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How I Handle Pre-Performance Nerves

How I Handle Pre-Performance Nerves

by | Sep 20, 2023 | Mindset

“The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”
~ Nelson Mandela

I want to share with you a few things I do whenever I feel nervous about “performing” in my business. That might be teaching a class, doing a live video, being interviewed, or speaking to someone else’s audience and even though I dislike the term performance, I trust you’ll get what I mean when I say that’s how it can feel to us!

As a solopreneur who is committed to getting the word out about conscious business and ethical marketing, I regularly need to face my fears and put myself at the front of the room, so to speak.

To give you a few examples, I presented on authentic outreach to Sarah Santococe’s Humane Marketing Circle, hosted a live online workshop (or 2), and was one of 4 speakers at a roundtable discussion on business model for Tad Hargrave. All of these things, to varying degrees, result in what I’m calling pre-performance nerves.

Back when I had a 9–5 office job, I had a lot of presentations to do and they absolutely terrified me. My voice would start shaking, my stomach would be in knots, I’d feel my face flush and I’d be dying inside (side note: people always told me I came across as very confident and didn’t see any of what I was experiencing inside). The thing was I didn’t have a choice, they were part of the job description, so I sucked it up and somehow got through the excruciating anxiety of it all.

So, you can imagine as a business owner, choosing to volunteer myself for speaking opportunities or “putting myself out there” has required some courage on my part. What spurs me on though is knowing that people need to know that I and my business exist if they are going to buy from me. So I’ve developed a couple of strategies I always do when I start to feel the nerves of presenting get the better of me.

I think about people who love me

I’m a proud Mama of two gorgeous boys and I have a wonderful and loving partner. I keep on my desk at all times photos of the four of us together as a family. Whenever I’m about to do something scary, I’ll pick up one of my photos and take a good hard look and I remind myself that no matter how badly I do in this… interview, presentation or speaking slot, they will still love me. They won’t care if I umm or ahh, they won’t care if I forget my words or encounter a tech snafu. To these 3 people, I’m already a hero and that really helps me to put whatever I’m about to do into perspective. Their opinion matters to me more than anyone else’s and it won’t be affected by how I perform for a work thing and just remembering that can be enough to calm my nerves.

I think about the future

In a similar vein, if I’m feeling particularly nervous, I like to think about a point in time after the event has happened and imagine how good it will feel once it’s over.

Usually, that point in time is the boys coming home, full of energy and life, wanting to hug me and tell me about their day. I like to think about and revel in the sensations of the relief and elation I know I’m going to feel once the scary thing I had to do is now over. I’ll even look at the clock and calculate how long it will be before this scary thing will be out of the way and not something I have to worry about anymore. Focusing on those future sensations often is enough to override or at least quieten any anxiety I might be feeling.

I think about my mission

Sometimes, pre-performance anxiety can come in the form of inner chatter like “who am I to share this stuff”, “there’s nothing special about what I have to share”, “everybody’s probably heard all of this before” etc, I’m sure you know how it goes! When that’s the case, I remind myself of the relief I felt when I first heard or learned of some of the things I now share with my audience and other people’s.

I think about the impact everything I have learned about conscious business and ethical marketing has had on me as a business owner and the growth and evolution of my business and I remind myself of my mission to spread that message.

When I was on a speaking panel with some giants in my industry who have been in business twice as long as me and make far more money. Initially, I felt totally inadequate, but as I remembered my mission I realised that for many people in the audience, the gap between themselves and some of these speakers is so huge that it might feel intimidating or overwhelming to consider how to bridge it.

My goal then became to tailor my message for those people in the audience earlier on in the journey who I can still relate to. That really helped me to anchor into the fact that I have an important message and experience to share.

I remember previous performance successes

Given I’ve felt pre-performance anxiety and nerves many times in my life but have yet to really blow a speaking opportunity and have always received positive feedback. I also like to remind myself that even though there is fear and anxiety, I can do this. I have a wealth of experience of doing things like this and not messing up.

Now each of these things on their own might not seem like they’d be enough to quel pre-performance fears but for me, they do the trick. Plus the more times I put myself out there and face the fear, the easier it becomes. Will I ever be nerves free ahead of an important speaking opportunity? I don’t think so but I think that’s a good thing. It’s what drives me to prepare and practice, which I do regularly. It’s a sign that I care about doing a good job.

How about you? I’d love to know if you have any tips or tricks for managing your nerves in situations like these. Feel free to let me know in the comments.

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Once a week, in the form of an e-letter, I share the best of what I know about building a business with integrity for conscious business owners.

The intention behind these letters is to be a voice for integrity within your (undoubtedly) cluttered inbox. To be the one email you can count on to contain strategic and soulful advice for building a business without selling your soul.

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What To Do If You’ve Lost Your Business Mojo

What To Do If You’ve Lost Your Business Mojo

by | Jan 11, 2023 | Mindset, Uncategorized

“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.”
– Maya Angelou

I’d like to talk to you about something that came up in a client session and how to make sense of it. What to do when we lose our business mojo or feel like we’ve fallen out of love with our business. Having been through this myself and coached countless others through it, I wanted to share the 4 main reasons behind this feeling and what to do about it.

This is the one I think is the least common but ironically it’s where many business owners go first. You might have experienced the “burn it all to the ground” feeling yourself. You know the one, when you just feel so sick of your business that you find yourself daydreaming about doing something completely different, like a whole other niche or even giving up on being a business owner altogether and getting a job. I think we’ve all been there at some point or another.

Rather than burning your business to the ground, however, I’m going to suggest that we can usually rekindle our love for our business by making one of three changes. Perhaps, there is a change you need to make regarding what you are doing in your business, or there is a change you need to make regarding how you are doing things in your business or maybe you’re feeling disillusioned and beaten down by a lack of tangible results and a change of thinking about what that means is all that is needed.

Let’s look at each of these in turn.

This is where we need to consider what we are doing in our business. This could be within our business model (the products and services we offer) or it could be within the back end of the business (how we administrate and manage our business). Perhaps we are offering long-term 1:1 coaching packages when our sweet spot would be one off single sessions. Perhaps we’re offering a group program when our sweet spot would be getting creative with online courses. Perhaps we love delivering our services but hate the marketing and admin involved in running our business.

Whatever it is, there’s a chance that you could easily reignite your passion for your business if you just make some changes to what you are doing. Given we’re nearing the end of the year, it’s the perfect time to to review what you do in your business and what you could do differently in 2023.

Suggested action:

Open up a blank page on your computer or in a notebook and write at the top of it the following question: What am I doing in my business that I really don’t enjoy? Then go ahead and list out everything that you DO in your business that feels heavy or drains you of energy. Once you have your list go though it line by line and write one of the following options: Stop, Change, Delegate or Automate.

You essentially want to assess each item on your list and ask yourself can I stop doing this altogether? Can I change what I am doing here (For example, changing long-term coaching programs to short-term or single sessions) or is this a task I can delegate to someone else or automate with a piece of software or a process?

This is one that came up for me many years ago when I started to fall out of love with my 1:1 coaching service. It was back when I was life coaching and I had reached a point in my business where things were going really well, my prices were at an all time high and I had more clients saying yes to working together than ever before.

The odd thing was I started to dread going to work on my business on a daily basis and I couldn’t for the life of me work out why. I was so confused that I should feel this way, just as I was starting to see real success with my coaching. A few months later after several conversations with coaches and mentors of my own, I finally worked out that the success I had been experiencing had changed how I was showing up to my client calls.

Because of the higher price and higher numbers of clients, I had unconsciously started to worry about losing it all, this had made me less bold in my coaching and had brought the people pleaser out in me. Instead of challenging my clients, I was appeasing them. Of course, this felt awful and once I rectified it, I started to enjoy my clients sessions once again.

I share this example as a way to illustrate the idea that how we are showing up our work can really affect how we feel about our work. This is just one example. For you, it might be how you’re doing your marketing. See here for more on that.

Suggested action:

Open up a blank page on your computer or in a notebook and write at the top of it the following question:
Is there anything in the way I am delivering my offerings that could be contributing to the funk I am feeling?
Journal on this question until you’ve explored everything about the way in which you are showing up to and delivering your work. Given that there might be things here that you are unaware of, you might also want to consider talking it through with a business colleague, coach or mentor.

This is a big one. I see business owners dealing with some version of this on a regular basis. In response, I often talk about the business journey, which takes us from point A — starting our business to point B — succeeding in our business and the fact that during any time in between those 2 points, we’re likely to experience phases where we feel disillusioned or frustrated that we’re not where we want to be yet.

One antidote to this is to manage our expectations. Many of us are operating in a toxic online marketplace, where the predominant narrative is one of fast and exponential success. What I’ve realised from over 10 years of working for myself and over 6 years of supporting other business owners to succeed is that slow, incremental success is not only more realistic, but it’s also more fulfilling and long-lasting.

Suggested action:

Read this article I wrote on the pains of business growth and this article on the stages of business growth.

Next take some time to think about and question your inner dialogue about your progress. I talk to business owners all the time who are seeing results, but, because they are not as big as they want or expect, they dismiss them.

Next open up a blank page on your computer or in a notebook and write at the top of it the following question: What can I celebrate today about my business growth journey? Write down all your wins, the small and big ones — you’ll be surprised how easily we forget what is actually working when we are so focused on what is not.

So I’m curious, for those of you feeling in a funk with your business, has this helped shed any light? If so, please let me know in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you.

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Once a week, in the form of an e-letter, I share the best of what I know about building a business with integrity for conscious business owners.

The intention behind these letters is to be a voice for integrity within your (undoubtedly) cluttered inbox. To be the one email you can count on to contain strategic and soulful advice for building a business without selling your soul.

If you want to receive the Soulful Strategies Weekly, simply share with me your name and email address below and you’ll start recieving emails right away.

Five Things I’m Doing To Start The Year Off Well

Five Things I’m Doing To Start The Year Off Well

by | Jan 4, 2023 | Mindset, Uncategorized

“If you believe you can change — if you make it a habit — the change becomes real.”
~ Charles Duhigge

I want to share with you five things that I’m doing to start the year off well. My hope is that they may inspire your own list of things that can support you to start the year on the right foot.

The key to all of these things is that mainly they are not specifically “business” related. They are things that are key to improving my personal life, which I know will, in turn, have a positive impact on my business.

1. Clearing my space

I spent several hours cleaning and organising my office. I’m so grateful to have a dedicated room from which to run my business, however, when we moved into the new house, my office was a hot mess of boxes, piles of paper and uncared for plants. Not a space I really enjoyed spending time in.

I got ruthless and threw a lot of old papers into the recycling, found a home for everything that needed one, watered and pruned my plants and cleaned the floor and surfaces. It felt sooo good.

It was so wonderful to start the day in this space and I know that keeping it clean and organised is going to be essential for my mental wellbeing over the year. Clutter and chaos in my external environment definitely has a negative impact on how I feel on the inside so I’m excited to cultivate more calm by keeping my office tidy and organised.

2. Getting more sleep

I typically don’t get enough sleep. Period. On a daily basis, by the time my partner and I have got our two boys to bed, tidied up and washed the dishes, it usually close to 10pm. Given that we need and want some time to relax, decompress and connect with each other before bed, this means we often go to bed way too late. We were often getting to sleep as late as midnight, only for our alarm to go off at 6.30am! Cue exhaustion.

We’ve spent a lot of time talking about how to fix this, including getting better at meal-planning so that we can eat earlier and thus start the boys bedtime routine earlier, so that we can be ready to start winding down at 9pm instead of 10pm. We’ve made a promising start on this.

We’re also committed to having less screen time in the evenings and reading more before bed so that we sleep better.

3. Daily meditation

My mind, body and soul has been craving more mindfulness in my day to day for months (if not years!) now. Having small children and a busy business to look after has meant that some of my spiritual practices have taken a back seat in recent years. I’m also not one who does well with typical, silent, sitting meditation and so for many years my meditative practice was running. However, since having children, as a result of a compromised pelvic floor and related lower back pain, running hasn’t been on the agenda for me.

A while ago my partner bought me some virtual reality goggles for my birthday so that I could use them for fitness classes when weather or workload prevented me from getting outside to exercise. What I’ve discovered recently is that they are also great for meditation.

I’ve found an amazing app called Tripp, which I’ve been using morning and night to meditate. The interactive, immersive nature of the guided meditations really works for me and I’m already feeling so much calmer and less stressed out.

4. Daily exercise

This one is huge for me. I know that a lack of exercise in recent years has left me low on energy and feeling disconnected from my body. Working online means I’m sitting down for much of the day and a lack of movement over time leaves me feeling sore and achy and less inclined to move my body. It’s a negative cycle.

I’m now doing a combination of walks in nature and boxing and dance classes on my virtual reality goggles to make sure I spend some time each day moving my body.

We also dusted off our bicycles at the weekend and went on a lovely family bike ride in nature which is something we’re committed to doing more of as a family. Being more active gives me heaps more energy.

5. Drinking more water

For years I’ve been in the bad habit of making myself a cup of coffee to drink on my client calls. Given that I can often have as many as 3 or 4 sessions a day, my caffeine intake has definitely contributed to low-level feelings of stress a feeling of being wired. And given that my go-to drink is coffee, I’m aware that I’m in no way drinking enough water and that doing so has a negative impact on my energy levels and overall sense of well being.

I’ve committed to drinking more water each day so that I avoid the effects of low-level dehydration and reap the benefits of drinking enough water each day.

And that’s it, five new habits (not resolutions) that I’m committed to implementing in my life this year.

I appreciate that none of the things on this list are particularly groundbreaking, but it’s been really helpful for me to think about the key habits I want to put in place that will have a ripple effect on both my personal and professional life. How about you? What new habits might support you in 2023? Feel free to let me know in the comments.

SIGN UP FOR MY SOULFUL STRATEGIES WEEKLY

 

Once a week, in the form of an e-letter, I share the best of what I know about building a business with integrity for conscious business owners.

The intention behind these letters is to be a voice for integrity within your (undoubtedly) cluttered inbox. To be the one email you can count on to contain strategic and soulful advice for building a business without selling your soul.

If you want to receive the Soulful Strategies Weekly, simply share with me your name and email address below and you’ll start recieving emails right away.

10 Practical Ways To Minimise Business Overwhelm

10 Practical Ways To Minimise Business Overwhelm

by | Apr 13, 2022 | Mindset

dded”Putting first things first means organizing and executing around your most important priorities. It is living and being driven by the principles you value most, not by the agendas and forces surrounding you.”
~ Dr. Stephen R. Covey

In this blog, I’m sharing 10 practical things you can do to better understand overwhelm and to minimise its impact on your day-to-day business activities.

For me overwhelm is nearly always an indicator of fear. When I feel overwhelmed I know that, in that moment, my mind has lost sight of the here and now, that I’ve become attached to some desired outcome in the future and the overwhelm has crept into the space between the two.

For me overwhelm is the fear that I won’t realise my desired outcome and a sign that I’ve become focused on how things should be versus how they are and then from that place taking the single most simple next step.

If overwhelm is affecting your ability to get things done in your business (or just making you feel low), take a look through this list and choose the actions that speak to you.

1. Get it out of your head.

The first thing I do when I recognise that I am feeling overwhelmed is to make a list of everything on my plate. It sounds super simple because it is. Making a list gets all of the various things you are juggling out of your head and onto a piece of paper, the key is to include everything no matter how small or silly they may seem.

I’ll never forget the most powerful coaching session I ever had (and I’ve had many!). I got on the call with my coach and I was feeling terrible, really low and totally overwhelmed. He told me to open up my notebook and write down the number one thing that was bothering me. After that, he asked me what else? And what else? And what else? Until I had filled four pages of my notebook. At the end of it, we reviewed the list and he said to me “no wonder you’re feeling overwhelmed, who wouldn’t with all of this to deal with?” I instantly felt better. Just getting those things off my chest and out of my head eased the feeling of overwhelm significantly.

The overwhelm was coming from feeling like I should have had it more together, the overwhelm dissipated when I found a place of acceptance with what was.

2. Prioritise.

Once you’ve made your list, you’ll want to organise it. Often when we are feeling overwhelmed, we’re ruminating on the million different things that we believe we could or should be doing, instead of focusing on the next most important step. Here’s where we need to prioritise. Personally, I like to organise my tasks using Stephen Covey’s 4 quadrants (see image below) so that I can quickly eliminate anything that is not important (Quadrants 3+4) and spend my valuable time on what is important (quadrants 1+2). I no longer need to use the 4 quadrants diagram to do this, these days, I instinctively know what is important and/or urgent and can disregard the rest.

To deal with my most important tasks for the day, I like to identify them and then schedule them in my diary, so that I can take into account any pre-existing appointments and how long things get done. If that means I can only do 1–3 of the urgent and important tasks on my list then that is what I schedule, nothing more.

I also recommend never committing to more than 3 tasks a day regardless of the time and space you have. Any more than 3 and our minds inevitably veer towards overwhelm. Besides, there’s nothing to stop you from doing more if you get your 3 things done early.

3. Limit your inputs.

Given the world we now live in, it’s no wonder that overwhelm is a common occurrence. We are bombarded by information on a second by second basis. With the internet, social media and the accompanying barrage of pings, notifications and reminders, not being in a state of overwhelm can often feel like an insurmountable task.

This is where it becomes really important to limit your inputs. There are plenty of things you can do to minimise this assault on your senses. Turn off notifications, remove apps from your phone if you have to, delay checking email until later in the day and avoid mainstream media at all costs (if you want to protect your mental health!).

I was talking to someone once who always seemed to be overwhelmed and depressed by the state of the world yet continued to digest the very mainstream media that perpetuated that state. I make a conscious choice not to watch or read mainstream media, precisely because I know that is designed to play on our fears in order to maximise profits.

If there are inputs in your life that don’t serve you, my best advice is to limit or eliminate them. This can take time, but it’s often easier to do than you think. Next time you’re on the receiving end of something that leaves you feeling overwhelmed ask yourself, can I eliminate this somehow? (unsubscribe, block, remove notifications or stop participating in).

4. Watch your mindset.

Sometimes when we have found something overwhelming in the past (like schedules, social media, finances or planning), we develop a fixed mindset around it, i.e. we get very black and white about it. We start to believe that we just don’t do well with that thing and immediately start to feel overwhelmed when faced with it.

I’d like to gently challenge you here to cultivate a growth mindset and create space for something new to emerge. I’ll give you a personal example. For years, I told myself that I was terrible at focus and found it very hard to concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time. After living for several years with someone who is incredibly focused (sometimes to the extreme), I started to notice my own capacity for focused work increase.

When I allowed myself to question the assumption that I was a person who was very easily distracted and therefore unable to focus, change became possible. These days I wouldn’t dream of describing myself as unfocused — quite the opposite. I’m perfectly capable of sitting down to a piece of work and getting into a focused state for several hours if I have to. By allowing myself to believe that I could become a focused person and working on the skillset to achieve that, I became one.

Consider when in your business life you always revert to a state of overwhelm, is there a possible mindset shift here?

6. Shine a light.

Fear lives in the dark — when we shine a light on something, it can become less scary and overwhelming, If we’re scared of numbers, then working on our financials will feel overwhelming and uncomfortable. That’s because there is a barely audible script running in the background telling us we don’t know what we’re doing.

If you become conscious of that script and seek to change it by empowering yourself with knowledge, then change is possible. Why not take some to learn more about something you find overwhelming and watch the overwhelm dissipate.

When we know how to do something, we feel good about doing it.

So consider now what things in your business are causing overwhelm because of a lack of knowledge or skill and then take some steps to rectify that.

7. Focus on the present.

As I’ve already mentioned I’m a firm believer that overwhelm occurs when we’ve become disconnected from the present moment. So it follows that one way to ease feelings of overwhelm is to do something to connect with the present moment.

One way to do this is to bring our attention to the breath. Another might be to get out of our heads and into our bodies. If you don’t have a regular mindfulness practice like meditation, yoga, movement or dance, consider starting one. I truly believe you’ll notice the impact it has on your feelings of overwhelm.

8. Simplify the task/offering.

Often we feel overwhelmed because we simply have too much to do. I know that there are times in my working week when there are more things that need to be completed than I have time in the day to complete them.

Here is where I recommend scaling back what you do to make your tasks/offerings simpler. Let me give you some examples.

If you offer 1:1 and started out by always writing up post-session notes to send to clients, but as you’ve got more and more clients, now struggle to find the time, stop doing it.

If when you send your weekly newsletter you always like to share at least 5 links to other useful resources but you’re finding it takes too long to pull these together, give yourself permission to stop doing it.

A lot of the people I work with (and I include myself in this camp) are chronic over givers/perfectionists. Meaning there is often scope to scale back how much we do in any given task or client offering. It can feel challenging to pare things down but believe me, the extra space it will give you will be worth it.

9. Adjust your expectations.

Closely related to #8 but more focused on how we think about what we offer. It’s important to acknowledge when our expectations are too high.

I was talking to a client a while ago who has these amazing templates she uses in her business, they are gold. In a beta collaboration, she was working on, she had agreed to turn her (already amazing) templates into workbooks, but doing so was kicking her butt, she was facing a launch deadline and on top of her heavy client load, she was struggling to get the work done.

I suggested that she simply use the templates as they were. Nobody would know the difference having seen neither format and given the templates, as is, are already brilliant and worth more than the whole beta program would cost, it wouldn’t devalue the offering one bit. Such a simple shift, but one that took a whole lot of pressure off and created a truckload of new space in her calendar.

10. Choose differently.

In another piece of writing, I talk about how my own personal epiphany about overwhelm came after reading an article by a coach who argued that overwhelm is a choice. This idea can be triggering for some people, but for me it was life-changing. Knowing that there are things I do that contribute to my feeling of overwhelm and things I can do to minimise them means that I have some control over whether I am in a state of overwhelm or not.

I’m not saying that it’s always as simple as choosing not to be overwhelmed but acknowledging that there is a choice really helps me. To understand more what I mean by this final point head here to read an article I wrote on this very idea.

And there you have it, 10 things you can do to minimise business related overwhelm. I hope you find them useful.

SIGN UP FOR MY SOULFUL STRATEGIES WEEKLY

 

Once a week, in the form of an e-letter, I share the best of what I know about building a business with integrity for conscious business owners.

The intention behind these letters is to be a voice for integrity within your (undoubtedly) cluttered inbox. To be the one email you can count on to contain strategic and soulful advice for building a business without selling your soul.

If you want to receive the Soulful Strategies Weekly, simply share with me your name and email address below and you’ll start recieving emails right away.

What I Do When I Don’t Feel Like Working On My Business

What I Do When I Don’t Feel Like Working On My Business

by | Mar 23, 2022 | Mindset

“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day, saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’

~ Mary Anne Radmacherost

What I’m not talking about in this blog is not those days when you’re just feeling a bit demotivated, we all have days when we have less energy or feel less inclined to work. On those days, I do believe in picking myself up and doing what I can to get what needs to get done, done.

Instead, what I am talking about in this blog is those times when external circumstances are seriously challenging and impeding our ability to focus. Things like the threat of world war, humanitarian crises, a global pandemic, illness, bereavement, moving house and so on. Big things that affect us deeply and knock us off centre, making it feel extremely difficult to focus on work.

I’m also not talking about work that doesn’t matter, work that you don’t need or truly care about. I’m talking about your livelihood, the work that pays your bills and keeps a roof over your head, your purpose, the work in the world that is deeply important to you and to those you serve.

Navigating difficult times while maintaining your ability to focus on your business becomes crucial in this context. I personally don’t have the luxury of not showing up to work when I don’t feel like it. My business is my livelihood and I have a full roster of clients who are counting on me to be there.

So how have I got through these difficult times, without dropping all the balls, throwing the towel in or killing myself to carry on in the process? On the other side of it, I’m able to share what I’ve done to get through this challenging time.

1. I feel the feels

I allow myself to really feel what I am feeling. This one is easy for me because I’ve never been one to bury or hide my emotions. I’ve always worn my heart on my sleeve and been dubbed too sensitive by my family, ever since I can remember.

So in some ways, I don’t really feel I have a choice in this one but it bears mentioning anyway, because so many people feel like they have to hide what they are feeling from their friends and family and also from their clients and colleagues. I don’t do this, I tell my kids when Mama feels sad, I tell my partner when I feel like I’m struggling and I let my friends and clients know when I don’t have it all together.

For me, it would be exhausting to put a brave face on and pretend everything is okay and in not doing so, I believe I release a great deal of pressure on myself.

2. I do less

My typical day-to-day is very full. With my business, a household to run and two energetic little boys to parent, I have a fair amount of stuff to do on a day to day basis. A while ago, I hit a wall with this and just didn’t feel like I had the capacity to keep being as productive as my schedule demanded of me. So after a tearful conversation with my partner, I came to a place of acceptance with the fact that I needed to just do less for a while.

That meant cutting back on non-essential business activities, like this newsletter and the creation of my forthcoming short course and focusing solely on my 1:1 clients and group mastermind.

Instead of using the time between client calls to do admin, work on content or creating new products, I took a pause from work. Sometimes this meant sleeping and sometimes it meant watching the heartbreaking news (not always the best move, but in some ways related to point #1).

It also meant that I wasn’t as on top of other things like housework or doing my daily exercises.

3. I ditch the guilt

Like many people, I can be prone to feeling guilty when I feel like I’m not pulling my weight or doing what I said I was going to do. For example, I’m very aware of a dynamic between me and my partner where I can, if I let myself, start to believe that I am letting the side down when I’m not at my best.

Similarly, when I find myself not sticking to personal plans or goals I’ve set myself, the temptation to start beating myself up is very present. The thing is, I learned many years ago that all guilt does is keep us trapped in a negative loop.

I know that if I make myself feel bad for not feeling great, then I just feel worse than I otherwise would. Whilst I may still succumb to guilt momentarily, these days I’m much better at calling bullshit on it and stopping it in its tracks more quickly.

4. I get support

This one doesn’t come easily to me as I’ve always suffered under the illusion that I can do everything myself. In recent years, however, I’ve gotten much better at seeking out support, from my partner, from friends and even from other practitioners.

I had an incredible EFT session with the wonderful Liesel Teversham and felt so much lighter and even joyful as a result. Just sharing what was up for me and then using EFT to release what wasn’t serving created a powerful shift.

I also upped my virtual assistant’s hours so that she can do more of the busy work that inevitably piles up when I’m not on top of everything. Handing more things over to her over the last few weeks has brought with it a lot of relief.

I know how easy it is to retreat when I’m not feeling at my best and that still happens to a degree for sure, but recognising that there is support available to me and using that support is, and has been, a game changer for me.

5. I don’t let it run on indefinitely

When we cut back on our activities, it can sometimes feel hard to get back to doing them again. I don’t tend to have this problem and I believe it’s because I really allow myself to step back when I need to, in a way that allows me to recharge and come back stronger.

After I have really embraced my feelings, let go of the shoulds, reduced what’s on my plate (without the guilt), rested more, gotten support from others and in doing so, I was able to get myself back to a place where I felt good again fairly quickly.

Then at the beginning of a new week, I mentally prepared myself to start the week with a renewed commitment to my work and to feeling better. I completed my daily exercise, made all the beds and wrote a newsletter. I think it’s safe to say, I was feeling more like me again! 🙂

Is the world still messed up in many ways? Yes. Do I feel more resourced to deal with that? Yes.

So there you have it, five things that help me stay on track, even when I’d rather crawl under the duvet and sleep all day. I hope you find them useful and I would love to hear from you what you do to keep going during difficult times.

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