For this Monday Motivation’s bounteous bundle of Self care and self care ideas, we’re honouring how far we’ve come with our recoveries and successes.
It’s my 19th Business Birthday this week so the Embodied Wellbeing newsletter has loving and compassionate advice for 2004 Me focused around self care and Self care. Mostly about being worthy… Yesterday’s Personal Peace newsletter has journal prompts and reflections (plus an oracle card reading) to help you honour your own journey so far. And this blog post has some of the business advice I wish I could share with 2004 Me.
STOP THINKING THAT BECAUSE YOU’RE A “LIFE COACH” YOU SHOULD HAVE YOUR LIFE SORTED
You’re not yet 30 and still secretly believe you’ll wake up in a few years AS a Proper Grown Up on your 30th birthday but you don’t HAVE to have it all together in order to serve and support others.
Even as you only see messiness and trauma you’re only beginning to process, you’re helping people.
Let sunshine be the best disinfectant and enjoy all the additional trainings you undertake without feeling like you need them in order to be worthy in any way shape or form.
LEARN TO BUDGET
Yes, you’re self employed and even 19 years later, won’t fully understand the guessing work of “projections” (when it comes to finances v unconscious processes).
Yet, even with the feast and famine nature of self employment and freelance journalism, you can learn more.
Don’t wait until 2022 to start your first pension since your last office job in 2004! Ethical investments have come a long way but you staying hand to mouth for so long doesn’t help anyone in difficult situations.
Prioritise healing your relationship with money – it’s just energy.
Let what needs healing come up for more sunlight as disinfectant. You don’t need to know anything in order to begin to learn and transform your relationship with your income and expenses.
List all the things you feel clueless and BAD at and begin to access support and even mentoring around them.
FIND SUPERVISION THAT SUPPORTS YOU AND YOUR PRACTICE
Yes, when you’re training as a psychosynthesis counsellor, you won’t be able to choose. You’ll be lucky with some and less lucky with others but you’ll learn from ALL your supervision and training. It’ll help you become a more supportive supervisor yourself (Yup. You’ll become a BACP Senior Accredited and IACP Accredited Supervisor, specialising in working with multiskilled therapists and coaches thanks to your years serving on BACP’s Coaching Executive (including nearly 2 years as Chair).
Just remember that supervision is there to support you and your clients. It’s not an exam. Use it as part of your self and Self care.
SPEAK UP!
You were told, repeatedly, at some of the amazing events you covered as a freelance journalist, that becoming a speaker would help your business blossom.
But you spent YEARS telling yourself that you couldn’t. You were somehow happy with sporadic TV (live not prerecorded) and regular BBC and other radio guest spots but you psyched yourself out of live speaking gigs.
You thought you had to be more polished.
More glamorous.
Less human.
As you draft this, you’re preparing to speak at a therapy conference in Dublin next month and while it’s not occurred yet, already, your approach has been very different to Younger You’s: When you nearly let Imposter Syndrome get the better of you, you checked in with the people who were hiring you and asked them what they thought of your outline.
Far from vomitting over the email and cancelling the gig, they came back delighted with it!
So, for the first time (apart from the ones you had your BACP Coaching team working with you behind the scenes too) you’re realising that you’re on the same page as them.
And that being yourself is enough.
Not only enough but they’re looking forward to it!
And so are you.
Seriously, who’d have thunk that speaking would become one of the favourite aspects of your work?
BE YOURSELF
Stop chasing things that aren’t YOU and that you have to contort yourself to even attempt and honour all the things that come easy to you.
Yes, some Very Basic Things have always felt impossible for you.
But on the other hand, some things DO come easily to you.
Stop dismissing these as flukes and undeserved and instead DO MORE of what feels good.
Go where you feel welcome.
Go where you feel safe.
Go where you feel cherished and even loved.
Move away from ALL situations that feel icky.
Your nervous system is an amazing guide.
You’ve GOT this.
AND – TO WHOMEVER IS READING THIS – SO DO YOU!
What advice would you like to send Younger You, whether you’re your own boss or in any life or work situation?
What are you going to do differently as a result of reading this?
with love,
