10 Journaling prompts to decide when to push through fear (and when not to)
There are a lot of people out there who believe pushing through fear is the key to success. A quick search for fear-related quotes brings up statements like feel the fear and do it anyway, don’t let fear win, everything you want is on the other side of fear. Of course, there are times when this advice is accurate. Those times when self-doubt is holding us back from what we…
How to feel confident doing something new
When it comes to building confidence, a key ingredient is to gather evidence that you can do something and the only way to gather that evidence is to… do it. When we’ve done something a few times, we find it easier to feel confident. We can look back at the times we’ve done it before, we can delve into our evidence banks and remind ourselves how capable we are. But…
How to reframe failure as redirection
When I became burnt out last summer and needed a break from Blue Jay of Happiness – I felt like a failure. Logically I knew I just needed some rest, but after working relentlessly for years trying to get my coaching business off the ground and knowing I couldn’t do it anymore, it was hard to get past the word ‘fail’. I hadn’t been able to do what I wanted…
Lessons from 2020 and the quote that’s going to get me through 2021
I wasn’t planning on writing any blogs over the festive period, but I recently worked my way through Suzannah Conway’s ‘unravel your year’ workbook and felt the need to process and consolidate all that journaling into some clearer thoughts, especially in regards to my ‘word’ of the year, or more precisely my ‘quote’ of the year. So I thought why not do it here? To start with, let’s take a…
Getting my head around NLP
*This post contains a gifted experience* Towards the beginning of this year, when I was in full-on coaching mode, I was looking into NLP courses. NLP stands for neuro linguistic programming and the NLP Academy defines it in the following way: “NLP is the practice of understanding how people organise their thinking, feeling, language and behaviour to produce the results they do. NLP provides people with a methodology to model…
When you really want to quit
It’s happened before and it’ll happen again. Those moments when the thought of quitting your dream takes you and feels utterly overwhelming. If you’re a fellow side-hustler or own your own business, I’m sure you can relate. I had a moment like this recently. I woke up one morning and just thought… is it worth it? I’ve been working so hard since launching my coaching services a year and a…
What I’m doing to learn more about race (part 2)
Two years ago, almost to the day, I wrote about race for the very first time. Here’s how that piece started: “This is one of those blog posts that makes my chest tight writing about. It makes me uncomfortable because I feel unqualified to talk about race and I’m treading a very fine line between using my privileged position to speak about important issues and centralising myself, a white woman,…
Navigating growing pain
As you may have noticed after reading last week’s blog on the impact of self-belief on my life, I’ve been feeling reflective recently. Maybe lockdown is encouraging more navel-gazing than usual, who knows, but it’s been interesting. For this week’s blog I wanted to talk about the fact that growth can be painful. It’s amazing of course, to develop, learn and grow as a person, but it can be uncomfortable.…
How self-belief has shaped my life
There’s a reason I go on about self-worth, self-belief and confidence so much. I’ve seen the impact developing these areas has had on my life. For context, and for those of you who may not know my story, any self-belief I had as a kid got knocked out of me in my early teens. As a young kid I was always pretty shy and quiet, but I did have self-belief.…
What to do when you feel stuck
I think all of us can relate to the feeling of being stuck in a certain area of our lives. You feel like you don’t know which way to turn or how to take the next step forward. You know things have to change, but you don’t know how. You feel frustrated, exhausted and paralysed. It’s a horrible feeling. But the frustration we feel can be turned into fuel, propelling…