Coming Full Circle with Vulnerability .. The Bridgerton Way Many of us live our lives in fear of really being seen and heard for who we are. We don’t feel good enough or bright enough, or thin enough, or educated enough or whatever enough. We will do anything to fit in. This can be at work, with friends and even with our family of origin. However, to “fit” in requires us to change or to hide a part of ourselves, meanwhile, sabotaging our authenticity.

In the first paragraph of his book The motivation manifesto Brendon Burchard asks a question - why having being endowed with the courageous heart of a lion do we live as mice? This is a very profound question to ask. One of the ways we can lean into this question and find out why we may be living like a mouse as opposed to like a lion is to find out which dial our mindset is set on is it set on a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. Because our actions are fueled by that that mindset. Some of those actions are conscious but most are unconscious. To be conscious is to be aware of what is motivating you to do what you do. To be unconscious is to not realise what is fuelling your actions. Most of what you do is fuelled from this unconscious place which is home to the habitual patterns you run on, I will speak to that more later. The unconscious is also where you store the parts of yourself that you disassociated from in order to fit in and feel like you belong.

As humans, we all strive for, a sense of belonging, a sense of belief in ourselves and others, a feeling of security and safety, and connection with others. When these needs are met we will then be able to develop personal skills like boundary building, becoming assertive, and be able to be emotionally aware, and not let stress overtake us. With these building blocks, we can then thrive in our leadership role

Our comfort zone is our safe place. It’s fuelled by the things we do automatically that feel safe to us. If you have ever tried to do something outside of your comfort zone you might know that feeling you get when you think to yourself “ok that’s me done, I need to stop here, it isn’t feeling good or safe anymore”. Sometimes though we don’t hear the self-talk, we just know unconsciously stop ourselves from going any further and this may be in relation to applying for a new job, looking for a different type of relationship or whatever. It's as if we go to the edge of the comfort zone and there’s something there that stops us from going any further. But it is as we know and you have probably heard before that outside our comfort zone lies our potential. So let’s explore this further.

On this episode of the podcast we are talking about beauty and the fact that ,,,, and I will quote our guest today Sharon D Founder of Irelands Got Curves who says Beauty isn't a size and size doesn't define you. Sharon you are welcome to the podcast. I want to talk to you about this topic of what defines us and how we can let that get a little ashew.

Nicola is a passionate advocate for empowering women to take proactive steps to optimise their physical and mental health during this stage of our lives. The more clarity we have the more we will be able to be actively involved in our own healthcare decisions armed with the correct information. A very informative chat with Nicola whose background is in nursing, education and mental health.

The tale of the Little Mermaid is a typical heroine’s quest. Although Ariel, the Little Mermaid seems to have it all, she comes from a beautiful place, has the love of her father and sisters and grandmother she yearns for something more. Something outside of what she has. She is blessed with many things in her life; she has the most beautiful voice in her kingdom, she is the most beautiful dancer and her beauty is astounding. However, she doesn’t feel whole. She desperately wants to grow a pair of legs like the humans she hears about and to have new experiences and to experience love. However, it is forbidden for her as a mermaid to interact with humans. Her yearning itches away at Ariel until, against the wishes of her family and friends she sets off on her quest. In order to do this, she has had to make a huge sacrifice. She goes to the dark witch who takes her voice from her in return for a potion that will change her mermaid tale into a pair of legs. The dark witch warns her that it won’t be easy and that she will suffer excruciating pain in her legs when she walks. And true to what she has been told what follows for Ariel is a series of trials and challenges. Without her voice she cannot tell the handsome prince she has fallen in love with that it was she who in fact had saved him from drowning. Instead, she has to watch as he falls in love with a beautiful girl who was the first woman he saw when he was washed up on the beach where Ariel had left him. He in fact believes it was this girl who saved him. He does fall in love for Ariel but it is more of a sisterly nature and when he finally meets the girl he remembers seeing on the beach he marries her. Because Ariel has lost the challenge of making a human man fall in love and marry her she is destined to die on the prince’s wedding day. Hearing about her demise her sisters visit the dark witch and ask for something to save her. The dark witch gives them a knife to give to Ariel. Ariel is faced with a choice; kill the prince and save herself or die (mermaids don’t have immortal souls). She cannot bring herself to kill the prince and instead decides to forfeit her own life. On seeing her brave deeds of first saving the prince and not killing him to save herself she is taken by the elements of the air. There she gets her voice back and has the opportunity to become a immortal soul by doing good deeds for 300 years (with a few extra few deeds she can reduce the number of years!). What lessons can we learn from the Little Mermaid. She was courageous and in the end her quest brought her closer to what she wanted an immortal soul or the hope of it.

In this episode of the podcast, I discuss living in alignment with our core values with Business Owner and Coach Gill Caroll. Gill takes us on a journey of exploration around tuning into our values via our feelings. When we show up in our life coming from a place of being aligned with what brings us contentment and joy we will be more in flow with our life.

Our belief system defines how we see the world and gives us the ability to process what happens around us. If we didn’t have a belief system, we wouldn’t know how to process our reactions to all the things that happen to us on a daily basis. Our belief system is like the cookies in our browser enabling us to sort through things faster and based on our past behaviours. Our beliefs start to form from a young and are based on the way we perceive our life and its surroundings. We form beliefs about everything; how safe we feel; how loved we feel; how emotional we feel; how supported we feel etc. We can hold either good or bad beliefs about ourselves, when they stop us reaching our full potential we call them limiting beliefs. This limiting beliefs stack on top of each other and form our inner glass ceiling that keep us well and truly stuck where we are until we decide to change them.

I speak with Mel Murphy, Separation and Divorce Coach about the importance of support during these stressful times. Mel gives us some practical advice and NLP techniques for managing our lives during these times.

On this episode I speak with Kerri Hummingbird, No. 1 Best Selling Author of "The Second Wave: Transcending the Human Drama" and the award-winning best-selling book "Awakening To Me: One Woman’s Journey To Self Love." I speak with Kerri about the mother's wound and how it affects us on so many levels. Oftentimes it is when parenting our own children that our mother wounds get triggered and come up for healing.

One definition of the saying “you can’t fit a square peg into a round hole” says that it describes the unusual individualist who could not fit into a niche of their society. Now here my friends in my opinion is where the problem lies. It is the use of the word “unusual” which when we are talking about a person could be better described as “unique” individual. At the end of the day we are all unique and we are all individual. So here’s my journey through this exact problem.

A journey to living a fulfilled life happens when you honour your own values and you live by them. When you are incongruent with your values you may be living someone else’s life and you may form bad habits or become lost in trying to find yourself. Understanding what you value is less about looking outside and wondering what you should value, or what society says you should value, looking at what everyone else is doing and thinking this is what therefore you should do. Understanding your value system is an inside, personal job that is best done on your own or with the help of a professional who has no agenda, instead someone who holds space for you to help you tease out the information for yourself.

The definition of resolution is the act of solving a conflict. However, we often focus on what we cannot change and stick to that story. In this podcast, I look at some common themes or conflicts that keep you stuck in a rut or feeling overwhelmed and give you ways of looking at the conflict differently.

Instead of finding a way to quieten or banish the inner critic I want to show you four ways to embrace it. Why? Because your inner critic is a part of you. It’s the part of you that developed beliefs from your perceptions of your life’s challenges. And although challenges cause tension, without tension there is no growth. Your inner critic points you to your soul growth, to your inner north star, your full potential. When you lean into the inner critic you find it’s wisdom and you uncover your power.

I want to share something tangible with you now, something that you can do in the present moment that will bring you from where you are now, to where you want to be. This step is vital. It takes courage to visit something that may be painful for you, and you may struggle with admitting your vulnerabilities even to yourself. It is not a blaming or shaming yourself exercise. What it is, is an exercise to take the first step, even if it is only a baby step, it is a step all the same.

There are times when not taking it personally is the best advice we can take. But there are also times when it's essential to see what is being triggered in you that is causing you to take something personally in the first place. If you neglect to take this step, then what is being triggered is being kept in the shadow, so to speak, you are brushing it under the carpet. But things that are kept in the shadow or brushed under the carpet and still there.

I was asked a question by another coach recently about my opinion around whether we are controlled by fate, destiny or other external events as opposed to feeling like our own behaviours or actions determine our results. It got me thinking and I decided to share my views on the topic here at my podcast. I believe in both. I think there are definitely things in our life that are destined for us, and on the other hand we have a choice of what actions we can take. I believe we are born with strengths in some areas of our life which, if we follow them we will excel at.

The main protagonist in my yet unpublished novel is an example of how we can become empowered by healing the wounded and dissociated parts of ourselves. It’s also a good insight into how we can be leading our life feeling like we have it all under control until we realise we are in fact the one that is being controlled and have no control at al. Something happens that rocks our life and the very foundation on which our beliefs are based upon. We find out if those foundations are solid enough to support the stories we tell ourselves about our life. If they are not solid, no matter how many excuses we make or give to ourselves or the world they will crumble and fall. Mary, she is called, for now, used control and power as her default. She is fiercely independent and a perfectionist.

At times, our perception of an event may be totally untrue, but our mind distorts the truth to match our beliefs. It is only when we have an AHA moment or a moment of revelation that we realise the real truth, the truth that has been hidden from our consciousness For example you may attend a conference and hear something and have one of these AHA or revelation moments. This is when you see something from a different perspective. It is one thing of course to have a revelation but it’s another thing to allow it seep into our psyche and change our perception forever, if that change is better for us. Otherwise we will slip back into our old ways and become closed minded. When we are closed minded, we limit ourselves.