Phew, dodged those proverbial brown bullets

Friday morning I was in the privileged position to deliver a workshop for the Prince’s Trust International Women’s Day event, in connection to their Change a Girl’s Life Campaign, (raising vital funds to support young women to build better futures through employment, education, or starting their own businesses - please check it out here and support where you can, I’ve met lots of the beneficiaries of this campaign and I can assure you they are achieving quite brilliant things: https://www.princes-trust.org.uk/support-our-work/change-a-girls-life).

I delivered a powerful, practical, and interactive workshop around the impact our mindset has on our whole lives. How our mindset is created and how we can work on our mindset with specific tools and practices to change the trajectory of our whole lives. (If you missed my mindset foundations course, don’t worry I’ll be making it available again soon - imperative learning). I shared the room with 40+ engaged, inspirational, warm, and eager to learn women. My very happy place. I also got to share a place on a Q&A panel with 3 other empowering women in business.

We all left that room high as kites! Full of self-belief and feeling powerful as HELL!

I’d done what I most love doing in this world. Teaching and raising awareness of the free, innate tools we all have available to us to help us when we learn how to access and use them. Tools that enable us to really thrive and enjoy this one, short, precious life we have here in this body we stand in.

I got to listen to so many stories; past experiences, heady heartening dreams, goals, and aspirations. YES GIRLS! Go get ‘em! I got to help people recognize their brilliance and help them get over the limiting beliefs that threatened to stop them moving forwards into what will be the life of their dreams, if they will only stay out of their own way and keep taking the action to make it happen.

Roll back to just two days earlier though…..

Wednesday - my mental health was spiralling. overwhelm hit hard. I was exhausted, couldn’t think straight, on the brink of tears all day and feeling like I was fighting to keep a grip on it all. Fighting. Not living. That is not cricket. My brain felt jam packed with all the things I ‘had to do’ and limiting beliefs were starting to come in thick and fast. All of them.

So I want you to really pay attention to this. This isn't a call for ‘You ok hun?’ - ha. This is an educational piece that is SO important to hear.

I want you to know that when we hit the shit, like I did on Wednesday, it's all just part of the 'normal' human experience. It's not a sign you're failing or need to push through blindly. It's actually your body’s way of giving you a powerful wake up call. It’s telling you to stop and take a minute. That you need to become aware of what the hell is really going on (Self Awareness is the first step in the Shift Life Design System for a reason!).

We are incredibly clever creations. Sensations, feelings, pain etc. are all there for a reason you know. They are an alert system, there to grab our attention, to signal to us that something significant is happening or something needs to be addressed. We also come complete with an inbuilt tool kit to manage it all too. Pretty clever hey?

When put into use, these inbuilt tools allow us to use these moments to our advantage, to realign, to recalibrate, to help us to continue growing and moving forwards towards our goals. They are not a reason to stop and give up. If we take the time to acknowledge the messages, to listen in and take the action these messages are shouting us to take, (not just pushing through and pushing the feelings back down again) they will help us grow, and most importantly keep us happy. They act as a kind of inner compass, taking us to our dreams and goals. Yep. Really!

To allow you to see this in action, let’s dial back to me on Wednesday.

What the hell was going on? Because I’ll tell you one thing, it isn’t really ever ‘all the things we have to do’ that’s causing the overwhelm, it’s what’s going on inside at the same time as all the externals.

• I had some life stuff I wasn’t confronting head on. This stuff eats away at you until you listen to it and take notice. If you don’t listen in, if you don’t act on what you know deep down is a problem, your body will continue to make louder and louder noises until you do (hello anxiety and panic attacks if you aren’t careful. I speak from experience).
• I wasn’t asking for help, not really, I wasn’t admitting things were getting on top of me (and I don’t mean asking for help in a shouting ‘why do I have to everything around here’ martyr kind of way. I mean really allowing your vulnerability to be really seen so a proper understanding and connection can be felt - genuinely asking for help)

Why wasn’t I asking for help? I hadn’t even taken time to notice I wasn’t. Old limiting beliefs, old patterns were starting to creep in without me even noticing… If I admitted I wasn’t coping and needed help did that mean I wasn’t capable, I was failing? I wasn’t ‘good enough’ to be doing what I was trying to achieve? DID IT HECK… but I just hadn’t paid attention to those old patterns starting to kick back in….

Then I did, because my body made me. It started to go into overwhelm.

I won’t continue with my Wednesday woes, but I hope you can see a picture forming here? This downward spiral can happen really quickly IF we don’t learn how to develop self-awareness and get a grip on it. How to stop the spiral. Fortunately, these days, I am well versed in this process and here’s how I turned it around.

Wednesday night.

Bedtime with the kids and I was at overwhelm…..

So I was honest and open. Great start (a problem shared and all that)

Told my little boy I was feeling overwhelmed, explained that I needed a cry to let the chemicals in my body release that feeling. I showed him grown ups cry too and that a big cuddle, telling someone how we feel and a cry always makes us feel better. We did those things together. It worked. It’s wonderful for children to learn this stuff. I felt a tonne better, he understood what was going on, we cuddled, read bedtime stories and off he went to sleep, happy as Larry. I was starting to feel better.

Then I sat with my eldest before she went to sleep. By this point I didn’t feel the need to cry anymore, it was easing. I told her the way I was feeling and she said she sometimes feels the same. It opened up another great conversation. The shared vulnerability building upon an already deep connection, increasing the trust and accessibility of sharing thoughts and feelings together. Blessed.

Then I came down and offloaded so much stuff to my husband. Telling him how overwhelmed I was, being vulnerable, and taking ownership of all my own actions and feelings, despite prior to self reflection, the overwhelm spiral had convinced me that none of this boiling feeling I had inside of me was indeed anything to do with me! (Also important to note here, we only have control of ourselves and how we choose to act and respond to situations. It is never anyone else's fault. Nobody can ever 'make us feel' any way. We get to choose how we feel. SO take the power back and own it!)

Went to bed Wednesday night like a new person. Tension and overwhelm dissipated.

Thursday had the most productive, gratifying day you could imagine.

Nothing had changed. Just me. I’d self-reflected, become aware, put the tools into action and freed myself from all the inner crap holding me back. Just like you can too.

Friday I delivered that workshop and am preparing to deliver a bigger one this coming week all around Limiting Beliefs. YES!

It really is amazing what we can achieve in life when we are honest with ourselves, clear the inner crap, and spend our precious lives doing something we genuinely love doing…

And that’s why I love dropping in your inbox each week with this email. In the hope I can positively change your life in some way by hearing about my life, the challenges we can all face and how to tackle them. My wish is that you too spread the ripple effect by sharing these realisations, tools and your positive life shifts far and wide!

Make it a great week you lot.