THE TRUTH ABOUT BEING AN INFLUENCER

I don't know how long you’ve been following along in terms of the work that I do or what I share, but if you were around pre-pandemic, you may have seen that I had a little bit of time where I was exploring the idea of influence. I went on a bit of a quest to explore what it means in culture today; to break open the word and dig out all the flesh that we have put around it and try to find out what is at its core – the real juicy stuff.

And I got somewhere with it. Somewhere surprising. It was exciting to lift the layers and see what’s underneath all the trappings of influence that we have created for ourselves. (sidenote: what we have created - not wonderful)

You see, for the majority of my early career I was involved in activism work. Working with charities, running charity projects, advocating, lobbying, creating movements for change. I’ve met people along the way that have shaped my idea of influence while working in that world. I’ve witnessed a hunger for influence in the social justice sphere and been fascinated at how the power dynamics work when working for systemic change. I’ve seen what it takes for shifts to happen in the policy room or the campaign planning session; how influence is used – in healthy and unhealthy ways.  Yes. The non-profit sector is not always healthy. Activism is not always healthy. Crazy, right? Imagine.

And then of course in the last several years I’ve also been building my own business, one that largely operates online. And I believe that my business holds closely the same values as my non-profit work – empowering, advocating and opening conversations about systemic issues that have held women and girls back and creating connections so they can flourish – but this time my medium for this work has changed. I’ve been immersed in the world of social media, working to have my message heard there, connecting with others who are doing the same. And I’ve noticed that to have influence in this sphere requires very different trappings and associations and what is held up as influential when it comes to the online world has sometimes left a lot to desire. For me, anyway.

Both of these worlds have been fascinating to be part of and what influence looks like and what it takes to acquire it are very contrasting from one to the other. Not better. Not more effective. Just different.

In one world, influence is largely about who you know at the top.

In the other world, influence is largely about how many people are looking.

In one world, influence is about needing to be an expert in your field.

In the other world, influence can be gained by staging expertise or being the loudest in the room.

In one world, influence is mastered by having firm boundaries.

In the other world, influence is largely gained by blurred personal/private lines.

There are so many contrasts to it all.

How does influence work so differently in one area to another?

Are there common threads that run through both?

A couple of years back while I was exploring this more deeply,  I asked my friends on Instagram to think about who has truly been influential in their lives. I wanted to know what the top qualities of that person were that made them so significantly influential to them.

The answers to this came in thick and fast and it would seem that the people who have been incredible influences on our lives are quite close to our minds, easy to recount.

I paid close attention to the responses and what fascinated me was that there were some recurring themes. Themes that I spent some time sorting through to make sense of.

What occurred to me in sifting through this all, these personal lived experiences of being influenced by someone else is that influence isn’t actually about what happens on the outside.

Influence seems to be an inside job.

Being a person of influence isn’t something that you can cajole or project - it’s an inner work that makes it’s way out and seems to have depth to it that makes it last a long time..

As I looked through all the data and the interviews and research I did back then, I thought it would be encourage to share with you some of the life-changing things that emerged in my findings about the inside out idea of influence. You may want to make notes for this one. Be challenged and hopeful.

• Influence isn’t actually about outer platforms – it’s about an inner posture.

People shared with me about their secondary school teachers, their grandparents, their foster mums, their neighbours who didnt necessarily have some sort of wild following or fame, but their inner landscape was so rich and magnetic that it left a lasting impact on them. It inspired them or comforted them so much so that they hold that person in such high regard as someone who continues to influence how they live their lives and show up for others. 

• Influence isn’t about momentary notoriety – it’s about long-term dedication.

Often these stories about people who have been influential were about long term witnessing of integrity. There was no real fan fare but a deep knowledge of someone being a consistent and steady presence. 

• Influence isn’t about power – it’s about contribution.

All of these people mentioned as being influential seemed to have some sort of willingness to contribute with intention. They seemed to recognise their significance in the relationship and wanted to add value to other peoples lives. It never came up that someone was influential because they had power or because they could get them further up a ladder - it was about an investment in the wellbeing of the persons life.

• Influence isn’t about reach, it’s about depth.

Integrity plays a big part here. Those reflections were often about admiring the persons responses to difficulties in life and learning from that example. It wasn’t about how many people loved them, it was about the depth of character that they could see and feel.

• Influence isn’t about accumulation, it’s about generosity.

Similarly, there was a huge amount of generosity mentioned in these interviews and responses - the people that had great influence tended to be those that, wether wealthy or not - were generous with their time, generous in their relationship. And that seemed to count for a lot more.

• Influence isn’t about perfecting who we are, it’s about becoming who we are.

No one claimed these people to be perfect - and in some instances, there was discussion of how the person actually had changed over time or transformed in a way from situations of difficulty and chaos into creating a life that was meaningful and had purpose. There was never any illusion that they were perfect people or that that was even important, but that they could see their evolution as inspiring.

• Influence isn’t about striving, it’s about ease.

I heard phrases like ‘they had a peaceful presence’ or they were a safe space, which felt like an important thing to note - it seems like people of true lasting influence are not always striving or trying to earn their place - they seem to be able to be present and a true person of calm.

These are life-changing truths because they tip our cultures idea of influence on it’s head.

I would love for this definition of influence  - the ones that have emerged based on the stories of real people I heard about, to be the new rebrand of the word. I love that this definition means that we don’t have to wait for numbers and figures to have an impact. We don’t have to show up perfectly or expertly or loudly. We don’t have to wait for some sort of status. We get to have an impact on people now - we get to influence each other now.. We get to do the inner work that brings integrity back into a world that so badly needs some now. This could just be the relief we all need to keep perspective in a world that can be so loud, so distracted by shiny things. 

As always, I’m here - willing to chat more - you can email me hello@melwiggins.com or catch me on IG or my email list  if you want to hear more on this - Sign up below!

Three ways you can work with me right now:

• Over the summer I have a few spaces available for VIP Days. If you need a more in depth burst of strategy and clarity but are short on time, join me for an in-person (or virtual online) day of getting clear, strategic and excited about the next stage of your business. These days have been amazing for my clients. We solve problems, generate new ideas and ways of working and have the best time doing it.

• Join my Brand Builder Group Programme! It is GLORIOUS! I've been running this programme ongoing for the last year and it really is so special. It's part self-learning, part live group-coaching and right now I have a beautiful group of female business owners going through the modules to help them create super sonic clarity, greater self-belief and ways of working that completely change the game for their energy and goals in their businesses. If you'd like to hear more about it, click the link in the shownotes or let's find a time to chat about where things are at for you and if this could be the right next step in developing you and your work. There is a link to Book a call with me in the show notes as well. ​

• If you’re not a business owner but you think your workplace could benefit from some coaching and training from me to help bring more connection to your teams and better ways of working when it comes to challenges and change, then I’d love to chat about that too. 

3 HUGE DISTRACTIONS THAT WILL KEEP YOU FROM DOING FULFILLING WORK

I’ve been involved in the personal development industry for just about a decade - 6 of those years directly coaching and building a business. I’ve been around the block in terms of the kind of gurus there are in this industry and have experienced a lot of different schools of thought when it comes to the ways you can make your business successful, grow your income and your influence etc and in this episode I want to shed some light on some of the more formulaic things that are being peddled that I think that are ultimately huge distractions that especially for women, are keeping us from doing fulfilling work. .

It is more important than ever, in this noisy culture that wants to tell us the formula for ‘success’, that we sift through the nonsense and tune into our own intuition and desires.

Here are three things that I see as huge distractions that are keeping us from doing work that is fulfilling and meaningful.

1) TRACKING NUMBERS / FOLLOWERS

Please hear this. Hitting 1K or 5K or 100K followers on instagram means jack shit when it comes to fulfillment. You do not need to have a big following on social media or even a huge email list to build a sustainable, thriving business, service or community. Social media and email platforms didn’t exist as a medium for businesses to use until the recent past and even though it can be an effective, free space for sharing your offerings and building trust in your products, services or values - the numbers game is a dangerous one.

One of my mentors has a thriving, six figure business doing what she absolutely loves and is gifted in with a relatively small following on instagram. She has built her business through writing regularly to email subscribers and developing online courses to teach the stuff that she knows, with a really strong referral system where alumni of her programmes stay on and word of mouth is powerful because they have such a great experience. She has harnessed the truth of quality over quantity and has been showing up consistently, building trust with the people she wants to serve. Her work is fulfilling and sustainable and she is not distracted by follower counting as a means to determine her success.

Big numbers does not equal ‘success’ or fulfilment. It is a façade that the ego wants to lure us into that we really need to do away with. If you’ve been struggling with feeling legitimate because of a small following, or you think you couldn’t possibly sell what you love or your ideas because you don’t have enough “reach” – it’s simply not true. Serve the people that have chosen to have you in their orbit well - develop consistency and congruency and repetition  in what you are doing and remember that business is a long game. All of the mediums like social media continue to change rapidly, so instead of panicking about having to get your head around the latest trend or platform, show up where people are already paying attention and continue to hold your own.

2) ENDLESS EDUCATION

The second thing I think is really significantly stopping people from doing fulfilling work is endless education. And its a common myth that a lot of women buy into - a mindset that desperately needs some updating.

I see this all the time. We have ideas, passions, ideas bubbling up and instead of trying things out or dipping our toes out into the water of sharing those ideas or starting that thing, we spend our time trying to legitimize ourselves by going to every event, every training, every course, researching every other similar business or idea instead of knuckling down and doing the work (this does not apply if you want to be a surgeon - please get a qualification for that).

Here’s the thing. You could have all the letters after your name and all the qualifications in the world and STILL - putting yourself out there to do the work you know will fulfill you will feel stretchy and uncomfortable. It will because it is precious to you and letting it out into the world will feel vulnerable.

This mindset of always feeling like we need to do more training and education is an easy one to slip into because we are programmed to try and keep ourselves safe from vulnerability and staying behind research or doing more and more qualifications is a safer space to occupy than putting yourself out there and actually getting to the part where you get to really get stuck into the work that you have over trained for. 

The danger is that often all of this endless education distracts us from the stuff we know we’d love to just be out there doing. It swallows up all our time and energy and ends up leaving us feeling burned out and unable to take action on the thing we longed to do in the first place. You do not need a business degree, a marketing course or a fancy qualification to dip your toe in, to launch that business or to talk about something you feel passionately about. In fact, in most cases, all you’ll ever need to know about the thing you want to do can be best learned by actually doing it and taking a beginners posture, being experimental and kind to yourself and learning as you do. Ive said it before, and ill say it again - Courage loves action. 

3) WAITING FOR APPROVAL

The last thing that I think can be really distracting advice from the industry is doing your research. Now I say this with some caution, because I am all for research. I love getting into the details of things, figuring out how things work, what the best methods are, what would truly resonate and what else is out there so you can provide a solution in an authentic way etc. BUT - and here is the caveat - often research turns into approval seeking really quickly. When we have ideas that we’d like to put out into the world, what can happen is that we tend to hang back and wait for someone else to give us permission; to tell us that we’re adequate or allowed. It’s likely a lifetime of school girl conditioning that has us this way.

Allowing the opinions or approval of others to shape our ideas rather than confidently trusting our own intuition and energy is a huge distraction from getting on with the work that we most want to do and is a slippery slope towards people-pleasing and losing our own voice.

It is really tempting, especially when we are thinking of beginning something new, or contemplating putting our ideas or products or whatever out into the world to consult all areas. We ask people in our family what they think (please tread carefully on that one), we ask the whole of Instagram (kind of crazy to do because just because people think something is a cool idea doesn’t mean theyre going to buy it!), we ask and we endlessly gather opinions. Often, what we’re really looking for is either validation that our ideas are good or for someone to tell us they are shit so we can back away and not have to sit in the potential discomfort of birthing something that feels important to us. Neither of these responses are going to propel us into meaningful work.

What is important is that you are excited and drawn to the ‘what’ of what you want to do, that you have information about the ‘how’ from your target market (not your auntie or your brother who will likely not be your target market) and that you cultivate a sense of inner trust in yourself and your own ideas that you can make decisions based on. 

Ok, so tell me - are you seeing anything here that you may have been told is good business advice but may be distracting you from getting on with the things you’d love to do? 

It’s totally normal and human to get sucked into business advice that you have always heard, but it’s also ok to question it and consider if it is actually moving you towards getting on with doing fulfilling work or moving you away from it and distracting you from actually getting stuck in - fear and all. 
As always, I’m here - willing to chat more - you can email me hello@melwiggins.com or catch me on IG or my email list.


Three ways you can work with me right now:

• Over the summer I have a few spaces available for VIP Days. If you need a more in depth burst of strategy and clarity but are short on time, join me for an in-person (or virtual online) day of getting clear, strategic and excited about the next stage of your business. These days have been amazing for my clients. We solve problems, generate new ideas and ways of working and have the best time doing it.

• Join my Brand Builder Group Programme! It is GLORIOUS! I've been running this programme ongoing for the last year and it really is so special. It's part self-learning, part live group-coaching and right now I have a beautiful group of female business owners going through the modules to help them create super sonic clarity, greater self-belief and ways of working that completely change the game for their energy and goals in their businesses. If you'd like to hear more about it, click the link below or let's find a time to chat about where things are at for you and if this could be the right next step in developing you and your work. There is a link to Book a call with me as well. ​

• If you’re not a business owner but you think your workplace could benefit from some coaching and training from me to help bring more connection to your teams and better ways of working when it comes to challenges and change, then I’d love to chat about that too. 

WHY YOUR WORK ISN'T SELLING

It’s likely that you clicked here today because you are a business owner, you create things – products of services that you really want to get out there into the world, into the hands of people who will love them. It’s also likely that you are here because the title of this blog is looking at sales and you would love to be selling more of these wonderful, smart, helpful things that you are creating. Because ultimately, that’s what business is about, right? Making sure that your product or service generates income that can sustain and regenerate profit in your business so you can pay your bills, have fun, keep creating and doing the work you love. So…

In this blog post I want to explore some of the reasons why your work might not be selling the way you want it to. And even though this might feel this question – why is my work not selling more -  has any number of answers to it – I want to focus down into three.

I’ve been working with hundreds of businesses over the last six years and I know how tricky selling is, especially for women, so I have witnessed first hand (in my own business) and in so many others the common stuff that gets in the way of seeing those sales come in. And so in this post I want to offer my top three things that I see business owners often missing that are really worth a deeper consideration…

1)     Positioning

2)     Offering

3)     Visibility Vulnerability

So let’s dive in and talk about some of the practicalities – both the outer and inner stuff - that might be in the way of people lining up to buy your amazing stuff.

First up let’s consider positioning:

When I say positioning, what I’m really talking about it how you are framing your offers. This takes into account the way you are connecting, messaging, marketing and framing what it is you have to offer.

Making sales in your business is not about just getting on Instagram and putting your product or service out there, spewing off reems about what it is and crossing your fingers that someone needs it. It’s not about detailing every aspect of what your product does on your website. It takes some understanding of where people are at that might be interested in or need your product to really make the connection.

For the most part, when it comes to purchasing something, people are really interested in how something is going to make them feel. So our messaging and marketing needs to factor that in. Sure, we like to know details of the product, how much it costs, how it works, but ultimately, people connect to how a product or service is going to change something for them, or bring them a feeling. So instead of selling from a place of details, try talking and sharing more about what kind of transformation your work brings. Now, I know that lots of people out there who offer products sometimes struggle with this part. But believe me when I say that there is transformation to be found in your product. Maybe you’re thinking about how much easier it is for service providing businesses to speak to this, but it isn’t the case. Remember, people buy based on feelings. You only have to go to the grocery store on an empty stomach to see that. Or think about the last thing you bought for yourself and dig into what feeling you were after when you purchased it. For me, I bought a candle the other because I wanted to feel cozy and warm as the nights are getting colder. I want to see the dance of that glowy flicker on my mantle piece to signal that it’s time to wind down when I go to sit down at the end of a long day. I bought into the cozy feeling.

So when it comes to your work, how does what you make or create delight, surprise, bring pleasure or joy to others. How will your food make them feel nourished or like a proper luxury treat they can savour. Speak about how your pottery or your clothes or your art brings a sense of personal or individual style. How it makes people feel satisfied, adds flair to a dining table or wall or gives something a sense of feeling finessed or put together. This goes for product or service testimonials too. Make sure when you get feedback, you ask your customer or clients to talk about this aspect. Where were they before they had your work, how do they feel now? What has shifted?

Positioning means framing the feelings of your work in a way that people recognise themselves in the offer. Don’t skip this bit – it’s how we connect and speak human to human with our customers/clients.

Secondly, let’s talk about offering.

When you’ve got your positioning right, it’s time to offer. It’s time to actually provide solutions to the feelings of your customers or clients. It’s one thing to understand your customer, how they feel, what kind of benefits they are after, what transformation or feeling they are looking for but now it’s your job to step up to that with your solution, how you know your product or service can remedy that and let people have it.

What I see happening a LOT a lot a lot is that we have these offers, we know how to position them and we are excited about people wanting them or needing them and all the beauty that comes in that transaction, and so we show up and post about it on social media and expect the sales cart to go mad, to sell out quickly (this whole selling out thing is lies that we are told by hustle culture is common when it truly is rare) or that people will just find it magically and want it quickly.

It does not work like this. And this is often where a lot of us lose our nerve and start doing the slow tiptoe away from our offerings. Like, just kidding – I didn’t really create this, gotta go! We can’t just post about something once or twice and expect things to sell easily. This requires so much nerve holding, showing up and staying committed to this part of the work.

Chances are, if you have something to offer, you aren’t talking about it enough. And for a whole host of reasons that ill get into in a minute. Either you aren’t talking about it enough or you’re talking about it cryptically instead of being bold about asking people to buy from you or work with you. I want you to realistically count in your head how many times you have actively, boldly asked for the sale this week. What I’m not saying is that you have to be pushy or manipulative or cringe here – asking for the sale isn’t begging or forcing. I’m not asking you to step away from your values of authenticity or connection – I am actually asking you to step into it more. Because to know you have solutions or something of value or something that could inspire or delight or help someone and not showing up and telling people about how they can get it – that is actually not activating your values of authenticity or connection is it? By hiding your offers, using vague language or tiptoeing around your offers isn’t actually providing the authentic connection that you really can provide!

You can offer and sell your stuff clearly, with integrity every single day. You can show up on social media or to your email list every day and make sure that whoever is ready or interested in your work knows how to get it and it doesn’t have to mean anything you might be making it mean about you. Please do not ghost your community when you think no one wants what you have to offer – show up for them and for yourself and keep letting those who may need to know what you have to offer. Do it regularly, do it often and do it with conviction because you believe in your own work.

And this brings me to my final point: Vulnerability

That’s the feelings that come up with this stuff. The vulnerability of the offering and showing up.

It is hard internal work to plug your offers. It requires a lots of risk and vulnerability to create something you care about from a place of genuine love for your work and then hold it out into the world and say – come see this? You like it? Do you want to buy it? It’s really good! Your risk aversion department in your brain is going to be on high alert, hoping that you back down your visibility and retreat to the safety of not being seen.

To show up and sell your work or your product or service is going to require you to acknowledge that protective voice, to recognise it when you start doing the slow tiptoe away, to identify how it is showing up when it comes to sharing about your work and asking people to buy from you. Recognising how your self doubt shows up and what you tend to do when that happens is a huge component of mastering it. When you recognise it – that you tend to go quiet, start comparing, stall because of perfectionism, ghost your audience, look for validation in the wrong places, numb out, people please, shrink back in – then you can start to deploy some settling techniques to bring yourself back to your commitment to the work.

Tend to your nervous system when this happens. Reassure your risk aversion department that you are curious about how this might actually work out for you and that it doesn’t need to be on such high alert. Do the work to bring some calm reassurance back into your body and mind. Journal, get into community with other business owners who are 100% likely to be feeling the same way about this for some solidarity, hire a flipping coach and co-regulate and let them do their job of helping you maintain your loyalty to yourself and your work.

If you are finding selling your stuff isn’t working for you right now and you are stuck, frustrated, doubting yourself and your abilities – lean into these three things and see what might shift for you. And let me know if it does.

What's your Method of Hiding? Part 2: Procrastination

Today I want to get stuck into part 2 of our series on methods of hiding and have a little look at procrastination.

Do you consider yourself a procrastinator. Do you always find something else to do instead of the thing you know you supposed to be doing? Do you find yourself faffing with peripheral stuff more than tackling the real needle moving tasks? Are you currently procrastinating by reading this? If you are – I want you to stay here. Procrastinate a bit longer, because I want to offer an alternative way of thinking about how we see procrastination and why we do it.

 I did a survey early on in 2022 with almost 100 female business owners about some of the ways they feel stuck, what they wish they had a magic wand for and over and over and over again, I read answers about time management and feeling like they were procrastinating.

And I totally get it. We live in a high functioning society where productivity is applauded and rewarded. We are conditioned to feel like we should be human doings instead of human beings and that narrative runs deep. And of COURSE with women being acutely aware of how scrutinised we still are in the workplace we feel compelled to always be on, be task and action oriented lest we let down the side.

There’s a level of shame that also surrounds the idea of procrastination – and that shame locks us into a cycle that can be hard to cycle out of. We shame ourselves for not tackling something, that shame isn’t motivating, we build the tasks up to be something huge because of the shame and continue to avoid.

Dr. Sirois, professor of psychology at the University of Sheffield has said.

“The thoughts we have about procrastination typically exacerbate our distress and stress, which contribute to further procrastination. But the momentary relief we feel when procrastinating is actually what makes the cycle especially vicious. In the immediate present, putting off a task provides relief — you’ve been rewarded for procrastinating.”

And we know from basic psychology that when we’re rewarded for something, we tend to want do it again. This is why procrastination tends to be a cycle, one that easily keeps us locked in shame.

 It occurs to me that when it comes to berating ourselves for what we might be calling ‘procrastinating’ there are actually a few more intricate things to consider and be self-aware about:

1)     Are you actually procrastinating? Or are you overworking?

2)     Are you actually procrastinating? Or are you overwhelmed?

3)     Are you actually procrastinating? Or are you feeling vulnerable about doing the work that might actually be true to you because it feels exposing and requires you to be visible?

Let’s look at each of these:

1)     Are you actually procrastinating? Or are you overworking?

It is fully possible that you are stalling or avoiding certain tasks because you are overworking. Might it be that you actually ARE tired and find the thought of a particular task really exhausting? Might it be that you have packed your schedule really full so other things that might help support you or that might move the needle are just not possible to get stuck into?

It really is possible that what you are viewing as procrastination might actually be a stress response to your workload. I want you to consider how much space you leave around tasks? How much margin do you give yourself to complete things? Are you asking a lot of yourself considering the other work you have going on? If the thing you are procrastinating on is going to require a lot of emotional or physical energy from you, would it not make sense to leave extra extra space for that instead of holding yourself to impossible standards of productivity? Just a thought you might want to consider before you shame yourself for not being productive. Rest is also productive. Rest is fuel.

2)     Are you actually procrastinating? Or are you overwhelmed?

Secondly – it’s worth considering - are you actually procrastinating or are you overwhelmed? Usually when we think of procrastinating we assume that there’s a bit of laziness happening but it’s very seldom that our procrastination looks like idleness. Usually we find something else to occupy our time (tidying our offices, clearing our laptop desktop etc) so it’s not that we are not doing things, we are often just choosing to do something else.

Dr. Tim Pychyl, professor of psychology and member of the Procrastination Research Group at Carleton University in Ottawa suggests that

“Procrastination is an emotion regulation problem, not a time management problem,”

It’s not a unique character flaw or a curse on your ability to manage time, but a way of coping with emotions and associations with certain tasks — overwhelm, boredom, anxiety, insecurity, frustration, resentment, self-doubt and beyond.

Which leads me to our third question to reflect on:

3)     Are you actually procrastinating? Or are you feeling vulnerable about doing work that might actually be true to you because it feels exposing and requires you to be visible?

When faced with a task that make us feel vulnerable, exposed or insecure, the amygdala — the “threat detector” part of the brain — perceives that task as a genuine threat, in this case it’s a thread to our self-esteem or sense of belonging or ego. Even if we know in our intellect that putting off the task will create more stress for ourselves in the future, our brains are still wired to be more concerned with removing the threat right now. Researchers call this “amygdala hijack.”

So procrastination becomes the thing we distract ourselves with in order to maintain that inner safety.

In all of this, at its core, procrastination is about emotions, not productivity or lack of ability or poor time management. The solution to feeling like you are always procrastinating isn’t in an app that blocks social media or in time-blocking or punishing ourselves. It is ultimately about managing our emotions in a new way.

If we want to look at how to manage our cycles of procrastination, we need to go deeper than the surface and think about self-forgiveness and compassion.

When we treat ourselves with kindness and understanding, particularly recognising that our brain is having a moment of vulnerability or is perceiving a threat to our ego, it allows for a much more self-supportive condition in which to move forward.

In fact, several studies show that self-compassion supports motivation and personal growth. Not only does it decrease psychological distress, which we now know is a primary culprit for procrastination, it also actively boosts motivation, enhances feelings of self-worth and fosters positive emotions like optimism, wisdom, curiosity and personal initiative. Best of all, self-compassion doesn’t require anything external of us — just a commitment to meeting your challenges with greater acceptance and kindness rather than shaming and berating ourselves.

I wonder how you can load more self-compassion and forgiveness into your week so you can truly move towards the things that you know are vulnerable but that might just lead to a fuller sense of personal fulfilment and impact.

Maybe this post is just what you needed to read in order to understand yourself more tenderly and what is behind the ways that you are hiding through procrastination.

As always, I’d love to hear how this topic lands for you. Feel free to reach out to me on email hello@melwiggins.com or in my DM’s on IG @melwiggins.

Ill be back with part 3 of this series on What’s Your Method of Hiding very soon.