Nicola: [00:00:00] and welcome to the female leaders on fire podcast. I am your host, I’m Nipper Buckley, and I am the coach work with women at the very top of organizations, helping them to find their buyers. So really to re find that purpose, that passion, that excited. So they can have impact or influence, um, more income as a result, but we’ll say they can be a force for good driving, much needed positive change in organizations.

So today’s episode. So I’m just here for a quick introduction. So I got a brilliant guest with me today. Um, we were part of a mentoring group together, probably when I first started to really. On working and more with corporates. So within organizations to really be able to help more women at the very, very top and also inspire and support future leaders to really [00:01:00] drive gender parity and help close the gender pay gap and organization.

So this was someone that I immediately just felt a connection to. She does something very similar, a bit of different industry and yeah, it’s just very human. She’s very real and yeah, just immediately warm. So, so I was always really keen to get on the podcast, but when we were talking about what she was going to talk about and the subject that we were going to together, What she suggested just really resonated with me, really touched my heart.

And the subject that we’re going to talk about today is her own very personal experience. And she is brutally honest. She is bare bones, honest and very bravely. So sharing her experience of burnout in the corporate world and the very, very physical and real effects it had on her and the impact it had on her home life, her relationship, her health, and also her career.

And then we go into talking about the reasons behind that. So what, what drove her to those [00:02:00] behaviors that led to that burnout, but out what were the expectations and pressures she felt she was under? And it’s a story that I think for me when I’ve listened back to it really, really touched my heart because.

This is a place that many women at the top have been that experience of just being like they can’t give any more, the energy’s depleted and burning out, but this is burnout, very, very physical level that is really affecting health. That it just, it stops you absolutely stops you in your tracks and. Also fascinating because everyone has a different experience of it.

And Amy’s symptoms were very, very physical, very real, and very debilitating and quite different to mine. But we share all about that on the podcast, but then we also talk about ways that you can make sure that you’re not burning out, that you’re not over giving that you’re not giving so much yourself.

There’s nothing left. So I think it’s a really, really important subject because I think it’s a symptom of. What [00:03:00] women feel they have to do when the, at the very top of organizations, which has given given gifts, there’s nothing left. And at some point they burn out and then they fall into this trap that you’ve not delivered because you’ve burned out.

So it almost becomes a vicious circle and a cycle that we really need to. And we need to trust and believe in our own, our own skills, our own expertise. And also that know that we’re enough to start acting confidently and start owning our impacts on our influence so that we don’t get to that place where we feeling we’re giving so much.

We are giving so much that we burnt out. So I think this is a super important subject today, and I would love you to listen once and then listen back and take some notes. And if this is an experience or something that you’ve experienced, I’d love to hear about. Oh, my contact details are in the show notes.

Or if you’re looking for a coach to support you with your own journey out of burnout, please do drop me, drop me a message. Again, all my contact [00:04:00] details in the show notes and just a quick update for me. So I have. Just one place left work with me now as a one-to-one coaching client until after my wedding in September.

So I’ll be back to work in October. So I’m fully booked for one-to-one coaching for now, but just with that one place left just for a client to join me on a focus coaching program. So, if you’re interested in that, please do drop me a message or contact details in the show notes. And if you’re an organization and you’re looking for someone to come in and speak in your women’s network or to.

Support men and becoming allies, or you’re looking for to create a female, a women’s leadership program, or you’re looking for some one-to-one coaching for someone in your organization. Please do drop me a message because my diary is really filling up, especially with those I’m taking that month off in September around the wedding.

So I am working with some incredible organizations. [00:05:00] I love the talks I’m putting together and the speaking opportunities that I’m being given. And, um, yeah, the diary is filling up. So my availability is increasingly limited. So if you’ve been following me for a while, you think I can help you organization drop me a message.

So that’s it for today. I’d love to know what you think and just say a huge thank you to Amy for being so brave and honest and real entry. I think it’s going to really, really resonate with you. Enjoy and I’m welcome to the female leaders on fire podcast. And I am your host I’m Nicola Buckley. So I am the women working with women at the very top of corporate organization and those aspiring future leaders and helping them to find their fire gang.

So that passion, that purpose, the excitement, so that they can have more impact, more influence and more. But also be a real force of good driving, much needed change in organizations. So today I’m very excited because I have a brilliant guest today talking about a subject that I think is incredibly, incredibly [00:06:00] important for women at the top.

And I have to brilliant Amy. Today. And she’s going to be talking about just her journey from burning out in the corporate world to having a much more balanced life. And I think this will resonate with many, many listeners today, even if you’re not actually having actually gone through burnout. Just really just that sense of giving so much for so long that you’re just feeling.

Tired at a different level. You’re filling it out, kind of what I called bone tired, and you have rest, but you still feel tired. And just how to recognize the symptoms, how to understand what’s going on, how to start to make changes. So that you’re we were just saying before we came on the podcast, actually what we find with clients is almost they’re giving so much for so long.

When they come to work with someone like myself or Amy, they might already be at the point that they have to do something. And that can be signed off work with anxiety that could be, um, being offered on suppressants or counseling through their doctors that could be, you know, handing in their notice.

Cause they’ve just had enough [00:07:00] that it felt like then carry on. So what we want to do today is just to help you to step back from the edge of feeling like that. I’m really start to think about how we can live a much more balanced life and how you can. Be that really impactful and influential leader without giving everything so that you’re trying to be everything to everyone.

So just to introduce Amy. So Amy is a coach who supports women and teams in the food and grocery industry, and she helps them to speak up, influence more and get the recognition they deserve in their careers and her career. She worked with large corporate food manufacturers over 22 years. And of course, many different functions with a particular focus in new product development, commercial and marketing.

So there’s a fellow marketeer and a product development geek here today as well, which is great. And Amy brings her own personal experience of resilience. Having suffered burnout in a senior management role, and then recovering to rebuild a successful career in food with new farm boundaries. I love that word [00:08:00] and a much, much stronger.

It’s now Amy’s missions help others have the same success in their careers, but without the burnout, welcome to the show today, Amy, I’m super excited that you’re here.

Amy: All right. Thank you so much for having me. It’s great to

Nicola: be here and you are so welcome. You’re on my hit list for a little while, so

Amy: well, ditto, because you know, we’re going to be on our podcast as well.

Nicola: We’ve had like a podcast morning, so yeah, so. Start off by sharing a little bit about the story, about how you came to be doing this brilliant work that you’re doing today. And just really about a little bit about your burnout story. Yeah, sure.

Amy: So my story starts about 10 years ago, I was working as a senior commercial manager in the feed industry and I had.

Moved job roles a couple of years before this. So I had been working in product development and I’d moved into commercial. It will become relevant. What I tell you that part of the story, which is [00:09:00] really because. I didn’t feel like I completely had the right to be in the role that I was in. I was constantly asking if I could have some commercial training of some description, can I have some negotiation training?

And I kept being told only evidence was there that was doing a really good job and I didn’t need it. Didn’t need spending money on training because it’s doing a really good job. So I was there. I was in a position where, you know, everybody was telling me I was doing really good job, but I wasn’t really convinced myself.

And from the outside. Everything was perfect. So I had this big job, had the big shiny car adjustable, a big shiny new house and had a big mortgage to boot with that. And I was getting married. So you know, this Nick cause you’re in the lead up to a wedding. There’s quite a lot of stress that comes along.

And the pressure of that, all of that was going on outside. And, you know, the wedding was an amazing [00:10:00] thing, but it’s still just a stress and a pressure that was going on. And I was finding that work was getting more and more stressful and I was taking on more and more, and I was traveling a lot. So I was working across two different sites.

I spent like my whole life on the Awan or on the east coast mainline getting up at 5:30 AM because I had to be at the management meeting on a Monday morning. All of that sort of stuff. Firefighting day in, day out, winning big contracts, you know, it was all amazing. And if you’d been on the outside, you’d have been thinking she has got it all.

You know, I was totally that person. And I always think when I say that I might have sounded like a bit arrogant and I wasn’t, I wasn’t a particularly, you know, big headed person or whatever I was still with. Um, You know, very empathetic to my friends. I was the person that everybody came to. If they needed advice as the acne.

And I was everything to everybody, I was also like everybody’s career coach didn’t even [00:11:00] know that career coaches existed then, but it turns out it was a natural one of those. So it was always like helping people with their interview, prep and CVS and all of that sort of stuff. And then outside of work, I was also, um, loved entertaining.

So I was, I wouldn’t say it was a party yet. I wasn’t like going out drinking all the time, but I was, I love, you know, it was a few days worked in the feed industry 22 years, you know, and I trained as a chef. Loved entertaining. So I’d always have people around and, you know, I thought it was completely normal to be busy six nights a week.

And, uh, you know, at lunch times at the weekend, you know, I just literally never stopped. I was just this constantly busy person and, you know, the role got bigger and bigger. And what I, you know, in hindsight, what I didn’t do was ask for more support. I just, I just sucked it all up and started doing more and more staff.

And, you know, it’s exhausting even just talking about it. Now I look back. [00:12:00] Yeah. And then I started to get the site physical signs of stress. And, you know, I’ve learned so much about this since that since then, but at the time I just saw, I was getting headaches. Didn’t really think anything of it, but I was getting headaches that were like, Really really excruciating pain.

So I was laterally told by the doctors they known as ice pick headaches. So it literally felt like somebody was hitting me in my head with my, with an ice pack. And we talked about this before about. I got to the point where my body was screaming at me so much that I had to listen. So when that happened, when I was getting these low aspect headaches, I would go to bed and, you know, work were fine with it.

And it was pre kind of people didn’t work from home then, but they were, they were cool with it. Go and go and work from home or go to bed. But obviously I just had my laptop with me, cause I didn’t believe that anybody could possibly survive without. And it was, um, [00:13:00] smartphones that only really just come out.

I had one of those one with a pen, like a stylist

um, but you know, I was, I, I, it was attached to me and that’s normal now, but it. It’s not right, but it’s normal. A lot of people have that, but I was like an early adopter to being addicted to my phone, constantly refreshing my emails, almost expecting there to be problems all the time, because I worked in fresh Portuguese, which is, you know, that are, you know, it’s genuine, there are issues every single day, constantly getting phone calls from the factory and phone calls from procurement saying that pineapples are stuck in port, you know, or sort of random stuff that people think is funny, but actually.

The stress really gets to you. And I think I just got to a point where, you know, it was building up and it was building up and I was just ignoring those signs. And then. This is where I can sort of pinpoint a day. And that’s why I can say it’s 10 years since I burnt out, [00:14:00] there was a weekend where I got really bad head cold and you know, the sort of cold where you just can’t move.

And I had to wrap a towel around my head and all that sort of stuff. And again, listen to my body for two days and lay lay on the safer. Woke up at half, five, Monday morning, because I had to drive to new castle for my management meeting. And I was like, oh yeah, I actually feel right now I was a complete fog.

And I almost feel like, you know, your brain sort of blocks out traumatic experiences. I, I just can’t remember that week because the following week. Um, the Saturday morning I woke up and I physically couldn’t get out of bed. And when I say that to people that are right, so you weren’t, you just didn’t have the motivation to get off.

I’m like, no, I physically could not move. I couldn’t move my arms and I couldn’t move my legs. And it was terrifying, you know? I’ve completely burned out. You know, my body had just given up and it was, [00:15:00] it was really scary, you know, it sounds melodramatic now, but I felt like I was dying what was going on and I had to crawl to go to the toilet and yeah.

Just needing to sleep all the time. And it was just, yeah, it was really scary. So I then had a couple of weeks of being in bed. Went to the doctors got, got conflicting advice from different doctors and went and saw various doctors. Cause you’re not hearing it like anything that you want to hear. Some doctors were like, you need full breath rest.

And another doctor said you need to go to the gym. So what do you think I did? I went to the jail.

Nicola: I’ll take, I’ll take the hard way please. Yeah.

Amy: Cause I had went and dressed again. And side note, I ended up having to put a lace up back in that wedding dress, because I’d never lost all the way that I want you to get into that wedding dress, but you know what, it doesn’t matter, particularly as went out of horse.

So it really didn’t matter. Um, but yeah, so [00:16:00] I then spent, so that’s kind of my burnout day, but then I spent two years fighting through it and pretending that. And I had this mask on. I know Nick, you often talk about work masks and I had a mask on for two years where I literally would, you know, it’d be fine for a couple of weeks.

And then I’d had a really bad day and I’d end up back in bed. And as time went by, I got to the point where I could work. I could put a lot of makeup on and I could get through the days with the adrenaline. I get home from work at six o’clock or later sometimes goes, you know, but go straight in eat, go straight to bed.

And the only way I could survive. By doing that. And I had this massive, massive, intense pressure. When I look back, it was, I was the breadwinner, my partner at the time he was retraining. So all the money, all the money needed to come from me to pay that mortgage. And I just felt that intense, intense pressure.

And I was [00:17:00] just ignoring, you know, my body kept trying to tell me, kept trying to tell me, but just ignored it. And it got to the point. And another pivotal moment that I remember was I used to go down to London on the train to have meetings at Sainsbury’s head office and. I often had to like spend the day before embedding the day after, but there was one that I remember in particular where I plastered the makeup on and adrenaline got me there and I got out of the head office, got in a black cab and I literally had to lie down and I just thought, I mean, what you do, and it’s really hard to explain to people when you’ve got, you know, the physical.

Symptoms of stress is so bad. Like my body was in switched down. It’s just telling me I’ve got to lie down. You’ve got to close your eyes. You’ve got to get rid of all this noise around you. And London’s not a good place to do that at all. And yeah, it was, it was terrifying. And it was at that point and I’d got a new [00:18:00] line manager.

Interestingly was, I don’t know if there is a link here, but she was a woman. I think she was a bit more empathetic. And she just kind of said to me, Amy enough is enough. And she gave me a week off to kind of go and contemplate what I needed to do. And in that week I realized I was really poorly because I actually stopped and slowed down.

And you know, the physical symptoms I had, I had tinnitus felt like ants were crawling out of my body all over my body. Like the fight or flight feeling all the time, literally unable to relax. And it was that point. I went back to her and I was like, yeah, I need to take some time off sick. And we agreed.

We sort of agreed upfront that I would take the maximum amount of time that the business would pay for me to have off sick. And I went off and was signed off Australia and it was, you know, it was, it was, I felt like a complete Nutter failure. People who are sick or did you feel relieved when that happened?

I felt awful. I felt like. Completely filed. I’d [00:19:00] had a real amazing career trajectory. Got to the top and then,

Nicola: yeah. Oh, my gosh. I’ve got so many bumps. Yeah. Wow. Thank you for sharing. Can we just pull out some of the lessons from it, from your story, if that’s okay. Having this some, a huge lessons here? Yeah.

I was just thinking about a couple of different things and one of them was just around. If you look back now, and you’re really honest with yourself, because you share this story a lot and it’s, it’s really, really powerful. And I think so many people connect to it. What do you think caused. The burnout, if you can pit it down to kind of, these are the things I think really contributed.

What do you think, what do you think some of the causes were that led you to.

Amy: Yeah, I’ve been so many, but if I had to really summarize it, there was a lot linked to perfectionism. So always having to do things perfectly. There was definitely [00:20:00] something around that whole imposter syndrome. When I looked at and I was thinking, I wasn’t good enough at that job.

There were other male equivalent. I’m not bashing here. It’s just, you know, I was the only woman in that team

Nicola: experience. Right.

Amy: They were sat in the corner, watching Wimbledon on their laptops while I was running around, like all the evidence was there, that I was doing a much better job than them, but I just didn’t believe it.

You know, it just, it was, there was the lack of self-belief. Now it wasn’t at the other thing I would say is, I think I felt like you have a work mask and you lost your home life and you work. It should be mutually exclusive. And actually all of that, you know, there was the stuff going on with my wedding and actually, you know, we got divorced within a couple of years, so that relationship wasn’t in a great place.

You know, it wasn’t gang support outside of work as well. But because I had such a mask on at work and didn’t bring that part of me to work. [00:21:00] Couldn’t, couldn’t admit to people that there was stress going on outside of work that all contributed to it. And then I was putting my body under a lot of physical stress as well.

You know, I lost a lot of weight in a short amount of time. I didn’t do it in a healthy way. I did, it was a very restrictive diet and I was exercising to access. You know, I, I, I didn’t do it in a healthy way with, with, uh, With a personal trainer. I just. Exercise to reset kind of thing. It’s, you know, it’s almost like I had emotional stress going on.

I had work stress going on and I had physical stress and it was like the perfect storm.

Nicola: Yeah, absolutely. So am I set your stress bucket is just permanently full and overflowing and yeah. Yeah. If he, then again, if you look back, so some of the causes, so if we just kind of summarize some of those around, and it sounds like that lack of belief led into perfectionism that led into working more and giving more, almost like proving.

We know that women [00:22:00] women’s hands get promoted on performance and men tend to get promoted on potential. So there’s that pressure as well. You’re a women at the top. So people looking up to you and looking to you. Yeah. So there’s all of that going on at work and then, you know, wanting to get to the next rung of the ladder probably as well.

So I need to be opera, you know, I need to be operating at the next level and demonstrating and evidencing that add to that, the pressures outside of home. It’s just, it’s no, it’s a constant fight or flight trigger. Isn’t it. It’s that constant. Oh, my gosh, what’s happening. What’s happening? And you just, like you said, never relax, never switch off.

Never, never slowed down. And actually don’t want to, because that’s when you’re with your thoughts, that’s where your body’s kind of like is this is too much. So that exhaustion kind of makes absolute sense. But if you look back now, what do you think? What was some of the, I know you’ve described some of the very specific physical symptoms were there other symptoms as well?

Just so if a woman’s listing stay and there’s recognized in some of your story, What are the symptoms may be earlier [00:23:00] on that she could recognize.

Amy: Yeah. I mean, yeah. So I mentioned like the physical symptoms and it doesn’t, you know, for me it was headaches, but it isn’t, it doesn’t necessarily going to be headaches for everyone, but it’s, it’s physical symptoms that you just ignore and just think, oh, well, I’ll just push through that.

Cause it, you know, there was other stuff going on. I had like a bad hip and all of that sort of stuff, but I think things like being really short tempered. So, um, and not necessarily at work because I kept the mask on at work, but it, it definitely bled over into exactly. I couldn’t be like that. So yeah.

You know, it, it, it happened outside of work in hours. I was really snappy and yeah, just that inability. It was the snappiness, the inability to switch off. And I think we all know that kind of wired feeling. Um, Also, uh, I think the point at which I realized [00:24:00] now, when I look back, I didn’t realize it at the time when you, uh, it’s not just sort of a healthy stress and pressure that is getting through the day and you’re feeling good, but you, you know, When it’s just stress.

And I don’t, I say that isn’t it. It’s not just stress, but if it is just stress, you feel like you’ve got so much to do and you don’t know how you’re going to get it done, but you still have the motivation to get it done. When it starting to tip into burnout, there’s so much to do and you don’t want to do any of it.

Like. It’s things like, and I talked to other women that have been through it and experienced burnout. It’s things like not even reading emails anymore, just to leading them straight away, because you are, you sort of move into apathy, you know, you’re just like, I’ve got so much to do, but don’t know where to start.

So I’m just, I just don’t want to stop. And that’s the difference between that and that high pressure

Nicola: environment. Yeah. That makes absolute the thin and I [00:25:00] think. That’s the point, which I worked with a lot of women. They’re almost at that point, I think a little bit before, which is when you’re already frustrated and you’re really, I’m feeling quite resentful that you’ll give in and you’re not necessarily being recognized or appreciated.

Yeah. This feels almost like if that’s, if that continues, you’re at the point where. Yeah, you have apathy. Yeah. And I think I’ve, I think I, if I look back, I think I’ve had burnout two points in my life. And I think my last point was not last year. Cause I’m trying to get my head around the years. Cause it will kind of merge with COVID just likes it.

But the year before, so when I’d had surgery and then I was coming back and I came, I took six or seven weeks off and I just had my VIP clients for a while. I’m just going to work with them. But I think I still came back to quickly. I was sending, I started a launch. I had the operation in late July then ran a launch in October.

And my, I don’t think my body had really [00:26:00] recovered and not only was the, the surgery. There was also the effects of the anesthetic. There was also the fact that actually I was on the point of having sepsis. So my body had been. Really quite, I’ve been really quite poorly. My ironically, my partner was working in a hospital at the time and he came home, took one, look at me cause I’d be meshing through the day.

And he said, you’re the most ill person I’ve seen today. I’m going to take you back to the hospital scrubs back on and just say that you’d be around and lot not allowed it, but I just think it was just that pressure to come back that pressure to. You have that pressure being the breadwinner. I didn’t have that pressure because my partner, I kind of, we worked together brilliant as a team, but almost my own pressure of if I’m, if I’m not contributing, if I’m not earning.

Whereas if I’d said to him, Another month for you to just be like, yeah, that’s fine. Cool. Yeah. And it was, it was a lot of the pressure I’d created for myself, um, pressures. Yeah. But I think, I think for me it wasn’t even apathy. I think when I [00:27:00] realized it was a re a serious issue was just almost like my motion.

I was, I was constantly. And my worst sort of beliefs mindset. I was constantly Terri. Yeah, I wake up, but if it had such physical symptoms do, but I’d wake up even after like eight, nine hours sleep, but I was still tired. I like, my bones felt tired. Like my heart felt tired. I just, I think it’s been through treacle.

Isn’t it? Absolutely. Absolutely. But I think it’s also important to recognize through this whole time, period. I know you’re slightly different. But if we’ve been free, locked down and we’ve been through everything it’s changed from what? March 9, 29. I think it was when I first tried to turn to unbelievers.

It’s like mind blowing, but you imagine how much change everyone’s been through and like work from home. Come back to the office, work from home, come back to your first and all the changes and how organizations are run, or if you’ve been on furlough and then you’re back or Thurlow, and then. [00:28:00] All of these things are, if you’re the HR director pitting your entire teams or fellow taking a salary car, deciding who keeps a job and who doesn’t.

And it’s almost like there’s a, for me, it’s like a hangover of the last couple of years that I think it was really interesting to do. Planning workshop into some work group of HRD HR directors. And for them this year was all about being grounded. This year was all about being in the moment more. And yeah, it was all about almost getting back to what I love and what I’m passionate about because the last two years have just been like the word you use for firefighting.

Like just get through the day. Yeah. That

is where everyone’s been. So if people are feeling some of the symptoms at the moment, it’s some recognize some of them. You know, some of the courses, it’s okay to feel like that. But if we start to look more at what the steps to that you’ve taken and what the steps are, if, if a woman is really resonating and listening to this now, and I can share some of my steps.

Well, what, the steps that you took to get to [00:29:00] now having much more balanced. Yeah,

Amy: it has been a lot. And I always say to people, you know, it’s not, it’s not a straight road to recovery from burnout, but you can go a few steps forward and you can go a few steps back. But, you know, and when I think about the advice I would give to other people as well is always start.

Getting checked out by a doctor because you know, the stuff that we’re talking about, you can make the assumptions that it’s just because just because I’ve burned out, but actually they could, you know, you need to get blood tests. You need to, you know, I had all of that stuff, you know, I had. It can be really tough.

And you have to, particularly at the moment where it is harder to access health services, you have, you know, you’re not seeing doctors face-to-face as much, you have to be a real advocate for yourself and you have to fight to just get all of that stuff. Checked out. But then I also [00:30:00] did get support. So at the time I got a health coach and she really helped me cause, you know, I mentioned denied that I’d been on a really restrictive diet and that sort of thing, you know, I needed to, I almost needed a reset wherever I almost left.

I mean, I feel so ashamed to say this because I’ve got a degree in nutrition, but I needed help with. Nourishing my body learning how to nourish my body again, because it isn’t just about what you know, it’s about, you know, all the self belief you have and all of that. So I’ve worked with a coach that really helped me with that stuff.

And then three that. I found mindfulness, which has been a massive part of recovery for me. And I think sometimes when I say that to people, I get a bit of an eye roll and I don’t want to sit and meditate. It’s not about that. And actually right back at the start, when I had a health coach, she wanted me to meditate and I was like, I haven’t got time to meditate because how many times have you heard that?

So I had to, I [00:31:00] had to habit stack it, as I know it now with having a Epsom salt bath, I would, I was allowed to meditate in the bath because I was doing two things. Yeah.

Nicola: He’s still winning is still multitasking is so high

Amy: achieving. Um, but you know, it doesn’t have to be, you don’t have to sit cross-legged for half an hour.

It’s just. Taking the time to know this. So doing things like having stretches in the morning, you know, I was talking about, I didn’t notice all that stuff going on in my body and now stretch in the morning and you know, your body, when people used to say to me, your body’s, how you tells you messages, I’d be like, I just didn’t get what they mean, but I get that now.

It’s not actually words, but, but listening to that stuff. So it’s almost like you’ve got to say. From scratch in terms of self care. You know, we really doing that, the really basic stuff that you’ve forgotten how to do, because you’ve just been running around a million miles an hour. And I would [00:32:00] say that was the basis.

But then I did a lot of work. I’ve worked with various coaches and therapists and counselors over the years to, to get a better understanding of why I got to the state that I did. You know why I didn’t have that? Self-belief. And that that’s been a real game changer for me, because having more self-belief has really, really helped.

And knowing that, you know, I’m worthy worthy of rest, don’t have to earn rest, still have to still have to tell myself that sometimes, but you know, getting a lot of support through all of that stuff. And then, so I did go back to work, you know, I had that, those that time off, um, I actually at the time decided to take a side step, whether it was a step down, really.

So take a step down and a side step into a different function that was less firefighting and day to day. And that was a massive decision. And felt like failure. I won’t know, but actually I’ve [00:33:00] recognized now doing something that was much more aligned to who I was, was so important. So there’s almost that whole reassessment of who I am as a person.

And I’m what I want to do. And. Talk about pineapples importance. You know, it was something else

Nicola: I’ll leave up for someone else.

Amy: Let’s talk about how we can help the nation get healthier by eating the pineapple. You know, that was, and that’s how I moved,

Nicola: uh, juicy stuff,

Amy: but, you know, so I moved into marketing because that suited my personality better and that would not being shameful.

Nicola: Isn’t it. It’s taking away from the. Uh, move, always being awkward. And actually I saw a post from a friend. They have data I worked with when I worked in one of the big corporates and they’ve just moved into effectively a sidestepped role. And they on the graduate schemes they’ve done really well. They moved up through the ranks and that’s all great, but he was like, I just, there’s an ally.

There’s something missing [00:34:00] for me. I felt like I couldn’t, I couldn’t give my everything. I did feel like I was. I just felt like if I saw the next step, I didn’t want to that to be me. So he’s now moved into more of like a talent development role. He absolutely, they love it. And you can feel the passion when they talk about it.

And that’s, I think we need to take that pressure off herself. That it’s only one way to move when you’re. Most senior in the organization is only ever upwards. I don’t know. It’s frustrating sometimes. Cause I was, when I went from patients, sometimes I was giving sideways moves, but I went from being very much in product management.

I then moved into go tomorrow. I am. I loved go-to-market staff. It was like, give me something to launch. Give me a team, a decent, give me a budget. And, um, I’m off are just, they see independence. I love product management for owning a PNL, but I think go-to-market similar because it’s like, I’m going to deliver this in the best possible way.

And actually I was one of the, uh, the time it was one of the people in the organization that I’d [00:35:00] been, I’d worked on a few different products and then they weren’t, their products were kind of mocked a bit and not very high level. And then suddenly I’ve launched him so well that they became high level and it was almost like he could have asked me to do something.

I’m going to do it fricking well, and it’s okay. But it’s okay to take that sideways. Maybe it’s okay to say, I want to work four days a week and what I was. Well, I was thinking about what she was speaking as well. It’s just also to think about for the audience to kind of think about what chapter of their life that they’re in right now.

So is the chapter of your life. You’re just very career focused and that’s your main focus or is a chapter of your life, your mum, or your stepmom or your moving house. And it’s okay to have different leads in those different chapters of your life that you think. Well, if that’s my focus right now, Um, we’ll be for a few months, where do I want to, where do I want to put my time?

My energy and my expertise. And it’s okay to just shift those over [00:36:00] time and it’s okay to make those sideways moves. It’s okay to say no, it’s okay. To work four days a week or to set some boundaries. All of that’s. Okay. Because it’s, you start difference between what I call like leading your. Externally by what others say and thinking you comparing, and you kind of like a bit of a feather in the wind versus being very anchored in who you are.

Yeah. Which leads to that. Isn’t very. I, whatever you think this is, what’s right for me. Yeah.

Amy: Yeah. Yeah. I see that resonates with me so much because I think I ha you know, and I did do that and I had to get few years where it’s almost from the outside, you’d have said, like I was in a holding pattern kind of thing.

I wasn’t, you know, I was doing a really good job, Nick and I had an old boss that used to say like, your 60% is everybody, else’s a hundred percent something like, it’s fine. But you know, there was a word, there was a, there was a little part of me that was like, oh, but [00:37:00] what are people going to think of me?

Because I took that step down. But actually. I’ve never been happier than having made those changes and having a more balanced life. And I actually got, you know, I got back up to the same level, up to the same salary again, without the stress and with, with my own boundaries in place. And I was very clear cause I moved companies a year after that will happen and interview, I was, I wasn’t a mum at the time, but I was very clear with them about my house.

And I said, I have to act like a mum. I need to leave at five o’clock, you know, and I need that. I was really clear about what I needed rather than just like fitting in. I was like, actually, because I was still suffering, um, physically. From the bird and how I worked on a really big site. And I was like, I’m not going to be able to walk across site to meetings.

People are going to have to come to me. You know, like the pre-born at me would have just been, had so much shame [00:38:00] attached to saying something like that. I need this. And I didn’t, you know, and it made all the difference and it’s, that whole is so cliche, but it’s not bringing the whole of you to work thing.

You know, I let go of that. I sometimes call it a mask, but it was also, it was more like a suit of armor that I’d been wearing before and just got rid of it. And I was just like, this is me. I’m really good at what I do, but I need your help in this, this and this, you know, I can’t. Join a meeting on a Friday because I worked four days a week, but I’ll do a really good job for you.

And it’s almost having that solid grounding in who you are and what your non-negotiables are.

Nicola: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s one of the first things I worked with clients on, in one of the first modules is all about how to lead your life. So what do you need what’s important to you? Well, what is what’s balance look like to you?

What’s this? What are your boundaries? How do you say no? W [00:39:00] what do you want your diary to be like? And it’s leading yeah. Leading from, within, from the heart and what’s right for you. And it’s interesting, like, you know, your backups, same level of X amount of time, because actually, because you’re. You’ve got that balance.

You’ve got stuff for you. Love outside of work. You’re spending time with your family and your love two arms. And then in work, you’re doing something that you’re like you said, I don’t want to bat pineapple spin stuck at the pool. I’m going to talk about how healthy they are. More they’re delicious and why ours are the best.

And this. That inciting staff. I don’t want to be debating, like where’s the sump paperwork for pineapples, so it’s that. And it’s okay. That’s all okay to say, um, as a woman as well, it’s okay to change your mind. It’s okay. You know, something that fitted with you once might not fit with you anymore. And that’s okay.

I can use, I used to work, uh, evenings. I used to work weekends. I don’t, I don’t really work. At all [00:40:00] in the evenings, I might finish something off. It might be a bit late finishing something up, but now, especially now I have my office when I’m finished for the day I pack up and then not. Unless there’s an absolute emergency, which really isn’t my sort of world, unless the client particularly needed me.

And that weekend the same. I’m not, I’m not going to apply to anything. Oh, weekend. My intention is the next few months I’ll stop. Start working Fridays. I’m not quite, not quite there yet, but I, I don’t, I don’t, I wouldn’t do a big project work on a Friday cause actually my energy is not quite the same. And there was some up when I saw your notes for today.

I love the fact that you mentioned a book. In love with, uh, I heard about these women. I just want it to mention this as well. Um, so they are called Emily and Amelia Nagorski are going to go for that. Um, and they wrote a book called completing and how to complete the stress cycle burnout. I haven’t read the book actually, but I heard them on Bernie Brown’s podcasts and locked.

I was blown away. And part of what they were [00:41:00] talking about, all the different burnouts that Amy’s talks about, but they also talked about completing the stress cycle. So basically when you’re stressed and there’s a trigger that goes through your body in a certain way. So there’s an alarm system. That’s effectively an alarm system that then sets off a physical reaction, emotional and hormonal reaction.

But if you don’t finish that cycle, you’re still carrying some of that. So, for example, if something, if your boss has been a bit of an idiot and he’s really annoying to you, and there’s a certain reaction and there’s a trigger and that set off that stress cycle, unless you close that stress cycle out, you’ll carry that with you.

So if you go back to Amy’s story and all those stresses around the wedding, around her relationship around pressure at work around traveling so much, none of that’s that’s with her every day and that’s increasing every day. So I loved it as well. When they talked about how to complete the stress icon, love to know your sort of things, but it’s almost like there needs to be a physical and to it.

So that could be moving. That could be walking that could be dancing. There needs to [00:42:00] be an emotional kind of close off to that reaction. So what what’s going on, what have I learned? And then hormone lays kind of all of that’s flush for your system by that movement part. So are there any things that you do.

Kind of finished that stress cycle

Amy: now. Yeah. I mean, movement is a big one for me, so, but, but different to back then. So back then, I, you know, it was very hard and fast in the gym, you know, pounding. I remember pounding and that w on the treadmill and it’s almost not that now, like. It is a gentle walk in nature.

And it is, it is like literally breathing in. Sometimes it is, you know, something stressful has happened. And I might just open the back door and go to stand outside for 30 seconds because I’ve got a three-year-old and sometimes that’s all I’ve got. And those. A couple of deep, somebody said to me yesterday, do you want to change your name to Debbie?

I was like, yes. [00:43:00] Um, but just stand outside and take, you know, take proper deep breaths in. I think when I look back, I was not very good. You know, it was holding it all inside. I didn’t, my friends didn’t know the stress I was under. I worked remotely, which a lot of people do now, so I wasn’t talking to people.

So yeah. That emotional completing the stress cycle of, you know, talking about it out loud with people, oh, I’ve taught my three year old, this one, I’m going to regret it, screaming into a pillow. Like sometimes that’s all it takes, but I think it was a real game changer for me when I realized that that, that, that stress cycle needs to be completed.

Or, or it’s just going to sit with you because I thought that I thought stress was the things that made you stress. They’re not they’re distresses. You’ve got to get, you can get rid of the stresses, but it’s too late. You know, your body is already thinking that there’s a lion chasing it, or one of us you’ve got to do those things.

So for me, [00:44:00] it’s those things. And you know, it is, it’s doing things that are just for me as well, that aren’t work and aren’t being a mom. And, you know, I feel like I sound really old when I say this, I started doing things like cross-stitch, you know, but that’s, it, it’s, it’s a fault, you know, crafty things or like a form of completing that stress cycle for me, you know, it’s like a way of, it’s a way of meditating while it’s doing something with your hands and not being on your phone.

Nicola: Absolutely. Absolutely. You kind of absorbed in yourself on you’re kind of in the moment and yeah, so I think my equivalent moment is. Out in nature, like walking on the beach and it was really stormy here yesterday. Like really, really, really stormy. It was quite amazing to see. Yeah. But then today it was like, everything was clear, but there’s still like the power of the waves and the waves are coming in.

Beautiful sets. You just stand there and it’s just like, just grab. Yeah, just grounds,

Amy: nature. [00:45:00] Yeah. Nature is amazing for that. And uh, yeah, very jealous of where you live. I live in the middle of the country, but I’ve got work. We’ve got a big body of water, Rutland water nearby, and that’s where I go for that.

To see the enormous cause it is a big, big place that, you know, the enormity of water and sea clouds. And it, it, it brings you back into perspective because a lot of those things that we’re stressing about don’t

Nicola: matter that much. Well, they match. Next week next month. Next year. Yeah. I like that one. Yeah.

Well, Amy, I think we could talk about this all day. It’s a final message for our audience today to share with them just around your amazing story of burnout to more balance.

Amy: I think my message would be to. Take time to take notice if, if some of this stuff, you know, if you’ve been listening to me talk and think, [00:46:00] oh God, that’s me.

Just take some time out. Like I took, I’m not saying you need to take a week. You only need to take a few minutes, but really think about where things might be out of balance in your life. And you do deserve. Even if it’s five minutes where the copper, you know, and what is the best way for you to do that, if it’s journaling or whatever, but really think about where things are out of balance and what you need to do about it.

It’s as simple as that,

Nicola: I love that. I love that. And where can our audience find out more about you and the work that you do, helping people around resilience, burnout.

Amy: Well, I hang out mainly on LinkedIn. So Amy Wilkinson coach on LinkedIn. Um, I also have an Instagram account where I share a little bit more about my personal life as well.

So yeah, I would say high in either

Nicola: of those places and your podcast is, oh, yes. I forgot to

Amy: mention. I’m not remembering to mention, so yeah, I have a podcast called the overfeed sake podcast.

Nicola: So good. So good [00:47:00] though. Thank you so much for Dale. Thank you for sharing such personal story and that’s it for today.

So if you, uh, hopefully you’ve got some really useful insights out of state. If this is something you’re struggling with, do speak to Amy, or if you’re looking for someone to work with women at the top, your organization or women that are aspiring to be leaders, all my contact details, all the show notes.

So thanks so much and we will speak to.

Amy: Bye

Nicola: If what I talk about really resonates with you and you love what I have to say, and you have moments and flashes of inspiration from the podcast, I would invite you to get in touch, to find out how I can help you. So individually, that can be through my coaching focused. For my VIP program, depending on how you like to learn and what will suit you, or I can help you in your organization to really help the women that you work with [00:48:00] across the organization at all different levels.

And at that very senior level to really feel empowered and to know that they can reach the very, the most senior levels in that organization and to give them the. In who they are and the clarity, what they want to be able to get there. And we do that through workshops, do that through leadership programs, and we can do that.

Free consulting work. If you are looking for help with any of that, drop me an email nycla@nicholasschoolco.com, the spelling, not the easiest. So all the details were in the show notes results I get for clients. Clients have been promoted twice in the six months we’ve worked together. They’d been invited to join the board.

They’ve gone from redundancy to being offered three dreams. They’ve gone from being pushed out of an organization to going into bigger organization and a bigger role with a bigger pay rise and just a quote from a client that particular. I’ve gone from the pit of despair. When I started working with Nick to just being really happy and she is an incredibly empowered leader.

Now, if you’re not quite ready for that, you can download my overwhelm to [00:49:00] on fire guide the details that are in the show notes, but that really helps you everyday to stay in your fire. So it helps you to clear your head. It helps you to come back to what’s important to you, and it helps you to have that most impact and influence every single day.

It’s a little Quip sheet that you can just go through and tick. So go and download that. Or you can subscribe to my newsletter, which comes out every Friday, which is a Roundup of the week. Really? So what’s going on in my world. What’s the blog for that week, a quick video, that’s going to help your particular subject.

And it’s all about helping female leaders to find their fire and also stats and any research from the industry as well. And things that I’m reading the. Um, recommendations that we’re making. So go and subscribe to that. And finally, for the podcast, if you haven’t done so already, I would love you to go and leave us a review and subscribe so that you never miss an episode.

And you’re always going to have the one that release and doing that as well. Not only helps you, but it also means that we’re going to reach more [00:50:00] women and we’re going to be able to start that revolution to helping female leaders, to keep that fire, find their fire and keep it. Keep that passion, that purpose side excitement.

So if you haven’t done that already, please go and do that. Thank you.