Episode 20: Ethical Marketing In A Scarcity Culture

Today I want to get stuck in right away and talk a little bit about what it means to market your business, your products, under services in a way that doesn't give the 'ick'. The reason that I want to talk about this is because marketing your business especially if you're a woman is really tricky. I also want to make this episode a little bit more directed to the personal development industry. So anyone who is in the coaching, teaching, supporting, wellness and fitness space. I want to talk about this area in particular because it feels like it needs the most regulation in terms of how it is marketed. It is a largely unregulated field and so it’s always helpful to maybe shine a light on some things that might not be best practice and offer solutions to lift up the standards of the industry.

I really believe that when we are honest and true to ourselves our marketing can come from a place of integrity truth value and impact so today I want to gently uncover some of the ways that I see marketing happening in the personal development space that seems to me to be based in scarcity rather than being values-led.

I'm also beginning to take applications for my 8 month Leadership Accelerator Programme beginning in September 2022. If you would like to find out more - the link is here to fill in your details and I'll send you over an information document! https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1rLxmc_n19JbdlHCmFsFC7LuYmLQUy1krAPNrBvje9V4/edit

SIGN UP TO THE COURAGE IS CALLING NEWSLETTER HERE: https://www.melwiggins.com/sign-up

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Episode 19: Creating A No-Burnout Business Model

In this episode today I want to give you a run down of my current business model, the one I am training my clients in and using as the basis of my brand builder programme. The next round of the Brand Builder Programme starts on Tuesday the 3rd of May and runs until August.

It is a four month business coaching programme for female business owners with individual coaching, training videos, resources, an amazing group of other women to support and be supported by. It truly is magical. If you want to grab one of the last spaces, the link is here to do that:https://www.melwiggins.com/the-brand-builder-group-programme

This episode is the inside scoop on what you need to consider to have a regenerative, purposeful and profitable business, and I really hope it helps any of you that are out there who want to build your business in a way that honours your whole self. Grab a notebook, you are going to want to take notes!

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Episode 18: She Loves Herself

I’ve been in enough rooms and conversations to know that ‘she loves herself’ usually isn’t the kind of comment you want to welcome. Because what we’ve heard it said about is usually someone who isn’t playing small. Usually we say it about someone who shows confidence in themselves, or who shows up for themselves, or who navigates or moves in the world with some sort of self assurance and that rattles us.

So the words that we use to diminish her are: she loves herself. But what else should she do? Hate herself? Ignore herself? Numb herself out?

In this episode I'm calling for a reframe on this term, including a bit of a lesson from my six year old daughter (look out for a follow up reel from her and I on IG!).

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Hello, and welcome back to courage is calling. I am so glad you're here. Um, uh, those of you that follow me on Instagram or have been around, uh, what I do for any length of time, I'll know that I have an almost a six year old daughter and she is every bit to the typical six year old little girl. Uh, she loves singing and dancing and dresses. And performing for us. And there is a whole lot of mum. Mommy, watch, watch, watch mommy, watch mommy. Watch this. Watch mum, uh, going on in our living room. Um, every single day, uh, and she loves to sit with me when I'm doing my makeup in the morning and try bits of makeup on and give herself a wee bit of blush her or wee bit of lipstick. And, you know, I let her, because I know that right now in her little mind, all she's doing really is mimicing me. She's mimicking her mommy and just trying things out and it's all about play. Um, she doesn't yet have the loaded views of beauty and societal beauty norms that I have where, you know, I'm using makeup to try and cover certain parts of my face or improve my, in some way. She's literally just mimicking and playing and. I so badly want things to stay in that playful, easy place for her. It's really funny because, uh, every so often, if I'm being really honest, I am really triggered by my six year old's freedom around herself. Her full acceptance of herself, of her body, of her fierce, her hair, her personality, her skills. She really does move through the world. So unfair and so free. Like when she receives a Compli and she doesn't bat it away, she like welcomes it. Like. Anna. That was excellent. Did you have, I know, I know I am. You know, she says, I know and it's almost audacious that you would think otherwise to her, you know, she's so in tune with herself, she expresses her needs when she's hungry or tired. Not always in the way that I want her to, but she does. She expresses herself. She asks for what she wants. She refuses to do things that she doesn't wanna do. She wants you to see her. And she asks that you do, she really hopes for your attention. And it's so wild to me, it's so wild. How far removed we become from this version of ourselves as we grow up to become women. We don't know how to say what we need. We are scared to, we are afraid to ask for what we want in case we seem pushy or needy. We do things we don't wanna do because we don't wanna let people die or because we know it's gonna make other people happy with us. If we do and keep us in their good books, we step out of the camera lens and we offer to take the picture instead. We share other people's ideas instead of sharing our own, we recoil at attention, even though deep down, we want to be seen known. It's almost as though, as the years roll on, we transform from these liberated little girls and become smaller and smaller versions of ourselves. And sometimes I even find myself and I cons like I consider myself to be a strong, wrong feminist with a really good nose for sniffing out bullshit ways of thinking. But I find myself sometimes even cringing that she could be so content with herself almost, you know, wanting to make sure that she doesn't get carried away with that. Um, and I have to like actively stop myself from curbing herself, acceptance, or like playing it down in a weird way. At six years old, my daughter really, and truly loves herself. And I wonder how many can say the same at 36, I've been in enough rooms and enough conversations to know that the term she loves herself. Usually isn't the kind of comment that you want to welcome, because what we've heard it said about is usually someone who isn't playing small. All, usually we hear it sad about someone who shows confidence in themselves, who shows up for themselves. He navigates or moves in the world with some sort of self assurance that rattles us. And so the words that we use to diminish her are, Hmm. She loves herself. And I think to myself, what do we really want her to do? Instead hit herself, ignore herself. Like numb herself out to her body and her desires. Is that what we want? Like, what's the opposite of loving yourself? Is it loathing? But I guess, you know, it makes sense that when women spend their time and their lives hitting themselves and thinking that they're broken, thinking that they're fat or ugly or not gifted, then capitalism and patriarchy wins and it wins because. we tend to then step away from our gifts, not wanting to be seen and we don't take up space. It wins because we stand, spend our time and our money trying to fix ourselves, our bodies, our skins, and we line the pockets of the beauty industry and already wealthy. So, what would it look like if we reframed, she loves herself and actually came around to that idea in celebration instead. what would it look like if we gave other w women permission to be as audaciously, loving toward themselves else as a six year old is. What would it mean if we started using, she loves herself as something to aim for rather than a free is to take someone down AEG. What would it mean for you to decide to love yourself some more, to not SWOT away, compliments, to not fixate on your appearance, to not justify your presence or point out your flaws? What would it mean for you to stand tall in your giftings to take up some more space and family conversations in your relationships, in the workplace? What would it mean for you to be in the picture, to ask for some time to share your ideas, to be seen? What would it look like for you to reclaim in your own way? She loves herself before I go. I just also wanna mention, uh, that I have another brand builder strategy day coming up on the 11th of May Wednesday at the 11th of May at my home in county Arma. And this is a full day of intensive and focused coaching and planning to help you and the other women that will join you. Um, To get clear and excited about the next stage of building your business. Uh, these days are immersive and intensive and we go through so, so much to help you get absolutely clear on your, your business impact on messaging, create plans for your offers, your marketing, um, to really up level your sense of business ownership. Uh, if this is right for you, you can check out the brand builder strategy J. Um, through the link of my profile on Instagram or go to Mel wigs.com/brand-builder-strategy dash. There are only five spaces available. Um, this is a small group in person. Experience, uh, for female business owners who need that real injection of clarity, uh, to help them build a beautiful regenerative profitable business. So check it out as always, I am super grateful for your time. Listening to this, if you'd be so kind, it would mean so much to me. If you would take a minute to read and review the, the podcast on apple or Spotify, and maybe even share it with your friends or followers on Instagram stories or on WhatsApp or whatever, and you can feel free to get in touch with me with any of your thoughts on from at Mel Wiggins for email. hello@melwiggins.com. I really, really appreciate you. And I'll be back again in two weeks with another episode, we'll see you then.

Episode 17: Choose Your Hard

This episode is for anyone who is feeling the resistance to moving ahead with their new idea or new thing. Any situation we where you're putting your most truest ideas out there into the big world for other people to see, to judge, to have opinions on is going to be hard. But to not do the thing also brings some tough stuff too. We have to choose which hard thing we are going to pursue, there is no getting around it. If you're in that spot right now and the fear is creeping in and you're ready to quit, listen in.

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Episode 16: When Comparison is Keeping You Stuck

Welcome back to Season 2 of Courage Is Calling! In this pep-talk we are looking at comparison. This is the number one mindset issue that seems to be coming up for my clients and the women I connect with. This episode is all about looking beyond or underneath our comparison tendencies to what is leading us there. Comparison is usually symptomatic of some deeper stuff going on for us and I'm laying out three key things that it could be AND the important ways we can move through it.

I'm also mention in this episode about the Brand Builder Retreat Day I'm hosting on 2nd of March 2022 at my home - all the details are here if you want a space to come and join me! 

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Episode 15: Getting Brave With Boundaries Part 2

So with the last episode in mind, I want to give you 5 experiences or behaviour signs that might indicate that you need to update your boundaries and give you 5 ways that we can update and implement them.

This is an amazing opportunity for you to take stock, to recognise where boundaries are lacking in your life and how you can, without shame, but from a place of empowerment, claim them back.

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Mel: welcome back everybody. Thank you so much for tuning in. I am Mel. Uh, and I I'm your host in this podcast. Um, we are heading into part two of a little series that I've been putting together on getting brave with boundaries. Um, this is a great time of the year for us to be looking at our by and because, um, it's busy. There are lots of extra demands on us on our time, on our resources with emotional and physical. So last week, if you haven't caught up with the previous podcast episode, You'll have heard me going through kind of what my understanding is of boundaries, that they are freeing, uh, that they are an opportunity for us to be really clear and kind with the people that matter to us and that they actually offer us the opportunity to do our best, most honest, true work. I then talked a little bit about what's in the. So if boundaries are so great, Mel, like what is in the way, like, why are they so frigging hard to implement and Cape and Minton? And I talked a little bit about how I patriarchal cultures that we exist in do not make it easy for us to eat. To really put boundaries in place. Uh, the systems that we operate in and, and work on an home demand. So much of us that it's really hard for us to feel like we have space and time and to really execute good boundaries. Um, I also talked a little bit a bite, um, overestimate in our capacity. Maybe we also feel like we're flailing and flying by the seat of our pants, because we haven't put any structure in place for, as a gift to ourselves when it comes to our work and our life. Um, and we're just kind of moving around from urgent thing to urgent thing. Plan on a hat and then also not asking for help and really believe in the harder we work, the more we're going to get out of it instead of being smart and strategic about our time and implement and boundaries around that. So that was. The part two, I actually want to move into a few solutions and thoughts around high. We can update our bind race. So if you resonated with part one and you're like, Ooh, what button I want? What am I going to do about this? I need to know, I need to do this. I know I need to update this stuff, but how do I do that? You're in the right place. We're going to do that today. Um, before we get to that though, I just want to. Maybe give you some signs, some red flags, if you're not sure already. I think it's helpful sometimes to kind of just be really clear about, um, some signs that we might notice that are given us good information about needing to update our bind race. And the first one of these is martyrdom. So with this with martyrdom, you might identify as having had your boundaries imposed on them, and you might become overly defensive to ward off any further in position. Um, and actually the crux of martyrdom means that often you continue to be knowingly imposed on and then let other people know of your martyrdom. Anybody for lit. The second sign might be resentment, and this could be really reflected in your interactions and relationships with others because of your anger over past and position of your boundaries, you might feel really resentful towards a lot of people towards situations and expectations. Sophie, the third thing is invisibility. And visibility might be a sign and this could involve you pull an in or withdrawn so that other people, and maybe even yourself, never really know how you're feeling or what you're really thinking. And your goal with this kind of invisibility is to not be seen or heard so that your boundaries are not imposed on. Because if they can't say me, if I don't stick my head up, then no, one's going to ask anything. Another sign you might need to update your boundaries is aloofness. So maybe as a result of experiences of being ignored or rejected in the past, it might feel easier for you to protect your boundaries by taking the defensive posture to begin with and reject others before they might reject you. Uh, in this case, she inward an unwilling or maybe fearful of opening up your space, your work to others. You might try to seem cool or withdrawn. So not to have any boundary, imposing experiences going forward. And then maybe on the flip side of this, the fifth thing, um, that might be a sign that you need to update your boundaries is a hyper accessibility. So this is when it seems to you that maybe nothing you think or feel or do is your own business. Maybe you're not even aware that that's what you think. Maybe you feel like you're expected to, or you feel a real urge to report to others, all the details and content of your feelings, reactions, opinions, relationships, and dealings with the outside world. Maybe you begin to feel like nothing you experience can be kept in the privacy of your own domain. Maybe you begin to believe that you don't have a private domain or your own space. To which you can escape and maybe fail. You'd need to overexplain yourself to others, even people you don't know. Um, maybe, maybe that's showing up for you in social media, the sense of hyper accessibility and all of those martyrdom, resentment and visibility. Aloofness, hyper accessibility may be signs that we need to update our bind race and you might've identified. Something that resonates for you in that, um, maybe experiences, behaviors that you've adopted that could indicate that you felt like your boundaries have been compromised or imposed on, and maybe it's time to reflect on where these experiences came from. So what was the boundary that wasn't in place there, or what's the boundary that was a little bit porous or wasn't communicated that allowed this to be the case and based on these kinds. Signs. I wonder if he can connect to a situation or a person where, you know, you need to update your boundaries in order to free you up or allow you to become just a bit more true to yourself. I know we can move into ways that we can update and advocate for our boundaries. And I've got five things to say about this, because I think that there are really practical things that we can do to update our boundaries. And the first thing is. Having support in place before and after setting your boundaries, I find this to be hugely, hugely helpful. Find someone to talk it out with someone that you trust before you sat them, be accountable to someone. I kind ability with boundaries is key. How have a conversation with someone trusted before you set your boundaries with someone or something? Um, especially if you're feeling nervous about it, have someone in your corner that you can be accountable to so that you're able to be empowered. Before you do that really difficult, but important work of setting a boundary and someone who you can unpack it with once you've done that. The second thing that I think is really important that we can do to advocate for our boundaries is have really explicitly clear agreements about expectations. Remember, from last episode, to be clear is to be kind. When it comes to agreeing to do something for somebody or saying, yes, do not be afraid to ask as many questions as you'd like, get as much clarity as you need. So you can weigh up. Where are your boundary lies on a particular situation? I think that's super important that you don't feel. Like you're being annoying or over the top by asking as many questions as you need to, or being as clear as possible a bite, what the expectations are. If you do say yes to somebody, if you do agree to do something, if you are stepping into something. The third thing is use simple and direct language. So when it comes to setting boundaries, yep. Clarity is super clear, but also being really direct is also important. And I know that we all find this really hard because we don't want to come across as a bitch and we don't want to be come across as harsh, but sometimes it's about, you know, not leaving any room for. For wiggle, like not leaving any room for things to be ambiguous. So it might be that you have to say something like, you know what I have decided not to take phone calls between 10 and two so I can get my work done. I'll need to call you later. Or, you know, although this cause is really important to me, I thank you so much for asking me to be part of it. I actually really need to say no for NY because I need to honor what's going on in my family at the minute. Or how about this? It's not okay with me that you comment on my appearance. I'd really like you to stop doing that. Or my favorite one, you know what, I'm going to have to think that over, I have this policy of not making decisions right away. So I'll let you know by X amount of time, right? I've got this policy of not making decisions right away. Give yourself plenty of space. You absolutely deserve to do that. The fourth thing, and this one's hard. I will caveat this fourth point with that. Is that realizing within ourselves that we do not need to defend Debbie it or overexplain our bind race. We absolutely can be firm. We can be gracious and we can be direct. We don't need to defend it. We don't need it to be at it and we don't need to overexplain it. That's our right. That's our right to, to have our boundaries in place with I thought. And if you faced resistance, what you might do, it's okay to repeat that again. It's okay. To repeat your boundary, the fifth thing, and maybe the most important. Is that in order to update an advocate for our boundaries, we got a bucket with some action. So that means really holding ourselves accountable to the things that we have put in place, the boundaries that we've put in place, showing that we mean what we say, showing that we're loyal to ourselves and our values and how we want to show up. So I'd love for you to think about what you might need to do in order to update. Boundaries, maybe that you're struggling with maybe things that have caused you to compromise in whatever way or to be overstretched in some way. And are there any of these five things that you might need to activate to update that boundary for yourself? I wonder what you're actively going to do to update that boundary. Maybe it's connecting with a friend, applied, a boundary that you need to put in place, getting that support, getting somebody trusted in your corner so that you can feel in part to me. The, uh, boundary happen, maybe it's that you need to be super, super clear and ask a bunch of questions. Maybe you need to be really direct and use simple and direct language. Maybe you need to resist defending yourself or debating things with people who are maybe insistent on pushing your boundaries, or maybe you just need to start backing yourself with some action around your boundaries and showing that you mean what you said. I really hope that that's helpful. I hope that you're able to take something away from this new one that our boundaries are critical to have an, a life that feels meaningful. That is kind of self-supportive and not as free. If you have any questions, if you have any. Comments. If you're struggling with boundaries, I'd love to hear a by thought here, your experience. You can always reach out to me on Instagram. You can email me at hello at Melbourne and star calm. Um, and I really, I, yeah. I just hope that you feel. A little bit more emboldens, um, and in part to set some boundaries and update those and your life, I'll be back again and a little bit with another episode. Thank you so, so much for less than.

Episode 14: Getting Brave with Boundaries Part 1

About four years ago, I was barely keeping my head above water. I was running a home. I was running a charity, I was running this business – Assembly, I had a two year old and a 6 year old and a marriage and other responsibilities to manage and I was right in the deep end. I needed to make some changes. Not only did I need to get some help medically, I knew I needed to work out a better, easier way of doing things that didn’t involve me sacrificing my mental and physical health.

So. I want to share some of that learning and how implementing and updating boundaries have been so key to moving towards health for me.

I think the key thing here is getting to the baseline of why we are so frazzled and torn and I have a few ideas about why this is so and why women in particular are grappling with this desire for balance and boundaries so much more than men and why it is distracting us from the amazing work that we should be doing in the world. This is Part 1 of 2 and I'll be laying out why I believe boundaries are critical and freeing and what might be in the way of us setting them.

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lovely friends. Hi. Welcome back to courage is calling with me, your host, Mel Wiggins. Um, I wonder how you doing today as you listen to this wherever you are in the kitchen and the car on a walk. Put in washing away. Those are all my favorite places to listen to podcasts. Uh, today I thought I would begin a two-part series on getting brief with binderies. This is something that I have noticed is really, really, really one of the biggest things that we need to talk about when it comes to building courage, being brave. Moving towards the things that we feel called or compelled today, our bind race. Um, and so I'm wondering, let me just get a temperature gauge of, of where you're at, but I wonder if you've maybe thought of some of these things before, have any of these situations crossed your mind? Wanting to throw your phone at the wall because you're so sick of it. So sick of your addiction to it, even when you tell yourself it's, you know, working or networking or marketing and feeling like it just never ends, or maybe you feel like you don't have any time for yourself or your hobbies, you're not even actually sure. What any of your hobbies or what you like to do are anymore because. I feel really consumed with running your home or run your business or doing the thing. Maybe you feel like your brand never switches off because you're always running from task to task. And you're not really, really sure that you're giving your full attention to anything. Maybe you're someone that feels like they're always sneaking in work when you're at home. So you get the kids to bed or you get the dinner washed up on your back on the laptop. Um, Maybe you feel like you have really demanding clients and you're starting to be resentful of that. And you feel like you can't say no to them and you're bending to their whims, or maybe you're someone who, anytime you're asked how you're doing or how things are going, your default responses. Yeah. So busy, so busy. It's crazy. So tired, so busy or maybe a weekend at home. On your own with a stash of movies and all the good snacks signs like heaven to you. I wonder, I wonder if those are things that have crossed your mind before, or if you can relate to any of that. I just want to say if that's, if that's the case, you're absolutely in the right place by lesson today. Um, and those are absolutely thoughts that I've had at one stage or another. That's how I came up with them. I came up with those points really easily because they have been my own lift experience. I want to tell you about something personal. So about four years ago, I really was barely keeping my head above water. I was running a home, for my, my family, running a charity project, running this business assembly. I had a. Two year old, um, a six-year-old and a marriage and all these other responsibilities to manage. And I was right in the deep end and it all came to a head after a real bite of panic attacks came out of nowhere. Um, one night I actually ended up at A&E thinking that I was dying of a heart attack. Um, and anyone who's experienced panic attacks as part of their mental health story will attest to that's really how it feels times. And that was the wake-up call that I had to, to know that I needed to address what was going on on the outside was really affecting me and my body on the inside. I needed to make some changes and not only did I need to get some help medically. I knew that I needed to work out a better, an easier way of doing things that didn't involve me sacrificing my mental and physical health. So I want to share some of that learning with you. And I want to talk through some of the insights that I've. I've gained the shifts that have happened for me that have helped me to feel more safe, more free in my life and work. Um, and I think the key here is get into the baseline of why we're so frazzled and torn and have a few ideas about why this is so, and why women in particular are grappling with this desire for balance so much more than we understand that men are. Um, why it's distracting us from the amazing work that we could be doing in the world. So to start off, I want to just do a little run through of what I believe boundaries are and why they're so important in helping us redress some of the balance and that feeling frazzled and torn stats on the first thing I want to say about boundaries is boundaries are not constrictive. They are freeing, they are freeing. And maybe you have grown up in a culture where boundaries have meant restriction or being confined and sometimes blind. And, you know, in a really traditional sense can get a bad rap and be associated with stuff that maybe hasn't served us in the past. But I want you to know that boundaries when applied the right way are supposed to be so self-supportive. And so fraying, when we are really clear about what is serving us well and what isn't boundaries are that action point that helps us align with what we really and truly want to be doing. So I want to compel you to ask yourself. What freedom do I need to have that I don't right now? What boundaries can I put in place around my work? My relationships, the things that feel L fitting to me right now that will bring me more freedom and more opportunity to focus on the things that are going to help me grow and develop as a person. The second thing I want us to understand what boundaries is this binary. Do not equal letting people dying. They mean that we get to be really clear unkind with the people that matter most to us, because there's nothing that can harm a relationship more than unclear undefined, bind race. And often when a relationship is strand or difficult or burdensome it's because we've aligned our boundaries in that relationship to be unclear or loose. But when our loyalty to ourselves remains intact and we are clear about what we are willing to do, how much time we're able to invest, what kind of support we can offer, how much of ourselves we can give it, actually foster safety and clarity in our relationships. So I want you to think of relationships that you're having any difficulty with right now. It could be work. Our client relationships, it could be family or friends and notice where communication and clear boundaries might be ambiguous or avoidance at the minutes. And I want you to know it's not too late to update your boundaries and be clear with the people that you care about most. And it might mean that you have to draw a line or say no, or let someone. But you love know that you aren't able to commit to the thing in the way that you thought you could before. And this absolutely can feel stretchy at first because adjusting and updating boundaries might trigger reactions and other people, but it is the best thing you can do for others and ultimately yourself being clear in order to be kind. And that's a brand new O'Brien, uh, signed by. And she also says Darren to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves, even when we risk disappointing others. And finally, one last truth that bite boundaries boundaries actually offer us. The opportunity to do our best work, to be self-supportive and intentional about what we want to offer or create or high. We want to show up boundaries Elias to be really true and really loyal to ourselves. So when we're intentional about where we stand on things and how much time we have, what our priorities are. Absolutely are going to shift and move around for different seasons of our life. We will see our truest work coming three. There is something about being really clear on what matters and what's most important. That's going to allow us to siphon off things that actually were never meant for us in the safe. And we can be specific about, you know, our offerings and our services. We can be more focused on doing the stuff that brings out our best and we can serve and work, um, uh, be of service from a place of intention and pace rather than burnout or scarcity or resentment. So those are some reasons that I think boundaries are really important. So we need to be clear about, um, hi, they're here to really help us feel more CF, more free, more focused, and what I'd love for you to do, if you're up for a little bit of homework is to write dine. Um, some of the things that really are hitting home for you. And then also just as I talk through this next bit, you might want to make some notes. Because what I want to do is look at what's in the way what's in the way of us. So if boundaries are so great, Mel, then why are they so freaking hard? Why are they so hard to set? Why can I not get my boundaries sorted? Well, there's stuff in the way. And I think that it's important that we call that out, that we tell the truth about why boundaries are difficult. Um, and so I want to talk through like four or five. Reasons that I believe boundaries. Um, why boundaries are difficult for us in particular as women. So what's in the way. So the first thing I want to talk about is that when it comes to boundaries, we're really trying to contend with a very patriarchal society. And this is a big one and it underpins. So much of what we do and how we view balance and boundaries and all of that. We are forever trying to compartmentalize our lives and not acknowledging that there's always going to be a blade and then forever feeling guilty that we can't switch off. What we sometimes forget is that the systems and the functions of this world are not built for women who want to explore their desires. They're not built for us to maneuver between home and work easily. We are constantly thrown off by the systems and the barriers that have been created by man to suit ma male needs on the web man operate. And what happens when we come up against this is that we hit that wall. Realized that we can't do all of those things that we can't compartmentalize work and home and family and friendships and all of the things that we're supposed to balance and, um, have boundaries around. And we come up against that. And then we surmise that something's wrong with us. And we swallow this, this guilt pill, and we know that guilt. Well, eight us up at eight, set us up an ACE up our time. It eats up our action. It halts our action. And when guilt is rife, we operate out of sham and that's never good soil to grow anything from. And it's all because we're operating in a world that is not designed for our flourishing, of course, strides have been made for sure, to, for policies and procedures and all of that kind of stuff. All of the. Me and stuff that gets in the way still gravitates to a male-centered world, a patriarchal centered world where we orbit around the meal normative way of doing things. And so, so, so much of our guilt is misplaced because we forget that the world isn't set up in a way that enables women to feel good about existing and multiple roles and this heaps and heaps. Shame on us that we absolutely don't need. We don't deserve. That's a big one. And that's something that all of us need to question to challenge, to pick apart and find some good female role models for this stuff and be good female role models for this stuff by holding her hands up and saying the system is rigged. Secondly, maybe more practically speaking, there may be other reasons why you're feeling a real struggle in setting boundaries and. Getting any sense of balance. Um, and I think another reason why balance and boundaries might feel off might be in us, overestimating our capacity. So saying yes, when we really may know, or body says, no, maybe taking on too much and then feeling like real failures when we don't get round to doing things, or when we do it out of Judy we're resenting saying yes. And then we Essen more time and energy steward over these things that we wish we hadn't said yes to. Uh, maybe this is what having difficult conversations because generosity cannot exist without boundaries. Boundaries are not easy, but they are the key to self-love and treating others with loving kindness. Nothing is sustainable without blind race. Another reason why we might find ourselves flailing in terms of boundaries might be that we don't actually have a plan for. Our business or our work, and we are just flying by the seat of our ponds. Um, I know that I relate to that and it's only in the last couple of years that boundaries in my work have been so, so PowerPoint. So maybe you're switching from task to task feeling really half-assed and a bunch of areas. So if you work for yourself and you haven't given yourself the gift of some structure, it's super likely that you're going to be scrambling. It really is. That's super likely. You're not prioritizing that you feel swamped. And then you're doing a lot of comparing and looking around to other people's work or their businesses, giving yourself the gift of a plan of a strategy is significant and taken yourself, taking the work you have to do seriously and tuning into your own way of doing things. Another thing. Um, and what might be in the way is thinking that we should be able to do it all and not asking for help, not getting creative with collaboration, with Sharon ideas, with invest in and support. So maybe if you're running a business, you feel like you're the marketer, the creator, the admin, the CEO, the accountant bookkeeper, the designer, the cleaner, whatever it is. We would absolutely never, ever be expected to do all of these roles in a traditional job. Um, so what are the things that you're laboring over that are absolutely none of your business in your business? What do you wish could be taken off your hands? Time and money are the same energy in lots of ways. And we're exchanging them all the time. So what is it? A bite? Our hesitation to do this in our work. Asking for help. And maybe what's in the way is actually a belief that we have that tells us that the harder you work and work and work, that the more you'll earn and earn and earn and we're slogan at night, instead of being really smart and strategic about article. There's a bunch of stuff in the way, and that's why boundaries doesn't feel easy. That's why it's a big topic for us to unpack. And this is just part one I want to just present boundaries is what I believe they are. And what I see is in the way as a bit of a relief, hopefully for you to know that you are not alone. That this is absolutely stuff that all kinds of women are going through as well. Um, if any of these are connecting, I would love to hear it. You can always reach out to me on Instagram at malware gins. You can email me hello@malwareguns.com. Um, and I'll be back in a couple of weeks for part two of getting brief with fine.

Episode 13: A New Approach To Feedback & Validation

For anyone who is out there trying to do something, put something out there, create something new, offer out their skills or expertise, feedback can be super alluring and super terrifying. It’s almost like we have this push pull relationship with feedback and validation that means we want it, but it also has the potential to crush us.

In todays episode I want to talk about what feedback we actually need to get, how we interpret that wisely and how we can build resilience and wisdom about what feedback means. I'm going to talk through 5 key things we need to consider to take on a new approach to feedback and validation. Get your notepad out, it's a good one!

+ Click here to read the transcript

Hi, everyone. Welcome. Welcome back to the courage is calling podcast. I am so happy to be back with you and this week, digging into the idea of feedback and validation. So for anyone who is listening, who's Arthur right now, I to do something new or put something out there that they are creating. Um, if you're offering out your skills or expertise feedback, I know can be really alerting and also really terrifying.

It's almost like we have this push pole relationship with feedback and validation. That means that we want it. Like we crave it, but it also has the potential to crush us. Right. So, and today's episode, I want to talk briefly about what feedback really means. What feedback we really need to get how we interpret that wisely and how we can build resilience and wisdom up by what feedback means.

So if you can, I want you to scan back in your mind to a time when maybe you've received some tough feedback. Maybe it was something that was said to you by an old boss, a current boss, um, A client, a teacher, a parent, maybe you have to kind of dig back in the archives to remember that, or maybe it's often at the forefront of your mind. Um, well, I can vividly, I'm going to share it with you. A vivid memory that I have, um, of when I was 21 and I was living on my own in London, kind of first real, kind of big girl pants situation. I was just finishing up my youth work degree. And I had a placement at a youth at a youth center, um, that Kim with a placement mentor, um, and my placement mentor invited me over for dinner and, uh, at their house.

And we stopped after dinner and their living room. And they pulled out this piece of paper. It's like a four sheet of paper. And on, it was a list of things that they wanted to feed back to me about how I was struggling. Oh, even just talking about it right now is making my bottom clench. So, um, the things that they told me where, uh, we see that you are struggling to manage your money, uh, we can see that you are struggling to prioritize your university work.

We feel like you're struggling to pull your weight in the center and the center. And we feel like you're a struggling to stay grinded with the opportunities that you're getting to sing at the minute. Um, even just talking about it makes me want to be sick, uh, because like at that moment, you know, that's whatever, like it, 10 years ago, But I still remember it.

Um, and I was absolutely floored. I was devastated and I was so embarrassed. Um, and I know that some of that stuff was absolutely true, but I also know that I was 21 and I was at university for the first time. Um, I was in a placement. I was living in this big, big city. Um, I, as I was getting a lot of like singing opportunities at the time, which felt exciting for me, I was away from my family in Canada.

So yes, of course I was absolutely struggling with all those things, but it stung so hard at the time. And I was so overwhelmed by the kind of casual setting of dinner and then the heavy pulling end conversation. Um, um, that feedback was so hard to hear. And for so many years after, I really did hear a lot of what was said in that conversation ring over me in so many other roles that I had, you know, I would be questioning.

Am I ready? Am I sucking here with money? Like, am I, am I not pulling my weight? And this role , am I coming across as being cocky? Does everybody, is everybody else thinking this about me? Um, and so what was one person's observation into a really. Kind of formative period of my life actually set in motion, this new set of beliefs about myself.

Cause that's what happens. Right. Um, once we start to kind of think about things for long enough, it can, we can start to form them into these beliefs in our system. And then what happens is that beliefs become behaviors. So everybody, um, has beliefs. Kind of dictate their behavior. And so for me, there were these behavior sets that Kim to like either manage my beliefs about myself or counteract them.

And that looked like people-pleasing that looked like staying quiet more. Um, if you can believe that that looked like over-delivering, um, burning more quickly. And my later roles, it looked like sacrificing myself to the cause or being frugal to the point of like self punishment and really kind of toxic stuff.

Um, and so I wonder, does this ring any bells for you? Uh, can you think of a time in your life, in your work and your career? Whatever circumstance that you've received feedback, and it has become a belief about yourself and that that belief has shown in and behavior. And so it's for this reason that I think it's really important that particularly as women, we begin to understand. What feedback is when it's important, how we interpret it and how we can use it in the service of our own callings or aspirations, rather than have it, you know, silence us or stop us from doing the things we'd really love to do. And what I mean by that is the idea isn't to like fob off or be cold and robotic towards any kind of feedback, like shutting herself, dying from that, because that's, I think that's really inhuman of us to expect from ourselves. And it's impossible in fact, and it's really unfair, um, because. And every single one of us there is this part of us, this big part of us actually that really wants to be seen and witnessed that really wants to be acknowledged to mater to other people. And I believe that we absolutely should honor that part of ourselves that desires, respect, and appreciation and.

And we should know where the CFUs places are, uh, for us to go for that. Right. Um, and so it's a really imperative part of the conversation that we start to speak some new language and develop some new behaviors around feedback and validation. So they're kind of five things that I want to really quickly go through that. I think when we, when we're starting to kind of really re understand. The concept of getting feedback and getting validation or criticism or whatever that, uh, I think are just our K. Um, so the first thing is that it really, really matters who you ask, not everyone in your life is important to get feedback from.

And I think that our expectations around this are everything, um, Really the most important people to get feedback from if it's to do with, um, something that you're creating or producing our people here connected to the success of your work. So that's potential customers or clients or stakeholders. And so if you're asking close family members for feedback on something, Absolutely.

It has nothing to do with their interests or knowledge or that they don't have any stakes in that is a really slippery slope. Um, and I wonder if you can think of a time when you have asked the wrong person for feedback and often it's like kind of good intentions or, or they're just the closest people and you just really want their support, but often they're the wrong person to ask.

Um, and really, we only need to be considering the feedback of people who this really involves or, or might be important to you as well. So I wonder if you thought of a time where you've asked the wrong person for feedback on something that was really important to you and felt that real staying of disappointment or deflation when and their response, wasn't what you wanted.

Um, and what would it have meant for you to ask someone who really was more integral to the idea or to the work. The second thing I think is important to consider is that you get to decide if the feedback matters and you get to decide how it's interpreted. And so much of this process. Of that interpretation, um, is about cultivating real wisdom about what feedback is important to take on board.

So something that Tara Moore talks about a lot in her courses and in her book playing big is the idea that feedback only. Ever tells you about the person giving the feedback, feedback only ever tells you about the person giving the feedback. It doesn't tell you anything true about the work itself. And I really love this because when I, when I really started to understand this idea, it gives me so much freedom and autonomy to decide if the feedback I was getting was important for me to consider, um, And sometimes it is. I'm not saying that every time you get feedback from a client or whatever that you just say, oh, well, that's their opinion. That's their experience. Um, sometimes that feedback, if it is in, you know, if it is going to move your work forward and it is kind of critical to the progress of this idea or whatever, and maybe it is important for you to consider, but not.

Not always. Um, because really it does only ever tell you a bite, the person given the feedback. Um, and you'll see this like a good experiment to do to kind of validate this idea is go on Amazon, look up your favorite buy from your favorite author. Like a real, like, read that you just couldn't put Darren and adored and read the five star reviews, reviews, similar to what you would say. And then you will see that there will probably also be one-star reviews. There would be, there'll be people who did not connect with that book. So you will find both, but neither of them, like, remember this, neither of those five star or one star reviews actually tell you anything true about high gate.

The work of the author is it only tells you about the person. Giving the feedback about their expectations, their preferences, their likes and dislikes. So it really is important to consider if the feedback really matters and how you interpret it, remembering that it only ever tells you about the person giving up.

The third thing is that simply it's perfectly okay to not ask for feedback. Really, um, I really believe that there are times in our creative lives and our business journeys and our personal lives where it really is. Okay. And maybe even irrelevant to ask for feedback. Um, and I think that. Sometimes, what is most important for us to do is to just run with our intuition or our gut and not get side railed by asking for other people's opinions. Because what often happens when we do that, when we ask for feedback in the, in the very, like either embryonic stages of putting something together or creating something. Or when we ask for feedback, when we're in a really highly intuitive zone, it just halts our action and stops our momentum. And so if your gut is speaking to you about doing something, just keep at it, there may be time for feedback and opinions or considerations from other people during the road.

But when your intuition is leading, you just be led by that. Um, and I wonder if you know, on reflection, you can recall a time where you felt really in your flow and you find yourself really halted by someone else's feedback either asked for or not. The fourth thing that's, um, I think really interesting.

And as a different angle on this whole idea of feedback and validation, is that for women in particular w the ratio or the research shows that we are way more highly tuned in to feedback, because we have a much more sensitive. Uh, understanding of all the stuff surrounding feedback. So we're more switched on to body language, facial expressions, tone of voice.

We are interpreting that along with the words that people are saying we are taking in the entire room situation and person, not just the words. And so it isn't surprising then that. Often comes more fully loaded for women than it does for men. Um, we also research shows that we tend to laser focus in, on feedback and dwell on it longer.

And so, you know, it really has an impact on us in a totally different way than it does to men. And I think this comes from the idea that it jeopardizes our sense of likability whenever feedback and. It's brought in. Right? So when women only had likability to rely on before we had any access to finance or laws that protected us for our CFD or rights, we, we relied on being liked to get by. So, you know, so that any threat to our likability, nine mess. Fail very painful or scary, including feedback. Um, and I wonder what your experiences of likability. So have you ever find yourself in a situation where you've had a very visceral reaction to feedback given to you because you sense that it was jeopardizing your sense of likability and that, that feels very scary.

So that's definitely something to kind of. You know, say safe feedback and validation through the lens of that tuned in us that that women have in particular. And then finally, I'm probably most importantly, it's really important to consider that if you are doing something. You want to set you apart from other people from other whatever, or you're moving towards some really true important work or calling or whatever.

You're always going to face both sides of feedback. You're always going to FA face of validation and you're going to face criticism. There's just no escaping it. So if you're putting yourself out there into the world, If you're showing up, if you're sharing what you're doing, it's going to come. There's no escape in a, and so we've got to get comfortable with accepting that it is going to come and sometimes it's going to feel really good and our ego is going to enjoy.

And then sometimes it's really going to staying in our ego is going to be wounded, but ultimately we've got to have a firm footing in our own sense of pride and commitment and loyalty to our work, to our ideas. And that must be at the center because that's the only truth that we can really know. About the work is hard, committed and loyal.

We are to bring the idea to life when it's from that place that we can then hold both the validation and the criticism that might come more lightly. That's it? I hope it's helpful. To kind of think about this stuff in this way. I hope it releases you in some way, um, as always, thank you so much for tuning in.

If you are less than, um, um, want to tag me in your socials plays day, or if you want to chat through anything that you've heard in this episode today, you can always reach out by a DMS or emails. Um, and I look forward to catching up next time.

Episode 12: The Measure of Success

In this episode I want to talk about success and feelings.

Ultimately, the idea of success is so subjective. How one person measures success is not going to be the same as the next person.

Most of us are so disconnected to our own desires and needs that we end up defaulting to ascribe to the measures of success that seem easy and palpable:

- Hitting a certain number of followers
- How many people buy from you or sign up to your thing
- How much money you bring in
- How busy or in demand you are

By all means, these can contribute to the idea of being successful and in some ways – it feels really good to know that people are desiring our products, or connecting with our work or interested in what we have to say or share. But this can’t be it. This can’t be all we have been given as a measurement tool, can it? What if we are absolutely missing a critical metric here: How we are feeling about what we are doing. That's what we're going to explore today - so get your journal or notepad out and let's set some new measurements for success.

+ Click here to read the transcript

Mel: Welcome back my friends to courage is calling the pep talk station for women who want to be brave with their lives. I am your host male. I'm so glad to be in your ears or your car or your phone or your speaker today. Um, in this episode, I want to talk briefly about success and feelings. Um, this is such a big one.

Um, I have a lot to say, and hopefully it will, you know, provoke some. New understanding of success for you because ultimately the idea of success is really just, it's so subjective as not so high one person measures success. Isn't going to be the same as the next. Right. And I have this feeling because of the work that I do, that most of us are so disconnected to our own desires.

Uh Nate's. That we often end up defaulting to ascribing, to the measures of success that seem easy and measurable and palpable. Stuff like heading a certain number of followers on social media or your email list. Um, how many people buy from you or sign up to your thing, how much money you're bringing in every month, high, busy, or high in demand you are.

And by all means like these absolutely can contribute to the idea of being successful. I'm using some air quotes here. Um, and in some ways it feels really good to know that people are desiring our products or connecting with our work or are interested in what we have to say or share, but this can't be just at kind of like this just can't be all that we have been given as a measurement too. So what are we missing? What are we missing? Um, I wonder if what we're missing is a really critical metric. And I wonder if the critical metric that we're missing is high. We are feeling about what we're doing. And so often when we're bringing ideas into the world or creating a business or running a business or doing work, we feel excited about the focus is on these metrics that I just mentioned as a guidepost of high we're doing right.

And we kind of look to them to say, If, if it's air quotes working, I wish she could see my air quotes. I'm doing air quotes a lot, and we tend to bypass the feeling stuff and just cross our fingers that if the metrics add up, the feelings will follow that if the metrics start coming through, then the feelings will follow them.

But unfortunately that is usually the opposite of high at work. I've had several clients over the last year or so. Who on paper, based on the usual metrics are hitting all of those measures of success that I mentioned a minute ago, you know, they're booking clients, they're taking in lots of orders.

They're super in demand for their products and their services. And yet when we get into the coaching space together and really reflect on high, all of that is feeling. Successful is not a word that comes up. They're never saying, yeah, I feel really successful. Often. They're feeling really tired. They're feeling really frazzled and they're feeling really unclear. Those are the things that are coming up and often what I hear. Is that their work feels out of control that it's taken on a life of its own. It's like they work for their business instead of their business, working for them amongst all the other, very, usually very complex and busy demands of their whole, the whole rest of their life.

So to me, it seems like there is little to no connection between the standard measurement of success and the feeling of success. Maybe I’ll say that again, it seems like there's little to no connection between the standard measurements of how we are defining success and the actual feeling of success.

And then the work that I do, I feel like my jobs often a bite pulling my clients back to themselves, Dustin, off the road, that's been littered with expectations, arbitrary rules and measurements, and shining a light back to the center of who they are and asking what of this isn't working for your energy right now. What do you want? Less? Well, do you want more of what feels misaligned? Um, and you know, these are not the questions that come up in some sort of downloadable business plan through your local council. Um, but they really do hold the most par because when we are asking and answering these questions, when we make space to get quiet, About our real desires about how the work we maybe once loved is no mechanistic, feel about what we really want this work to look like within the context of the rest of our lives. Then, then once we, you know, dive into those questions, we can gently course correct and strategize to make them a reality and rebuilt that path towards that. And maybe if you're feeling stuck in the zone of, you know, setting metrics for yourself based on numbers and figures to identify high successful things are going, or you're feeling detached from how you want your work to fail and just kind of cruise on along and autopilot.

Um, maybe it would be helpful for you to sit down with some of those questions. And I'm going to share with you some of the questions and the metrics, I guess that helped me to unpack if what I'm doing is really fulfilling. Um, if it really is energizing me. So if you want to write these down and feel free, um, and, you know, check in with yourself, spend some time over these questions. So here we go, here are some other questions. So what kind of impact is my work? Having with the people that it's. Are they really feeling the intended shifts that they're there for? Are they trusting themselves more? Are they feeling supported? Hi, is my energy towards my work? Am I excited for it or am I dreading it? And if there's anything I'm dreading, what am I dreading and why? Hi, is my business, allowing me to live my life outside of it. Do I feel like I can switch off? Have I given myself so much to do that? I'm taking it into family time. Have I made up arbitrary rails for myself that are lemonade limiting my ability to experience joy or pleasure and the rest of my life?

What is the quality of my relationship? Hi, connected to, I fail to the people that really matter in my life. Do I feel like my reputation is holding up? Do I feel like I'm in integrity with how I'm communicating my work? Hi, I'm selling my services. Hi, I'm showing up for my clients. How do I feel about selling the service? I might delighted to let people know ABIDA and I grinded and the value of it. Or am I feeling some scarcity or fear? Do I feel momentum in my work? Like I'm finding space to grow deeper in my knowledge of how to help my clients. Um, I feel in supported, do I need to check in with my business support system?

So for me, that's maybe some other coaches or my supervisor. And I want, when you hear those questions, I don't know what comes up for you, but I do want you to be careful not to listen to them and contemplate them and dip into the pit of shame because shame is going to keep you stuck. It doesn't really inspire any action. So if you're contemplating these things and lots of them feel hard to answer or. Really scared to answer them. That's okay. You're not doing things wrong. That's not what I'm saying. That's not where we're going with this. You're doing your damn best. But I would encourage you to try and welcome this as an opportunity to reset with ITM lingering around, to be curious about these questions and use them as a way to maybe take some part back and inject the priority of how you are feeling as an integral part of your work. So for me, I know that with these questions as like thresholds for me to re reflect on, I am really likely to overlook. I'm really likely to load stuff onto my plate to numb EIT or disconnect because I'm too tired from all the stuff that I've given myself today. I'm likely to overthink. I'm likely to fix it on certain things to be easily hurt or offended and take things really personally, both with. My business. And in my personal life, I'm likely to be emotionally up and dying because my validation has been built on the wrong metrics. And these are the metrics that moderate to me. They might not all, you know, jive with you, but these are the metrics that matter to me because I know that when these things are prioritized, my work actually becomes a joy.

It becomes regenerative and a pleasure to be in. And the thing is that most of us start with the opposite metrics. The ones I mentioned at the beginning and hope that the rest will fall into place, or we believe that the outward success will somehow morph into an N-word feeling when the opposite is actually true.

When we realign our work or our business to take into account our whole self and put structures in place to honor that that is when the magic happens. I hope this gives you permission today to start to measure what you're doing from a different angle to set down the other measurements for a while. I hope you feel courageous enough, to be honest about the impact of what you're doing on how you're feeling.

And you're willing to take whatever steps you need to shift things around. If you didn't see us to do that, if you need someone to help you reflect back I'm here, you can always reach out on Instagram or email at hello@melwiggins.com, or if you're less than on it's before the 1st of November, 2021 uh, you can check out my month accelerator group coaching program, where we get into all of this, uh, it's now, and there's just a few spaces left. Um, as always, I really do appreciate you listening I'd love to hear from you. If any of this rings a bell or sits with you differently. And I will see you back here very soon. Um,

Episode 11: Women, Let's Talk About Earning Money

This week on Courage Is Calling I want to talk about the importance of women making money.

I want you to know that me feeling comfortable talking about making money in my business is something that has been about 4 years in the making. I took on a coach to help me with this stuff, I started opening the conversation in my community about money and I’ve learned a huge amount about the massive importance of being money literate and assured in my business so I want to share some of that with you in case you’re in that position too – where making money or talking about your work or selling or pricing feels hard. You’re not the only one, trust me.

In this episode I'll be talking through why we find it difficult, why it matters that women feel safe to earn well and get comfortable pricing well for their work. I hope you'll find something in this pep-talk to empower you to ask for what you want and trust yourself to go get it.

+ Click here to read the transcript

Hello and welcome back. how are you? I hope that your week is going well. Um, in this episode, I just want to jump straight in. I want to jump straight into my topic today because it's something that actually really excites me to talk about money and specifically women making money from the work that they do. But I have not always. Definitely not always felt excited to talk about this. Let me just say that. I know that this topic is not something that is overly comfortable for so many of us to talk about for lots of reasons. And I want to preface this episode by saying that this helps slightly has been my experience. So when I first started running my business, the money stuff was for sure the thing that I buried my head in the sand, about the most, um, and this was coming from decades of working in the nonprofit sector. So to go from having a set salary and, you know, applying for funding for different causes that I worked in to this kind of real stark contrast of creating products and offers of my own, where I was asking people to pay me. It was such a big leap, a really big, uncomfortable, hard leap and change. And I had to learn pretty quickly, um, uh, about money because the truth is if your business isn't making money, it's not a business. And more than that, if your business is not making money in strategic, Ongoing ways it's not sustainable. And that is a really hard place to operate from when you feel like things are really unstable, um, financially and that's often when we feel like. Need to scramble or undersell ourselves or change or contort what we do at every whim to suit what we think people want. Um, so I just want you to know that may feel uncomfortable talking about making money. And my business is something that has been about four years in the making. I took on a coach to help me with this stuff. I started opening the conversation about money in my community, and I've learned a huge amount about the massive importance of being money, literate, and assured in my business. So I want to share some of that with you just in case you're in that position, to where, you know, making money or talking about your work or selling or pricing feels hard. You are not the only one trust me. I think a large amount of our hesitation or fear of money conversations comes from women having been kept out of money conversations for many, many, many years, and it really, really is a new phenomenon. And Western society that women are able to earn good money on their own terms and have economic autonomy. And it's only in the last 40 years that we've been able to even have our own bank accounts or mortgages that are in our names without having a male signatory. So I, I imagine even if you look down your family tree, there probably only a few women before you who've been able to access the opportunities that women like us now have. To run our own businesses or work their way up in terms of earning. So even though we have more access to earning money and having a financial say in our own lives, it really does make sense that it feels to taboo or new for women to be talking about this stuff, because it is still so new in terms of our access. And when you've been kept out of the conversation for as long as we have. We will naturally feel timid about entering into it or feeling like we have any authority to do so. And many of us have complicated relationships with money as well. Don't we? So maybe it's to do with poverty or deaths, or maybe even guilt about our own privileges or our upbringing. Um, many of us women likely carry all of those experiences and feelings into our businesses, maybe subconsciously, and maybe when we face them, we can recognize how they're having an impact in the way that we show up, how we price ourselves, how we ask people to buy from us success. I really believe that in order for us to get more comfortable with all of those things, with showing up with pricing, with selling, asking people to connect and buy from us, we have to face them. We have to acknowledge and own them as part of our story. And also believe that it's important for us to be paid for our work and to earn money with autonomy. And another thing to note is that our culture sends women messages about our relationships with money all the time, too. Right. And like, it plays us off as the spenders, the shoppers, and really demonizes women's relationship to money and all these really patronizing ways. We also know that women who are financially successful on the other hand are also scrutinized more. Um, the conflation of those things rests in our mind that being a woman who makes money means that you're going to be perceived as being less likable. And we know how much like ability can be a real safety leaver for us. So we can see how women are likely to shrink when it comes to money. Because the risk of not being liked feels too much. We're also monitoring the reality of seeing high money and power works in the world around us. And it doesn't take long to observe that the accumulation and the distribution of wealth is so screwed up and so toxic and has resulted in an individualized, patriarchal capitalist society. And it's likely because of what we see now. And high things are now that our associations with money are that it can be really detrimental and corruptive rather than it being something that allows us freedom and greater opportunities to be generous, to change systems or create new and better ways of working. And so with all of that, all of that, it's natural that we have this kind of fear of money or fear of what having money or asking for money. Well bring up, well, it lump us into the cm patriarchal capitalist society that we know is absolutely not good for the world. Will it show us to be unlikable if we ask for things or if we desire more, what is crucial to know is that actually women operate really differently from men when it comes to wealth or money and research shows. That women are naturally more generous, better at handling money than man and more attuned to using our money wisely on for good. We're more likely to give to charity to give to more charities on gift. More often research shows that households headed by single females give 57% more to charity than those headed by single man. Men seemed to tend to favor charitable contributions for their tax advantages. Whereas women seem to give largely out of empathy and connection to certain causes. Women in the top 25% of permanent income status give 156% more than men in the same category. And one quarter of high net worth women support causes or organizations aimed at benefiting women and girls. How awesome is that, and they say that their number one motivation for this and forgiving is their belief that it is the most efficient way to solve societal problems. Investing in organizations and causes aimed at benefiting women and girls, see women tend to view money as a means by which to articulate their value set. So do you know what this means? I'm so excited by this information. It means that we are to be trusted. Women are absolutely to be trusted with money. And the only way that we can turn things around in terms of how money is shared in the world is if we harness our courage and are brave enough to ask for what we want to put our hand up and say, I'll have that. I can trust myself to earn this or to ask for that. We have an opportunity to reimagine how the world could look. If we had more women earning money, creating new solutions to the world's problems and getting paid for it. But to do that, we have to be willing to step into our own space and ask for what we need. And even better by doing this, we can begin to show younger women coming up in the world. How women can earn money, have autonomy shift inequality, and use their earning power for good. And if we continue to shrink around money. Neglect to offer our work out and keep our heads buried in the sun, the bite, this stuff, it's going to be harder for us to create a new collective narrative of the importance of women having equal earning power. Here are some other reasons why it's important for us to care about money and getting paid. One, so we can offer the best and maintain our integrity. So when we get paid for what we do, it allows us to bring ourselves to our work in a different way or energy. We show up differently when we feel like our work is valued well, right? So always doing stuff for free or discounted eventually is going to lead to resenting your work and losing. The second thing is it's also important because women need to be more integrated into economics spheres. We need more women in boardrooms, making decisions for fairer worlds, investing in good, sustainable ways. Having a seat at the table, we need more women using their money to create change to even things out in our unbalanced world. And I call it Nomi. Thirdly, another reason it's important for us to care about money and get paid for what we do is this reality. If you don't, you will not have a business or an offering to enjoy and serve. And it's plain and simple. If you continue to undercharge, not ask for what you want, not be clear about your money situation, you won't be able to continue doing the work that you love because you won't be able to afford to. Forthly,we really need to remember that when we offer our work, I, to people, we are giving other people the opportunity to invest in things that might solve their problems or help them because someone out there really needs and is ready to invest in you and whatever product or service that you have to have. So shrinking from money conversations is actually denying people, the opportunity to get the thing that they might really need from me. Don't patronize people by playing small with your gifts and skills, assuming they won't pay for them. You may have just what someone needs really and truly. And finally this conversation is important because you are absolutely to be trusted to earn good money. You can trust yourself to remain the amazing, generous creative person that you are. If you ask for what you want. Selling what you do offering your product out to people pitching for business, calling in clients, earning money in ways that you never imagined does not change your goodness. You can be trusted to do that. In fact, we need you to do that. I wonder if any of this is stirring something in you right now, or if you're feeling a shift with how you've been feeling about earning money or asking for what you want in your business. I really hope it injects a little courage into your soul today. And I would love it. If you would pass this podcast episode on to a friend who needs that too. I also want to remind you that if you want to submit a question or a dilemma, uh, that you need some courage for, then you can do that through the link in the show notes. I would love to hear from you. Thanks again for listening. I am always so grateful and I will see you next time.

Episode 10: The Trouble With Hustle Culture

Today’s episode is entitled The Trouble With Hustle Culture.

The idea that our productivity is the most valuable thing about us. Or that if you work harder and faster and more that somehow your value increases.

The reality is that lessons on the dangers of hustle culture and quotes like these are often learned by burnout. These messages also lack so much nuance, context and real life grounding around peoples differing responsibilities, accessibility, of mental health needs, of time constraints, of financial obstacles, of physical abilities. And when we hold this culture up as the one that is the pinnacle and fob all of that contextual stuff off as ‘excuses’ then the damage is absolutely real.

So today I want to talk through four ways that I see hustle culture seeping into how we are expected to work today, why it’s a troubling message and what the alternative is.

+ Click here to read the transcript

Well, hello there. Welcome back lovely friends to courage is calling. I had a little hiatus of podcast break for a few weeks, but I am buzzing to get back to chatting to you through these little pep talks. Um, there are a lot of things that I want to cover. Few months around, you know, making brave decisions and building a business as a woman and all of that good stuff, but I would really, really love to hear from you. So in the show notes, and in the description of this episode, you will find a form that you can click through to where you can send me any topic or issue that you'd love to hear more about on courage is calling it's anonymous.

So you can ask me anything at all and know that I'm not going to know who it is that's asking. So if you have a burning question or a delay, To do with building courage or womanhood or being a business owner and head over there and send them my way. Thank you. So today's episode is entitled the trouble with hustle culture, and I'm going to say hustle culture a lot in this episode, just to warn you.

And I might even mix up my words and call it custle hulture. So just be prepared for that. Okay. So what I thought I would do is. Address this today, because I have seen that this is something that has, um, I'm becoming increasingly aware of and online kind of entrepreneurial spaces. So this is hustle culture is this idea that our productivity is something that we can measure and give value to, right.

Or the idea that if you work harder and faster and more, that somehow your value increases. It's a message that if we just keep pushing, push through the hard stuff, then you know, you'll get to the other side and you'll find success. And we see these quotes on Instagram that encourage us to rise and grind, or, you know, don't stop when you're tired, stop when you're done. And I'm like, oh, smack in my head. I'm like, please don't do that. Um, so I want to talk about it today. And the, you know, the reality is. The lessons on the dangers of hustle culture and buying in to all of that and quotes like those are really only learned by burning out from it. Right. And these messages, which are often found in the entrepreneurial world, mostly that is dominated by masculine voices.

The problem is it lacks so much nuance and so much context and so much real life grinding. So we hear these sweeping and pressurized ideas of what it means to go after our dreams. And they are swept over the lives of real people. That have a huge spectrum of differing responsibilities in their lives of ability to access things in their lives have mental health needs of time constraints. Of financial obstacles of physical abilities. And when we hold this culture up as the one that is the pinnacle and then fob all of that contextual stuff off as, oh, those are just excuses. Then the damage is so rail and it leaves people questioning their worth. That leaves them questioning the value of what they have to offer. Um, and their abilities, their competency, and it quashes their passion and their desires and their motivations, this hustle culture. It does have a temporary dopamine head of motivation. So you kind of, you know, you fail that like, oh yeah, let's go for it. But it's actually, it's like, You know, it's, it's dressed up, but it's not a sustainable way to work and it's a toxic message to pedal.

So today I want to talk three, four ways that I can see hustle culture seeping into how we are expected to work today. Um, and why it's a troubling message, especially for those of us who run our own businesses and what the alternative is. Right. So the first thing I want to raise about hustle culture is the idea that if you are someone who's building a business, a community or creating something to put out there and offer, then hustle culture makes you fail.

Like you need to be always on and always available. And that's because hustle culture is actually not really interested in boundaries. It talks a lot about high. You know, you can't miss any opportunity. You got to seize the opportunities as they come, no matter what and offer the very best, most responsive output to your clients, to your customers, to your community, and the generous, this idea that human beings.

Um, actually have this capacity to always be responsive and we know that that's not true and it's dangerous. And it's actually a really quick way to send your nervous system into high alert, which is super harmful to the state of our bodies. It's super harmful for our bodies to be in a state of high alert consistently.

Because we're not bots, we're humans and we don't owe our Instagram followers or inboxes quick responses. And to think that we need to reply to every single question, every response or request that comes our way less, we miss something is scarcity mentality dressed up as being attentive. Or good customer service. Um, and this scarcity mentality is actually rife it's rife and hustle culture, but it's often disguised as you know, not letting opportunities go by, but behind this is the reality that often we believe that if we don't make ourselves available at all times, if we don't respond to every single DM or reply to every question from potential customers or clients, then they'll all go.

And there'll be nothing left for us and that's just simply not true. They may go elsewhere, but that doesn't mean that there's less for you. And I don't know about you, but I do want to build a business where my clients know and appreciate and respect my boundaries by my availability to respond to them. I want them to see me as a whole human, with complex responsibilities outside of my work, and a lot of my own learning around this has been about trusting that my work stands up. That my work stands up, even when I step away from it or take breaks from it. And it's about trust in that the value that I have to offer is not connected to how available I am to be all things to all people. So I wonder what shift and around you might need today in your head or in practice, maybe to reroute the idea that you shouldn't be expected to be on and available in your business all of the time. And the next message. Hustle culture that I want to address is the practice that we see of people using guilt and shame to attract customers and clients.

And this is if I was really fancy, I would have the talk a song. Oh no, no, no. Oh no, no, no, no. I would have that here, but you've just got me singing, but basically, no, I have seen this so much in the online business world. The language that's put out through copy and sales pages, and Instagram is all about focusing on the dissatisfaction and the pain and the struggle of the potential customer or client.

And it's a technique that works, right? Like it actually does work for sure. I'm not saying it doesn't work. Um, But she am is never a sustainable motivator and using tactics to rush people into buying from you or alluding that there's something wrong with them in order to sell your stuff, is manipulative at best and ethically wrong at first.

And it isn't actually creating a culture of business that is based on honesty and integrity. And this kind of marketing, just preys on people's vulnerabilities as a quick way to get conversions or close the sale. And again, it traits people like commodities to accumulate from it's. Again, scarcity driven, not authenticity driven and how this is communicated comes in all of these different forms, but it's usually packed up with some sort of urgency. Often arbitrary time for him and arbitrary pricing. And it also plays on language that would have you believe that with this thing, you will be less, you will be stuck or you will be left out. And what we need is more business owners communicating a bite, their businesses from a place of trust and honesty.

Highlighting the value of what they do, speaking to what their product or service offers and allowing people to not be patronized, but give them space to make up their minds rather than hustling them into things as a statement that connects to their struggle. That's gross. Let's not do that. The next thing I want to talk about is that hustle culture.

Is absolutely all about assigning worth or value to our output. And that is, um, that's dangerous. It's really dangerous. So to preface this, I want to say there is definitely something satisfying, right? Of like giving your best to a project or to an idea. So that's a great feeling. Okay. Knowing that you've committed yourself to something, you've seen it three on your pride of your work and what you've created, but the thing with hustle culture looming around.

Yeah. The thing we have to be careful with is that we don't conflate to working hard with hustling, uh, because in hustle culture, it's actually more a bite, um, proofing and showing that you're working hard glorifying busy-ness glorifying your output and your ability to grind more than it is about talking about the quality of your work, your dedication to do in a good job and preserving your capacity limits. You know, you see people posting on social media, by how busy they are, how hard they're working. I flat out they are, you know, and often it feels like a humble brag to not to hide money. Work they're doing. Um, and it also just reinforces this idea that if you're not struggling, if you're not Brecht, you're probably not working hard enough. And we know that that's bullshit. And when we assign value to someone's ability to push their mental and physical capacity to the limits, We're starting to bend into some really serious capitalist playbook territory that would really have us think that the only thing that matters is accumulation and productivity to increase the bottom line. Right. And it just makes me so sad because we need to remember that humans are made for more than just working. We're not mad just to be little working base. We were made for community. We were made to experience pleasure to enjoy rest, to care for one another. For curiosity for innovation, not to grind away as some sort of weird badge of honor, to the detriment of all of these amazing, beautiful things.

And for those of us who have grown up with messages about our productivity, being a measure of how good we are, it really does take a lot of unpacking. Um, and I think it's hard for our systems to go from. Being used to filling up empty space with stuff to do for, you know, to go from always feeling like we need to improve or strive, um, and to go from all of that, to relaxing into the margins of life or being at pace with our efforts and the different seasons of life.

It's tough and it takes some practicing really to be able to slow things, dine, to be okay with not always doing, to be okay with setting limitations to our workdays and what we do and what we take on the hustle culture creates addictions to doing, and it elevates it as the most important part of the human experience. The dominant part of the human experience. And the reality is that if we love what we do, and I hope that you do, I know I do. If we love what we do. And we want to have energy to sustain it, or even regenerate ourselves and our work. We have to practice knowing what is enough for us to take on and do so we can be fully present, fully attentive and aligned within our work.

And finally another fallout of hustle culture is the idea that there is some sort of fast track path or some sort of quick hack for growth or success and hustle culture will try to whisper to you that there are insider ways that you can access the next level and you can do it with spade. So I think it's with that, that we break down exactly what it is. This message wants us to hustle towards like, what are we hustling towards if that's what this message wants us to do. So what's the end game of hustle culture and its promise of success. So what does that mean? What is at the end of that? Is it loads of money?

Is it thousands of followers? Maybe it's not even something that we've thought about, right. Maybe the end goal. Isn't something that feels very clear, but just, we feel like we're on some sort of like slippery slope, water park ride that we feel we should go die. And if we want to. What we're doing is worth something. You know, once I crack 10 K followers, everyone will take me seriously. I got to figure out how you get to 10 K followers so that I can really, you know, be a serious business or really start making good money or really start promoting what I do properly. Or, you know, once I have sold out all the launches.

You know, this product, I'll be known for what I do. Um, and we go looking for these hacks, right. To kind of get there and these illusions of fast tracks to growth or success. However you wanted to find out are a fool's errand. They really are. And they're often Laden with risky or unfunded business advice that have big promises, but no real substance.

I'm actually, if we're talking about fools errands, the real fool's errand quality of these fast track hack type things is that it robs us of the joy and the pain of being a beginner of being a learner. Of growing with your community or your customers or your clients of, you know, try and things out on your own terms of factoring in your own very nuanced life of actually building steady foundations to your business or your work that feel honest and reflect what you want to build.

And ultimately we forgotten that there's nothing to win here. You know, I think also culture promotes the idea that there's a winner, but let me tell you, no one is going to be crying and fastest business winner of all time, 20, 21. Like it's not even a thing. And it's not even that, you know, as you, you know, advance in your career or your business, that the goalpost will keep moving it's that the goalposts don't even exist.

The goalposts are a construct that keeps us feeling inadequate and competitive. So there's no hack to grow in your business. There's only you, there's only you and your aligned, trustworthy way of showing up for yourself, showing up for your work, doing your best and letting people know how they can connect with it. Ultimately hustle culture leads us down the path of always having to prove ourselves to prove that we're gait to prove that we're hardworking to prove that we're worth paying attention to. And I'll tell you this hustle culture is snaky mofo. It sneaks up on those of us who are ambitious and believe we have something to offer that's valuable.

And then what it robs of us as the ability to be present and grateful for what we have, because it will always insist there's more to gain and so happy. Becomes a threat to our sense of achievement, because contentment has been sold to us by hustle culture as laziness. I'm going to say that again. What it robs of us is the ability to be ability to be present and grateful for what we have, because it will always insist there's more to gain and happiness becomes a threat to our sense of achievement, because contentment has been sold to us by hustle culture as laziness or dropping the ball.

So don't fall for it. My friends take the longer, take the study or take the more honest path do not give up on your ideas on your beautiful work. Honor. It. Honor it by putting scaffolding or rind, it, that will hold it up. That will offer you spaciousness to stay creative and, and your integrity and know that I I'm absolutely right along with you trying to do the same.

Thanks again for listening. Make sure if you haven't already. Describe to courage is calling on your favorite podcast platform. Give us a rate, give us a little review. If you're feeling fancy, make sure to share this episode with a friend and you can always connect over with me over on Instagram, @melwiggins, or if you want to see how we can work together, you can check out my website, Mel wiggins.com until next time.

Episode 9: What Do We Do With The Fear of Failure?

This week I want to talk about what we do with the fear of failure.

It’s so so important that we address this as an elephant in the room for anyone who is contemplating doing something new or putting themselves out there in any way with their ideas or work. At some stage or another in our lives, our businesses or in our attempts at creating, we’ve all felt the sting of failure or disappointment.

-       Something hasn’t quite taken off.

-       The thing you poured your soul into was met with crickets

-       The product you really believed in didn’t sell as well as you hoped.

-       The idea you have had for a lifetime suddenly seems to be happening for other people all around you.

-       We’ve all lost steam. We’ve all lost our nerve. We’ve all shut down and stopped.

This is the stuff of being human and we need to talk about it and normalise it just as much as we do the strategies and the reflective tasks we undertake when things are going well. Especially for women, failure feels personal. It feels overwhelming and daunting. It shuts us down, closes us up and stops us from moving forward because failure feels SO vulnerable and exposing. Often it feels like visceral rejection when things haven’t gone the way we hoped.

But - if we continue to try to hide from the things that aren’t going well, and bypass the hard feelings about the ways in which we feel things haven’t worked out we are going to miss out on a huge component of growth, of resilience building and of the courage honing muscles that it takes to life fully as a whole hearted person. To fail and just hide is to skip the most significant work that we can do as humans. To fail and learn is how we grow and evolve and develop empathy for ourselves and others.

+ Click here to read the transcript

Hello. And welcome back to courage is calling, um, how is everybody done this week? And this episode, I want to talk about what we do with fear of failure. Duh. So, so, so important that we address this as a pretty big elephant in the room for anyone who's contemplating doing something new or putting themselves out there in any way with their ideas, for work, you know, at some stage or another in our lives.

And our businesses and inner attempts at creating we've all felt the sting of failure or disappointment, right. Something just hasn't quite taken off. Or the thing that you poured your soul into was met with, or the product that you really believed in just didn't sell as well as you hoped. The idea you had for a lifetime suddenly seems to be happening for people.

All around you and not you. And you know, you lose steam and lose your nerve and you shut down and you stop. Well, this is the stuff of being human, and we need to talk about it and normalize it just as much as we do all the other strategies and reflections that we undertake when things are going well.

And especially for women, failure feels really personal. It feels overwhelming and daunting. It can shut us down. It can close us up and stop us from moving forward because failure feels so vulnerable and so exposing. And it often feels like visceral rejection and things. Haven't gone the way that we hoped.

But if we continue to try to hide from the things that maybe aren't going well and bypass the hard feelings about the ways in which we think things haven't worked out, we're going to miss out on a huge component of growth, huge component. Of resilience, building courage, honing, um, and all it takes to live life fully and wholeheartedly.

So to feel, or for things to go wrong and to just hide is really to skip the most significant work that we can do as humans to feel and learn is how we grow and evolve and develop empathy for ourselves. And hopefully then for others, But when we deny the times where things have crashed or we try and swipe away the hard handful, full moments of discomfort, we are missing an opportunity to learn and to build and rebuild and grow.

So I want to in this app, so talk about just three aspects of failure that I feel are really significant and freeing, and can hopefully reframe a bit of our view on the disappointment. We fail into a liberating opportunity to understand ourselves, to understand the world around us and how we can meaningfully continue to build courageous lives.

Even when things don't work the way that we'd hoped. The first thing that I want to talk about is the importance of identifying high. The fear of failure shows up for us because this fear of failure is a huge deal. It is. And the effect it has on us is, is pretty powerful. Perceived fear of failure is what is stopping women from bringing their ideas and their products and their solutions and service into the world.

Just think. And sometimes I do just think about all of the amazing things, ideas that women have tucked inside of them that could really contribute to more goodness. More joy, more beauty, more awareness, more education, more compassion in the world that are not being revealed because we are afraid of a failure.

And so I want you to take some time and really, really hone in on how the fear of failure is showing up in your life. Is it in the hesitation of even looking into that thing that you've been ruminating over? Does it show up as perfectionism, so never been quite ready to put that thing out there for others to see or to hear about it and just endlessly editing it or polishing it up. Is it showing up as relentless calculation of numbers and followers and figures and statistics and metrics, you know, waiting for that magic number before you dip your toe into the thing that you feel really drawn to make or create, or do. All of this is really how the fear of failure is showing up.

And if any of those things connect, I want you to feel relieved in one sense, because there are so many of us that feel this way, but it really doesn't have to be. So have a fear of failure is not going away. It's not, again, this threat of failure is a tactic of our inner protector and our inner protector wants to keep us safe from emotional risks.

But how we view failure can be reframed to serve us better. So if we can try and view it differently as I'll line out in the next couple of points, then maybe we can be women who boldly try and are showing up and being true, even when it feels scary, knowing that it's actually more important to be loyal to our dreams and our desires than it is to our fears.

The second thing that I think is really important to talk about around failure is our expectations. When we set out to bring something to life in the world, often we are caught up in the high, right. We're caught up in the high and the what and the when and the details. And we often forget to reflect on what we want this offering, this thing to achieve.

We spend a lot of time working out the details of the other stuff was I given thought to our own expectations, our Rhonda, and when we forget to take that stuff into consideration and then things don't go to plan. We end up feeling really hijacked and really dejected and really thrown or deflated and something that I have been learning today over the last number of years, it's really managed my own expectations around whatever it is that I'm putting out into the world and to get comfortable with a BS level.

So for me, the base level of my expectations is about my loyalty to my idea. And affirming that I'm happy with having completed what I said I today. So my own satisfaction is a top of my expectation list. This trumps anything that comes next, how have I been treated my values? Have I worked hard at this that I put the time?

And I really took into consideration what will serve my community? Well, and once that simply asked once I know that that the base level of my expectations. With myself and how I have shown up for this is in place. I try to hold the rest of the expectations of the outcome, just a little less tightly.

Once I've decided that I'm happy with what I've done, what I put out there, then I'm more able to identify what kind of response or reaction I want to have from the things that I'm doing. The more secure that I can feel in the value of my work. Uh, naming the desires for impact that I can actually have.

Um, the more that I feel like I can be self-supportive by adding this into the eyesight of the people that I want to serve and connect with, it takes energy to do that. It really does. It takes energy to put yourself out there because. Um, marketing or talking about our offerings can be really tiring, can be exposing, but having no idea of our expectations or just having our expectations kind of swirling around and a massive like insecure ideas can really harm us because we haven't fully connected with our desires for items for this thing.

And it's a really important and worthy part of the process. Not something to be overlay. The final thing that I want to say about failure and my friends assistant game too. Is it everything we do every wrong turn, every tricky decision, every way that we hide, every time we choose to stop, every time we don't get the results that we wanted is simply just an opportunity to receive information.

Every time we put something out into the world and we get a response, whether it's, you know, air quotes, booed, but noisy, quiet. Busy slow. It's all just information. So learning this, that everything is just information has been a really significant, really liberating part of my visibility journey. And remembering this aspect has given me.

Real courage, actually, as I have decided to put my ideas there, as I have marketed my own offerings and continually, you know, chosen to show up for myself, truly everything we received back, it's not good. It's not bad. It's not Prius. It's not criticism. It's just information, just information. And it's up to us what we do with that information.

So if you've ever launched something to crickets or posted an idea that didn't take off. Or developed a product that didn't sell. It's not that the idea was bad. This is what I need you to know. It's not that what you had to offer wasn't valuable or interesting or good, the quiet response. It's just information.

And it's up to us to access and use that information wise. If our offering isn't connecting, it doesn't mean it's a failure. It might just mean that we need to collect more info. And these things that might immediately fail, like failure might just be an opportunity to get the info. You need to get your thing out there again in a way that those connect better.

So it might mean that you need more information about. You know the time of the month or the year that you're offering it. And it might mean that you need more information about the people that you're trying to reach. It might mean that you need more information about price points or about what kind of setup is accessible for people. It might mean you need to build more trust with your community or your audience base in order to connect, you know, in the way that you're expecting to, and this information isn't given to you. To shut you down and stop you like your inner protector or your ego would like it's given to you as a guest to sift through it and determine what you should do with it.

It's given to you to investigate and to see this. To build on rather than an it or an opportunity for you to quit. And if we can see this information as a way of shipping, what you do so that more people can connect with it and the way that you want them to, then we are absolutely exercising, recovery and resilience, and it means that our ego is not in the driving seat, the curiosity and how we can serve and add value is here's the thing.

When we look at things through this lens of failure, failure is just information. It kind of makes a threat of failure, less powerful. Of course, there are always going to be risks. When we decide to put ourselves out there and take steps to pursue something close to our hearts and their risk is real. And we have to deal with the real feelings of fear and discomfort.

Here's the thing, the other option. As to not do anything with the things we feel drawn to create or do, and the trade off for that as another type of discomfort. It's the discomfort of always wondering if we could have given that thing a go and it's the discomfort of maybe never feeling the fulfillment of trying, I guess, both paths lead to some sort of risk.

And I guess that's the word figuring out which one, because we're going to face discomfort either way, but hopefully you'll choose the one that gives you the chance to be loyal to yourself. Thanks for less than today. Um, I'd love for you to feel free to share this episode with anyone in your life. Feels frozen by the fear of failure.

And in the meantime, you can reach out to me with any of your own thoughts on this at three Instagram or email. I know that if you want to build courage in a deeper way, you'd be so welcome to join the assembly members community. It is open. This is my coaching community of women who are all on this courage building journey together.

Either way. Thanks again. And I'll see you next time.

Episode 8: Top 3 Lessons in Building a Business

Building a business is tricky and even though I absolutely LOVE my job, I would hate for anyone to look in at Assembly and think that it magically and easily appeared. In that spirit, I thought that this week I would share three things that I’ve learned about building a business that I feel don’t get talked about enough in entrepreneurship.

It's true that the most amount of effort that I’ve had to put in in building my business is the effort of managing my own fears, insecurities and doubts. It’s really difficult to be brave and comfortable at the same time. But I know that taking action, practicing using my voice and getting some support in my business has made all the difference.

The Assembly Membership Community is now open for new members to join any time. You can find all the details here.

+ Click here to read the transcript

hello hello. Thank you for tuning back into courage is calling and this podcast is what I like to think the go-to place for brilliant women. Like you who need a courage pep talk from time to time. Because we all do. Right. So today I thought I would share a little bit about my own experience in building a business.

And if you don't already know, I'm a coach. So I spend my days working with women who want to build more courage and their lives to pursue their ideas. So I run a thriving, monthly membership community. I run group coaching programs, and I have a small roster of one-to-one clients that I do deep work with.

And I flipping love my job. I really, really do, but I didn't actually set out to build the business. I was working happily in the charity sector for many, many years. Um, and then in 2016, I decided to create some events for women to just come together and eat really nice food and really nice settings and do creative things together.

I was just, I was missing some sort of creative female community in my life, and I branded these events under the name assembly, and we had these gatherings like a few times a year for a couple of years. I decided I wanted to do a little bit of coaching training. And then as I began that, uh, I started to offer some of those, what I've been learning to the women that were already coming to you and were already connected into assembly into the events.

And then from there I hosted some workshops. And then I created this membership to take those workshops into like monthly accountability and learning online, um, and then started to deepen my work to offer them some group coaching programs that I knew would serve women who wanted to build on their ideas, um, and who wanted to create thriving businesses themselves.

And I would really hate for anyone to look in at what assembly looks like now and think that it just magically or easily. And it appeared. So I thought today I would share three things that I've really learned about building a business that I actually don't feel get talked about enough in the whole business building female entrepreneurship world.

So let's dive in. So the first thing that I want to say is that you got to do the work. Right. So if you've been around for awhile, you know, that I actually really reject the idea of hustle, culture of having to be on all of the time of working yourself to exhaustion for the sake of arbitrary metrics or whatever, but what I would never want to diminish or dismiss.

Is that building the business actually really takes effort. And more than that, there isn't a secret formula to it. So if you want to build a business that allows you to thrive and to do the thing that you love to do without having to hustle all the time, eventually that actually really requires some leg work to get, go on.

And there all of these Facebook ads and they're all of these webinars that promise you. The six-figure months and these enormous client or customer bases or selling out in whatever shape or form that is in these short timeframes and with these magic formulas, but they are a fools errand, right. And there are there's, there's no real silver bullet to build in a thriving business without some cost to your time and energy for a period of time.

What this doesn't mean is that you should be a slave to your business or to your idea, or overwork yourself into the ground, to the detriment of your wellbeing or to the detriment of the health of your relationships. But what it might mean is that we have to adjust some expectations of what it might require of us for a period of time, as we build and connect and hone our offers and our beds.

And this is especially true. If you're building a business on the side of another job or role, just like I was, but what I often say in the coaching world, particularly the online business coaching world are these headlines and this clickbait that seems to disregard the real graft that often goes into the beginning. Developing stages of building a business, like when it's just you. Um, it's really just gonna take some time and energy and willingness to be on a bit of a learning curve. So like learning how to create systems behind the scenes and learning to get a little bit more salvage. Websites and social media and mailing lists and all that good stuff.

You know, building my business has been one of the most fulfilling experiences of my career so far, but it has also meant that for periods of time, I have worked late. I've had to really learn new skills. I've had to listen to my community and make decisions that feel hard. So to imply that building a business is as easy as some sort of four-step formula that you can sign up for.

It's just patronizing and it doesn't account for the real lives of the real people with all kinds of other stuff and all kinds of other responsibilities going on in the background of their lives. That just absolutely need to be accounted for it takes work, but it's worth it. Secondly, I think it's fair to say that when you're building a business, you won't feel a sense of ownership with it for awhile.

And what I find. That was for a while. It felt like I was always imitating someone else. Right. So it wasn't like it was anyone in particular, it wasn't ripping anybody off, but I just felt like the stuff that I was doing was a mashup of the stuff that I'd been observing or listening to him. From other people that I admire or people that I thought were doing things well, and it just takes time to find your own groove and building a business and really feel like you're making it your own.

Um, and in saying that I actually just really want to normalize that it's so normal that you might go about poking around other people's websites and socials. And it's really human to be curious about what other people are doing and how they're doing it. It's a given that you'll want to see or hear about the tactics or the ways that other people who are maybe in a similar field or industry to you or operating it's normal.

Right. But it can also be a really slippery slope. Um, paying too close attention to what other people are doing is likely going to have you spinning your wheels a bit about what you're doing. And the reality is is that what you can actually see of other people's work is a tiny little fraction of what that person and really allows to be visible.

So you don't get to see any of the dilemmas or any of the struggles or any of the winging it that they're doing. So don't get yourself wrapped up in someone else's story, have a look, have a poke around and then move on and start practicing using your own voice and doing your own thing. Even if it feels unnatural to begin with your own style will emerge.

It will come. Just keep going. And thirdly, I think there comes a time where the benefit of investing in your business is what is actually needed to move the needle and trying to build a business without support. Exponentially harder. Um, if you're doing it on your own, are you saying that you should be, you run the risk of thinking that you're the only one that finds things tough or you're the only one that's over-complicating are you the only one that's overthinking things and it's actually really overwhelming.

In the early stages to be able to, um, try and take care of every little aspect of our businesses ourselves. Right? So to think that we should be the strategist, the marketer, the copywriter, the deliverer, the creator, the analyst, the sales person, the social media manager, the troubleshooter, the designer, you know, all on our own.

So lonely to think about that. And so overwhelming. So making the move to start investing in your business might sign scary, but it doesn't have to be massive to start with. And when I say investing this could mean anything from, you know, hiring a virtual assistant for a few hours a month to help you create more streamlined processes.

Or hiring a designer to like properly create branding and content for you instead of you slaving over Canva for hours or bringing in the content that can make sense of your finances or a coach that can help you on muddle your brand and keep you accountable to a particular goal you might have in that season, whatever it is, you need to start creating some space for your best work in your best. I would say it because we all have limitations to our expertise and our capacity, and we need to know what part of our business is our sweetest spots. So the space that needs our expertise the most, um, and for me, it started with hiring a virtual assistant for a few hours a month. And then gradually I could say the benefits of this both in like time that I was saving.

Freeing me up to create more and creating more. I was able to show up for my community more and bring in more clients to work with. And gradually I've been able to work my way to be able to hire an operations coordinator that just handles all the behind the scenes of my business every week in the systems and the processes and hire.

The community and content coach to help me connect with and create support in my membership community and doing this gradually was honestly the best decision ever. Um, and it means that I can spend most of my time communicating my message through content like this and serving the higher level coaching clients that I work with in a deeper way.

And I really do understand that spend money in your business feels scary and risky. If you can budget for. And if you're willing to experiment with what it might feel like to have more help sooner than you think you need to. And with all these things, um, I find building the business to be super stretchy, uh, mostly on the inside.

Um, the amount of effort that I've had to put into my business is the effort of managing my own fears of managing my insecurities and my doubts. Uh, it's really difficult. It's really difficult to be brave. And to be comfortable at the same time. And I know that I, but I also know that taken action practicing using my voice and getting some support in my business has made all the difference. I hope me sharing some of that helps you if you're in the throws of building a business or maybe if you're further down the line and, um, you maybe you're really at, to some of that as well as always. I love hearing from you. So if you want to chat more, you can find me on Instagram @melwiggins, or you can email me at hello@melwiggins.com.

And before I go, I just want to give you a heads up that we have just changed our membership community model so that it is open all of the time. And it is such a really exciting development. As a team, because we want to be able to bring people into this community when they're ready and not have to wait it until some sort of big official launch time.

So the price is staying the same. It costs £97 to join the membership on £35 a month after that. And you get coaching, training, resources, accountability, and community, but this membership brings it all together for you. So if you're needing an extra dose of courage for your next steps, this could be the place for you and you can find.

All of the information on the sign details in the show notes as always. Thank you so, so much for listening and I will see you next time.

Episode 7: Where to Start With Your Big Ideas

Today I thought it might be fun to get practical and talk through where to start when you have an idea or are coming up with a new project or offering in your work or creative life.

It can feel so exciting when an idea or a new thing lands in your mind right? Tingly, interesting, fun, scary, thrilling. All of those feelings have come up for me when I’ve contemplated something a bit new.

And if you’re also like me, the next breath can offer a whole bunch of overwhelm. Where do I start? Which part of the process of bringing this to life or experimenting is the best course to start down?

So what I want to do is offer two simple strands for starting. Two strands that will set you in the right direction when it comes to slowly breathing life into your next idea or thing.

+ Click here to read the transcript

Welcome back to Courage is calling. If you are tuning in for the first time then let me introduced myself, I'm Mel. I am a coach. I'm the leader of the amazing assembly community. And I write, and I'm a partner and a mum too um, Assembly is my coaching business, where I help brilliant women to build courage in their life and work.

And today I thought on this episode, I thought it would be fun maybe to get a little bit more practical and to kind of talk through where to start when you have an idea, or when you are coming up with a new project or a new offering in your work or your creative life, it can feel so exciting can't it.

An idea or like a new thing lands in your mind, right? Like all of those feelings, like the tingles, it feels interesting. Maybe feels fun, scary, maybe a bit thrilling when something new kind of comes to mind, uh, that you, you know, you would love to do. And all of those feelings have come up for me. When I've contemplated doing something a little bit new, and if you're also like me, um, the next breath after that excitement and oh, whoa, this, this sounds cool.

I really like the sound of this it's formulating in my mind, the next breath can offer a whole bunch of overwhelm. So, where do I start? Which, which part of this process of maybe bringing this thing to life or experimenting with this thing is the best course to start doing. And often what I have seen or experienced at this stage is that women, we tend to get tangled up and the practicalities or the really complex aspects of a new idea. We're thinking we need to have a full website built before we can never talk about this idea. And I want to give you a little news flash here. I did not have a website for my business for probably the first year. All I had was an Instagram and a PayPal account, and I actually just, it did the job to allow me to get on with it. And experiment for the first while, or maybe we do other stuff that kind of complicates things like starting to work out a budget or costs or faffing about with spreadsheets, or maybe over-complicating things by trying to try and write a business plan or something like that, or create your own logo.

Police. I have done it all and I have seen it all and heard it all. So I want to just gently call it out as a preemptive warning for you to notice if this is where you're at, because they'll tell you what nothing can kick the enthusiasm out of a shiny and exciting new idea, faster than opening up an Excel sheet, or, you know, spending hours on Canva, trying to create the perfect logo. Um, this embryonic stage of your idea, the starting point, this kind of idea stage is not the time to complicate. Okay. And I think that often we complicate things as a really natural form of protection and maybe hiding from really getting on with the stuff we know is going to move us forward because, well, we know that fear shows up like that and distracts us.

And I really do understand why this happens. If this idea, if you have an idea and it is chewing away at you and it will not leave you alone, it's time to take some brave action. So what I want to do is offer two simple strands for starting two simple strands for starting to use drones that will set you in the right direction. When it comes to just slowly and gently starting to breathe some life into your next idea or your next thing. And the two strands that I'm talking about are in and on, in and on. And these are the small, but mighty bits of work that we need to do in our idea and the work we need to do on our idea. So I want to break those two strands, down a little bit, see if it might help you to kind of. know a bit more about where to start. And I'm going to give a little bit of context to the way that these two strands kind of pull apart and separate. So you can see how, when they come together and they're woven together, it can really create some movement and some momentum with your idea. So let's start with working in your idea.

So the, in your idea part is all about the kind of inward facing stuff that needs to happen to start to nourish your idea. And when I talk about working in your idea, I'm talking about the foundational, like root growing aspects of growing this thing. So in the early stages of ideas that I've had, the in stuff for me has looked like solidifying my impact.

Right? So putting language to this idea so that I know what it is. I want this idea today, what impact I want it to have, what problem I wanted to solve. So for you, what is at the core of this idea that you have? What are some of the key ways that you want to be able to bring people towards it? My suggestion is pick three core aspects that, you know, you can go deep with around your idea and start mind dumping.

Ways to extract and dispense that information. Right? So for me, the core of my idea, a core of my business is about helping women to build courage and the way the three ways that I know and I've experienced and seen that that can happen is by helping them get clear, helping them to build self-trust and help helping them to become more visible with their stuff, with their ideas.

So those are my three core aspects. And then the in stuff may also be about like really good information gathering. So finding out exactly. Your idea is right for starting to zone in on who this idea is going to be a really great fit for who's going to want to buy it. Who's going to want to connect with it or engage with it. And where are those people? Where did they hang out online? What are they thinking about in relation to your idea? What are they struggling with in relation to your idea? So how can you find that out and how can you ask good questions to get more information? About the people that you want your idea to connect with.

So that's the in stuff. Um, this kind of understanding your impact, understand, and the people that you want your idea to connect with. That's the kind of inward facing stuff. And then from here, armed with this information, you can start to move into the on strand, the on strand and this on strand is all about the small steps you can take to start implementing the information that you're gathering.

And create messaging about the impact you want to have. So the on or the outward facing stuff is how you start to water those foundations. If you will, how you start to tend to the knowledge that you've been gathering and allow the idea to start to be seen above the soil. Right? So you've planted, you've watered.

Um, you've got good foundations, good soil. And now you want to allow this stuff to be seen above the. And so the working on strand for me, whenever I have a new idea, it usually looks like starting to share what I know with the people that might need to connect with it. So that might look like, you know, creating content or blog posts, podcasts, Instagram, posts that speak to the new idea.

One. Like pick one way to share and then break down your new idea into those three core aspects that you identified in your in strand and find the best way to communicate about those things, to the people that you identified, um, and the places you identified as best to show up. And just pick one don't over-complicate it don't think you need to be showing up in a blog and a podcast and Instagram and LinkedIn and Facebook, like just pick one and commit to that for a bit.

And then the working on strand can also look like, you know, starting to map out ways to build community or to take people who are really interested in your idea, along with you. So this might mean creating some form of content that people can opt into. Right. So for a deeper connection to you, like a mailing list, or maybe a private Facebook group or something like that, that they can go to intentionally, um, or hear from you intentionally to find out more.

So how can you create something where people can let you know that they want to hear from you? Right. So starting to share, and then creating an opportunity for people to kind of opt in in some way. Those are the kind of two top tips for working on this on strand at the beginning, um, that I would suggest, and I know that the on strand, the actually moving out of the, behind the scenes information, gathering stuff into some forward facing, um, And letting people into your idea stuff is actually going to feel really, really hard.

Um, it's going to feel vulnerable because actually keeping your excitement about your idea, your enthusiasm, about your idea in your own little container of happiness is going to feel way more safe. And do you know, I can't sit here and promise you that if you release your idea into the world, that it's going to be.

Massively connected with and a huge success, whatever that means, but I can promise you, like giving your idea some room to breathe outside of the container of just you as what it needs to evolve, because if you keep it in that container too long without oxygen, you will smother it and it will. And if you're looking for a way to measure how your idea is going, then my suggestion is that you can start by measuring your own loyalty to it because that's the only metric that really matters.

Okay. Are you showing up for it? Are you giving yourself some time and permission to pursue it? That's a really great metric for measuring how your ideas going. And if you try to measure it by any other factor in this early stage, By followers or subscribers or people who buy it or buy how much money you make from a you'll be hanging in your worth on something that can change with the wind for a million different reasons.

And the point of taking action on your idea is not so it can be perfect right out of the gate, but so that you can be a learner right out of the gate so that you can grow with your idea as you experiment. And as you give yourself grace to practice and get it wrong, and course correct. And shimmy in other directions.

So start today, take a look at how you can work in or on your idea today and stay fiercely loyal, and fiercely gracious to yourself as you explore and experiment. Thank you so much for tuning in and listening today. I would love to hear from you. If you do decide to take some action from this episode to work in or on your idea, you can reach me on Instagram @melwiggins, or you can email me at hello@melwiggins.com. And I will see you next time.

Episode 6: Why Trying to be Liked is Killing Your Courage

In my work, coaching women, it is a common theme that one of the hardest parts of being brave and showing up as your truest self with your work and ideas is the risk of not being liked.

It feels so viscerally terrifying to contemplate that someone might not like us.

In this episode, I'm talking through why likability has been such a big deal for women, how it shows up in life and work and how fixating on likability is killing our courage.

+ Click here to read the transcript

Hello. And welcome back to Courage Is Calling. Thank you so much for tuning in this podcast is so fun to do, and I really hope that it is become ago to space for you to have your very own personal pep talk. Um, so this week I want to talk about the concept of likeability, uh, in my work coaching women, it's a really common theme that one of the hardest parts about being brave and showing up as your true self with your work and your ideas and all that good stuff is the risk of not being liked.

And for us it feels so viscerally terrifying to contemplate that someone might not like us. Am I right? And I imagine even right now, just as you are listening on hearing me, me talk about this, that you could recall a feeling that related to the fear of not being liked. And partly this has to do with our human kind of hardwired need for connection.

With that then comes a desire to relate so we see likability and being likable as like a gateway to connection. But further than that, there's this research from the university of Montreal. And it's shown that women in particular are actually more highly tuned into the emotional feedback of other people.

So in social or work situations, we pick up more and we pick up more quickly, the cues, both verbal and nonverbal, like body language of how other people feel about us or about any given situation. So we're always reading the room. Um, and so when it comes to Sharon about anything important to us, we are of course, more acutely aware of what other people's body language means are high. They respond to us when we shake, we speak up or we share, and there are, there's so many complex reasons as to why this is so there's epigenetics, which is a fancy word for inherited experiences from previous generations where. You know, these evolutionary psychologists have actually suggested that females because of their generationally ascribed roles as the primary caretakers, they are wired to quickly and accurate accurately detect any kind of emotional distress and infants. And of course, as the generations have gone on, that has been passed on to us. I wish we have fine tuned and being able to use, uh, to detect and any other kind of relationship. And then there are these multitudes of societal or cultural reasons, as well as to why we are more hyper aware of how other people respond to us. So obviously women have spent more time in society, out of the picture. Quiet and small, then we have in this beautiful, brave, new world of where, of where women's voices are being, uh, projected more. So it's inevitable that we will still find it really tricky and a bit awkward tick and courageous steps to maybe talk about what we do or share our offerings online, or put ourselves out there in any way, because for centuries.

Women have had to operate in an orbit or rind, male visibility around masculine priorities and around male centered power. Um, and so for centuries, the CFUs most significant way that we could have any kind of say, or input or security was to make sure that we were likable. So likability has become currency for us.

It's a thing that we've had to use that our mothers and our grandmothers had to use in order to be safe, to be provided for, to be understood. And likability has been the thing that women have historically had to leverage to have a say in something, to negotiate into new spaces, to move around in the world or to function in the workplace.

So it's really, really very normal and inevitable that letting go of the attachment to like ability is going to feel scary for us. You know, the risk of not being liked historically has had really big consequences for women. For economic consequences, physical and emotional survival. And when we had no access to earn our own money and needed the provision of man to ensure that we survived, we stayed in our land.

We did what we needed to do. We made people happy. We were likable and we kept the status quo, but this is not the case anymore for women. And. We can do the job of reminding our brands of the many ways that society has evolved in our favor when we see that protection of likeability, maybe showing up for us. And so I thought in this episode, I would just give you a few examples of maybe how this shows up a few ways that I can see, um, how women tend to fix it on likability and how that actually really kills our courage. One of the sneakier ways that I think this happens is by softening our communication, to make sure that we don't get labeled as we often do as Becci or aggressive or abrasive.

So often caveating ourselves with, um, well actually, or I just wondered, or I just, or maybe statements like, like I'm not an expert, but. Or maybe finishing all our sentences when we have explained something with, does that make sense? Um, and this is a way to soften how we say things and to make sure that we come across.

You know, humble or nice or likable, instead of just saying what we need to say, sharing what we need to share with assertiveness or authority. So that's the first kind of example. The second is how we ask for everyone. On their ground, nice opinion on what we're doing and what we should do instead of taking action on the things that we really want to do.

So often women tend to consult all areas more, right? Including polling, Instagram, constantly. And it's usually as a way to buffer some ownership because we've been conditioned to believe that ownership can come across as threatening or arrogant when a woman. Displays that. And so by getting other people's opinions, we're making sure that people are willing to affirm or permit us so we can stay likable.

Another example might be fixating on metrics, right? So surmising that numbers are really good indicators. And that if we increase the metrics, it will mean we are more likable. And that's a really sneaky little way that we fixate on likability by attaching numbers and figures to something that literally could never be quantified. So then if the metrics don't come in, we're more willingly going to scrap our ideas and convictions, which is a terrible idea, right? So fixating on metrics is not a good indicator. Of whether something is good or not. It just isn't. Um, another sneaky way that likeability, uh, can kill our courage is by being an eternal editor.

Right? So being an eternal editor is also. A way that our fear of not being liked can show up because what happens when we are forever and ever editing and perfecting things behind the scenes, what happens when we spend all our time agonizing over our ideas? What happens is we never actually let them see the light of day. They just stay in drafts forever. And what's more protective for our likability. Then hiding straight up, hiding what we have to say or do or bay, and then finally contorting and blending. No, these are not new makeup techniques. I am not qualified in that department. And that is, this is not the podcast for that. But what I mean by contorting and blending is what happens when we prioritize, being liked over being loyal to ourselves. When we prioritize other people's values and opinions. An ideas over our own values and opinions and ideas. When we stay silent about things that matter to us when we blend in or contort to protect ourselves from the risk of not being liked.

And the reality is any women putting themselves out there in any way or doing something that takes some bravery. What we're doing is activating a magnet and that magnet both attracts and repels that's its job. Right. We can't rig it so that the magnet only ever attracts that's totally impossible. It wouldn't be doing its job, but we can equip ourselves with compassion.

We can equip ourselves with loyalty, to ourselves to show up, honestly, to show up authentically and trust. Not the people who really understand and connect with us as we are. Are there because we've been ourselves, not a version of ourselves that is hoping to be liked by everyone. And once we understand that it's not our job to get everyone to like us, it really does feel like for you. Now we get to be ourselves. Doesn't that sound good? And once we can begin to shed expectations and people pleasing metric fixations and endless opinion gathering from other people, we can recognize that actually like ability that desire to be liked is really quite a heavy load to carry. And it's so much more light to be yourself. I hope you find. Helpful to explore a bit about why and how I, this idea of being likable shows up for us, where it shows up and maybe has helped you recognize where it might be. Just killing your courage as always, if you've got any thoughts, reflections on this episode, feel free to get in touch on Instagram, share it or email me.

And I'd love to hear from you. And you can reach me at hello@melwiggins.com

Episode 5: 5 Ways to Cultivate Your Intuition

I believe that intuition is a superpower that we all possess – a gift within us that is our most sacred, trustworthy, brilliant internal guidance system. Like a compass that we can use to understand ourselves more deeply. And yet most of us dismiss it, or forget about it or override it because we live in such a fast-paced, quick fix society where we want other people to tell us the answers to all of our problems and how we should live.

In this episode I'm giving you five ways that you can cut through the the noise and cultivate your own wise sense of intuition.

+ Click here to read the transcript

Welcome back to Courage is Calling – thanks so much for tuning in today.

I wonder what you think of when you hear or see that word? I wonder what preconceived ideas or experiences you have with intuition that you come with. Maybe it’s not something you’ve explored? Maybe it’s something that has felt a bit woo to you? Maybe you have had experiences where you’ve not trusted your intuition and regrated it? Maybe it’s something you really believe in and want to cultivate more – whatever it is, I hope that todays episode brings some clarity for you. Because learning how to access my intuition or my own inner wisdom or my gut sense is something that has transformed my approach to my business and my life and I want to share with you why it’s important, what we can do to nurture it and use it to help us make decisions, when we come up against tough stuff and in every day life. I believe that intuition is a superpower that we all possess – a gift within us that is our most sacred, trustworthy, brilliant internal guidance system. Like a compass that we can use to understand ourselves more deeply. And yet most of us dismiss it, or forget about it or override it because we live in such a fast-paced, quick fix society where we want other people to tell us the answers to all of our problems and how we should live. Our rational brains are absolutely brilliant in their ability to help us find logic and make sense of things, but the place of intuition in our life means that it can be called on for a deeper connection to the world around us and most importantly a deeper connection to ourselves, our desires and our boundaries. Most of us are familiar with our inner critics, I talk about that a lot – the voice that tells us our limitations, that quashes our enthusiasm, that tries to keep us safe from any risk, that works to pull us back in when we contemplate change or stepping outside our comfort zone. If our inner critic is the voice of limitation, our intuition is the inner voice of wisdom and curiosity– the one that tells you that you should move towards the things that light you up, or avoid the person who seems great on paper but makes you uncomfortable. It’s that sense of knowing or feeling in your gut. And it's something we should all be not only paying more attention to but be learning to nurture and grow into. I know that the world is noisy. Our social media feeds feel noisy. Opinions of others feel noisy. Our minds are noisy. So getting connected to our intuition is an opportunity to retreat from that. Your intuition is actually the most wise, accurate, deep part of your true self and I want to share with you ways that we can begin to hone this part of who we are, to allow it to have a stronger presence or prominence in our lives and see how amazing, calming and discerning we can feel when we give ourselves space to understand it more. Like courage, intuition can be cultivated. It can be strengthed with practice so I want to give you five tips that I know have helped me and I know will help you to amplify your trustworthy inner voice of intuition.

1. The first thing that’s important is to identify which voices are NOT yours.

Before you can hear your own voice, you need to sift through all the ones that are not yours. Being selective about the type of content we choose to consume and being mindful of the amount that we consume helps to keep our own thoughts from drowning out. The less unnecessary information we absorb on a regular basis, the more it can amplify our own voice and our ability to hear our own thoughts and the more meaningful it will become. The same goes for other areas of your life where there are many opinions filtering in – be aware of whose voices you hear when you think about the things you would love to do or how you want to move forward. It’s really important to have good boundaries around whose opinions matter to us and what we are prepared to engage in so that we can make sure we don’t lose our own voice and thoughts in the midst.

2. Secondly, honing your intuition is so much easier when you align with your values so get to know where you stand on things and what is of utmost importance to you as a person. Your mind can often steer you away from your integrity in sneaky ways, but your intuition will not. We have all had experiences where we have or have been tempted to betray our values. Learn what it feels like to behave in alignment with your values, and you'll start to sense your intuition more clearly. The more that you connect to your core values, the more you will sense your intuition guiding you towards or away from things. It might be worth spending some time writing down 5-7 values that are most important to you in life or work. What do you want to anchor your intuition? When you know what your values are, your intuition is more able to function - you can discern more easily what is for you and what is not.

3. The third thing is regular journaling. It doesn’t have to be long, It doesn’t have to be hard, but even setting 5 minutes at some time during the day and sitting down and writing out what is going on in your head, how you are feeling, what you are struggling with and what you want to feel or do to move forward is POWERFUL. It allows the brain to slow down – even the act of writing with a pen and paper nowadays is significant in helping us to slow down because we’re so used to fast typing or texting. So many of us are resistant to this practice because we might not know what to say or write, but there are no rules and that’s the point. It’s about slowing down, allowing your brain to release some of the things swirling around and seeing what comes up. To get the most out of journalling, the focus must be on self-expression through sustainable practice. So, how it feelsr ather than how it looks, and realistic consistency determined by you. There is immense power in habitually making time to listen to your thoughts, which only serves to strengthen the connection with our intuition.

4. On a similar vein – the fourth thing is finding quiet space for ourselves. Quiet space can be in the form of meditation or just taking 5 minutes outside with our feet on the ground or lying down for a couple of minutes, doing some deep breathing, feeling each muscle release and sending breath around your body. Finding a few moments a day for quiet space, allows for an opportunity to quiet our mind and what's going on around us. These pockets of quiet can bring us back to the present and keep us focused on what we can do in that specific moment, which is so often all we have control of anyway. There are some great free apps for this – I’ve been using Simple Habit for a while which allows you to really tailor your meditation for whatever time of the day or situation you’re in and whatever time you have. I did a 2 minute meditation before I started work today and it was a great way of just stopping, getting quiet and observing my breath before I began my day.

5. Finally, a really clever, simple but powerful tip for tuning into your intuition can be simply CHANGING THE "WHY" QUESTIONS TO "WHAT" QUESTIONS. When you come to the point of struggle or resistance or feel the urge to shame yourself (Hello, inner critic!) you can begin to return back to your intuition by framing your inner dialogue. So instead of asking "Why am I struggling with this? Why do I always do this? Why can I never get this together?" a more intuitive way to approach yourself might be to ask "What is it about this task that I'm struggling with? What is it that is keeping me stuck in this situation? What am I worried about here? What is it that I need to move ahead here"

Often when we ask why, the question is framed in a way to bring shame. But when we ask what – we are searching for deeper reasons to connect to and that can reveal some powerful answers if we are willing to listen closely to ourselves.

So – 5 ways that we can nurture our intuition and access the guidance, self-trust and wisdom that we want.

Episode 4: Your Ambition Is Not Embarrassing

I wonder what comes up for you when you think about an ambitious woman? Is there an image or a set of feelings that you might attach to that word: Ambition? 

I KNOW so many women find it really hard to admit that they are ambitious. The fear of coming across as ambitious feels really scary for us because our culture hasn’t allowed women to celebrate their desire for more.

As if wanting more for this one life that we’ve got is greedy, needy or will make us unlikeable in some way.

This episodes dives into why it's hard for us as women to own our ambition and why it's important that we begin to turn the tide on the negative, damaging tropes around women's ambitions that keep us small, embarrassed and resentful.

+ Click here to read the transcript

Welcome back to Courage Is Calling, I’m so glad you’re here – thanks for tuning in today.

I wonder what comes up for you when you think about the word ambition?

Is there an image or a set of feelings that you might attach to that word?

What about when you think about an ambitious woman? What comes up for you then?

Sometimes I wonder if we’ve painted ambition with a dirty brush. Like, we’ve taken all the toxic elements that we’ve observed about ambition and what its really about and skewed its meaning

I think – actually I KNOW so many women find it really hard to admit that they are ambitious for this very reason. The fear of coming across as ambitious feels really scary for us because our culture hasn’t allowed women to celebrate their desire for more.

As if wanting more for this one life that we’ve got is greedy, needy or will make us unlikeable in some way.

In fact, there have been studies conducted by leading research institutions such as Harvard and Columbia University, disecting the perception of ambitious women. The research shows that culturally, ambition is seen as a positive trait in men yet criticized in women. When presented with two case studies (one male one female) with exactly the same goals, ideas and personality traits the female one was found to be more scrutinised and rejected.

And I can see the repercussions of this culture effecting so many women in my work. Women often come through the programmes that I run totally terrified to admit that they have goals, aspirations and ideas that they’d like to make a reality.

They have every reason to be afraid of owning their brilliance and their desires because we a) haven’t made women feel safe to have ambitions or to expand or stretch without attaching some sort of negative connotation to it, and b) we certainly haven’t created supportive systems to enable women to do this without feeling like they have to compromise other areas of their lives when they do.

Women are fearful of coming across as ambitious with good reason. We have demonised womens appetite for more and reduced it to mean that she’s pushy, untrustworthy, competitive, maybe even undesireable to a potential partner or a bit too big for her boots.

And on the other hand, we tend to see other virtues of womanhood celebrated and elevated much more – like self-sacrifice, and caring for everyone else being the holy grail.

So what happens for women with ambition who sense that fear about having big ideas or dreams? Well, we go into self-protection mode. We end up hiding, feeling embarrassed, dumbing down our ideas, people-pleasing, apologising or not taking credit for our efforts, handing things over to other people when we’re capable and want to do things for ourselves, doubting our abilities, feeling resentful and worse than that – this resentment often leads women to judging each other and being competitive or bitchy. We fall into the trap that society has set up for us, not realising that we’re being played and it keeps us small and scared. And so the cycle continues.

Can we be done with this now? We need to normalise, celebrate and give each other permission to thrive in the ways that we want to.

To really break these cycles we need to find supportive spaces to be more fully ourselves, to own our plans and goals, to find cheerleaders to encourage us as we pursue the things we care about. And it starts with us.

It starts with us both owning the desires and ambitions we have for ourselves and making sure that we are a safe person for other women to share their dreams and desires with.

When we own our desires and ambitions and ideas and become safe places for other women to thrive how they want to, it releases other women to do the same. We demonstrate that there is plenty of room for us all, that we all have different ideas of what fulfilment and desire looks like and we can help each other to be brave. Ambition comes in all forms and isn’t something we should hand over to the stereotypes we’ve been given. And if we don’t hand it over to these stereotypes we can actually allow ourselves to be really inspired by each other.

This is how we turn the tide on these cultural tropes that paint women with ambition in a negative light.

Sure there will always be those that are intimidated, threatened or resentful when they observe or encounter a woman who is pursuing the stuff she feels called towards. There’s no getting around the risk of potential criticism or the opinions of others but it’s important to remember that other peoples responses to your ambition usually have nothing to do with you. Their responses to us only really ever tell us about them.

And so the questions I want to leave you with today are:

• Are you willing to be loyal to your own curiosities and plans? are you ready to be loyal to yourself and your amitions?
• Where can you bring those ambitions and dreams to that feels safe and empowering.
• How are you going to champion other women who are taking the risk to stretch and expand as well.

I hope this episode gives you some permission today, to be ambitious in whatever way you need to. To know that your ambition is not embarrassing or threatening – it is important and necessary for us to witness and connect with.

If any of this is resonating with you, feel free to send me a message on IG, tell me about your ambition. It would be great to hear from you.

Thanks again for listening and ill see you next time.

Episode 3: More than self care: What feeds your core?

The concept of 'self-care' is having a bit of a moment lately, right? That sounds good, but what if it isn't enough? What if what is pitched to us as self-care actually feels like another thing to add to an already full to-do list.

It sounds like we need a revamp of what it really means to care for ourselves and in this episode I'm going to walk you through the two core components that I believe leads us to a richer, more sustainable way of self-care.

+ Click here to read the transcript

Welcome back to Courage is Calling!

Today I wanted to talk a little bit about self care.

It’s definitely having a moment this year right? With so many more anxieties and pressures on us and as the world seems to be so unpredictable and we have so many more people and causes and things vying for our attention, its good and right that we take a moment and think about how we might intentionally care for ourselves.

What worries me about this is that often, particularly for women, self care then takes on this extra line on our list of things to do:

Reply to that email – TICK Get groceries – TICK Check in on that friend that seemed off – TICK Set a reminder to register kids for x y z. – TICK Book in with the accountant – TICK CARE FOR SELF – ummmmm….Ok?

I really think we’ve got it wrong when we view self care in the same task driven way that we see other compartments of our lives. What this ends up doing is making self care another thing to feel pressured to do, to accomplish, to attain. It also then means, because we are human and are already stretched, we end up trying to look for hacks or tips to try and dunk ourselves into self-care or even more worringly – commodify it as something that can be purchased. Another sneaky capitalist-skewed way of operating that only depletes us more and actually heaps more shame on us if we ‘don’t get around to the self care thing this week’.

And we all know what happens when shame enters the room, right? We freeze. We shrink. We feel immobilised.

What I’m interested in is a more nuanced conversation about what it really means to care for ourselves, and actually more than that – what it really means for us to care for each other in meaningful, restorative ways. Because caring for ourselves as a concept might not be as helpful as it sounds. It really puts so much onus on us to be able to do that when in reality we need each other in order to feel nourished just as much as we need ourselves – and to deny that moves us away from our biological, innate essence.

In their brilliant book ‘Burnout: The Secret To Unlocking The Stress Cycle’ – Emily and Amelia Nagoski say this:

“No one is “complete” without other people—and we mean this literally. To be complete without social connection is to be nourished without food. It doesn’t happen. We get hungry. We get lonely. We must feed ourselves or die. We don’t mean you “need a man” or any kind of romantic partner. We mean you need connection in any or all of its varied forms. And it is also true that the lifelong development of autonomy is as innate to human nature as the drive to connect. We need both connection and autonomy. That’s not a contradiction. Humans are built to oscillate from connection to autonomy and back again.”
 So a more generous, supportive and rich way to understand self care comes in two parts:

The community aspect. Community care. Realising that we need each other. We need to intentionally connect with community and allow ourselves to be helped and cared for as well as doing that for others. We do this through deep honest friendships, in learning communities or spiritual communities and causes that we are connected to.

And secondly

the self aspect. And with this I think we need to look deeper than just candles and Netflix – although I am absolutely certain that those things give us a lovely experience of indulgence and escape – but what if instead of looking for ways to escape our life so we can feel cared for, we look deeper at the ways in which we really find fulfilment? What if we reflected on the experiences and moments in our life where we have felt in flow, in our element or like we are living our purpose and we dilute and dissect what elements of those experiences brought us to life? When we distill down what really makes us feel full up and alive, often things come up like: when I’m able to create without pressure. Or When I’m bringing people together for a purpose, or when I get to experience novelty or be spontaneous. These things, these core elements of experiences are telling us something about ourselves and what our bodies, minds and souls need to feel like ourselves, to feel cared for and nourished.

Getting to know what really feeds our core then becomes less about fitting those things in but seeing how we might be able to integrate an aspect of it in our already full lives. It becomes less about a to do list and more about a deep connection to our core nutrients, an awareness of what we need to look after our souls and really feel like ourselves.

It’s only when we see these two aspects, community care and core nutrients weaving together in depth and intenion that the self-care conversation actually can become much more whole – so we look at not just where we need that community connection but also what our autonomy needs in order to feel fulfilled and in flow.

So here are a couple of take aways for you: Where are you accessing community right now? Where are the spaces where you feel connected and cared for in community. Where do you have the opportunity to do this for others as well? What are the experiences in your past where you have felt most alive or fulfilled? What were the elements of that experience that really nourished you? Make a list, and then have a look at where you can integrate those things into your life now – your full life now. Not as another thing to do but as a way to allow yourself to be creative at caring for yourself in a deeper more meaningful and sustainable way.

Episode 2: You Cannot Fight With Your Fear

Welcome back to Courage Is Calling!

What do you need some courage for right now? Maybe you've been thinking about a change or you've got an idea that you're toying with or a thing that you really want to say or do and all of the feelings of fear are showing up for you.

Maybe you've maybe you've dipped your toe in the water of something new and fear has got you totally frozen or unable to move past the point of that toe dip and you're ready to run back to safer shores. If that's you and you feel like there are so many swirling racing thoughts running around your head about what could go wrong, how about your own capabilities or how you might feel or make a fool out of yourself, I want to offer you some understanding today about those really very real feelings.

Listen in for the number one thing that helps when it comes to facing your fears.

+ Click here to read the transcript (note that the transcription software isn't always accurate with the Northern Irish accent I have)

Welcome back to Courage Is Calling. This is episode two, I'm not sure what it is that brought you to this podcast today, but I imagine that for whatever reason, you need some bravery for something. Maybe you've been thinking about a challenge or you've got an idea that you're toying with or thing that you really want to say or do and all of the feelings are showing up for you. Maybe you've maybe you've dipped your toe in the water of something new and fear has got you totally frozen or unable to move past the point of that toe dip. And you're actually really ready to run back to see if we're shores. If that's you and you feel like there are so many swirling racing thoughts running around your head about what could go wrong, how about your own capabilities or how you might feel or make a fool out of yourself?

I want to offer you some understanding today about those really very real feelings. So I'm going to tell you a little story.

Some of you may know that I have two kids and like most children, they give me the run around at bed time. My youngest who's five, especially she loves the bedtime shenanigans and she is genuinely just such a happy, chilled out little girl until it comes to go into bed.

And as soon as it's time for turning the lights, so it just, it starts, it kicks off. And I guess some context for this would be that for the last five years. Of her life. We have stayed with her while she goes to sleep. She co-slept with me as a baby and while she's moved into her owned Raymond Long ago and her own bed and all of that, that we've still stayed with her as she falls asleep.

And so at five years old, we've been trying to. Transition out of that because she's five night and actually bedtime ends up taking forever when we're in the room. We are a big distraction and she gets overtired. And let me tell you, there is no comfort to be crumped up in a single bed beside a five-year-old.

It's just, it's not a great same for everyone. But for her, when it comes to time for light side, we've done our stories. We've brushed our teeth. We have talked cuddled, the whole gamut. It comes to light sight on whoever is putting her to bed starts to leave the room. She just, she starts, it starts the shenanigans start and she gets really scared.

And she starts to tell us all kinds of reasons why it is not bad time to try and keep us close. And the thing about this whole process is that it's not that she can't go to sleep by herself. It's that it's new. And new things are scary. The darkest scary, even though all the doors are open and the lights are on and we're just next door in our own bedroom.

But the thing about fear is that it isn't actually really interested in what's real or what's really happening when it showing up for us. Fears, main concern is to keep us safe. And that's going to do anything and say anything it can to try and bring us back to the comfort and the CFD of the known and doing things that are outside of the known are hard to get used to.

And our brands tend to speak up at those times to tell us about the risks of the unknown. And so for the first few times we tried putting her to bed and letting her go to bed by herself to sleep by herself. Whoever was putting her to bed with just get so riled, because there was so much getting up so many excuses.

It was so much faffing a bite, and I want to change my tatties and I need to enter front drank and don't go. And all of the, all of the things that you would expect, and it would end up getting really hated. I really, really hope that other parents can relate to this. And what I realized is that when it comes to fair, actually, it's so counter intuitive to try and fight it.

Because when we try to bypass fear and think that we can fight with it, argue with it or force it into place, it's just a lost cause it's a lost cause because fear is totally erotic. It's totally erotic. And so for my daughter getting annoyed at her and her fear. It only escalates the situation even more.

And when we are moving towards something vulnerable for us or expansive for us, even something exciting for us, fear is at the ready it's at the ready and high it shows up in our brand is by. You know, mentally chucking anything out us that might help us to retreat away from this unknown territory of expansion or vulnerability back to CFD and knowing again, and fear is usually chaotic.

And it's unlikely to make a whole lot of sense, even though what we might be hearing in our heads signs, realistic or reasonable. A moderate fear often needs instead is compassion and good old information. It needs tending to like a child that's kicking off at bed time. It needs understanding it needs soothing and calm to counteract the chaos that it brings to our internal systems.

So as a parent, this means dig in real deep at the tiredest part of the day. Actually, all I want to do is go down stairs and just crash on the sofa with an episode of something. And for anyone who's feeling fear about certain things that you want to do or that you want to explore. It actually means digging deep for yourself with understanding and compassion when all of our instincts.

Actually tell us to shame ourselves for not having it together or not being more brave or not doing what we really want to do. Why are you not doing that to be, you'll never do that. Why can't you do it? Everyone else seems like they can do it. All of that shame only escalates our fear because all we want is for our fear to go away and let us get on the things.

And all I wanted. Let me tell you was for my daughter to get there faster with the bedtime retain, but she needed me to remain calm. And to not enter into the chaos, to reassure her over and over and not put gasoline on the fire of her fears by getting annoyed, but to smother them with my love and my patients as hard as it is.

And you know what, after a few nights of this digging real deep and this kind of comfort and reassurance things are actually much calmer at bedtime. And she sees that she can do it, that it CF and that we're here to respond to her if she really does need us. And that's the thing, it takes some evidence building to show that, you know, she's capable of it for her to feel less scared and associate for us.

So, when you're thinking about this next thing, that you need to be brave a bite, and you feel that rise of fear coming up, know that you have it in you to dig deep, to come alongside and underneath your fear and acknowledge it for what it is. It's your body and your brain and trying to protect you from the unknown, the vulnerable and the unfamiliar.

And you can let your fear know that you're grateful for its protection, even though gratitude might be the last thing that you're failing. If you let it know that you're grateful for its protection and that you'd like to proceed, you can kind of give your fear level, a little stroke in the proverbial heads and reassure it that you you've got it from here.

You can take it from here. I want to thank you for tuning into these pep talks. It means a lot to me that you give me space in your day and as ever, if you want to talk about your thoughts on any of these episodes, you can reach out to me on Instagram at malware ends, or you can email me on hello@melwiggins.com until next time.

Episode 1: A Simple Framework For Courage

In this first ever episode of Courage Is Calling, I thought it would be good to introduce you to what I call ‘The Courage Concept’: my three-part framework for women who want to build bravery. Listen in to hear all about how this framework came about, who it’s for and how you can apply it to your life right now and begin to build beautiful courage!

+ Click here to read the transcript (note that the transcription software isn't always accurate with the Northern Irish accent I have)

Welcome to episode one or Courage Is Calling. I suppose I should introduce myself. My name is Mel Wiggins. The leader of assembly assembly is a virtue community of women who want to build courage. And I do that through loads of different things. Essentially I coach and train and create resources and programs for women.

And. I'm so glad that you're here. Thank you so much for less than thank you for dine load-in and liken this podcast already. It means so much to me that you have chosen to spend your time here today. I'm going to dive straight in if that's okay. Today's episode. This first ever episode of courage is calling.

I thought it would be good to introduce you to what I call the courage concept. And I guess I'll rewind a little bit before I get into that and that, you know, a little bit about how I, this courage concept framework that I'm going to explain in this episode came about. So I've been built in assembly, this beautiful business of mine for almost five years.

Now, I'm on assembly actually started as an event for women. So these were women that I had met online. And we've all been there, right? We've met loads of friends online and connected through different mediums on social media. And, but I had met some of these women online and really admired their work, admired their creativity and the things they were doing in the world.

And I really wanted to connect with them in person. So I started creating these events for women together for them to come together and they were beautiful and I miss them so, so much. Especially this year where we haven't been able to gather in the same way, but these were beautiful events.

They were styled in these amazing locations and there was so much good food. From our Maison female caterers we had workshops and everything. And as these events kind of rolled on throughout the year I started just really listening to the conversations of the women around the table. And I noticed that the same issues were coming up over and over.

They were having these really beautiful conversations with each other about just failing, like imposters in their work. Not knowing how to. Show up authentically on social media without failing like a deck. Not knowing how to talk about their work with other people, not knowing how to promote themselves.

It would be so worried about what people would think, and they have all these beautiful and amazing ideas upon ideas, but there were so free to move towards them. And these conversations were so. Significant and I could hear them happen and over and over again. And so I really knew that we needed more space and something deeper to sink our teeth into as women trying to do these things in the world.

And so I started to do some coaching training and then I started to with, with the training and that I had been done Realizing that I could actually lead some workshops around these themes and talk to some of these issues that were coming up around the tables. And from there these workshops led to developing a membership community so that we could do ongoing work virtually and talk about these things online together in a really safe space.

And then some coaching courses. Developed to kind of help women dive deeper into different aspects of this stuff. And all of this, I knew that there was a bit of a framework Bria and that I wanted to pull together that actually really spoke to and communicated. Exactly what the work of assembly was, where all of these pieces came together and, and really articulated what assembly was trying to be.

And I think I knew that the main goal was the assembly existed to help women build courage. And I, not the kind of courage you need to do kind of. I guess traditionally scary things like, you know, jump out of a plan or whatever, but this inner courage that we need, when we're trying to bring our ideas to life, the courage we need to, you know, shed some of the old stories that we've had about our own capabilities and our own goodness and our own trustworthiness.

The courage that we all need to show up in the world for ourselves and to act on the dreams and the desires that we have. That just so often we ignore or we repress because they feel too scary or just too vulnerable. I wanted to be able to take all of my learning about courage, all my own experience of building something both in my previous work, as a leader in the NGO world and as a leader of this coaching business and take the evidence that I had been gathering through research and through working with hundreds of these men and women over the years. And I wanted to put some context to what that work looked like. How it unfolds and how a framework would look that would really show the women that I worked with evidence-based pieces of what it takes to really build courage with these things. And I wanted to be able to create a framework that made, it all makes sense, essentially.

And so I was just mulling on this and I could feel the thoughts of this is kind of how my brain works at swirls and swirls around for weeks. And then it comes together and unusually at happens at the most inconvenient times, you know, like when you're in the shower or, and this particular time, it was one night when I was allying bad. And it felt like the, the like essential parts of this framework came to me like a lightning bolt which was really inconvenient because.

I already don't get enough sleep cause my kids still wake through the night. So I got up and I got up because I have absolutely been there when an idea shows up in my brain and I don't pay attention to it and you lose it. And then the next day you wish that you had written the don't and you forget it.

And that's so frustrating. So I got up, I got up in the dead of the night. It really was like two, three o'clock in the morning and I grabbed my old school notepad, because sometimes we still need an old schoolnotepad. And I started to scribble. I started to scribble down and the ideas really started to flow. And I finally found a clear way to explain how we build courage in this way as women with ideas and things to do in the world. And so I thought, what better way to start this podcast than to like, share that with you today in this first episode. To really set the scene for what this podcast is going to get into, because really all of the work that I do. And every aspect of Assembly is built around the three, these three things, these three pillars for building courage.

So every bit of work that I do with one-to-one clients, every coach and program that I develop every workshop and my membership community, it all comes back to helping women grow.

And these three areas. And the three pillars that I believe are really foundational for building courage are these clarity self-trust and visibility. So let's get into each one a little bit. I'll be expanded on and given loads of nuance to these. Particular aspects of building courage as this podcast grows so you can know what to expect, but I thought, why don't I give you a little overview of why I know that these three things are so important for women who want to build bravery in their lives.

So the first thing is clarity. The first pillar is clarity, and I really believe that when we are clear about who we are, And what we stand for and where we operate in our strengths, that we are powerful. And I actually know that through my own experience on the experience of the women that I am in community with that clarity is really hard.

One for us. We have so many competing. Responsibilities in our lives. And we have so many messages from our culture and society about who we should be and what we should do. And what path to take that, being clear up by what we want and who we are, and what we stand for is really difficult. So this work around clarity means really connecting in and honing our values.

So knowing high, what we really believe, what we really stand for, aligns with the work that we want to do in the world. I think this work around clarity also means finding out about what actually feeds our core, what actually sustains us as human beings individually more than what the self care kind of movement and ideas that.

Are often peddled to us in these signed bytes help us stay. And I also think that clarity comes when we discover our secret sauce. This, the space, this beautiful space of convergence, where. Our skills and our passions and the people we want to connect with come together. And so when we're really, really radically clear about who we are, about what we stand for and where our unique impact and gift set, we can see that courage will begin to grow.

The second part of this framework for building courage is self trust. So I'm going to try and not go off and around here, but I feel so strongly about this this idea of self trust, because we still continue to operate in a world that has. These big and small systems that indicate that women are not to be fully trusted, not to be trusted with our ideas, with our bodies, with our opinions, with money, with our voices, with how we feel all of that.

But we know that that's not true. We know that we are to be trusted, and we know that a world where women are excluded or not fully trusted is only a half whole world. And so we must begin the work to untangle those systems, rebuild those systems by actually learning to trust ourselves. And this means that self trust becomes a really radical act to fully trust that you are resilient.

That you are capable, that you are able to be committed to things that come your way, that you are fully trustworthy to make good decisions, to show up for yourself to really fully trust. All of that is a bold rebellion and I'm totally here for it. But we need the tools, right? We need the tools to unpack.

All of this conditioning that has led us to not trust ourselves, to not trust our own thoughts, to not trust our own instincts and to do this. We need a toolkit. We need a toolkit that is robust and evidence-based for working through our fears. We need tools to help us fine tune and actually cultivate our intuition, our sense of inner knowing.

And we also need the tools to harness curiosity, to continue to be curious. And wonder about what is possible in the world. What's possible for us, what's possible for others. And I believe that curiosity is a great antidote to fear and confusion and not trusting ourselves. So developing beautiful self-trust is such a hugely important pace and building courage.

And then the third and final pillar. And this framework for building courage is visibility. And I imagine as you're listening to this and you heard me say the word visibility that even, maybe feel a bit squirmy inside. And I just want to recognize that this is actually often the hardest part of building courage in a way, because it actually, it really, it requires some action.

It requires some real stretching. Some risk and a whole hell of a lot of vulnerability, because be invisible with your ideas and your project and your words and your body and your thoughts is quite terrifying for most of us. And it brings up. So much for us around worthiness to be heard fears of what people will think all of that, but let me tell you, I really believe the reward of visibility and showing up is, is actually in the trying.

It's in the show and up that we get to learn so much about ourselves. We get to see what we're capable of and we get to notice what impact we can have when we really honor our ideas on our desires through to action. So we don't let them just sit there. We follow them through to action. That's where we get to learn.

So much. And I want you to know that we need you, we need your visibility. We need to see you. We need to hear your ideas. We need to discover your innovative solutions to things in the world world we need to hear and say, and fail and touch your creativity and, and acknowledge the things that you do that bring joy to the world.

And we need to show up in a way that. Is honest to us, not in a way that we feel we're expected to. And I just think it's such a beautiful thing to see a woman really owning her ideas, owning her voice and her brilliance in her own way. And I believe that actually be invisible. You know, the hard thing is that it often requires us to wake up parts of our voice that we maybe have allied to you.

Fall to the wayside. I think it requires us to wake up our authentic voice so that we can communicate in a way that feels honest and really reflective of who we really are, not our performative Instagram self. I also believe that be invisible allows us to build magnetic community. People who really get what we're trying to do and say, and hire me isn't as that.

And we also need to recognize that when we are building a magnetic community, we also have to be equipped to handle the potential repelling of some people. And that's okay too. That's how magnets work. And finally, I believe that visibility gives us the opportunity to really ask for what we want a concept that well it's so far removed from the lived experiences of.

So many of us as women we get to practice asking for what we need. We get to practice giving opera people the opportunity to join us in the things that we're doing to buy from us, to connect with our ideas, et cetera. So visibility is actually the part of building courage that. Allows us to take action with clear minds that trust ourselves.

And you know, that I always preach that courage loves action because it gives us so much information, no matter what, which way it goes. So there you have up a brief introduction to what I call the courage concept, this framework, and three core pillars for brilliant women. Like you who want to build courage.

I really hope. That here in a bite, some of this has been helpful for you, and you're able to see yourself in some of what I've shared about this framework. This is just the beginning and I really hope that when you're approaching something in your own life that needs some bravery, that you can dive into those three things and understand a bit more about why.

If you need it and what you might need. Thank you so much for last night, really. And truly, I am so glad to be here in your ears, in this space. And I'd love to hear from you if you're taking anything away from this episode, if anything has kind of. Resonated, please feel free to get in touch. Feel free to share this episode with your friends to DM me with any of your thoughts, or you can send me an email at hello at malware and Stockholm.

And until next time, I'll see you later.