Stop flapping your feet!
I’m a busy woman who really does strive to get a good work life balance as much as possible. Difficult sometimes, with being a single parent of twins, running two businesses, a house hold to manage, you get the picture. I’m lucky to have a job I absolutely love, I’m able to take off a lot of the school holidays and I’m not a stressed sort of person. But every so often, I start to get too busy, a bit overloaded and feel like a swan… On top of the water, gliding through, everything looking calm, easy and in control but underneath, my feet are flapping like crazy!
Recently, I became a little overwhelmed. My work-life balance started to go, I started to feel run down and I started to feel unhealthy. Yes I eat well and exercise, but I could feel my adrenals kicking off and that releases all sorts of stress hormones in the body that create a hormone imbalance. I started to feel anxious, out of control and the negative messages started whirling round my brain like a washing machine on a spin cycle.
You’ll all know that earlier in the year, I created a 9 month coaching program called BEST. And as i found myself in this place of stress and overload, I decided to put all my 9 main best steps into practice.
Here are the 9 main BEST steps and this is how I used them in this situation:
1. Take control – What can I do about this situation, what can I change, what can I take charge of? I also reset myself, removed all denial and started to get a plan with better goals for me.
2. Create more self-respect – Many people’s default when things go wrong is to blame (usually themselves, sometimes others). For a while I started to turn against myself. But I took away the criticism, created some self-compassion and put all my focus on being really nice to myself. The foundation of positive change.
3. Look after yourself – Immediately I knew I needed to create more balance. So I adjusted my work load, took some time off and started to pace myself more.
4. Let things go – Rather than focus on how I got myself in this pickle, I put all my efforts on what I could do moving forwards (whilst still of course learning from the mistakes I made). I turned around my stress mindset, let go of any regretful feelings and stopped comparing myself. What did I need to do for me. End of.
5. Sort your priorities out – What was the most important things I needed to do to help myself out. It wasn’t actually to plough on through my workload to please others. It was actually to work out what I needed. Right now. To make a difference. I started to gently work out a simple task list (that included as much relaxation as it did action) and started to implement it slowly. I asked for help too and I was honest with my clients. I also adjusted my new year course dates so I can ensure I don’t burn out again. As soon as I made the changes, I instantly felt better. And most importantly, I know I’ll be able to do a much better job as a result. Win-win all round!
6. Lighten up – I decided to have a sense of humour about it all. Not only did it lift my mood, the laughter breeds more compassion and it releases the happy hormones that immediately started to balance out the stress hormones I had whizzing around my body! I also freed myself mentally. This is not life and death, this is what I call a plot twist, probably happening to send me on a better path!
7. Find your inner confidence – I needed to get that confidence to be honest to my clients, trust my instincts and my ability. Facing fear and overcoming it. Hard to do at first but you just take that leap of faith by believing in yourself that what you need to do is what you need to do!
8. Beat self sabotage – Once a decision was made to slow down, I had difficulty implementing it. An email would ping and I’d go to answer it and literally had to yell at myself (in a fun way)… “Stop reading your bloody emails!” …. and “Step away from the computer Janey!” A big part of beating self sabotage is understanding how to override negative messages in your head, overcome procrastination and re-affirming what you need to do and why.
9. Make things easy – I mean my business is called this for goodness sakes! And here I was in a pickle of difficulty! As I like to inspire by example and practice what I preach, I knew I needed to simplify some things. And so I have. And I feel better. And I’m back in control. And I’m feeling healthier. My adrenals have calmed down. I’ve slowed down. And I’m feeling good again.
Becoming the best version of yourself, isn’t about never getting yourselves into these messes. It’s about identifying it as soon as you do and knowing how to get out of them.
I explain more in this little video here… (Please accept my apologies for the fact the video conversion has changed the framing so my head is at the bottom of the screen. And I know I need my highlights doing as one of my team pointed out (booked for Saturday!). But in BEST style, I’m just letting that go and hopefully you’ll focus on what I’m saying, he hee!
BEST starts on the 3rd of October and runs for 12 months. If you’d like to find out more about BEST, take a look HERE. It really can help you with the big life transformations some of you want, but also the day to day stuff as I’ve just shared here!
We all deserve to be the very best versions of ourselves and live our lives to their true potential. We get one life. Let’s live it well!
Janey x
