Tag: self-confidence

How To Avoid End of Year Burnout And End With Energy

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I put a post up on Instagram last Friday, asking: are you in charge of your time, or are your demands in charge of you?

I promised to post a blog the following Monday with solutions. I believed I had found some! 

I couldn’t actually write the blog from an authentic place because the solutions I thought I had weren’t working. I was still at the mercy of many demands, and not making the time and space for the important things. I had the experience over the weekend like a blocked pipe suddenly becoming unblocked: a bit of a crash and burn. There were too many plates spinning, too many commitments, too much striving all at once, and not as much self-care as I actually need (which is actually quite a lot, although I try and pretend I can do with less.)

I was on the very edge of burn-out, because I hadn’t protected my time and energy properly. This can happen to someone like me, with all my skills, and it can happen to any of us as we get swept up in a demanding and noisy world. 

I’m recovering and have peeled RIGHT BACK on the commitments and deadlines and pressures. I’ve cleared my diary of most of these, and am focused on being in a really good state for my clients on my 1:1 days and a couple of networking commitments I already had with some old and new colleagues, which is basically more like socialising than anything. I’ve said no to lots of Christmas parties and gatherings. I’m putting exercise and rest at the TOP of my priorities. I feel back in the driver’s seat and feeling deliberate. Here is my Christmas present for you, my top tips for avoiding end-of-year burnout and actually ending your 2024 with some balance and energy!

How to recognise the beginning of burnout:

Impatience and a short fuse – road rage and a desire to get to places quickly!

A constant pull to keep checking your phone – seeking “answers” from there somehow

A tightening in your solar-plexus or tummy

Little things – requests or things going “wrong” feel like big things

Sacrificing self-care or exercise for a need to “get things done” – I don’t need that yoga class, if I didn’t go I’d get an extra 90 minutes to “get things done”

Your to-do list is constantly on your mind… even when you’re trying to unplug or relax

Your multi-tasking – switching between things rather than staying singularly focused on something to completion

Your phone is beeping all day and you keep responding to stuff that’s just coming in: reactive rather than proactive – no boundaries around phone use!

You’re relying on alcohol to relax you

Obvious difficulties with relaxation and sleep

Snappy and irritable with people (partner, family usually)

Every time you think of all the things you “need to do” you feel nothing but overwhelm! Which stops you from actually doing them

Solutions you can put in place right now:

Look at all your commitments and check: what is absolutely essential? What is not essential this year? See how much you can get rid of in your diary. You might be surprised at how many non-essentials there actually are

If you catch yourself thinking – I’ll cancel that walk, yoga class, friend catch up to “get more done” then stop that, and go and do your self-care. Energy in, before energy out, a simple and effective equation.

Start to timeblock if you can: schedule time in your calendar for SPECIFIC things; CEO time, meeting time, admin time. Do your best to protect that time for what it is. Include scheduling downtime, time to do WHATEVER YOU FEEL LIKE IN THE MOMENT- whether it’s a Netflix binge or a HIIT class, do what feels right and feel no guilt. I recommend at least twice a week to have this choosy-downtime

Stop being a slave to your phone. Honestly. What’s the time of day when you can put your phone away, or even turn it off? For me, it’s off every evening so I can spend time with my husband. I put it down when doing focussed work, it helps to turn it off if I can. 

In terms of creating some BOUNDARIES. Most people (not all, but a lot) need to be about 80% better at boundaries, and about 80% of us find this very hard to do. Whether it’s in regards to self-care, sleep, eating and drinking, not spending time or energy on particular people, here’s my advice: decide what you want a boundary around – break that down to the absolute micro level, the lowest denominator that you believe you can actually STICK to, and make that your absolute NON-NEGOTIABLE boundary. The key is choosing the right level of micro-boundary that is going to be straightforward enough to stick to, and protecting it with your life. This is called your non-negotiable. For example:

for me, if I don’t eat low-carb, I put on weight. I have a few kilos to lose, but this time of year is actually not the best time to be calorie-deficiting. So, my one non-negotiable is, no matter what I eat and drink, it has to be low-carb. I’m not restricting or counting calories, but I’m not eating anything above 5g carbs per serve (approx). This makes me feel great because I won’t put on any weight, and gives me a sense of control in a tricky time of year. I won’t be entering January feeling bloated and gross and like I need to go on a diet.

time to deep dive into long-term projects. I keep struggling to find and keep it, and I keep scheduling it and cancelling it, scheduling and cancelling it in a loop! As I am trying to timeblock my week better, so I’ve got time available for the many different things I do, so my lowest and non-negotiable denominator is Friday mornings. I can find other time usually too, and when I can I will, but for now, I can stick to that, so I’m doing that. At least it means it’s not neglected and things are still getting worked on!

These suggestions are great in and of themselves, and, the hidden greatness is this: making and keeping an agreement with yourself. When we feel like we’ve let ourselves down, it’s an opening for all kinds of entanglements we get into with ourselves, beat ups and so on. So, let’s decide on our micro-boundaries to stick to, get some time back, and enjoy the self-esteem that comes from sticking to an agreement you’ve made with yourself.

Merry Christmas and happy new year to you – let’s end with energy, and start with purpose!

Charlotte.

Video 7: How To Boost Self-Confidence

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Welcome to Video 7 of my free 8-day Video Series leading up to the launch of my Inner Critic to Inner Coach eCourse. Every day I’ll be talking about an area of significance to your life, and how negative self-talk either causes or perpetuates that problem. And then importantly, a quick-and-dirty instant solution that you can use right away to make a difference to yourself. In this case a distinction and a tool to help you boost your self-confidence.

I just love this topic of self-confidence, because this is a huge part of what the Inner Critic to Inner Coach© Process is about! I make the distinction between self-confidence and the self-esteem in the earlier self-esteem post.

I want to make another distinction: between inside-confidence and outside-confidence. Let me tell you a brief story. When I was growing up as a teen and a young adult, when I still lived in England, I had a lot of outside-confidence. I was loud and said what I thought. I was brave and did scary things. I was socially competent and funny. To all I seemed a very ‘confident’ person. Once I moved in New Zealand and started my – what was going to be a never-ending, but in a good way! – self-development journey, I did so much healing. Because on the inside I didn’t feel confident, almost at all. I was highly insecure and needy; I doubted myself incessantly; I hated my body and appearance; my self-worth was in the toilet most of the time; I didn’t believe in an ounce of my own intelligence and I had no proper aspirations for myself. Yes, I put myself out there, but because it was the only way I knew how to get approval from others and keep them liking me, something I desperately needed to stay afloat in my life.

Once I’d done about 3 years of intense inner-work, I finally felt like I’d ‘bridged the gap’ between the outside and the inside. I felt so much more whole, and more self-confident in a very genuine way. I went back to London for a visit, and asked my friends if they’d noticed any differences in me. The overall answer was – ‘no’!  I guess that’s the thing with outside-confidence – it’s extremely convincing. However I felt the difference on the inside, which is the point.

Of course all the issues with self-confidence I’ve described can be solved by putting a stop to the constant Inner Critic and learning how to fundamentally talk to ourselves and therefore treat ourselves differently. So here’s a tip. See if you can begin to distinguish between inside and outside confidence. I’ll give you a clue – the more outside-confidence you have, the less inside-confidence there currently is. You can tell if it’s of the outside kind as your motivation will be about others, rather than you.

A quick way to begin boosting your inside-confidence is by finding real TRUTHS about yourself that you believe in 100% – specifically your abilities, competence or capacity to do something. Something you know about yourself. It could be as simple as: I know that I’m really organised, and this benefits me and the people I live with. Do a brainstorm of these small things that you absolutely believe about your competence and keep this list somewhere. When you need to cultivate that inside-confidence, you have a start.

This is such an important concept that’s explored in much more depth in the training.  For now, try it, and tell me how well it works for you!

And get in touch if you have any questions or comments, I’d love to hear from you.

Charlotte x

Video 4: How To Improve Low Self-Esteem

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This is such an important topic!

The distinction between self-esteem and self-confidence (which I’ll be talking about in a few days) is this: self-confidence is how you feel about your abilities, your competencies and your capacity to do something.  Self-esteem is how you feel about YOURSELF – about who you are as a person.

How you feel about yourself as a person depends on what you believe. A belief isn’t objectively ‘correct’ or something ‘absolutely true’ – simply something that your brain holds as ‘absolutely true’. What you believe is fundamentally influenced by what you talk to yourself about inside your head. Your brain doesn’t know the difference between what’s real – what’s really happening out there in the real world – and your internal thoughts, images, words etc. It simply responds as if they were real. Of course, the logical part of you knows the difference, but not the unconscious part. So, what you’re telling yourself about yourself is crucial to what you believe about who you are, and therefore the sum of your self-esteem.

The beginning of a solution to start improving low self-esteem is to find something POSITIVE about yourself and who you are, and make it something you already BELIEVE is absolutely true.  And I advise going with the smallest possible thing – as long as you genuinely believe it about yourself. It’s much better to go small and believable, then go lofty and ideal, as these kinds of things will be rejected by your brain. And make it about YOU – even if it has to be about your appearance. If you have a poor body-image and each time you look in the mirror you’re telling yourself you’re fat and that no-one would want you, then find something about your body/appearance that you absolutely and positively like that’s already rooted in your belief system. It can be as small as “I really like the colour of my eyes”.  And then focus on that when you look in the mirror or think about your body.

There’s a neurological reason why finding an existing positive belief really works to turn this around, which I go into in much more detail in the upcoming eCourse – Inner Critic to Inner Coach.

For now – try this quick self-talk solution, and tell me how it works for you.  Any questions please get in touch!

Charlotte x