and obstacles!
I’m so grateful that I have that. But for me, it’s a huge part of what makes my business so enjoyable and fun.
So what would be fun for you?
Connection is essential, you need to find your group of ride or dies who have your back and you can send weird GIFs or MEMEs to them and they just get you.
You need that in business.
Making sure you make time for the things you enjoy outside of your business and making sure your business fits around that, rather than taking it away. What is that for you?
How do you celebrate your wins? A big part of the work that I do with clients is around this because we just don’t do it enough.
We bypass the positives and focus on the negatives. But the reality is when we take the time to celebrate our wins it motivates us.
It allows us to embed those feelings of being proud of what we’ve achieved into our nervous system helping us create that as a baseline and make it normal. It grows our self worth.
So these small little things are NOT to be ignored.
When I get a new client my hubs and I will still crack out a bottle of wine and have a takeaway or I will buy something that I see all the time that is a reminder of the work I do, celebrating that clients growth, celebrating the trust they have in me and celebrating my hard work too.
I do the same thing for milestones. My first 1000 podcast listens I bought myself an Alex Monroe necklace. Even though I can sometimes get 1000 downloads in a day now it reminds me to not take that for granted.
To not forget that where I am now, I used to dream about getting to one day.
That’s fun for me.
Talking about injecting more fun into your business also means we need to look at what to take out.
Outsourcing time!
What tasks bring you the opposite of fun. What sucks your soul but is a necessary part of the job? Give it to someone else who DOES get joy out there...they exist!
Just start to think about these things. How could you make launching fun. What could you do that will make you laugh and you can involve others? What do you want to do more of?
Don’t judge what you find fun in comparison to other people because the bottom line is, it’s nothing to do with them.
When you have more fun in your business you will quickly find how much easier everything becomes. How much more enjoyable. How much more motivating.
You get to decide how you do things but just remember, we didn’t get into this to give ourselves more shackles and stress than working for someone else.
It’s time to take having fun more seriously. ;-)
Fx | |||
| Kindness Costs Nothing, So Why Is It Hard When We're Triggered? | 15 Mar 2021 | 00:16:29 | |
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Kindness costs nothing.
Kindness costs nothing, but when emotions are heightened it can sometimes go straight out the window.
I get it!
It’s been a heck of a year and last week was a heck of a week with a lot of divisive opinions online.
It’s as if you can feel the tension rising.
So many people have been holding in emotions for a long time. They are bound to come out somewhere.
I spoke to SO many clients and people last week who just felt heavy.
Weighed down by what was going on.
I felt it too.
There was drama, there was nastiness.
There was an us vs them mentality everywhere I looked.
There were ill thought out opinions, stubbornness, ego reactions left right and centre.
Unless you live under a rock or off grid or choose your media very wisely the first thing that caused a lot of tension was that we had the interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
My goodness did that divide opinion.
It led to some very heated debates but really when you strip it back you had a young couple wanting something simple.
For people to be kind.
For the nastiness, assumptions and negativity to stop.
To have the opportunity to defend themselves against millions of people worldwide who don’t know them!
Whether you think it was a good thing or a bad thing and whatever judgements you make about the way they went about it is of course completely up to you.
But it was certainly a conversation starter around why some people feel the need to be unkind and also why it’s something we fear happening in business that stops people getting visible.
The conversations this week turned to privilege, mental health, racism, women’s safety, sexual harassment and more.
Some big HEAVY stuff!
Things that will have personally touched most of our lives in some way shape or form.
There was anger.
There was hate.
There was upset.
There were debates about right and wrong.
Emotions were running high.
When that happens most people won’t take a second to step back and try to see all sides of the coin.
In amongst ALL of this, I was seeing blaming. Shaming. Name calling. Down right abuse in some cases.
Intentionally trying to bring others down, calling people out with the intention of damaging reputation or businesses and we need to do better.
What’s the point?
What’s another way?
There’s standing up for what’s right and there’s being nasty.
In my opinion two very different intentions and two very different outcomes.
One has the potential to question thoughts and behaviour and potentially make REAL change.
The other is just going to create more ego and escalate the situation and emotions further.
We need to seek to understand each other more.
We’re all up against our own unconscious bias, our upbringing, what we’ve been taught as children what environment we were raised in. What we modelled from our parents. What we were taught is acceptable and what isn’t.
There’s a LOT of unconscious programming driving our behaviour and our protection mechanisms.
We need to get out of reaction mode and think a little more deeply.
Imagine if we all took a minute to step back before we reacted to something. Would we make a different decision over how to handle it?
You see it in the online business world all the time.
People tearing each other down.
Being quick to lash out.
It’s a big reason people sabotage themselves in putting themselves out there in the first place. The fear of nastiness being aimed at them.
So it’s an important conversation to have on both sides I think.
To know when it happens TO you, it’s usually nothing actually about you at all.
It’s more often than not something that has been triggered in the other person.
But also, if you’ve been the one to lash out.
That’s an important conversation to have.
Understanding where that comes from in the hope you may not feel the need to take that route again.
We’re all bouncing off each other's egos ALL the time and reacting unconsciously.
But often the thing we’re REALLY reacting to isn’t the thing that’s in front of us in the moment.
When we’re hurting it’s an easy tendency to want to lash out at someone else.
There can be a lot at play under the surface.
Protecting yourself because of past traumas.
Biting before someone can bite you first!
Reacting from a place of hurt.
Seeking ways to project and vent our anger.
But really, what does it get you?
Does it ever really go well?
Does it ever make you look good in that situation?
I get it.
But it just creates gossip and drama which is no good for anyone.
Especially now, with a year of lockdown. Awful things happening all over the globe. People waking up to these unconscious bias’ that we’ve been living under our whole lives, it’s going to bring up emotion.
There’s going to be multiple opinions.
There’s going to be anger.
There’s going to be triggers.
But we can still be kind to each other even if we don’t agree with each other.
We can be brave and have difficult conversations like adults rather than putting out a derogatory post with negative intentions for the other person in the hope it ‘brings them down a peg or two’ or hurts them. Or wanting to rally other people around to your cause and validate your experience...that may or may not actually be based in truth!
To be clear, kind doesn’t always mean ‘nice’.
You can still stand up for injustice. You can make your opinion clear. But there are SO many ways to do this before the public showdown.
You can be very clear and firm in your stance and your boundaries and approach something with kindness with the hope of changing someone’s opinion. Or helping them see another side. Giving an opportunity to explain their side.
You might not achieve it but at least it’s a positive intention.
It’s nuanced.
We can reach out to the person who’s upset us privately instead of publicly.
We can be curious about why that thing has upset us so much, is it about the person...or is it about us?!
What’s REALLY going on underneath it?
If you want to lash out, what’s the intention behind that really?
If you want to criticise, put up a bad review, publicly call someone out, tear someone else down.
Why?
How would it feel to be on the receiving end?
How would you feel if it happened to your best friend?
Think before you victim shame.
Think before you call someone a liar.
Think before you judge someone for their privilege or what they wear.
Think before you make assumptions.
Think before you let your ego take over.
Think before you write that nasty comment and think about the person on the other end of it.
Pause and BREATHE before you respond.
It really can be that simple. This can be harder to do in person, but behind a screen? We ALL have that pause we can take!
Allow the rational, thinking, conscious part of your brain to come back online so you can make a decision from that place. Not one that’s reacting to or from ego, or assumptions, hurt or triggers.
Question yourself and your reactions!
You often can’t take it back, and words can do immense damage.
Be responsible for your choices over what you consume. We live in an echo chamber, particularly with social media.
When we’re triggered we need to start to notice it before we act.
We need to notice when we’re allowing ourselves to be dragged into drama.
Learn to respond, not react.
Take responsibility and regulate your emotions first.
Understand your fight or flight response has been activated, taking the prefrontal cortex (the CEO, conscious part of the brain) offline so it’s potentially not the best time to write that email!
Start to question why that thing someone said online hurt us, or angered us so much.
Did they REALLY mean it how we took it?
Is there potentially another side to this?
Another option or route to go down?
Let’s live a little bit deeper than the surface level.
With multiple, opposing opinions...who’s actually in the right?
Often we want to share our opinion and rally people around that agree with us. As humans we want to feel like we ‘belong’, we’re social creatures.
It was a heavy week. It was a heavy week being a woman. We don’t need to take that heaviness and misplace it somewhere else and make ourselves feel worse in the long run.
A HUGE number of people have been triggered this last year, particularly this last week. Myself included. But we get to take responsibility for that.
Look at ourselves with curiosity and compassion.
Try to find empathy over anger.
Let’s all just pause. Take a few breaths before we respond. And see how it changes what you want to do and how that changes the outcomes.
#bekind is still a thing...and it’s free!
Fx | |||
| Stop Waiting To Have All The Answers! | 08 Mar 2021 | 00:16:29 | |
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Stop Waiting To Have All The Answers!
Stop waiting to have all the answers before you put yourself out there. I absolutely understand the tendency but you WILL end up wasting time and holding yourself back.
So, today i’m going to give you some reasons why waiting is NOT a good thing and a few practical things to do to just get you going.
There’s a couple of subjects in particular I see come up with every single client who is new to their business.
Without fail.
So i’m going to save you some time.
The main ‘worries’ I see are these three:
I don’t know what my niche is I don’t know who my ideal client is I don’t know what my programme is
So I absolutely understand the tendency to just not take action until you figure this out.
BUT...the trick to figuring this stuff out IS taking action!
So I want you to let go of needing to think you’ve got everything nailed before you put yourself out there.
Let go of that attachment.
You just don’t need it and it WILL hold you back.
This is what beta programmes and prices are for!
Reduce the price, let people know you’re beta testing your product/service/programme and they get that discount in exchange for their feedback, testimonials and the fact that they know you will be tweaking and testing a little as you go.
If you think a beta test means it’s ‘LESS than’ the full programme, let go of that too. I LOVE signing up to a beta because you often get MORE attention, you’re there to say what you want more or less of so you get to shape it to your needs AND you get the cheaper price.
Wonderful!
So...let me talk a little bit about the three key areas.
Firstly, your niche.
In all honesty how are you supposed to know this before you’ve worked with anyone? Give yourself a break.
Yes you need the IDEA of what you THINK you want your niche to be but you have to be 100% open to finding out it doesn’t work for you.
For example, when I first started out I wanted my niche to be corporate women in their late 20s-30s who hate their job and were going through the motions thinking they were SUPPOSED to hate Mon-Fri and live for the weekend.
Societal conditioning everywhere you look is that pretty much...you’re not meant to enjoy what you do! It’s a means to an end.
So...you might think, ‘oooh that’s a great niche, I absolutely see how much those people need help and can benefit from what I offer’.
Nope!
Two problems here. ONE, they don’t actually know they have a problem!
WHAAAAAAT?
They think they’re supposed to feel how they do, it’s normal, they’re supposed to have dreams of a career change or starting a business or writing a book but it’s unattainable because you’re not supposed to do what you love. You’re certainly not supposed to make money from it.
So this makes marketing super difficult! You’re constantly in persuade and educate mode around the fact they have a problem in the first place.
They’re hard to find because they aren’t the ones hanging out in groups or on insta searching for a solution...because they don’t know they have a problem that CAN be fixed.
Second problem with this as a niche is they aren’t in the coaching world...they don’t know the cost! It’s also not a priority. We always pay for the things that are a priority right, not just a nice to have.
So when I did my market research I found they thought coaching would be about £30-£50 per session, they thought they MIGHT pay about what they’d pay for a personal training session.
You can see the issue here right?!
SO...I only really worked this out by doing the market research and working with clients at a beta rate.
So...my niche now is the SAME PERSON….just 20 steps further ahead.
So she’s usually ex corporate or been successful in some way. KNOWS she wants to start a business or is already running one but now her problem is new.
She’s sabotaging her own success. She’s getting in her own way. She knows what to do but she’s not doing it.
So you see how this is FAR more of a pain point. If you want to run a business you need to have clients, you need to use some form of content and/or social media, you need to ask people to pay you for your services. You need to do all these things that are new, outside your comfort zone and scary.
NOW the pain point is strong!
So you see? You don’t know this stuff until you DO the stuff and work with some people, with curiosity! To see if you actually LIKE working with that niche. To see what the issues are with that niche in terms of messaging.
But it’s going in with an open mind, knowing who you THINK it is you want to work with and taking it from there.
This is exactly the same for Ideal clients.
You just don’t know until you actually start working with people. And different people so you can see what you love doing and what drives you bonkers.
YES you need to know your ideal client really well, you need to get in their heads to crack your messaging BUT...you need to allow yourself the time to ACTUALLY get to know them first. They may drive you nuts!
With both niching and ideal client I want you to think of it as a dart board too. Yes you’re aiming for the bullseye BUT...you still win points outside of the bullseye right?!
So my ideal client is a female business owner. She’s holding herself back, self sabotaging and running off adrenaline! So it becomes, I help female business owners overcome self sabotage and stress less.
That doesn’t mean I don’t work with men, I do!
That doesn’t mean I don’t work with people who aren’t business owners, I do!
You see? They identify with the PROBLEM.
I also have people at the very beginning of their journey, people who have been at it a couple of years right up to multi 7 figure business owners. New level, new devil and it’s the SAME issues at each stage. BUT my services and the products i’m launching are for each of those different steps along the journey.
Which leads me nicely onto feeling like you need to have your programmes and services frameworks nailed too. This is why we have beta testers.
You don’t truly know all the steps to get a client from A to B before you’ve worked with some.
The common roadblocks that come up.
All of this HELPS you to create your programmes because you identify the need, the want and the problem.
You can have an idea of what that’s going to be but you often won’t know the exact steps until you’ve actually done it yourself!
My NICER framework (Notice, Identify, Challenge/curiosity, Evolve/empathise and Rewire/regulate) genuinely took me years to realise. Now I'm trademarking it.
I couldn’t have come up with it at the beginning. I worked with hundreds of people before I really saw the patterns and commonalities between them all. Because each client is so different and presents a totally unique set of circumstances and yet they are all struggling in exactly the same way.
So let go of needing to have all the answers to your exact niche and your exact ideal client and your exact programmes. The start of your journey is the fun bit. It’s also the scariest but it’s supposed to be fun. Approached with curiosity.
We make up all these stories about what it means to niche and have an ideal client, YES they are necessary. BUT you don’t have to nail it fresh out the gate, you aren’t married to it, you get to change it AND you will still hit people on other parts of the dartboard!
I’ve wanted to start a membership since day one of my business. Day one. That was the business model I wanted. But I also know what I want for my life, what success looks like to me and there were a few pieces of the puzzle that I couldn’t get to slot into place...until now.
I’ve also got my course framework now, my book framework. The Positive Pants Planner is coming this year. The mastermind I'll be launching with 2 other amazing business owners who believe the same things I do about business.
It’s all there, and it will all be actioned in it’s own time. You do not have to have this all figured out straight away.
AND….now i’m EXCITED about each and every one of these products BECAUSE i’ve allowed myself to really be curious. Make sure i’m not doing anything for the sake of it. Make sure it totally aligns and makes sense with me and what I want for my life.
There’s no point doing this if it’s not fun. You’ll just create yourself another job and the tax is far better there ha!
This is a lifestyle, not just something you do so allowing yourself time and curiosity and it will feel SO much easier for you.
Give yourself a break.
Take action without a need to get it right the first time and allow yourself to see what works and what doesn’t for you.
Yes you need a niche, yes you need to know your ideal clients, yes you need to make what you offer tangible. All important stuff.
But you’ll NEVER get there if you don’t allow yourself to work with some people first. To experiment, to observe yourself with curiosity.
Go do the thing. I believe in you!
And if you want to know anything more about the membership, drop me an email at hello@franexcell.com because i’m in research mode AND will be looking for beta testers ;-)
Fx
| |||
| The Way Through Your Fear | 01 Mar 2021 | 00:16:34 | |
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Move towards your fear to get over your fear
You kind of know that the best way to stop being scared of something is to move through the fear...but urgh it can feel hard!
ALL the thoughts come up.
Am I doing the right thing? Will I lose friends or loved ones? What if I fail? What if I get it wrong? What if people judge me?
ALL the symptoms come up.
Procrastination. Overwhelm. Stress. Imposter syndrome. Comparison.
All the fun things.
And to add insult to injury if you’re not conscious to what’s really happening...you start to very quickly internalise it and make yourself ‘wrong’.
Which then perpetuates the cycle of ‘i’m not good enough’ ‘it’s for other people, not for me’.
There’s a big problem here though...the only way to really know any of these answers and to get through the behaviours and stop those pesky thoughts is to do what you fear.
BUT, not all at once.
Bit by bit, piece by piece.
You don’t have to jump from A to Z without skipping all the other letters in the alphabet because that will make the negative thoughts and symptoms WORSE.
I think there’s another podcast episode coming just for that statement ha! We always want to skip straight to the end!
No, no, we have to softly softly catchy monkey on this one and build a base line of safety as we move through it.
You do that by tiptoeing your way in.
You don’t have to chuck yourself at it like a wrecking ball. I mean you can. It will work in some circumstances. BUT, for most people, the softly softly catchy monkey approach is far more effective and long lasting.
Start thinking about what’s one small thing I can do to move TOWARDS my fear.
That could be finding a safe space to do it in.
An example of that which I've talked about before is that one of my bonuses as an affiliate for Lisa Johnson’s One To Many course was a secret squirrel teeny tiny group where it was safe and encouraged to start going live.
How much does going live hold people back in their businesses? Urgh, I see it ALL the time! They moved towards their fear bit by bit...and I have to say they’re absolutely smashing it now. It’s hard to believe they were ever afraid of it!
But another dipping your toe in the water idea could be posting a story on instagram. They’re 15 seconds and only stay up 24 hours!
So have a think about breaking it down and tiptoeing into it.
Now, there’s a reason the fear is there and it’s not because there’s something wrong with you, it’s not your fault.
It’s a totally normal, biological reason.
The brain and the nervous system does not like change. At all.
And when you’re starting or growing a business, going outside your comfort zone and doing new things ON THE DAILY everything kind of works against that.
It’s unsurprising. To start with you’re constantly in a state of being consciously incompetant...DOH!
There’s a few things at play. Your brain and your nervous system don't like change, partly because it LOVES certainty.
And you’re not really giving it that right now!
The very definition of uncertainty can be running your own business!
So we’ve got to learn a couple of things.
Firstly how to identify when our threat response has got involved and being able to take a step back and recognise the protection mechanisms.
If you haven’t listened to the previous episode all about ego make sure you head over there which can be a big help in identifying it.
Fundamentally we want to be able to take that pause, step back for a second and observe the thoughts. First piece of the puzzle.
When we can understand that this is inevitable AND not permanent it becomes so much easier to be objective.
So much less emotionally charged.
Far less blame and shame!
But we also what to know how we can work with the brain and the body to try and give it some of what it needs to be able to take action. (I’ll focus on the brain mostly for today but remember the brain and body are in CONSTANT communication, 20% of messaging is from the brain to the body and 80% is from the body to the brain, you often feel it before you think it!)
So, first things first.
Let’s understand a little about what’s going on in our brain.
There are several sections of the brain specifically working when it comes to fear and it shuts off other areas of the brain that we need to be able to make conscious choices. Better decisions. Take action.
So without getting too technical i’m going to give you a little intro to some of these.
First, you’ve probably met your amygdala. You’ve probably heard about the fight, flight, freeze or fawn response. You’ve probably heard someone talk about saber toothed tigers when explaining it.
There are a few pieces of the puzzle that often get left out that I think it’s important to know so things start to click into place for you.
You have 3 key areas of the brain, The brain stem which is responsible for our unconscious actions. It also helps us breathe and our heart beat. It’s the oldest, most primitive part of the brain.
Then you have our emotional brain which is where you find our friend the Amygdala (it really is our friend, it does keep us safe, it just gets it a little wrong sometimes but it’s intentions are good!) It also is home to our basal ganglia (responsible for helping us form habits which are energy efficient….remember 95-99% of everything we do is unconscious...that’s where habits come into play. Hello autopilot!) Then we also have our Hippocampus which is responsible for memory.
So here you can see that the memory centre and fear centre are verrrrrry close friends! Memories stored in the hippocampus can activate the amygdala at the drop of a hat. AND chronic stress affects the hippocampus, affecting our memory.
So here, something that is important to recognise is that when you’ve REHEARSED something in the future….it gets stores as a memory. Uh oh!
Then your future memories of what hasn’t happened yet from when you’ve catastrophised and spent many hours contemplating the worst case scenario are now activating your fear centre!
You can see the issue here! (more on this when I talk about things we can do to calm this in a moment!)
Then, you have the prefrontal cortex which is the CEO of your brain. It’s higher level functioning. It’s where you get to make the unconscious conscious and make choices and decisions.
Are you seeing how all this is slotting into place?
Your prefrontal cortex uses up a LOT of energy so the brain works to try and conserve this by creating habits, following patterns, looking for the familiar.
This is why when it’s activated all those pesky thoughts start to come in that actively stop you taking action.
So when the amygdala is activated through fear, doing anything new, stepping outside your comfort zone….your higher level functioning gets hijacked. Meaning you can’t make those good decisions. Your PFC is where you can consciously regulate your emotions.
You also have something called your Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) which is known as the error detection system...but that’s probably for another day, but essentially it’s job is to scan for errors.
That could be where your conscious wants,don’t match up with your unconscious beliefs. Meaning it’s not ‘safe’ to take action.
Ooooooh….doesn’t just knowing that make you excited?
Show you that it’s totally normal and changeable and that there’s nothing wrong with you, there’s a way through?
I love this stuff!
So i’ve obviously massively simplified it, I could talk about this for hours but it’s just SUPER helpful to know what’s REALLY going on rather than assuming it’s us...so what's next?
You can take a step back and understand that you make perfect biological sense in these moments. Which is good.
Being able to identify and name what’s underneath that fear can take the healing to the next level.
What’s causing it to feel like life or death for your nervous system?
It could just be super simple that it’s new and you need to ease yourself in and work on creating some certainty in your brain by giving it your OWN future memories using visualisation.
I actually have an awesome Future self meditation in my shop on my website franexcell.com which is exactly for this purpose.
Start to feed your brain all the ways it CAN work out!
See yourself already having what you want. Major strategy for overcoming fear for you right there!
But it could be an indication of an out of date belief that needs looking at that is activating your ACC and/or your amygdala.
So activate your PFC higher level thinking by making the unconscious conscious and dig a little deeper.
Have an explore with your journal and try to name the fear (which also helps calm the amygdala)
What’s the emotion? What’s the fear? Where might it have come from?
You master your fear by mastering your emotions.
Knowing how to regulate your nervous system when it’s activated. (my FREE Stressed To Success Meditation helps with exactly that!)
They’re always going to come up but mastering how we react to them is hugely important and that’s what will calm them over the long term.
It’s not about suppressing, it’s about addressing.
Understanding why it’s happening and the tools to get you through. It’s absolutely not about letting it take over causing you to not take action.
Fear is going to happen.
It doesn’t matter how much you know about this stuff, it really doesn’t.
But, the more you practice the less it will have an effect, the quicker you can move through it so it doesn’t stop you in your tracks.
Remember, you make sense!
There is a way through and all the good stuff is sat there waiting for you on the other side!
Fx
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| How To Handle Disappointment | 31 Jul 2023 | 00:11:14 | |
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How To Handle Disappointment
Disappointment is something we have all and will all experience at various points in our lives.
Of course there’s a spectrum of disappointment that can go from not being able to find your favourite snack in the shop to hearing bad news of varying degrees, disappointment from other people, situations and even disappointment in yourself.
It can be that relationship you were hopeful about not working out.
It can be getting a no for something you really wanted.
I don’t need to explain disappointment to you at all. We’ve all been in the trenches.
But I’m still kind of going to anyway!
The dictionary defines disappointment as sadness or displeasure caused by the non-fulfilment of one's hopes or expectations.
I think we can all feel that one!
One of the things I have noticed throughout my years of learning about why we do the things that we do, why we react the way we react and feel the way we feel, how our brain and nervous system contributes to that and how we can learn to work WITH that information, is how much my ability to handle disappointment has changed.
I’m always talking about how feeling our feelings is so important and how what we’re aiming for when we ‘do the work’ on ourselves isn’t to ‘get rid’ of ‘negative’ emotions. Or to avoid them.
But almost learn to befriend them and see them in a different light.
To see negative emotions as part of the human existence that contributes to the sweet sweet polarity of experiencing all the positive emotions too.
To understand them more so we don’t fear them or judge ourselves for having feelings and emotions that make perfect sense!
Disappointment is one of those inevitable emotions.
Can you imagine a world when you were never disappointed…ever?
You might think it would be nice, maybe it would be, but personally it would take some magic out of life for me.
Let me explain why I think that way.
Sometimes you can think something is right for you, you want it, you don’t get it, it stings.
We’ve all been there.
However, these moments tend to be the ones that lead you to something even better. Or in a totally new direction that’s better for you. Or where you learn an incredibly valuable lesson.
It’s always been the case for me.
The last year for me has been full to the brim of disappointments for me.
AND it’s also been full of incredible experiences, deaths and rebirths of my ego aplenty, lots of twists, turns and redirects and as much as it might suck sometimes i’m totally trusting the direction and 100% know that there’s so much beauty, positivity, happiness, joy and all the other good stuff just on the other side.
When it comes to handling disappointment there’s two things to consider.
The short term. What do we actually do in the moment of disappointment?
And there’s the long term. This is what we can do to totally change and shift the way we see and respond to disappointment.
You’ll be unsurprised that it requires both cognitive and somatic angles.
So the thinking stuff and the working with the body stuff!
You’ll also be unsurprised that it involves self awareness and self reflection.
I won’t spend too much on the long term things that will help all your future disappointments because I bang this drum all the time.
You need to be focusing on the things that work with your nervous system to create more ‘flexibility’
If you’d like a deep dive into this please do listen to my interview with Stefan Chmelik, founder of the Sensate.
The more you work to create balance within your nervous system the less reactive you are and the quicker your recovery is…aka…more resilience!
Focusing on breathing techniques like Heartmath, using devices like the Sensate (there’s a discount code in the show notes)meditation, mindfulness, EFT, diet, exercise, sleep. All the key essentials.
So let’s talk short term, you’re in the thick of the disappointment.
First is to of course allow it to be there without judgement. It makes sense that the disappointment would be there. You get to feel it, often disappointment can come with grief too and it’s important that you allow yourself to feel what’s there. (Skip to the episode on feeling your feelings if you need help with understanding some of the tools that can help)
Whether that’s on your own if you feel you have the capacity, with a friend or loved one or a licensed professional. Surround yourself with good people.
You’ll find when you can do that, you’ll be able to take a step back and see the situation more clearly.
You can analyse how you were feeling about that thing happening or not happening in the first place. Did you have real clarity in your mind
Be kind and have self compassion.
It’s always worth checking your expectations vs reality. Was it a realistic outcome? Were you rigid in your thinking? By that I mean, this or NOTHING else thinking.
The next stage is, what do you want to do about it? What do you want your next step to be? Make sure you don’t stay ruminating on it for any longer than is necessary and you take action to move forwards. Whatever you decide for that to look like.
Can you go as far as allowing yourself to be excited about the redirect? If you have beliefs in any sort of ‘higher power’ getting involved, can you trust it?
What could you learn from it?
Is it the kind of disappointment where it would be incredibly helpful to talk to a professional about it?
Can you get yourself back in the game and be open to disappointment knowing that you’re going to be absolutely fine and any future redirects could lead to something positive?
That’s often the hardest thing with disappointment, how we’ll try and protect ourselves from it happening again.
Can you be brave and stay open?
Sometimes hard things happen, and that’s ok. I always love the phrase ‘it’ll be ok in the end, if it’s not ok, it’s not the end’ Kind of says it all really.
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| Wellbeing Series: Tripping Our Way To Change With Jonathan De Potter | 22 Feb 2021 | 00:58:14 | |
Show note links: Find out more about Jonathan De Potter and his amazing retreats: https://www.behold-retreats.com
I had an amazing chat with Jonathan de Potter in this episode. The transformational effects of plant medicine is something I've been curious about for a long time so I loved having this conversation.
We talked all about the benefits of psychedelics in mental health, busted a few myths, the ever growing body of research into the field, how they can help you reach your full potential and we shared a lot about our passions in the field of personal development and growth. My kind of chat!
Jonathan is the Founder of Behold Retreats, passionate about plant medicine, and believes that absolutely everyone can improve their mental health and consciousness.
Jonathan believes that in these times of change, the single most valuable contribution any of us can make is to focus upon our own personal and spiritual development.
Behold Retreats facilitate life-changing plant medicine journeys to explore your inner world, discover your truth, and live to your full potential.
The specialist guides clients that are ready to accelerate personal and spiritual growth to realize the full transformational benefits of plant medicine like Ayahuasca and Psilocybin.
A primary focus for Jonathan is to raise awareness and education on the subject of plant medicine, and to begin conversations on if and how to bring this important science to the many cultures in Asia-Pacific.
Prior to working in plant medicine, Jonathan worked in management consulting, supporting clients in APAC with innovation, digital strategy, scaling, and transformation programs.
I hope you enjoy listening to this eye opening conversation as much as I enjoyed having it!
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| Let’s Stop Saying We’re Fine If We’re Not! | 17 Feb 2021 | 00:12:15 | |
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Let’s stop saying we’re fine if we’re not
Let’s stop saying we’re fine if we’re not.
It’s so counterintuitive but it’s also very loaded in many ways!
Where does the impulse come from to reply ‘I’m fine, yeah good’ to the question ‘how are you?’...even if it’s not true?
It’s such a funny societal thing that I’d like to dig into a little bit in the hopes that if you’re listening you might choose to respond differently and create some space and freedom for yourself.
Maybe not with everyone, but maybe with someone who matters.
This last year has been very, very….weird! None of this is normal.
I know I have listeners all over the world but here in the UK we’re still in a full lockdown across the country. And I feel like this one is hitting people a little harder.
We also have to be honest about some of the big things that have been going on in the world this last year!
This has not been a ‘normal’ year.
It’s been a year full to the brim of collective and personal trauma.
But it seems more than ever people don’t want to share what’s really going on for them.
There’s so much opinion online telling you what you should or shouldn’t do, think, feel or say or be that we’ve become disconnected to what or who that even is for ourselves.
This is leading to a denial of negative feelings. Guilt for having more than other people. Feeling like you have to keep quiet. Like if you have it better than someone else it means you haven’t got a right to feel bad.
It’s all total rubbish.
It’s all perspective too.
For example, there are people who are suffering and struggling because they’re on their own. There are people who are suffering and struggling because they can’t be on their own.
There are people loving that they can’t be on their own and there are people loving being on their own.
So who’s right in this example?
Who has a right to feel bad, who doesn’t have a right to feel good because someone else feels bad?
Can you see how bonkers this way of thinking is?
It’s creating fear around our own feelings and emotions.
Even if you don’t want to share your feelings with the world you should at least feel ok sharing with your friends and loved ones, no?
How is anything going to change if you don’t?
If you’re in that space, how much progress do you think you’re going to make?
This goes for life and business!
How helpful do you think it is feeling like you’ve wasted this time in lock down if you haven’t made 7 figures in your business, while learning ballet, greek and guitar online and becoming a qualified chef and dancer?
I mean…
Can we all take a little step back for a minute?
I don’t mean this just related to the shocking 12 months we’ve all had.
I mean it in life in general.
Can we all just start being more honest about our feelings without feeling bad about it?
To other people, and to ourselves?
Sometimes someone else’s perspective, or a different viewpoint can change yours in an instant. Meaning you save TONNES of time not feeling rubbish! So why do we deny ourselves this?
Why do we feel like we aren’t ‘allowed’ or ‘shouldn’t’ or that it’s socially ‘unacceptable’ to struggle sometimes?
Challenge that belief. Where does it come from? If one of your friends or loved ones was having a hard time would you want them to tell you?
So many of us are so emotionally disconnected to ourselves. Your emotions drive your behaviour so it’s worth having a look at right?
We all have our strategies for dealing with big emotions too.
That might come in the form of procrastination, numbing, overworking and heading for burnout, not taking any time for rest, not looking after our bodies, addiction...so many strategies that could be worked through by just admitting you don’t feel fine!
Let’s realise why we’ve learned to do this in the first place.
It’s been frowned upon in society to be negative, to moan...even using those words isn’t great is it. Why is being honest about not feeling great considered ‘moaning’ in the first place?
We’ve been taught time and time again that we ‘shouldn’t’ feel certain ways.
That they’re undesirable in some way.
By society and by us.
It could be that we were punished as children when our big emotions were inconvenient so we were taught to deny them or hide them.
This is what happened to me, I was at boarding school ages 11 and my best friend back home died suddenly. The teachers, my friends, no one around me knew what to do with a hysterical 11 year old girl and I couldn’t run to my parents so I learned that big emotions were inconvenient, they were something to be ridiculed.
It meant as much as I was a very empathetic person and was ALWAYS talking to other people about thier feelings, I wasn’t doing it myself.
It also eluded me BECAUSE I was always the one having the deep and meaningful conversations with people at a party, I was the one helping them solve their problems...but I hadn’t realised I was ignoring my own.
Which meant they stayed pent up inside of me and would often come out at times when the emotion I was feeling was nothing to do with what was right in front of me. For example, feeling rage at a partner. It was coming from somewhere else.
Emotions have a funny way of doing that when you deny them and don’t listen.
It’s taken a lot of work to unlearn this.
The same thing comes to feeling like we ‘shouldn’t’ ask for help. That it means we’re failing in some way, or not good enough.
But can you think of a time you HAVE been honest with someone, or they’ve been honest with you and it’s made things 10 times better in a short space of time?
If we were all a bit more honest about this stuff with ourselves and those close to us...we might see how common it is and feel less alone.
We might also be able to move through it more quickly. It doesn’t help to deny any of this. It just makes it last longer!
Why are we so afraid of the truth really?
Are we scared that someone may judge us?
Might think we’re failing or not doing well?
Where does the shame and embarrassment really come from?
Who’s judgement specifically are we afraid of?
Is it a fear of being rejected?
Is it the fact that if we say it out loud it becomes real?
Are we afraid it might upset someone or cause conflict in some way?
Does it not fit in with the identity you’ve built for yourself? The strong, positive, always has it together person?!
Is it because it’s such a programmed, automatic question that you don’t know if the person asking it REALLY even wants the answer?
Do you even know what you really feel if you had to name it?
There’s so much unconscious programming in all of this.
I just want us to start to challenge it a little and not just accept our thoughts as facts all the time.
There’s power in radical honesty...particularly with ourselves.
If you don’t want to talk to a friend or loved one then talking with a coach or therapist can really help you unpick all of this and start to make progress and normalise being able to feel, be honest about and communicate your feelings.
Let’s try and bring back some connection while we have to be apart.
So next time someone asks, ‘how are you?’ What’s the real answer?
What’s the worst that could happen if you just said it out loud?
What’s the story you’re telling?
Your emotions are valid my love.
Sometimes there’s an easy reframe, a different perspective that can totally change your outlook in an instant.
What are you telling yourself happens if you’re honest?
This goes for generally in life, around our current situation but in your business too.
Wouldn’t it be better to find a way out of the struggle when you don’t have to stay there?
Stop denying your feelings. Stop denying your experiences. They deserve your attention.
It’s ok to feel your feelings. It’s far more exhausting to hide them.
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| Where Are You Saying Can't, But Really Mean Won't? | 08 Feb 2021 | 00:09:09 | |
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Where are you telling yourself you can’t, but really mean won’t?
Where are you telling yourself you can’t have, do or be something when the reality is you won’t or don’t want to?
Oof...if this title hit you between the eyes then listen up!
This is going to be a little tough love, WITH love episode.
I have been JUST as guilty of this in the past, and still today...but now I have the consciousness and curiosity to know the difference between the two.
So, let’s dig into this a little bit deeper shall we?
The ‘I can’t’ gremlin is a loud one. I see it rearing its ugly head all the time. Usually when you think about something you want to launch.
Or when you’re offered a new opportunity that could make you visible.
The bottom line is, you really CAN do anything you put your mind to. You’ll know I'm a believer of that if you’ve been listening for any amount of time.
I don’t believe it, I know it to be true. I’m surrounded all the time by people doing what they never thought possible and I feel HUGELY privileged to witness it and often play a little part in making it happen.
Nothing brings me more joy.
But how do we start to get YOU on that path, to KNOWING anything is possible for you.
As always, it starts with the awareness piece.
Where are you telling yourself you can’t do something? I previously did an episode on this that will help you start to identify it.
Even when we look at the word ‘can’t’ in the context of not having the knowledge or skills yet...it’s still not true.
You can’t YET, but you still can if you find the knowledge or the skill.
Whereas ‘won’t’ is you don’t want to do it. This could be based around your values and morals. This could also be based around laziness. It could also be based around fear.
The word can’t...what does it make you feel?
Stress? Shame? Guilt? All of the above? And what does the word won’t make you feel?
Slightly more in control? A bit sticky because you have to own it? More empowered?
But isn’t it the truth really?
You’re making a choice.
That choice will be based on a TONNE of unconscious programming so it’s absolutely not your FAULT.
BUT, you do get to choose to look at it dead in the face and challenge it!
It’s a shift of power.
Amazing what a little language tweak can do huh!
You’ve always got to go a few layers deeper than the surface of what you’re telling yourself.
Behind the can’t, is the won’t...what's underneath the won’t?
Is it ‘unsafe’ to take action? Are you fearing judgement? Are you fearing failure? Do you actually just not want to do it?
We need to get your actions to match up to what you want for your life.
Is it possible that underneath what you consciously think you want, that you don’t really?
This business owner malarky is one hell of a journey of self discovery.
But it’s so worth it.
When you know yourself on this kind of deeper level a whole world of opportunity opens up.
You’re more honest with yourself.
You don’t have the same doubts.
Your inner self talk is FAR kinder.
You won’t continue to buy into your own excuses.
Your own growth will be exponential!
Remember, when you’ve told yourself the same thing over and over, you’re going to believe it more and more. Your brain is going to filter out more evidence that it’s true, and ignore the evidence that it may not be.
When you can get to the core truth of the ‘I can’t’ you can make decisions. Based on that truth. Not the rubbish your ego has been telling you.
Do you see how there could be a monumental shift in how you see yourself when you think this way?
When you question your own motives with curiosity...remember no need to be judgy! It will have served a purpose many times over. You get to decide if it still does.
So when you catch yourself telling yourself you can’t do something because you don’t have the time, or the money, or you feel you’re not good enough, that’s for other people not for me…
When you catch yourself there. Ask yourself if it’s really true. Say the word won’t and see if it feels more true...a vast majority of the time it will.
You’ll feel it’s truth in your body.
Yes it can feel difficult sometimes to acknowledge you’ve been getting in your way with this one word. But you get to take responsibility.
You get to be excited because you now know that it’s not true!
How amazing is that!
Everything is open! Everything is more honest!
The power that gives you is immense.
Please don’t sell yourself short. If it’s possible for someone else it’s possible for you!
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