How to stop overthinking and (finally) start taking action: the workshop

Key Takeaways from Kirsty Hulse’s Confidence Workshop

1. Confidence is not a personality trait; it’s a practice.

• Kirsty emphasised that confidence isn’t something you either have or don’t have. Instead, think of it as a muscle that you build gradually through intentional practice, exposure, and repetition.
• Shift your thinking from “I’m just not a confident person” to “I can learn to be confident through practice.”

2. Notice and challenge your inner critic.

• One of the biggest barriers to confidence is our inner voice, often harsh and critical. Kirsty encouraged listeners to acknowledge this inner critic compassionately rather than ignoring it.
• Replace self-critical statements (“I’m going to mess this up”) with kinder, supportive ones (“I’m prepared, and it’s okay if I make mistakes.”).

3. Your body shapes your mind (and your confidence).

• Confidence is as much physical as it is mental. Kirsty discussed how posture, breathing, and movement significantly impact how confident we feel internally.
• Practices like power poses, intentional breathing, and grounding your feet firmly before speaking or presenting can help you feel centred and in control.

4. Embrace vulnerability as strength.

• Confidence isn’t about never feeling nervous; it’s about accepting nerves as a natural part of being human.
• Kirsty shared that vulnerability connects us. Admitting you’re nervous or feeling unsure can foster genuine relationships, deepen connections, and ultimately enhance confidence.

5. Small steps can lead to transformative growth.

• You don’t need dramatic changes to feel more confident. Small, consistent acts of bravery—such as speaking up in meetings or saying yes to new challenges—gradually build lasting confidence.
• Each small step you take creates proof that you can cope, adapt, and thrive.

6. Be mindful of what drains your confidence.

• Kirsty highlighted common confidence killers, like comparison to others, perfectionism, and seeking external validation.
• Build self-awareness to notice when you’re slipping into comparison or perfectionism. Catching these moments allows you to shift perspective quickly and regain a sense of self-worth.

7. Visualisation can unlock your potential.

• The brain can’t easily distinguish between vividly imagined experiences and real ones. Visualising yourself confidently handling situations can train your brain to respond positively when they happen.
• Take time regularly to visualise speaking confidently, presenting clearly, or calmly tackling challenges.

8. Confidence thrives in community.

• Surround yourself with people who genuinely believe in you and who encourage and celebrate your growth.
• A supportive community creates emotional safety, enabling you to stretch yourself without fear of judgement or failure.

9. Celebrate your growth, not just your outcomes.

• Kirsty emphasised the importance of acknowledging your progress along the journey—not just the end result.
• Celebrating small wins and incremental improvements reinforces confidence and creates momentum.

Transcript

good morning lovely human beings it’s so lovely to have you here today and

0:06welcome to the first ever live free marketing Meetup Workshop it’s a little bit mad and uh with no

0:13idea how it’s going to go but I think we’re in safe hands with KY uh so I think we’re gonna have a lot of fun today and thank you all already for po

0:21popping in the chat uh just saying good morning it feels very early I mean Kirsty and I have just had 15 minutes of

0:27chat and like that’s the first person I’ve spoken to to the um but um also you know thank you for

0:33popping in and saying where you’re watching from like Miranda has who says that Miranda’s watching from Brussels which is amazing uh and so we’ve got

0:40Emma Michael Janette Anthony uh you’re all Hero so thank you all so much for

0:46bit here um if you haven’t already um as so many of you already have uh if your

0:51chat messages aren’t currently switched over to everyone so everyone can see your messages there some instructions on

0:57your screen right now so you head to your chat chat feature and presently if your little toggle in

1:02there says host and panelists uh switch that to everyone so everyone can see your messages and we can go through

1:08these two hours today um with the opportunity to interact with one another

1:14uh as Martin says Martin is in Victoria in London in the office so uh I hope we

1:20accompany you uh in your office uh for a great session today Martin uh today our

1:26guest is Kirsty hor now last time I introduced Kirsty I just had to say raw

1:32training uh but now we can add CEO of neuroworks and founder of confidence

1:38live uh to the list so Kirsty is a busy uh but amazing human being I just want

1:43to pause for a moment on the confidence Live point because uh this is a conference that Kirsty runs every year

1:50and last year I had the privilege of speaking there and it was one of the most profound moments of my entire career um it was a conference unlike any

1:58other um um and a conference where the the vibe I’m going to use that word is

2:05unmatched by any conference that I’ve ever ever attended um so I just wanted

2:10to add like a very sincere endorsement that if you would like to go to confidence live uh then please uh do

2:17head that way uh we’ve got some feedback that I’m super quiet so I’m going to go closer to the mic hopefully that’s not

2:23too loud um today is something new uh after five years of running webinars uh

2:29in a standard 1 hour slot today we’re going to give ourselves the time to breathe with an extra hour uh the

2:36purpose is to make today as practical as possible and while this isn’t new for Kirsty which is why we asked her to do

2:43it for the first ever one it is new for TMM so we’re going to be figuring this out together you are all Pioneers uh on

2:49today’s session um as you can see uh you got the chat feature uh that all of you

2:54are using so wonderfully uh today so we’ve got Sarah in the chat and Allison uh popping in messages right now um but

3:02then we also have the Q&A feature I’m actually going to leave it to Kirsty to sort of direct us as to how we use those

3:09today um but the chat feature in particular I imagine will be used before we get started I just want to say thank

3:15you to our uh sponsors uh for today’s session because we wouldn’t be able to even innovate or try new things if they

3:21didn’t support our community so this week’s featured sponsor is story block uh they are a CMS a modern CMS they

3:30a CMS which enables you to do things which will carry you through the next few years into um these big

3:37technological changes and so if you’re looking at redoing your website then

3:42don’t uh just go for the default have a look and see whether something like story block might well help you uh

3:50they’re running a webinar in a couple of months uh all about Ai and VR uh in e-commerce spaces so if that would be of

3:56interest uh absolutely check that out also thank you to frontify Cambridge marketing College planable Redgate and

4:03score app again uh if uh if it wasn’t for these companies then we won’t be

4:08able to bring these sessions to you so really really important with all that said uh now’s

4:14the time for me to shut up and hand over to the very incredible Kirsty horse thank you all so much for being here and

4:20and I hope you really enjoy the session Take Care thank you Joe thank you so much thank you to everyone in the chat

4:28um so I two things so I uh have like this office

4:34space it has this like good setup and a microphone but I went in there this morning and we live in an old 1840s

4:42converted church and it is freezing in there and I like put the heating on and I put my little Heating and I was

4:48shaking I was like that’s okay we can just hang out on my kitchen so welcome to my kitchen we’ve got a cup of coffee

4:54it’s the morning we’re going to talk a bit about overthinking and confidence speaking second ly of overthinking and

5:01confidence as Joe mentioned this is the first time that TMM have done a webinar

5:06and just before we all joined I said Joe we can’t get this wrong and he was like maybe we can so can we just all just

5:13give me a yes in the chat if we’re just here with an open mind we’re here thank you Lauren um we’re here for just

5:20learning connecting if you believe me that we can’t get this wrong a group of

5:25nice people trying to help each other out you can never get itong wrong there we go lovely thank you for joining um

5:33also I saw in the chat um somebody mentioned that maybe they’re a little apprehensive about this session so

5:40firstly thank you for joining I have noticed at this point in my career I’ve trained probably about 60,000 people to

5:47be more confident whatever that means we’ll Define that later and a lot of the times when people are joining a workshop

5:54or a training on something you know about overthinking and taking action and confidence and things like that um

6:01sometimes it can come with a little bit of apprehension so before I start the session I just want to make it very

6:06clear that you know nobody’s going to have to do anything we’re not suddenly going to like Spotlight on a camera and

6:12be like yes this is what we’re going to do so it is my invitation that you spend the next couple of hours kind of

6:18absorbing information the thing with training and this is going to be training I’m going to train you some stuff the thing with training is you get

6:27exactly out of it what you put in so I appreciate we’re busy if this is

6:32something you’re listening to whilst doing your emails I love that for you and my invitation would be to try and

6:38clear out distractions as much as possible just so you can kind of get the most out of it I’ll try and make it as

6:44interactive as engaging as possible um the more obviously you keep sharing in the chat the better I’ll give us some

6:52exercises to do um awesome okay so we are going to start and I am just going

6:58to share my screen now when I share my o lovely okay so I’m just going to check

7:03can everybody let me press play uh can you give me a yes in the chat if you can

7:08see my screen just to make sure we’re all good I panic about it every time thank you I’ve delivered thousands of

7:14virtual sessions and every time I share my screen I psych myself out so there we go that’s a good place to start how to

7:20stop overthinking and finally start taking action so what we are going to be

7:26talking about today is we’re going to be talking about noticing when your mind

7:31jumps to worst case thinking figuring out how to move past the fear of making wrong choices spotting the difference

7:38between gut feeling and worry like what is Instinct what is panic what is fear

7:44what is intuition what is dread uh and I’m going to talk about how to turn self-doubt into practical problem

7:51solving I want to start by saying about three years ago I left a first date

7:58after eight eight minutes literally 8 minutes left this first date and the

8:06moment I left I felt this like huge sense of relief so I went on a date the

8:11man’s name I think was Gary now you’ll learn this about me I have a very big

8:18laugh it’s a big laugh it’s a loud laugh my nickname when I was growing up as a

8:23kid was the fog horn I don’t know where it comes from it’s very real like I’m if

8:29there’s any burgeoning standup Comics you want me as a stooge in your audience my laugh is big it is loud I’ve come to

8:37uh enjoy it but it is the kind of laugh that we’ll get like a like a side glance in a quiet restaurant I can’t do

8:43anything about it I am who I am anyway I’m going to open the chat anyway so I was on this dat with our friend Gary and

8:51he made me laugh and the moment I laughed I saw him kind of like do this like winz uh like I don’t know like a

8:58Somalia having a drink on boxed wine he was like and in that moment I was like

9:04right okay I don’t think I want to be on a date with somebody who would want to censor my joy top tip that’s probably

9:12not the kind of person we want to spend some time with so about eight minutes into the date I politely calmly kindly

9:19said Gary thank you so much for the drinks I’ve had a sip of mine but I’m I’m going to go and I left some people

9:27when I tell them that story are kind of almost shocked by it some

9:34people think it’s rude some people think it’s quite bold most people have a reaction of like whoa you like you left

9:41after eight minutes John fair play lovely um but I was sitting on that

9:46train and I felt on the way home so the the the sense I got was of like freedom

9:54I felt liberated and the reason that I felt so free is because I maybe for the

9:59first time in my life had made a choice based on what was right in the moment

10:06rather than all the layers of norms and rules and internalized beliefs that I’ve

10:14had my whole life and that is kind of what this session is going to be about

10:21have you ever give me a yes in the chat have you ever used jargon or complex language that felt unnatural have you

10:27ever stopped yourself sharing because all they’ve probably already thought of that have you ever stopped yourself from

10:33like sharing something because or who am I to say have you ever tried to be somebody else and ended up feeling really uncomfortable have you ever

10:40avoided showing your passion or enthusiasm because it’s not professional have you ever presented in a way that

10:46felt more like a lecture than a conversation have you ever turned yourself into a robot at work have you

10:51ever left your warmth your charisma your joy your kindness at the door because that isn’t what work should be have you

10:58ever my friend said uh let’s leverage our synergies when you actually meant let’s work

11:04together this this is what this is like I get out of bed for this we my friends

11:12all of us have so many internalized

11:17rules that get in our way and when we have all of these rules and these ideas

11:24it can stop us from like actually being ourselves so I’m just going to start with a quick exercise so pop in the chat

11:31for me I’m going to say one word and I want you to put in the um first thing

11:40that comes into your head try not to overthink it um yes uh first thing that

11:45comes into your head and the word is professional what does professional mean

11:53to you suit and tie boring suit career fake stuffy dry stiff smart polished not

12:00me somebody said uh oh so fast proper formal Posh interesting serious no

12:06laughing or swearing Smooth hair uh stuck up uh restrained pretentious

12:14focused conventional doing your best Straight lace suits probably not neat distant respectful quiet dry inauthentic

12:21spreadsheets good at what they do suppressing yourself interesting renumerated difficult lovely

12:29thank you my friends thank you in a box lovely Simon

12:35corporate culture okay thank you for your participating everyone this is fun

12:41um some of us have maybe quite healthy ideas of what it means to be

12:46professional some people said uh I think some people said knowledgeable I think some people said respectable but a lot

12:53of us when we think of the word professional it doesn’t feel like o or

13:00maybe it feels perhaps like you’re doing something wrong and I remember when I

13:05started my career I was like there are a whole host of things here that I don’t understand in my first ever job uh

13:13senior executive burst out laughing in the middle of the meeting because of the way that I used to say Luke instead of

13:20look I’m from Stoke in Stoke we say Luke book and c I changed it at the beginning of my career cuz I learned somewhere

13:26along the line if I had to be taken seriously I had to be different so my plan today is Let’s Make

13:34a Deal give me 90 minutes that’s wrong it’s 2 hours first mistake we’ve got it give me two hours even more time and

13:40I’ll help you remember what it feels like before we got so sensible and serious back when you trusted your gut

13:46you spoke your mind you didn’t start every good idea with this might be stupid but you didn’t read every email

13:5237,000 times you didn’t constantly question your decisions you didn’t always go well maybe this could be bad

13:57or what if I get it wrong or what if people judge me or what if nobody likes me and do I look like an egg on this Zoom before our minds got so busy with

14:04the constant chatter trying to keep us safe I’m going to help you remember what

14:09it was like before all of that again and I’m pretty sure that I can do it are we

14:15ready are we ready give me a yes lovely thank

14:23you there is nobody I know I’ve got the chat open on

14:30my screen and you can see it but we’re all good I don’t think there is anybody

14:35stay with me on this call who isn’t confident I don’t think

14:41there’s anybody on this call who overthinks too much I don’t think there’s anybody on this call who doesn’t

14:47know how to be able to believe in themselves in the way that other people do because my friends confidence is not

14:54something that we learn it’s something we remember

15:00anybody here got children let’s imagine that you take your toddler to Morrison’s

15:06and your toddler just decides that they are not about it your toddler’s like nah I’m not feeling this and they absolutely

15:13kick off is a 2-year-old going oh I don’t want to possibly have a tantrum in

15:19a four because what do people see me when children are first born the first

15:24thing the first thing that a baby does when it’s born is it scream

15:30we have an innate knowledge an innate understanding that you deserve attention

15:36you deserve to be seen you deserve to have your need met you can be the weird

15:41and wonderful tantruming in a tutu and Wellies and Morrison at 400 p.m. but we

15:47lose that along the way we lose it along the way and there’s a few different

15:53reasons why so I am going to teach you lots of different techniques today I’m going to teach you lots of different

15:58techniques today that will help you trust yourself a bit more that will

16:04help you work with anxiety if anybody experiences anxiety that will help you

16:11befriend perhaps your overthinking worrying Tendencies but I want you to

16:16think of this session as more like learning to swim so I will give you the

16:23theory I don’t know my old swimming teacher I just had a memory my old swimming teacher was called Mr Witter

16:29and I don’t think I ever saw Mr Whitaker swim he would stand by the side of the

16:34pool you know what I mean he would be like by the pool doing this with his arms like showing us what to do but I

16:40never actually saw him in the water we had to get in the water so I today I’m Mr WIA I am going to stand by I’ve never

16:47used that metaphor before and it’s abusing me I am going to stand by the ball doing this showing you what to do

16:53but then you have to jump in if you don’t take some of what I teach you to

16:58today in terms of the tools and the techniques and actually try emphasize in your daily life this would have just

17:04been a fun silly chat I love that for us but this could also if you want it to be

17:11this could also be perhaps the moment this could be the morning this could be

17:18that time that you actually look back on and go it was that it was when I started

17:24doing that thing everything got a little bit easier give me a yes in the chat if we’re willing to make today that day

17:31that moment that morning where finally

17:38actually we can start just letting it go it’s probably worth saying at this

17:45point I present as someone yes I love that energy um I present as somebody who

17:53you might assume to be naturally confident we’ll come on to how that’s a myth in a minute it’s probably worth

17:59sharing that I have experienced deep anxiety for a lot of my

18:04life I experienced quite intense social anxiety I used to get huge public

18:10speaking anxiety it’s why it’s so important to me I’ve had panic attacks on stages uh it’s not a great look it’s

18:18why it’s so important to me that we are all different we all have different expressions of confidence me and Joe

18:25always joke that we’re like opposite people but the fact that so many of us so many of us do overthink question

18:33ourselves all the time that’s a universal truth that’s something that connects us okay type in the chat for me

18:39where’s this anybody know where this is you cultured Bunch yes that is

18:49Florence I recently went on a city break

18:54and I a city break with some friends and I knew that it was the perfect City

19:00break because I was with a bunch of my University friends and we were St in the rain queuing with all frustrated low

19:07blood sugar arguing that’s when you know it’s a good City break it’s raining and you’re arguing with your friends and you’re all a bit grumpy and you’re a bit

19:13miserable and you’ve been wandering around my friends wanted to go and see the statue of David the statue of David

19:20is by Michelangelo and it’s in a museum in Florence now I am going to hold my

19:26hands up as uh you know maybe making some judgments and negative assumptions

19:33here but we were queuing to go and I was like I don’t want to go I was being like

19:39the toddler having a tantrum and Morrison I was like I don’t care it’s I think at one point I said this will be

19:46boring seen one Statue seen them all I think I said that I was like it’ be boring anybody who’s crammed into the

19:54Lou in Paris to see the Mona Lisa knows the anticlimactic nature of seeing

19:59incredible art in person it’s always a bit underwhelming so I was like I don’t want to cue anyway my friend was like

20:05please please please I really want to see this Quee so I was grumpy I was annoyed but I queued we walked in now I

20:12don’t know if anybody has ever seen Michelangelo’s David but it is bloody

20:18good now I honest I know I’m giving like mansplainer realizes woman is Smart

20:25Energy being like Michelangelo’s David actually pretty good but I was all

20:33inspired Michelangelo David I think at least is awesome in the genuine sense of

20:39the word awesome it inspired my awe for a star it’s massive his foot is like as

20:47big as a dining room table I walked in and I was really genuinely taken away at

20:54how phenomenal it was so I do this thing I think a lot of do where I learn

20:59something then I decide it’s who I am it’s my identity it’s my personality for a good week uh and then it goes uh but I

21:06for a whole week was like obsessed I was watching documentaries I was reading books like I suddenly was like a

21:11Renaissance art historian and there is a legend this is going somewhere don’t worry there is a legend that um when the

21:19pope first saw Michelangelo’s David he said how on Earth did you take a piece

21:26of marble and create something and Michelangelo famously replied I

21:31simply removed anything that was not David now I today I’m

21:38Michelangelo it’s a bold claim I today I’m Michelangelo you are confident you

21:44believe in yourself you trust your gut it is just my job to help you remove the

21:49stuff that is not that you already have everything you need to be exactly the

21:55person you want to be you already have the self self belief you already have the knowledge you already have the

22:01information you already have the expertise you already have the capabilities you all have the ability to

22:07learn and grow and improve and it’s my job to help you to help us remove those

22:14things that get in the way of your David to really overextend the metaphor let me

22:19prove something to you so I mentioned at the beginning of of this call I’ve trained about 60,000 is people to be

22:27confident at this point point and there’s lots of different manifestations of that now when I go into teams um

22:34before I go and I’ll train a team on confidence I will send a survey and I will ask them a few different questions

22:42and so now I have a spreadsheet we love a spreadsheet and in this spreadsheet I have about

22:4813,680 rows of data on confidence on how people feel and I ask people this

22:54question on a scale from not confident at all to very confid ident where would

22:59you rate yourself so I want you to have a think maybe about where you might be

23:04on this 8% of us say not confident at all so not many but 8% not confident at

23:11all but then 41% of people say mostly not confident so what that’s 49% of

23:19people actively identifying as not being a confident person half the people you interact with don’t identify as being

23:27confident and then we have 32% of people who say they’re unsure now I don’t know about

23:33you but if I go up to someone and I say are you a confident person and they go me or I don’t know I don’t know actually

23:41me I’m unsure they’re probably a no no offense the unsure people either you’re confident or you’re not if you’re unsure

23:47I’m saying you’re probably not that confident and then we have 12% of people who say kind of confident and then we

23:55have what I lovingly call the sociopathic s now the sociopathic 7 they

24:01say they’re very confident I have never met one of these in the wild um it’s certainly not me I think now after years

24:09of training confidence talking about confidence learning about confidence living breathing confidence I’m here

24:14kind of I have my moments I have my days sometimes I forget who I am often I forget what I’m capable of but this kind

24:22of 7% so the first thing that I want us to know is most of us think we’re not confident or we haven’t even really got

24:27a clue what it means just going to open the chat for a second give me a yes in

24:34the chat if uh anyone here is an overthinker who here overthinks yes in the

24:42chat okay big big overthinking energy th a

24:48million percent death oh yes one John needs to think about it

24:57mm okay so I am fortunate and that I speak to a

25:02lot of people every week uh about overthinking and I say who here

25:07overthinks most of us put a hand up go me me I overthink surely I don’t know if anybody here is a statistician but we

25:14can’t all be overdoing something that’s not how averages work if we’re all

25:20overthinking surely it’s just thinking if every single human on a

25:25planet is having an experience of a bit of a noisy second guessing questioning things oh should I be doing this we

25:31can’t all be overthinking maybe just maybe this is what we do maybe this is

25:37actually what you evolved to do maybe your overthinking isn’t bad or wrong or

25:42flawed maybe it’s just you doing exactly what you were built and evolved to do maybe so why why do so many of us

25:53experience this experience a sense a a creeping s of not being good enough or a

26:01I don’t know how it experienced itself for you maybe it’s a shaking hands maybe it’s a not doing stuff maybe it’s

26:07sitting in a meeting on that [ __ ] incredible idea but you don’t say anything because you’re like what if I

26:12say it and it’s weird maybe it’s not putting yourself forward for things maybe it’s feeling

26:20exhausted by the fact that you’re constantly always questioning your

26:25decisions the by the way that SL has just snuck in throughout the presentation that blue one you’ll see I

26:31don’t know it’s like hidden in the deck anyway if anybody’s familiar with keynote help me out I don’t know why

26:36that’s doing that but why so why do humans do this so there’s a few like ground things I’m going to talk about um

26:42you may be familiar with some of this you may have heard me talk about some of these concepts with Joe before but I

26:47think they’re really important and then we’ll build on this so we can think more about the specificity of overthinking so

26:54first thing humans are genetically pre red disposed to focus on

27:00the negative now that’s not a you thing that’s not a me thing it’s just what we

27:06do I’m going to stop sharing for actually no I’m not it’s just what we do so I want you to imagine you are walking

27:13through the plains of the Savannah and early stages of human evolution we have

27:19not changed and you see a tiger it is in your interest to go oh there’s a tiger there oh my God there’s a tiger there’s

27:24a tiger there’s a tiger and every single time you’re in a similar environment you’re like I think I’m pretty sure I saw a tiger there in 1992 you’re walking

27:31down a familiar Savannah and you’re like I think there might be tiger you know let me just say is there a tiger is there a tiger is there a tiger like if

27:36you didn’t evolve to do that you’d be dead like like actually we have a deep

27:44driving evolutionary instinct to overthink to lock on to the bad thing to

27:50absorb bad stuff there’s a research paper that says why is negativity so

27:55sticky that a neuroscientist showed with a lot of clear like objective evidence-based

28:03results that unless we actively neutralize this we move through

28:09our lives and negative experiences are like velcro positive ones they’re like

28:15is it Teflon you know what I mean they’re like Teflon they like slip right off us and we didn’t evolve to move

28:21through the planes of the Savannah going I’ve got a really lovely relationship with my family I I’m actually quite

28:26gifted at my work I love my life like we didn’t evolve to do that we evolved to go will I die will I die will I die will

28:33I die will I die will I die like that’s what we evolv to do so first lesson hello overthinking friends welcome to

28:40your fundamental Humanity it’s nice here we need to stop judging ourselves for

28:45Being Human because it’s not necessarily where we can grow from there’s also a

28:51neuroscientist called Matthew Lieberman and Matthew Le liberman is a

28:56legend that’s say I’ve never met him he might be a brick but his books are good

29:02uh Matthew leman’s written a couple of very good books one called social and one called anxious he’s a neuroscientist

29:09and he found that in humans when we feel socially excluded it lights up the part

29:16of our brain called the amigdala which is also responsible for physical pain so

29:22if you get you know you’re in a meeting and you let’s say you’re in a meeting in

29:27your like doing an amazing job you’re like oh my God I’m crushing this I’m awesome look at my pie charts I’m so

29:34clever and then at the end of the meeting you just like say something weird you’re at the end of the meeting

29:40and you’re like oh I’ve just said something weird why am I suddenly talking about boy zone why am I talking about my favorite pop band in the 90s

29:47why am I doing this I’m just making this up on this webinar now I’m saying something weird why like in that moment

29:52when you feel that like flash of embarrassment that flash of oh my

29:59God that is akin to physiological pain it

30:06hurts social exclusion hurts because at our core we’re wired to belong so every

30:13single lovely wonderful kind awesome person on this call is constantly

30:19constantly trying to make sure that you’re safe that you’re included that you’re not going to be left out like

30:25this is just one of the things that’s working which is why stuff like this

30:33happens honestly my mom is absolute nightmare for this my mom has this trait

30:40I’m going to open the chat and I want you to know if anybody else’s mom’s like this my mom Val she’ll text me she text

30:45me the other day and she’s like need to talk and I was like [ __ ] me dad’s dead

30:51he’s gone he’s gone it’s for Dad he’s gone so I’m panicking and I ring it I’m like what is it mom is everything okay

30:58and she goes oh you got some post you’ve got a parcel you’ve got a parcel why why have you made it sound

31:06like this has been this like huge emergency like this is this is what we

31:13do and also actually if anybody if anybody is uh like a I’m

31:20laughing at your responses like why are we like this it just really makes me laugh like I think somebody put in the

31:26chat like every time my dad dad rings me I panic someone started goes can you call

31:32me I’ve got some news and Olivia I bet it’s like I don’t know I’ve had to get rid of something from the

31:38garage so your boss does it okay I I see that if anybody yeah if anyone’s like

31:45can you talk or you know your partner’s like we need to chat I’m like oh my God

31:51this is like this is just what we do so if anybody does actually lead or manage

31:57people Please be aware of this because humans have this cute little Quirk that

32:02ambiguity will always be perceived negatively

32:08ambiguity will always be perceived negatively not because of any reason

32:13other then that’s just what we do we we if we don’t have Clarity our brains will try and fill in the gaps to keep us safe

32:20I’m going to read what Rachel said um Rachel I did this on holiday my dad text me out the blue to see what day we

32:25landed back in the UK he’s not a texed that’s how scare you isn’t it Rachel and I was convinced my mom

32:32was sorry oh turns out he was arguing about but we go with

32:38my sorry I just I find a fundamental Humanity so cute and we’ll talk about

32:46this later but I do find everybody like everybody like most of us are moving

32:53through the world like genuinely like terrified give me me a yes in the chat

32:58if that makes sense like we’re scared we’re freaking out thank

33:03you it’s not you maybe it was never you

33:09maybe it was never your fault maybe you were never the problem maybe you were

33:15never broken maybe you were never not good enough maybe you were never not confident maybe you were never an

33:20overthinker maybe you’re a human doing human stuff we also have nearly done

33:27with the context we also do this little thing called protective pessimism oh boy

33:33do we do this let’s play game I’m going to tell you my partner’s name by the way

33:40every everything I say in these sessions is always a statement of connection and

33:46never a statement of judgment so I’m going to say my partner’s name in the chat and you can’t we can’t do this

33:53wrong remember I want you to type the first thing that comes into your head when I say his name okay you ready my

33:59partner’s name is Henry Charles Blanchard Henry Charles Blanchard what

34:04do we think Henry [Laughter] is oh so funny

34:13yeah oh I like you L this is so King kenry awesome lives at Blen Palace Rich

34:20Richard and Cass in finance isn’t this so funny this is so funny okay so I met

34:26Henry through a work thing and he was like hello my name is Henry Charles Blanchard and you don’t need to know my

34:33life history but I grew up in the rough part of a rough town I did not I have

34:38and I’m going to be very vulnerable now I think I experienced something that’s called inverted snobbery where it’s like

34:44the opposite so it’s not like looking down on people I’ll be like they’re Posh

34:49and I text my friend and I was like ever I’ve just met this man and he seems awesome but I’m pretty sure he went to

34:55board in school like he’s got one of voices he’s called Henry Charles Blanchard so I made her stalk him on

35:02LinkedIn to see if he went to boarding school and I very nearly didn’t date him

35:10very nearly didn’t date him because I was making an assumption like all of us did that he was royalty that he’s a

35:16Bridget and cast the reality is actually that Henry’s dad died when he was I have

35:21his permission to share this Henry’s dad died when he was quite young Henry grew up in poverty like actual poverty like

35:27didn’t have a shower until he was 18 no heating used to have a tin bath situation Henry was the opposite of Posh

35:36but because I had all of these things in my mind I nearly didn’t date someone who

35:44is maybe the best thing that’s ever happened to me because I was doing this thing called protective pessimism

35:49protective pessimism is when we move through the world assuming things are going to be worse than they are I’ll

35:55tell you one last story on protective peus and then we’ll move on I’m just going to look at the chat oh for new

36:02messages thank you thank you yeah Henry’s great Henry’s 10 out of 10 he has got a posh voice but we’ll let him

36:09off um so I am I’ll tell you one more story just so I can really illustrate

36:15this and to be really clear the reason that I tell stories it’s not to talk about me it’s so that we can all see

36:20ourselves reflected I do think what’s nice about stories is the more specific they come to an individual the more

36:28Universal they are okay so my granddad was called Sid and Sid was a minor he

36:36was down the mines in the second world war he he first went down the coal mines when he was 11

36:43crazy and just from a different generation really we were very fortunate uh we lost him a few years ago but he

36:50was around for basically all of my life and he was a legend he used to keep a

36:55mouth organ a harmonica in his pocket and just like occasionally whip out Danny Boy without context he used to

37:01tell naughty jokes he was very much of the 50s he was that kind of man so when

37:07my brother came out as gay and decided he was going to be one of the first couples in the UK to have a same-sex

37:14civil partnership we were all so excited so my brother uh and my brother-in-law

37:22are planning their big day but there was this undercurrent of like what are we going to do about Sid see Sid did didn’t

37:27know that Kieran was gay he’d never come out to him because he assumed that Sid would think negatively of it he assumed

37:34that Sid would be I don’t know like like reject

37:40him or something and so we’re getting closer and closer to organizing this wedding and there were drag queens and

37:46Bingo and it was amazing and it was this incredible day and about a week before Kieran was like I’m going to invite Sid

37:53I’m going to come out to him I’m going to sit down I’m going to tell him everything what’s going on and he was so

37:59scared we were so scared because we all had a really good relationship with Sid

38:05anyway Sid did not give a

38:10solitary I’m I’m going to stop swearing he didn’t care he didn’t care at all he came to the wedding he had an amazing

38:16time the only time he mentioned it was when he sat me down and he said by the way Kirsty do you know that your great

38:23uncle was called Cornelius he must have been gay but it runs in the family like he didn’t care we nearly missed out on

38:30this amazing incredible family moment because of our negative assumptions that

38:35we have about people all the time now my friends you will we love Sid so you’re

38:41going to be doing this all the time and you have my hand of compassion because I

38:47don’t know your background I don’t know what environment you grew up in I don’t know your genetics I don’t know your

38:53brain chemistry but I do know that every single one of you you has gone into a meeting and gone oh God I’m going to

39:00hate this I do know that every single one of you presents to an audience annoyed at

39:06the imaginary questions you’ve convinced yourself they’re going to ask I do know that every single one of you before you

39:13send that business proposal is like what if they say no what if they hate me what if they think I overcharge like we do

39:19this all the time give me a yes in the chat if anybody here self- sabotages anyone self-sabotage

39:29all day long K all the time total expert me too Gwen

39:36yes always doing it right now okay this is going to be an

39:43important point and we’ll talk about this a little bit more you do not

39:49self-sabotage you self protect that voice in your head that’s

39:55telling you don’t do that don’t do that it’s just trying to keep you safe does anybody want to guess in the chat how

40:01old we are is when we start developing uh these feelings of maybe

40:08guilt or shame or overthinking or being a bit more negative anybody want to guess how

40:13old yeah thank you yeah 16 6 three young

40:20teenage nine but it’s crazy like 18 teenagers

40:29the research shows generally it’s about

40:34five can you remember the first time you got laughed at can you remember the first time you got

40:40bullied can you remember the first time you felt small I kind of remember mine viscerally there was a

40:47man there was a man called I’m going to change his name in the moment so I don’t use his real name uh there was a boy

40:54then called Sam Smith that’s not not his real name that’s a famous singer and I was y on we’re talking

41:02reception kindergarten and I remember one day he looked at me in the class and he pointed

41:09at me and he went Cy ol’s fat isn’t she fat and the whole class looked and

41:15started pointing at me going she’s fat she’s fat and I remember the whole everyone was laughing at me in the

41:22shame that was maybe the first time I started to feel wrong

41:27that I was not good enough that I really didn’t want to be seen samith is now in prison that’s why I changed his name

41:34he’s legit now in prison separate story but this protective pessimism this voice

41:42that tells you you’re not good enough this is an important point it isn’t an adult it isn’t big grown up successful

41:50doing your marketing thing doing your freelance career or working in house or whatever it is that you’re doing it

41:56isn’t now you you it’s then you it’s baby you whenever I’m overthinking when

42:03I’m whenever I’m questioning literally everything what I do is I picture a

42:09little version of Me Maybe that chubby adorable 5-year-old with her ponytails

42:15wearing her cursy headband on backwards I picture her pulling on my coattails going am I okay am I

42:23okay that’s it when you realize that you’re overthinking the constant mental

42:28noise is little you trying to keep you safe put it in the chat for me what

42:34might that do to your relationship with that voice when you stop telling

42:41yourself that you are mean to yourself or whatever it is when we understand

42:48that so much of this overthinking is a smaller scared more vulnerable human

42:56part of your it kind of fundamentally changes that relationship we stop giving it so much weight and actually what we

43:03start doing some nice messages here like being kind giving yourself a hug makes you feel empowered what would you say to

43:11your tiny self what would you tell them to feel this way what it does my friends is it creates self-kindness

43:17and that’s where we learn to be confident from talk about this more in a minute

43:22but we can’t beat ourselves up to liking ourselves more more we can’t overthink

43:29our way to overthinking less we can’t constantly tell ourselves you’re not good enough and eventually hopefully

43:35maybe feel finally like we’re good not good enough that’s like not kind of how it works give me a yes in the chat if

43:42this is resonating I’m just going to check the time see how we’re doing on time is this

43:47helpful okay lovely thanks everyone I’m going to just

43:53keep going so what I’m going to do is I’m going to keep teaching you some stuff I’m aware I don’t want to like

43:59talk at you forever and then we’ll take a little break just to kind of have a a

44:04reset Raymond I remember being asked if I’d let someone talk to my closest friend the way I talked to myself and

44:09that was a big eye opener exactly if anybody does experience we’re not going to talk about it specifically today U

44:16thank you Haley me too um if we won’t talk about this very specifically today

44:22there’s some other things I want to cover but if anybody does have a loud inner critic

44:27there is a book called self-compassion honestly I need to be on some kind of commission for this like I

44:32recommend it more than anything else it’s by a researcher called Dr Kristen nef and it talks about how we can learn

44:40to be like a little bit Kinder so Allison if you do have a big inner critic hard recommend self-compassion oh

44:47Lauren you will never speak to anyone as much as yourself and your thoughts be kind extreme perfectionist hello Allison

44:55I see that um awesome okay so this is kind of a bit of

45:00background so notice when your mind jumps to worst case thinking so here’s the thing my friends it will be literally all the time not because you

45:09are broken but because you are human I’m going to stop sharing just for a second

45:14just to mix oh I can see Joe hi how you doing I’m having a moment over there how

45:22are you yeah yeah I’m doing good though so thank you nice okay um I’m I will go

45:28to share and not sharing my screen just to kind of mix up the novel stimuli make it more visually interesting so here’s

45:35the thing with overthinking second guessing ourselves like questioning ourselves all the time um it is the most

45:44normal not unique not a rational thing in the world in 2020 I was having a

45:54shocker you might call it I uh I won’t I won’t like bore you with the specifics

46:00but I was so TW I used to run a marketing agency and I wound that down

46:05at the end of 2019 because the stress of it was making me poorly people often say uh starting a business is brave let me

46:12tell you closing a successful one for your own mental health is braver um so I

46:17stopped doing that and then I started doing lots of training and speaking because I don’t know if I’m allowed to say this but I think I’m good at it so I

46:23started doing lots of training and lots of speaking and I I wrote this blog post at the end of 2019 being like I’m so

46:30excited I’m so excited I’ve set myself up for an amazing professional 2020

46:37friends I had not I literally had not so I had a moment where I lost all of my

46:43Revenue all of my income literally within about three hours because it was all in person boom gone three hours I

46:49was also in one of those like bad marriages where suddenly you’re kind of like ooh do we want to do this whole in

46:58the same room at the same time um and so he was from the US he flew back to the

47:04US and then suddenly I realized I was going to run out of money and run out of money fast because I I didn’t make money

47:09when I wound down my business I gave it to team I was skinn I had like 300 quid um so I was like right I need to get out

47:15of this expensive place that I’m living in in West London uh and here’s the

47:21thing I lost my home my husband my job in about 3 days I’m not exaggerating I ended up moving back in with mom and dad

47:27very grateful that I had that space but it wasn’t necessarily restful I remember

47:32waking up one morning and they were arguing about how to pronounce quinoa despite the fact that neither of them eat it the bottom fell out of my

47:41life like worst case scenario for me like worst case scenario for me but at

47:49the time because life as Alanis moriset says has a funny way of something something I at the time was having a bit

47:56of a personal branding boom now the reason was because in 2016 I published a

48:03book on remote working and how something was going to happen in the world that made it almost impossible for everybody

48:09to try to be at the same place in the same office at the same time so I suddenly started getting like invited to

48:16be uh I don’t know like uh on TV and give quotes and things so I got invited

48:22to be interviewed live on this morning and 2.5 million people watch that and I

48:28was at a bit of a no I was at a lot of a low E I was experiencing grief I’d kind

48:35of lost everything my mom and dad’s internet connection was poor but I don’t know if anybody else is like this is

48:40anybody else like fundamentally INE equipped to say no to Opportunities like I just crack on I I’ve got that I don’t

48:47know that maybe you say yes to stuff so I was like yeah um this feels like a

48:53good time to be uh interviewed live on TV let’s do that so I got interviewed

48:59live and I was pacing you know when you are absolutely

49:06terrified and you’re like pacing and the nerves are getting bigger and bigger and it’s starting to expand and you kind of

49:13cease to exist I was trying to do all of my tricks tips techniques in that moment

49:19to try and make myself feel less absolutely petrified and as I was walking up and

49:26down the landing just before I went live two little words popped into my head well

49:34yeah cury you’re terrified well yeah cursor your hands are shaking well yeah

49:40cursor your heart is pounding well yeah of course it is cursy you’re you’re panicking well yes of course I am well

49:46yeah you’re scared about sending that proposal to a new client well yeah you’re scared about speaking up in a

49:51meeting while yeah you’re scared about having your ideas heard while yeah you’re scared to walk into a networking event where you know anyone well

49:59yeah the amount of times people have come up to me over the years and they say oh my God I’m so scared of of

50:04presenting for example and I go yeah yeah and then normally people go no but

50:11I’m I’m really scared of it and I go yeah yeah it’s scary that’s it like that is it is

50:18saying to yourself in your deepest moments of fear and vulnerability and panic well yeah going to stop it no but

50:26will it normalize it well yeah will it stop you judging yourself for your

50:31fundamental Human Experience well yeah I taught this at a conference once and I

50:36don’t know whether I think this is amazing or a little weird but someone got someone got it tattooed on my wrist

50:42well yeah hello human having a human experience well yeah I don’t know about you but for me

50:48that feels like a bit of an exhale so next time you find yourself overthinking second guessing questioning everything

50:55give yourself a well yeah I’m going to give you one quick tip also I have something um that I kind of invented a

51:02few years ago and it’s called winz and send it is my winz and send method I

51:10don’t have a slide on it in here uh because I kind of forgot about it but I just remembered you know when you have to like do something and you don’t want

51:16to do it maybe you need to send a quote you need to up your prices you haven’t asked your going oh my God uh hi can I

51:22be on your podcast or those moments when you’re like oh what that what and it’s embarrassing wi and send it like close

51:28your eyes feel the feeling of like oh my God this is embarrassing like this is

51:35mortifying wiz and send it’s hard feeling embarrassed let’s

51:42exert ourselves so that is the well yeah method now what I want you to do is don’t think about a pink elephant on the

51:48moon don’t don’t think of a tiny rat doing the can

51:54can don’t think of Le Ardo DiCaprio as starring in Swan Lake is a ballet virtuoso don’t do it don’t think about

52:02it don’t think about it you know anybody here actually give me a yes in the chat

52:08anybody want to try and just stop caring what people think got to just stop caring what people think just got to

52:15stop oh I wish I could just stop caring here is my quick

52:23tip if you want to stop caring what people think I I don’t know I don’t know how to do that slip into a

52:29coma you’re going to care what people think you are literally going to Care you are going to Care big you are going

52:37to care that people like your work you are going to care that you’re being kind like you are going to Care Let It Go I

52:45care imagine if I didn’t care what you thought I care deeply I care deeply what

52:51you think because I care about my work I care about having integrity I don’t know

52:56why we’ve shamed Integrity I don’t know why we’ve shamed our Humanity don’t care

53:03about the wrong people don’t care about what they think but the kind people the

53:09people that you want to like you the people you want to respect you we’re allowed to care what they think you know

53:17we’re social remember sometimes we set ourselves totally unachievable targets

53:23if we tell ourselves that there’s an expectation that we should never care what people think like of course we’re going to ease

53:31it ease it up so there’s something that I use which is stop versus start motivation and I did a little Ry smile

53:38to myself uh when I was naming this um

53:43webinar because I think I named it stop stop overthinking and I was like I’m going to

53:49play a little trick I’m going to play a little trick when I name this webinar because if we try and stop overthinking

53:55you will overthink the fact that you were overthinking anybody ever tried to stop being nervous before a

54:00presentation you’re like going into a meeting you’re like stop being nervous okay stop stop being nervous stop it stop it stop it or anybody ever been

54:07like stop thinking about food no we’ve eaten enough Kirsty stop thinking about cake stop it stop thinking about cake

54:12stop thinking about what’s in the fridge stop it doesn’t work literally doesn’t work

54:17and you can tell yourself to stop thinking something all you like but in Neuroscience this is called HEBs

54:25law we can’t really distinguish between the stop so

54:31when I say you know stop thinking about that tiny rat on the moon stop it you may probably suddenly picture it did you

54:37picture it when I said stop thinking about the tiny little rat when I say stop thinking about lunch you need to go

54:44to the toilet oh stop stop thinking about it because all this is doing is

54:50just you’re you’re just still like enhancing those synaptic connections so

54:56neurosciences is called HEBs law if you’re thinking about something you’re creating neurological attention there

55:03whether there’s a stop there or not does that make sense have I explained that well give me a yes in the chat because I

55:09think if we took like maybe one thing away from today it would be

55:15this that stop is very very very

55:21unhelpful so this is a big question I’m going to talk about this more in a minute it and I’m going to get you if it

55:28feels safe to write this in the chat what are the

55:33lies that you are currently telling yourself about

55:41yourself what are the lies that you are currently telling

55:47yourself about yourself that I’m not good enough that I’ll be found out as a fraud

55:54and I’ll be abandoned that I don’t know what I’m doing that I’m boring that I haven’t achieved

55:59anything I wanted to that I’m fundamentally

56:09unworthy that I have no skills that I don’t know what I’m

56:14talking about that I’m too much that I’m not progressing in my career in the traditional

56:21way that I’m a jack of all trades that I’m not supposed to be doing what I’m doing

56:29that I’m not progressing in my career that I don’t deserve to be in this

56:36role that I don’t deserve the good situations I have that I can’t communicate with

56:43leaders that there’s always someone better that people don’t like me that someone else can do it

56:49better that I’m not good enough that I’m not made to lead that

56:56I’m not good enough at work or as a parent that I can’t be successful as anybody else that I’ll never get a new

57:02job that I’m not a likable person that I’m not driven

57:07enough I’m never going to be doing anything else I can’t do it all I can’t be a full-time working

57:15mom it’s okay I like crying my friend sometimes says crying is like a sneeze

57:20that I’ll disappoint everyone that I’m stupid okay the good thing about this question you ready I’m gonna I’m G to

57:27I’ve tricked you so my friends if those are the

57:32lies what’s the truth if those are the lies what’s the

57:39truth put the truth in the chat for me if those are the lies what’s the

57:49truth my deafness is my superpower I am good enough you can do

57:55anything you put your mind to I have plenty to offer that I’m good at what I’m doing I have the evidence to prove

58:03it people tell me I’m good at my job I can do anything full stop I’ll figure it out that I deserve to be big and take up

58:10space I totally know what I’m doing I can do whatever I want to achieve you’re already doing it people

58:17tell me I can do it I deserve it that’s the truth my friends that’s the truth I

58:23didn’t tell you that was a truth you told yourself that was a truth truth you told yourself that’s the truth

58:30I’m doing my best and I deserve a bit more credit yes Emma you deserve a bit more credit people actually meant Vicki

58:37I think Vicki speaking for all of us that people actually meant the words in the nice feedback they wrote they weren’t lying they actually meant it

58:44like we know this like we know you know what this truth is sometimes we just

58:51need a reminder I forget oh my God Lauren we’re all crying in the office

58:56it’s at 10:30 a.m. I’m so sorry I was like as I was reading everyone’s things I was like I’m going to startop crying and I’m not going to stop it that’s nice

59:02and but what I am going to do so that’s the truth thank you everyone for sharing

59:08that’s the truth and the way we can make this really practical okay let’s make it practical so here’s what we do is we

59:15take stop worry thinking and we turn it into start action thinking I can’t send this until it’s perfect Don is better

59:21than perfect everyone will judge me in this meeting maybe a few but I’ll focus on contributing one good point I

59:26shouldn’t take on this project let me break it into smaller pieces I’m not experienced enough to speak each time I

59:32speak I get better what if my idea gets rejected Let’s test this as an experiment I look stupid asking for help

59:38smart people ask good questions I’m terrible at difficult conversations I’m building my feedback muscle this is too

59:44overwhelming what is my first tiny step you are never probably going to

59:52stop overthinking it’s a fundamental part of who you are it’s a a fundamental part of who we are but what you can do

1:00:00is you can take the overthinking am I okay version of you give it a high five

1:00:05say thank you I’ve got this and then go to your next small

1:00:12step let’s take a little 10-minute break I need a wee so yeah let’s do a little 10-minute break it’s been two hours

1:00:1810-minute break come back and then what we’ve got is really really practical stuff so lots of really practical stuff

1:00:24so that we can take everything we’re doing um yeah so stay on the call I’ll mute I’ll turn my video off let’s come

1:00:30back in 10 minutes and let’s crack on promise me give me a yes in the chat if you’re definitely G to come

1:00:36back amazing I’m having so much fun with you all thank you okay see you in 10 get

1:00:43yourself a lovely cup of tea thank you thank

1:00:51you and Cake yes thank you Anthony

1:01:24e

1:01:54e

1:02:24e

1:02:54e

1:03:24e

1:03:54e

1:04:24e e

1:05:15hi Lily we’ve just taken a quick break so don’t worry if you if you’re just

1:05:20joining and you can’t hear anything we’re going to get started again in a few two minutes so all good

1:05:27Lily nice to have you

1:05:41here hi Adam thank you yes if you’re just joining don’t worry we’re all technically working we’re just having a

1:05:47little a little tea break we’ll get started again in a couple of

1:05:54minutes e

1:06:40okay we’ll get started in a couple of minutes I’ll stop sharing actually just for a second just whilst we

1:06:50wait okay get started in a couple of minutes if you are returning give me a wave so I

1:06:57know we’re back hi Joe hello how’s it going it’s going

1:07:03well Sarah’s back Winston said I’ve got um in fact

1:07:10actually because it’s technically still a breath I’ve

1:07:17been I’ve been making some merch as part of confidence live and I’ve made these

1:07:22Winson send mugs I’m still working on the design but literally like like the winon send is maybe it’s so practical I

1:07:30think so we l like Winson send a lot of people do uh really enjoy

1:07:36it it’s so useful so it is I’m loving the I’m just laughing at

1:07:43the enthusiasm in the chat uh from F from folks about that I feel like if you don’t end up selling them then there’s

1:07:49going to be some some people going to to Vista Print or similar just to people always say to me that I cuz

1:07:56I’ve got a couple of like little expression things and people are always like you should trademark them but I I

1:08:02like that they spread I once saw um a conference coach doing a whole reel on

1:08:08I’ve come up with this thing went and send and I was like I love that like I would rather people remembered my ideas

1:08:14than my name yeah yeah that’s so true you know um yeah that’s that’s proper

1:08:20Legacy isn’t it proper Legacy stuff leg should we crack on I think so that

1:08:25sounds okay give me a yes in the chat friends if we’re back if we’re

1:08:31ready oh lovely okay Le’s ready love that okay good to

1:08:41go we do need a little break from time to time right so let me share my screen

1:08:50awesome so you can’t fix excuse me blueberry you can’t fix

1:08:58self-doubt with self-doubt so we’re allowed to be

1:09:03worried we’re allowed to be anxious we’re allowed to overthink like we’re

1:09:08allowed to experience all of this and

1:09:14then and then we also need to add more in my nan Vera had an

1:09:21expression which was uh uh the onions I forgot

1:09:27it my had an expression which is the onions are in the soup what she meant by

1:09:34that was like this stuff like stuff happens like we’re not all guaranteed to have this like amazing existence now we

1:09:42could spend our lives trying to take the onions out of the soup or we could just

1:09:49add more in the overthinking is the onions the self-doubt is the onion so

1:09:55it’s our job to put more in you do not need I promise you you do not need a big

1:10:02personality transplant you don’t need to completely change who you are what we

1:10:08need is Tiny incremental things we can do that will help that’s what we’re going to talk

1:10:13about so move past the fear of making the wrong choices by focusing on small

1:10:20tiny doable actions small tiny doable actions

1:10:26so let’s think about this does anybody give me a yes in the chat the reason I put this in today is it’s something that

1:10:32I’ve worked on and tried to figure out for a long time how do you know the difference between gut feeling and worry

1:10:37anybody get that like let’s say I you know you get this huge

1:10:43opportunity and you’re like oh but I’m so scared of that like how do we know

1:10:49when to make ourselves uncomfortable how do we know when to do the scary thing

1:10:56versus when to not like how do we figure this out so I’m going to talk about this

1:11:03I think it’s quite a a nice topic for my fellow overthinking friends so first I’m

1:11:10just I my own slides are making me laugh I’m just going to go on a rant and I

1:11:15need you to stay with me U and this is honestly this is a a small rant but I think it’s going to be helpful and it’s

1:11:22going to reframe some things so two things I’m angry I am angry at Galileo

1:11:29you know Galileo that Galileo like the mathematician Galileo so the ancient

1:11:35Greeks now the ancient Greeks they were pretty bad vibes for feminism I’ll be

1:11:40honest so there’s a lot they did wrong but the ancient Greeks used to have six

1:11:45different types of intelligence uh I’m not going to try to say them all now because I don’t think I

1:11:50would get it right but there was lots of different types of intelligence one one of the types of intelligence that the

1:11:57ancient Greeks spoke about was this like intuitive wisdom that sense this kind of

1:12:04knowing and it was as important it was considered as robust as all the other

1:12:10different types of intelligence and then we have Galileo so Galileo mathematician

1:12:17great lad Galileo like we don’t we don’t want to do you know Galileo exist like

1:12:23we’re here talking now because of Galileo Galileo basically invented quantifying information so

1:12:31before Galileo what people would do is they would you know look at the stars or try and do science or experiments based

1:12:38largely on pure Vibes Galileo was the first person that was like hm maybe we

1:12:44can measure this maybe we can do some numbers on this and so then Galileo

1:12:52created a a huge shift in science but also in culture because after Galileo

1:12:59anything that couldn’t be Quantified was no longer considered

1:13:04real the scientific method thank you now we still live in this I did a

1:13:13Philosophy degree one of my ex- lecturers wrote a book on gal Galileo and his impact and I spoke to him at

1:13:21length uh about this when I was writing my book that comes out in me uh and so

1:13:27we’re now living in a world where even human topics we frame in terms of data

1:13:34anybody here may be gone uh you can see from the graph our statistical analysis

1:13:42shows our data or our survey informs us now there’s nothing wrong with that but

1:13:48even human topics we frame in this you know I I work in the people in the HR and the talent sector and people always

1:13:55be like our Employee Engagement survey is telling us that employee happiness has gone up 12% why don’t you tell me

1:14:02about the fact that Dave managed to actually finally go to sports day with his twins we’ve lost it we no longer really

1:14:10in the same way believe that intelligence is something that can be

1:14:18felt we no long it’s very subtle ala thank you we no longer believe that

1:14:23intelligence is something that we don’t have to sit and mentally

1:14:30calculate now this is good this isn’t a bad thing but you know when you meet someone

1:14:38and you’re like oh there’s something a bit off with them but their CV was perfect so you hide them anyway but it

1:14:44didn’t work or you meet a potential client and you’re like oh like this

1:14:51could be a really good project this could be a really good project but uh it just feels a bit off it feels a bit

1:14:57weird but you do it anyway and then it turns out to be awful anybody had that experience give me a yes in the chat if you’ve ever had an experience where you

1:15:04knew you knew that something wasn’t right but your head made you do it

1:15:10anyway because of the numbers because of the stats because of the like this is why I believe we do so much

1:15:18overthinking this is why not not why this is one of the reasons why we do so

1:15:23much overthinking because we’ve lost lost our trust in ourselves we’ve lost

1:15:29our trust in Instinct now we have to be careful with Instinct it’s close to

1:15:35bias some of you may have read this there’s a book called Blink by a psychologist called Michael Gladwell

1:15:41there’s a quote in the first task of blink is to convince you of a simple fact decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made

1:15:47cautiously and deliberately my friends do both you know next time you feel

1:15:54something thing listen to that we dismiss our

1:16:00emotions as being Irrelevant in the workplace we dismiss our emotions as not having anything valuable to add your

1:16:07emotions are clearly communicating something to you instead of going oh what do I think

1:16:13about this what do you feel about this if you’re going oh I don’t know

1:16:19what to do I’m overthinking take a moment to like okay how do I feel when I think about that like how

1:16:26does it actually feel what’s the physical Sensations that I get when I do

1:16:33this let’s say for example some of you want to start speaking on stages hypothetical you want to start speaking

1:16:40on stages and you think about it and your brain starts going like yeah but what about this and then what if people laughed at you and what and then if you

1:16:45close your eyes and took a moment to go okay like I’m going to picture myself doing it how does it feel o it feels

1:16:51scary but wait is that hope is there a little bit you get

1:16:56it I use my emotions to indicate pretty

1:17:03much everything I do pretty much everything I do I trust my emotions oh

1:17:08I’ll get you a reading list don’t worry I trust my emotions and what’s quite nice is I am now the CEO of a tech

1:17:15business uh and they have been going for about seven years and there’s a team and they’re all incredibly technical the

1:17:21founder who I’m working with very closely is perhaps the most considered rational analytical technical person I

1:17:29have ever operated with and when we first decided to work together I said look if we’re going to work together you

1:17:35have to respect the way I work the way I work is I trust my instincts so

1:17:41sometimes I might do something that might not make sense in the moment recently we had this opportunity

1:17:48and it was quite a big opportunity that came through and I was reading it and my brain was like yeah let’s do it this big money it’s going to be amazing it’s

1:17:54going to be awesome but there was something that felt off there’s

1:18:00something that felt a little and I said to him he’s called guy

1:18:05I was like guy I’m not going to do this we’re not going to take this we’re not going to take this opportunity and he was like tell me why and I was like I

1:18:12can’t but I can tell you that I know something is off that company went

1:18:18bankrupt a few weeks later we know you know you know I know

1:18:24you know like you have this great profound

1:18:29intelligence that we’ve dismissed that we dismiss especially in the

1:18:34workplace God you’re smart you are so smart you are so astute you are

1:18:40incredibly perceptive I know you walk into a room and you can tell if something’s off I know you know what

1:18:46mood your partner is in from how he puts the keys on the table when he walks in the room I know that you can feel the

1:18:53energy in this face like we don’t need to dismiss this

1:18:58if you want to think a little bit less feel more it’s not always easy often we’re

1:19:05kind of within these containers of environments where it’s like what’s the data what’s the statistical analysis now

1:19:10that’s good that’s valid but we have loads of different forms of intelligence

1:19:16soften allow yourself to feel if you are someone that’s a big overthinker practice feeling like practice feeling

1:19:24here we go hard to feel when it is completely remote though any tips on that um have you felt something remote today Janette

1:19:32did I cry when we were sharing things it’s not hard to feel remote at all we can still feel it we can

1:19:39absolutely still feel things so Anar if you’re Fe if you’re experiencing that

1:19:44you can’t pick up on non-verbal cues on Zoom it’s harder but we can do it so

1:19:52practice my invitation is just practice like listening to our emotions they’re

1:19:57often so overridden and they’re a little slower and they are quieter like they’re

1:20:03definitely quieter so normally if you want to I’ll just answer the questions in the chat if you’re struggling to

1:20:10hear it’s because normally we’re not listening so I genuinely think I got to

1:20:17about 29 years old before I ever actually listened to anyone this is a nice way I’m doing a slight tangent here

1:20:24but it will definitely help with overthinking so I as a child um I’m going to stop sharing so the slides not

1:20:30distracting okay so when I was a child I my mom made me some pom poms she cut

1:20:37Tesco carrier bags up stuck them and made me these pom poms and I went into school and I would like wave pom poms in

1:20:43people’s faces I am the youngest of five I’ve got four older brothers I learned that in if I needed if I wanted to be

1:20:50seen to have attention I had to earn it I was never never a great conversationalist I was not attuned to

1:20:57other people’s needs that well at all until I learned to listen And now when I

1:21:04say I learned to listen this was in 2016 I was on an Executive coaching course

1:21:09somebody taught me it for 16 weeks I’m going to give it to you in

1:21:15four minutes but I believe you I think you’ve got it some of you might know this already give me a yes in the chat

1:21:21if when you are in a conversation with somebody or you’re in a meeting or when

1:21:27you’re presenting you’re doing those things but you’re kind of in your head going I know what I’m going to say next

1:21:32okay I’ve got it I know what I’m goingon to say next my next slide is that oh yeah okay I’m gonna say that that’s smart okay yeah I know what I’m going to

1:21:38say okay yeah yeah yeah okay that person is doing that lasagna have I got some lasagna in the freezer listen you’re in a meeting like

1:21:45that like I spent all of my life doing

1:21:51that I’m going to guarantee you something for the past 2

1:21:57hours nothing nothing has existed for me apart

1:22:03from you nothing nothing the only thing in my

1:22:10head is you the collective energy we’re making on the chat you talking to me me

1:22:18feeling what I’m going to say I’ve got some slides but I’m going in and out of script depending on what I think feels

1:22:23good I learned to do this over years here’s how you here’s how I learned to

1:22:29do it so first I was on this executive um leadership training and they put two

1:22:36people sitting in front of each other and she had a timer she had a stopwatch and she was like okay you managed to

1:22:43listen for three seconds and then eventually slowly maybe some of us this will be

1:22:49easier for some harder for others but maybe slowly we can learn

1:22:55to listen a little bit more not all the time you don’t want to do it all the time it’s too difficult but try to

1:23:02find the the ease one of the things I often say that confidence is the space

1:23:07that’s left it’s the space that’s left for some of you we might do like a tiny little

1:23:14Improvement but sometimes it is just about if that makes sense does that make sense um so for sometimes it is just

1:23:21kind of about like yeah creating a bit more a bit more

1:23:28room so I organized this conference called confidence live uh and I a few years ago oh I went

1:23:38on the slid too fast I’m going to stop sharing so I organized this conference called confidence life and a couple of

1:23:43years ago in the first year it was terrifying it was one of the scariest

1:23:49things I’d ever done uh mainly because it’s basically getting hundreds of people to come to your hometown for a

1:23:55confidence for a conference on confidence I didn’t know if anybody was going to come it was expensive I took

1:24:01huge amounts of risks and to make it all worse because it was my hometown my mom

1:24:07came like the vulnerability like feeling vulnerable anyway but then your family

1:24:13imagine your family watching you at a work presentation like unless you work in like a family business or with your

1:24:19family that’s like there’s just kind of like I know like like there was just it was so vble and so intense it was one of

1:24:25the scariest things I ever did and I started having stress dreams and uh yeah I started having

1:24:34these really intense stress streams and I’m a big Star Trek fan and one night I woke up and there’ been this like

1:24:39Intergalactic war in my mind and I was like right okay I am stressed I spent

1:24:45years dismissing my stress dismissing my overthinking oh stop overthinking you’re

1:24:50an idiot like just crack on or why are you so worried about this me it’s just a meeting like stop it you know that you

1:24:56know that feeling I spent years doing that but now what I what I do is I go

1:25:03ooh I’m stressed about this and then I ask myself a question that’s simple in

1:25:10practice but radical in its Rarity is what are my emotions trying to tell

1:25:15me like what are you trying to tell me instead of pushing away dismissing

1:25:23disregarding overthinking constantly it’s like okay okay okay okay okay what

1:25:29are you trying to what are you trying to tell me and then what I do because once a nerd always a nerd I take all of my

1:25:36worry my fears my existential dread and I put it in column C I open a

1:25:41spreadsheet in my spreadsheet I have my worry and in there that’s where I start so in this I was in that example I was

1:25:48worried about the venue this is a real actual screenshot from my spreadsheet I do this all the time if I am worried

1:25:56about something I listen to that because nearly always our worry are overthinking

1:26:02it’s a message that’s trying to be heard so then I’ll be like okay what am I worried about I can feel that you’re

1:26:09worried my brain is going 75,000 miles an hour I hear you let’s create some

1:26:15space little friend little Kirsty I’m scared I’m scared okay I’m going to listen to you I’m going to sit down with

1:26:21you I’m going to sit next to my worry I’m going to next to my overthinking and with a loving adult

1:26:28compassionate hand I’m going to go okay what have we got and

1:26:34then and then solution and then action this is

1:26:39really really really simple but I promise you if you sit down and there is something quite specific about the

1:26:46spreadsheet like a lot of you might have a journaling practice for when anxious love that but there’s also something

1:26:52about the like the solution and the action this is what I’m going to do so next time next time you feel this

1:27:00can you give this a go give it a go give this like putting putting spreadsheets

1:27:06putting your worries putting your fears into a spreadsheet give me a yes in the chat if you’re going to give that a go

1:27:11it can be so so so helpful lovely thank

1:27:17you perfect and

1:27:25there is something that I want to cover

1:27:30o de going to do it for interview fear yes love that even opening the

1:27:35spreadsheet can help thank you lovely so good and it’s about that you know that

1:27:41not dismissing our emotions as like ridiculous and acknowledging that it does have some some

1:27:49value lovely I’ve actually got um a template so I’ll share it with because we love there’s nothing better than

1:27:56putting all of your worries into a a column before the call me and Joe were just having a chat because we like

1:28:02having a chat and we were talking about how sometimes give me a yes in the chat

1:28:08sometimes do you ever feel as though life is just a bit gray do you ever get that like oh that

1:28:15kind of like constant kind of monotony and

1:28:20especially in England yeah that like I was sitting in the the PB with some of my really really close friends

1:28:27very recently and we were sitting together and we were sitting around the table now I I love my friends and both

1:28:35of them were really they were they were depressed they were really going through

1:28:40some things they were really really struggling they were overthinking everything they were under feeling they

1:28:47were experiencing this like constant like oh I’m so busy I’m so busy you know that like oh I’ve just got so much going on this I’m just like so busy

1:28:54all of that and I remember sitting listening to them and I on the way home I felt really sad because I knew deep

1:29:04down in my wise part whenever by the way you haven’t seen this you know when I talk about um when I was talking about

1:29:11feeling I always put my hand on my tummy because it’s kind of here for me it’ll be different for you but I kind of got

1:29:16this sense this like deep down sense of what could help them but you

1:29:23can’t do it you know people have to yes a few years ago I read a book by a

1:29:30medical doctor called Dr Stewart Brown now Dr Stewart Brown has researched one

1:29:37thing forever and the thing that he has researched pretty consistently over

1:29:44years is something that we all know that we all very familiar with but perhaps

1:29:50we’re not kind of giving it as much like time or attention as we could and that

1:29:56my friends is play there’s lots of research that shows

1:30:04that play isn’t necessarily like just what we think it is that play has so

1:30:12much more to it than when I say the word play research has shown that animals

1:30:18play there’s some really incredible photos of a wolf and a polar bear

1:30:25playing the polar bear is lying on his back and this is what the researchers study the polar bear is lying on his

1:30:31back with his neck bed and the Wolf is there like over him and it is wild

1:30:37because W uh polar bears and wolves they’re they’re like they should be eating each other or kicking off

1:30:43especially in a food scarce environment but often they will meet and they will just play put in the chat with me why

1:30:50why do researchers think that play is so important

1:30:57why is play so important as humans why could it be that play is something that

1:31:04people research that people study that animals do c to practice things inflex

1:31:11your brain it frees the mind it helps you relax it breaks down barriers it brings out your inner child it practicing you Solutions because it’s a

1:31:17natural state creativity comes from it makes everyday difference it straightens relationships it’s humans it allows us

1:31:23to think in a different way it helps you connect mindfulness relaxation stimulates the brain free thinking State happiness do something that’s just

1:31:28pointless not always be productive it gives your life meaning it relaxes you thank you the formal this is one of my

1:31:35favorite things in the world the there’s a lot of play researchers and they’ve all decided the formal definition the

1:31:43scientific definition of why people play because it’s fun because it’s fun that’s

1:31:50enough that is enough we play because it’s fun there is a quote from Dr Stuart

1:31:56Brown that lives I was going to say it lives in my head rentree but it doesn’t it lives in my heart the opposite of

1:32:02play is not work the opposite of play is

1:32:09depression research has shown that there is a sleep uh you can see a play deficit

1:32:15in the same way that we see a sleep deficit I was training some really

1:32:20senior Executives at one of the biggest banks in the world world and it was a group of women and they had got me in

1:32:28because they were not trusting their leadership decisions anybody struggle with that anybody struggle with trusting

1:32:34yourself they came to me and they were like I just need to I just need to you

1:32:39know trust trust myself a little bit more I know that I know what I’m doing I know what I and I was talking to them

1:32:46and I as I was speaking to these incredibly powerful overachieving women

1:32:53that are crushing it in the boardroom and then nailing it baking the cookies in the bake sale like navigating this

1:33:00like big complex life with so much responsibility and obligation I felt

1:33:07something and you know me now if I feel something I act on it I felt something

1:33:12in my stomach that said Kirsty these women do not need confidence these women need

1:33:18Joy I don’t really overthink anymore I don’t sweat the small stuff because I

1:33:25play do you know what today has been for me play just play like I’m making jokes I’m making myself laugh if you’ve

1:33:31enjoyed this it’s because I’m playing but the thing is with play it’s not what we think it is so we actually have eight

1:33:40different play personalities would you like to learn yours now we are on the

1:33:45home stretch this is our last probably 10ish minutes I’m going to give you

1:33:51every last ounce of energy and emotion I have an exchange can I have

1:33:57yours thank you okay let’s go let’s leave High play

1:34:06eight different play personalities now I wasn’t necessarily planning on covering this uh but me and Joe were talking

1:34:11about it and I was like God like that’s so helpful for overthinking to kind of get out of our head and into our play so

1:34:17I’m going to talk about it eight different play personalities now you’re going to have to help me I don’t have them in front of me I’m pretty sure I

1:34:23can remember them but let’s go number one is the

1:34:28Storyteller the Storyteller is the individual who loves telling stories who

1:34:34loves creating narratives who loves sharing who loves connecting through

1:34:40like making things up you all know a Storyteller can anybody guess who may be

1:34:47a Storyteller that perhaps you have met or interacted with for the first time

1:34:52today might be me my yeah big time no

1:34:57[ __ ] Sherlock she’s a Storyteller like me through and through a nice way to

1:35:03access by the way what you’re good at when I was little I would sit and write

1:35:09poems I would write stories like it’s what you tend to do when you’re little

1:35:14that’s a really good indicator I uh will often share that I was very behind at school I was so

1:35:21behind at school when I was in year three I think I got put back down to reception for maths I refused to read

1:35:29There were all these reports my mom saved all my school reports it’s like I went for tests I went for tests with

1:35:35psychologist because I just refused to read but my mom Val fortunately was

1:35:40never worried because what I would do is I would get a picture book and it would have maybe a a cat sitting on a mat and

1:35:49the teachers would be like Kirsty read the book okay uh cat cat is on the and I

1:35:54wouldn’t do it I’d be like there was an orange cat the cat was called Jason

1:35:59Jason was experiencing wo it wasn’t that I couldn’t read I just didn’t want to I

1:36:04didn’t want to read stories I wanted to tell stories it was more fun and natural and intuitive for me to go into this

1:36:12world of imagination and to tell stories and to make things up the thing that made me behind as a child turned out to

1:36:19be my greatest gift and I am so for forunate because my job is now my play

1:36:26personality so Storyteller number one number two is the organizer the

1:36:33organizer is anybody here oh my gosh I need you in my life can we be best

1:36:38friends anybody here the one who like organizes the holidays organizes the trips like takes genuine joy out of the

1:36:47itinery the spreadsheet oh my okay I need this like the the person who’s like

1:36:52Okay so we’ve got the hot tubet and then we’ve got the games and that like that okay so that’s the organizer

1:36:57the people who just love of it’s so fun love planning love organizing love a

1:37:02spreadsheet that’s the organizer then we have the collector the collectors are anybody

1:37:10here H the collectors seem more rare but they’re the collectors the ones who like their trinkets my friend Phil is a

1:37:16collector and he has a big collection of swords that he keeps on his wall he’s

1:37:22struggling with women I’ve got it we’ve got it so collectors are the people who

1:37:28like gather things and collect things so maybe the old man tinkering in his

1:37:34Workshop people who collect cars those are the collector then we have the

1:37:39competitor the competitors are the people ah Georgia lovely you might be a

1:37:44collector lovely hi collectors then we have the competitors so the competitors

1:37:50are the people who like to win they’re in it for the win they’re the people who take Monopoly so seriously they’re the

1:37:58athletes they’re the sports people now I’m going to say this my friends if you are a competitor is someone who is not a

1:38:04competitor competitor it is not fun playing games with you honestly like call your jets you just need to play

1:38:10with other competitors love that my best friend Jamie is a competitor he like you

1:38:16need to you can create a competitor group now my best friend Jamie is a competitor he’s obsessed with board

1:38:21games and it’s like I’m going to win I’m win even trivial stuff there’s so much joy in winning for him those are the

1:38:27competitors then we have the Explorers so the Explorers are The Travelers the

1:38:33people who like to explore new things now it can be literal it can be literally exploring or it can be

1:38:40mentally exploring it can be the Curious people you’re always reading a new book about something that’s got nothing to do

1:38:47with anything and my friend Lea’s an Explorer I always ask her for book recommendations and she’s like oh I just

1:38:52read this book about um I don’t know wheat farming in Tania in the 1820s I’m like why are you reading that Lea

1:38:59because she’s an Explorer those are the Explorers that’s five then we have the

1:39:05we’ve done this store ah then we have the movers the movers now you are the yogis

1:39:11you’re the dancers you’re the people who uh I’m a bit of a mover as well I’m

1:39:17like I don’t know if this is okay to say no I’m doing to that anyway I’m like in the kitchen slop dropping to 90s R&B on

1:39:25Tuesday afternoon I’m dancing I’m moving like that’s a form of play for me are you one of those my front door is

1:39:32ringing I’m just going to ignore it we’re just going to keep going with it I’m just going to stop it actually otherwise it’ll keep

1:39:39beeping there we go okay so then you have the movers the movers and then what

1:39:46do we have so there’s two more the we’ve got the directors we’ve got the Explorers we’ve got the mve

1:39:53we’ve got the competitors now we have the creators look at my little brain doing on the spot any so creators you

1:40:01are the artists you’re the makers you’re the makers the people who make things

1:40:07with your hands you’re crafty you honestly genuinely enjoy crafts like I

1:40:13love that for you I don’t I don’t understand it um it’s going to ring

1:40:18again I’m G to turn it off again um yeah I’m going to turn that off

1:40:27yes you are I really hope it doesn’t ring again but it might never mind yeah so you are the creators and lastly last

1:40:33but not least we have the Jokers The Jokers are the goofy people the people

1:40:40who tell jokes I’m a mix of Storyteller mover Joker Storyteller mainly put in

1:40:46the chat what are you you’ve been kind of saying that’s me Anthony you’re the Joker hi so the Jokers are you’re making

1:40:52p you’re being silly you’re being daed now what’s important and I’m not and I

1:40:58don’t mean important I mean absolutely totally utterly

1:41:04essential more of this you can also be all of them cat thank you like make this

1:41:11a non-negotiable if you’re a mover make sure at least once a day you’re doing a little bedroom Groove if you’re an

1:41:17Explorer watch something new and weird that you’ve not thought about if you’re a storyteller sit down and write a poem

1:41:24for literally no reason if you’re an organizer stop mentally planning all of your holidays if you’re not doing it if

1:41:31you’re a joker like find ways to add that lightness and that levity play is

1:41:36perhaps the most essential the most important thing if you want to think

1:41:43less play more I don’t think we can do enough of

1:41:49it and I am someone who really really

1:41:55genuinely actually practices what I preach here like actually I am always

1:42:00playing I bring an element of play to everything I do my play will look

1:42:05different to yours because honestly my friends we are sitting here hurtling on a spinning Rock towards the ultimate

1:42:12heat death of the universe [ __ ] it doesn’t matter it really doesn’t

1:42:19matter it is not that deep your work is

1:42:24important your work is valuable but it isn’t important in those moments when we feel

1:42:31the pressure people say to me oh cir you’re organizing a conference must be so hard no it isn’t it’s just sending a

1:42:37few emails it’s just sending a few emails I’m going to do a quick wrap up as we

1:42:42come to a close I also thought maybe we do maybe some questions if anyone has

1:42:48any questions feel free to pop them in the chat um lovely hi Joe hi

1:42:55Joe hi I don’t I don’t think I realized I was gone I’ve been sat taking oh you came back I thought you were like I’m

1:43:03back no not at all okay so Joe how do you feel that the first webinar went oh

1:43:09gez Kirsty I mean like it’s pretty rare that I Come Away with stuff like this and and and stuff like this and so I’ve

1:43:17I’ve been going along with everyone so you’ve done phenomenally uh to to quote Raymond in the chat but just honestly

1:43:24thank you you know um it’s it’s so nice I think more than anything just to give the space to this

1:43:30stuff it doesn’t feel rushed and like we’ve had the chance to there was that moment I’ve been chatting with James and

1:43:35L uh in in our WhatsApp group during it and there was that moment you know particular

1:43:40where uh you ask people to uh speak about the lies they tell themselves and

1:43:46then the truth I think that was one of the most profound moments we’ve ever had in you know sort of nine years of of of

1:43:52TM so like I just want to say thank you because it feels like a proper shared experience as well you know so um you

1:43:59know it’s community in it and that’s literally honestly got very little I’ll

1:44:05take a bit of credit it’s got very little to do with me and everything to do with everybody here like creating all

1:44:13I can do is be a vessel for some information like whether that lands or

1:44:19whether people like interact with it like so like thank you to this community

1:44:26like I as a as a facilitator and a trainer I can only give and feel and be as much as I’m getting back um so thank

1:44:34you thank you thank you I’m G to uh see if anybody has any questions but also I

1:44:40really like that you know Joe when I was like we can’t get this wrong I think what I meant is I know that every single

1:44:46person in this community is really nice and kind and even if we did get it wrong it would be fine even if my doorbell did

1:44:53ring twice in the middle of the session it would be fine like all of this stuff is fine okay does anybody have any I’m

1:45:01just going to quickly check if anyone has any questions Joe do you have any questions there’s there’s a couple in

1:45:07the chat which I’ll I’ll take in in the Q&A uh sorry in the Q&A the Q&A oh wow

1:45:13yeah um so they came a little while ago so we may have covered these already but um the first one comes from an anonymous

1:45:20person who says uh tips or advice for someone in their first com’s job who doesn’t feel confident in what they’re

1:45:26doing and feels like they’re winging it every day okay I mean it’s it’s been a

1:45:31lot of the session but I mean like the the specifics for that that person yeah so if it’s your first job it is not your

1:45:38job to be good it is your job to learn that’s your job right now if it’s

1:45:44your first ever role in an industry when I ran my agency I used to say this to people when they were starting out for

1:45:50the first couple of years you don’t need to be good but you do need to be learning keep learning and as long as

1:45:56you feel so what I would do is if you’re not feeling confident yet that’s okay if when new confidence develops over time

1:46:03make sure at the end of every single night you’re going okay what have I done well today and you can do it when you’re

1:46:08brushing your teeth it’s nice empty space what have I done well today um

1:46:13what have I learned today and your confidence will come through the reinforcing that you’re learning so that

1:46:20would be my advice and allow a little bit of I’m not confident yet takes time I haven’t been confident public speaking

1:46:27for it took me 10 years like this stuff takes time okay hopefully that helps I’m going to Rattle through these questions

1:46:33quite quickly okay okay what would you do or say to convince the serious corporate

1:46:39types in general playing to their work my book is coming out so I’ve written a book about this um it’s called don’t

1:46:47swear at work and other [ __ ] and it’s all about this about how everything’s too serious and take things

1:46:53way too seriously so anarie what I would do is all we can do we can’t change

1:47:00other people we can’t really unless it’s your business change company cultures or

1:47:05in corporate environments too much but what we can do is you can model it like

1:47:10you model it you model your play you model your joy you model whatever it is

1:47:15for you so if you do it and you talk about it that’s the most agency we have

1:47:22that’s the most agency we have to like uh influence things lovely any tips on

1:47:28staying positive after some setbacks okay really quick tip there was a couple of people who said they were

1:47:35perfectionists um there is uh a book called mindset that talks about fixed

1:47:40mindset and growth mindset I’ll do you a reading list in fact I can do you one better I’ve got some online um courses

1:47:47on this I’ll share with you they’re totally free they’re totally open you can all have them um

1:47:54yes read mindset because what that will help us do is reinforce so if you’ve had some setbacks

1:48:01we’re going to come back to that question what have I learned what have I learned what have I

1:48:06learned and just keep persisting keep going don’t give up take a big deep

1:48:13breath give yourself kindness give yourself compassion and then keep trying and keep reinforcing this learning okay

1:48:21loveely what about if you’ve been beaten down at work to the point where you’re questioning everything scared to speak

1:48:28too tired to keep fighting for a voice now I’m going to answer this very honestly

1:48:34leave H maybe that wasn’t a very helpful answer I get asked these kind of questions a lot what do I do if I have a

1:48:39very toxic work environment first ask yourself the question do I have any

1:48:46power to change this do I have anything that I can do to influence so the things

1:48:53that you can do is speak to HR speak to your boss speak to the people who might be able to support you but if you still

1:49:01feel as though your work environment is eroding your

1:49:06confidence is making is having a genuine negative impact on your mental health

1:49:12try and find something else you know we’re not jumping ship but do try and take a big deep breath and know you

1:49:18deserve more and know you deserve better like there is other there could be

1:49:24something better but you’ve got to go through that process first of really being like is there anything I can do do

1:49:29I have any agency is there anything I control if not Manana Joe are you going

1:49:36to say something then no okay it’s like an auction you moved your hand

1:49:44okay more I’m just going to keep rattling through until time is done here we go tips to bring out this

1:49:51honesty play and feeling in org that’s extremely cautious appademic risk averse and quiet now here’s the thing this is a

1:49:58counter perception I have done training in all kinds of businesses the excuse me

1:50:07the most playful people I meet are the Nerds the academics the genuinely the I

1:50:15did some training with a bioengineering firm and they are using AI to cure

1:50:22cancer and I came in and I did a session and I threw in the stuff on Play and I asked the room you know what does play mean to

1:50:29you like what is play and somebody in the session looked at me and went I don’t have the data to model that like

1:50:35actually like that was their answer and I was like iconic but a lot of people like this will naturally do some more

1:50:41play so I would just strike up a conversation this is a bit sweeping but whenever I meet like more like academic

1:50:48people they’re normally the people who are Gamers who might do a bit of D and D

1:50:53who do board games so just have have those conversations but I have an expression in my family which is

1:50:59everyone has good crack everyone in some way has good crack so it’s just about

1:51:04asking people like asking people sharing that you’ve learned this I’ve spoken to

1:51:10hundreds of people about this and everybody connects with it investment bankers bioengineering people marketing

1:51:15people Everyone goes oh yeah I think that’s me I think I’m the Joker I’ve never met anyone who goes not me I don’t

1:51:22play ever so it would just be about kind of opening up that conversation so many

1:51:28questions I want to try and do as many as I can um okay I know for a fact that

1:51:33I’m not a Storyteller but I want to get out of my comfort zone and be one it’ll really help me with my confidence and front of people in camera give me advice

1:51:40please got some bad news for you uh the way you get better at being on camera

1:51:46telling stories uh is practice so the tricky thing is you got to start but you

1:51:52have to start start very small think of the smallest Next Step sometimes people

1:51:57go Zero to Hero sometimes they’re like I’ve never done any public speaking and I I think I’m really scared of it and I don’t know if I’m very good I’m going to

1:52:03stand on this huge stage don’t go Zero to Hero go smallest next thing um

1:52:10there’s lots of lots and lots and lots of like training on how to tell good stories and let me make this very clear

1:52:17and I’ll make sure you have these resources if has anybody here enjoyed the stories I’ve told you today because

1:52:23if you’ve enjoyed the stories I’ve told you today I need you to know that they

1:52:28are rehearsed they are curated in a spreadsheet they are thought about Joe I

1:52:36think you will have heard a few of my stories at least at least at least I’ve got the same

1:52:43stories that’s friendship but if you’ve seen me on a

1:52:49podcast or seen me on a stage or see me they there’ll be repetition in the stories because it is a craft like it’s

1:52:58marketing you know it’s a craft so don’t don’t assume that you’ve gone oh uh

1:53:03she’s good at storytelling it’s it’s I have a an enjoyment of it but now I’m good at it because I’ve learned it so

1:53:09there’s loads of different like advice on that but my advice to you is start start small and keep going okay got a

1:53:17couple of things here we go decided to set up my own business love that for you but the sense of imposter syndrome

1:53:23feeling of potential failure no money is crippling I can’t reflect on my achievements as I can always find ways

1:53:29to dismiss anything I’ve ever achieved thank you for asking me that question I have been I realized recently in a

1:53:37couple of months it will be my 10-year business anniversary I am still scared

1:53:42bad news is when you run a business it is scary like it is scary like it’s

1:53:48scary you’re responsible for your own thing now for somebody who says to me I can’t focus on my

1:53:54achievements in 2020 I did the most 2020 thing ever I started meditating with a

1:54:00Buddhist monk on Zoom that I found on Airbnb experiences like it’s so 2020 and

1:54:07I said he said to me once he was like I want you to do 20 minutes of mindfulness

1:54:12exercises a day and I was like I cannot do 20 minutes of mindfulness exercises a

1:54:18day and he looked at me who was called shintu he was in temple in Japan and he

1:54:24looked at me and shintu said okay I understand you can’t do 20 minutes of mindfulness exercises a day so for you

1:54:31it’s an hour and he meant it like he meant it because if somebody’s saying to

1:54:36me I can’t focus on my achievements all that tells me is we’ve just got to

1:54:42practice it even harder then because you can we all can it’s a uh grinding

1:54:47crippling difficult process and if in that moment you’re like okay this is what’s gone well brain goes yeah but this is what’s gone bad then what I want

1:54:54you to do is go thank you I see you and what else is true both can be true you

1:55:00know it can be hard it can be difficult we can have made mistakes and and at the same time it’s never about battling with

1:55:08yourself it’s not about making the part of you that is scared that perhaps isn’t more positive wrong it’s about letting

1:55:14them sit next to each other so I would make this a total absolute

1:55:20non-negotiable and the bad news is is I am a highly qualified highly trained highly experienced expert and everybody

1:55:26can take a moment at least to be like okay but it might take time I’ve got two

1:55:32minutes one more question here we go one more question how can I stop building my digital presence when I’m not confident

1:55:38in my ideas afraid of being judged and struggling with engagement took me about 15 years to build my digital presence

1:55:44start keep going don’t give up takes ages doesn’t happen overnight PR persistence persistence gentle easy

1:55:51steady don’t quit keep going it’s thankless and I think on that uh we are

1:55:58probably at time so again just thank you so so so much for making this morning so

1:56:04enjoyable and nourishing for me thank you for your presence thank you for your openm mindedness thank you for your questions I really truly appreciate you

1:56:12and I uh I do hope that we get to be friends in and I see you again and like

1:56:18we hang out and this has been really lovely thank you to Joe and the team for creating such a clearly safe open space

1:56:24so thank you everyone bloody hell Kirsty thank you thank you so much and and like

1:56:30this is hopefully been mirrored uh well you can see that it’s being mirrored in the chat as well you know and thank you

1:56:36to everyone in the community as Kirsty has said for for just making it such a blooming incredible uh couple of hours I

1:56:44think well I don’t need to think anything more I don’t need to add anything more I think it’s just been

1:56:50everything it quite clearly has been um which has been incredible so Kirsty thank you so much and thank you all for

1:56:57engaging as you have and making today’s session uh phenomenal uh truly so uh all

1:57:04that said um we haven’t got an online uh session in the calendar just yet um but we’ll be announcing our new season uh

1:57:12next week probably um so if you would like to come back to more sessions like this I mean maybe not like this I think

1:57:19this was fairly unique but if you’d like to come back to more sessions from marketing meet up and and so much more then then um please keep an eye on the

1:57:26newsletter please uh check out the website and uh I’ll posting on LinkedIn as well with all that said um this has

1:57:33been a proper setup for hopefully the rest of your week the rest of your month rest of your year rest of your life

1:57:39thank you Kirsty for for making that and thank you uh everyone for engaging as you have we will see you uh very very

1:57:47soon take care everyone thank you so much thank you everyone cheers byebye