You make around 36,000 decisions every day… but mostly without realising it.

If you think that any of those decisions could change the whole course of your life… it could become quite terrifying. Deciding to go to that seminar might inspire you to start your own business; deciding to have a hot chocolate again (again…) could lead to you having a heart attack in 50 years’ time; deciding to pop to the shop whilst you’re passing could lead to you meeting the love of your life. Who knows where deciding to read this article might eventually lead you?

Did you know that research shows that people would rather have the certainty of knowing they were going to get an electric shock than worry about whether they might.

Our lives are full of uncertainty, and for leaders, this is an extra challenge. Will those VCs invest? Will that big client come on? Will that big project pay off? Will your new hire do the job you so desperately need them to do?

Have you ever found yourself behaving in a way that doesn’t feel like you?

I used to have areas that flipped me into a different version of myself. My anger was one of them. I hated it! Luckily, I was self-aware enough that I recognise this and continuously strived to clear that behaviour.

In our relentless pursuit of success, we often overlook the pace at which we navigate our lives.

I encounter numerous leaders whose existence is characterized by a rapid tempo - an attribute commonly observed among those at the helm. This zest for a fast-paced life is not inherently problematic for them; they adeptly hop from one idea to the next.

…and how this blog can help you if you are being pushed into it)

It’s been quite a couple of years for leaders.

Not only have they had to get to grips with remote leading, working from home, and the impact of Covid-19 on their careers, businesses, and personal lives, but they are also expected to have absorbed several new skills from the ether…

Feeling tired, stressed, or just happy but busy? How can you recoup your energy so you can stay on top of your life? Energy points, that’s how…

I'm going to give you this analogy.

Imagine that every day you wake up you have a set amount of energy points. Let's say 100 points.

Everything takes points. So...

…It occurred to me that walking on frost is a bit like business and life - stay with me here! When you set up your own business or get that job you want, it feels great, you have seen the sparkle, and unlike the hot pant scenario you have ‘bought’ the product. However, frost is not just sparkly, it’s also slippery and can be dangerous.

Losing is hard, you never heard Hannibal from ‘The A-Team’ say, ‘I love it when a plan doesn’t come together.’ Leaders should be innovating, they should let go of fear of failure or Imposter Syndrome, but what happens when they don’t…. tempers may flare.

There’s a joke in my family that when my kids were little, I could tell a board game was over when I heard the swish of the board flying through the air and the multiple little thuds as the pieces hit the floor. My son, ended almost every board game, like this….

My Mother died just before New Year. As humans we avoid talking about death. We say someone has, ‘passed away’, ‘gone to the other side’ or, if we want to laugh it off, ‘they’ve croaked’.

The problem with this is that we set ourselves up for a lifetime of repressed grief and stress. This in turn causes so many other health issues, both mental and physical. Think of the energy of trying to hold a gate shut against an angry bull. That’s what we do when we refuse to face our feelings.

I remember playing Pandemic the board game a long time ago with some friends. I found the game fast paced, confusing and overwhelming and pretty much sat in silence whilst being told what to do by my team mates! This real life situation feels a bit the same! However, this time I'm NOT sitting back waiting to be told what to do in all respects. Understanding what my brain is doing when it sees empty pasta shelves is a good place to start!

Have you ever felt stuck? As you can see from the photo, I definitely have! To be honest, my father pushed me in that bucket to take the photo, maybe you have someone in your life who pushes you, so you feel stuck as well?!

My clients are often feeling stuck when they arrive. Feeling stuck is just a way of the mind expressing that it isn’t happy. Stuck is just the feeling that is presented, so what can we do about it?

This is a story which is somewhat humiliating and yet also the opposite because I’m so damn proud of myself!

I was on holiday in Norway with old friends who live there. Every few years we get together and do activities. Norway, with its beautiful mountains and outdoor attitude, entices these things unlike my Cambridge home which is flat, landlocked doesn’t do a lot of outdoor enticing. I am not outdoorsy, but currently unfit, chubby, and pasty pale. I’m not just pale, I’m that blue colour that slightly hypothermic people go.

I hesitated to write this because on the surface it’s hilarious and humiliating, but if by being vulnerable I can help you have a giggle and learn something, it’s a fair swap. On one level this is very funny, it’s just that at 3.45am when you are tired… it’s not.

A bit of background. I don’t like horror films, or in fact any film where anything scary happens, I think my fear reflex is probably around a PG, pushing to a 12A and a 15 is a challenge!

‘Make it so number one’ spoken by Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the starship Enterprise, is a phrase captured in my head, having heard Picard say it thousands of times. My mother didn’t have great mental health, but she had good taste in TV.

Being ‘taught at home’ (I use speech marks because I never really was) meant that I got my education from TV, copious amounts of books, and random visits to churches, floods, and whatever else took my mother’s fancy each day. Unfortunately, this meant that I didn’t know what the English flag was by the age of 23, but I do now, and it never really held me back.

I have many male friends, colleagues and clients. I feel a deep empathy for men as they don’t seem to have their own space in the world anymore. There’s no room for their masculinity to be seen positively. Masculinity seems to have been tied to physical strength which gets tied to violence, or if you are into the gym, you are a himbo. If a women goes to the gym, she is empowering and enabling herself, getting in the feminine strength zone, taking me time, it’s all very positive. Men in the gym are preening, over confident and physically - slightly threatening. I’ve never heard anyone say to a man, well done for taking time out and empowering yourself.

We need to take responsibility for our own actions, but understanding how your own brain is busy tripping you up can be useful. Throughout my life, I have had many things that I didn’t like about myself, but my anger was the main one. I used to get so angry, full-blown tantrum. It took quite a lot to trigger me but then, as a friend described it, I could go ‘naught to nuclear’ in a split second.

Ever have a day where everything goes wrong, or nothing goes wrong, but you are just in a foul mood? That's today for me. Don't show me positive quotes, don't tell me to re-frame or any other helpful techniques I teach clients, it won't work, not today. And you know what? That's just fine.

Whether it's hormones, relationships, lack of sleep or, well, anything else I can blame that means I can pretend to have no responsibility, it actually doesn't matter. It will pass.

I’m off on holiday soon, but before I go I’m spending this weekend, completely alone. Something I would have avoided a few years ago. So how did I move from hating being alone, to loving it?

I learnt to like myself.

Being alone is a big problem for a lot of people. They feel lost. Many create a world where noise is constant and use music or TV to get to sleep. Why? So they don’t have to listen to that voice in their heads filled with self-doubt.

Are you stressed out, rushing from one thing to another, feeling the pressure but feeling you can’t stop because something will fail or not get done or someone else is relying on you?

Most of us spend our time rushing from one thing to the next. Life seems to be a continuous to-do list and we never get most of it done. The problem is, you’re wasting your own time living like this…

You’re already skim-reading this article, aren’t you?

Fear is such an emotive word and we apply it to so many different situations and yet, we never lose context. Fear of threat - terrorism for example, fear of failure, fear of crime, fear of challenge, fear of change, fear of the future. We can place the word fear in front of almost anything and make it a ‘thing’ to fear. My ex-husband has a fear of clowns – in other words, a phobia, the word phobia is derived from the word fear.