Speaker 1 (00:00):

[inaudible]

Speaker 2 (00:13):

Hey, welcome to female leaders on fire. I am your host. I am Nicola Buckley, and it’s my mission to help female leaders, female, senior leaders in the corporate. I’ll help them to find that fire, that passion, that purpose sakes, excitement, so that they can have more impact, more influence and income as a result. So today I’m talking about jet, I think is really

Speaker 3 (00:37):

Fundamental to being a female leader, uh, with the impact and influence you on, but without neglecting family time, without compromising who you are without putting yourself at the bottom of the priority list. So today I’m going to be talking all about the balanced lie and myth for female leaders and why it’s not actually a real thing. And I’m going to be talking about choices and seasons of your life. And we talking about an alternative view that is actually a different way of looking at balance. And I’m also going to be talking about how we can ask better questions as female leaders. I’m going to talk about roles versus soul, which absolutely love, uh, was something inspired by Glennon Doyle. And then I’m going to be talking about how you can start to create a feel like you have more balance. So why does it feel, why is this such an important subject and why did I want to talk about it today?

Speaker 3 (01:34):

I actually did a poll over on LinkedIn and I asked for just votes on four different areas. I wanted to talk about at some point and have female leaders having that balance and having that, that home and that work-life balance was the one that actually came out on top. So it’s the one that I think is on the minds of so many female leaders. How do you have that balance? How do you have that home life that you love, that you can relax in, that you can have the lifestyle that you want to in the time that you want your family to really enjoy? How can you have that once you also have the incredible career that you deserve and you can continue to grow that. Um, and the biggest message that I wanted to take out today is really the idea of pilots or senior female leaders is a lie.

Speaker 3 (02:21):

It’s a myth. And it’s actually misleading to talk about in that way, the idea that we can have it all and nothing less than that is failure. Um, Rudy creates this myth that we need to be superwoman to create this perfect balance. Um, reality is there’s no such thing as balance. It’s a lie and a myth. Instead, there are times of our life, there are seasons of our lives, the ebbs and flows. So my invitation, she stays to take off the superwoman Cape and to really sit down with, look up and listen in and think about your balance and what it means to you. So let’s start at the beginning with what does work life balance actually mean? Work life balance means having, having that sense that you’re in control and having that sense that you can spend that time at home, in the lifestyle with your family, that you love in the way that you want.

Speaker 3 (03:11):

Yeah. And you can do that in a way where you don’t feel under pressure where you don’t feel anxious about what’s going on at work. Um, and that you can also pick times into your passions and your hobbies spend time with the people that you love, but also have this great career. Also have that feeling of being on fire. Also love getting up for work in the morning, and that definition is great. But actually for me, big message. I want you to take out today, which is what I work my clients on. It’s about choices. It’s about choosing what you want your balance to be it’s about seasons of your life and what are your priorities, your focus, because in that moment and that idea of balance, I don’t actually like that idea because I, that word balance makes me think, think about scales and having to be equal and work and home perfectly counseling each other out and balancing in this way.

Speaker 3 (04:03):

So they’re perfectly even, whereas life isn’t really like that. And I think that also puts pressure on women, be the superwoman of doing everything, being everything to everyone at work and at home. So today I’m really invite you to take your superwoman Cape off. Think about the seasons of your life and think about the choices that you want to make. Um, is a really a great quote from Jack Welch, which says, um, there’s no such thing as a work-life balance. There are work life choices and you make them, and they have consequences. They have reasons, and they have an impact on you. So it’s about consciously deciding rather than just this sense that you have to balance out there equally proportional. They have to cancel each other out. Let’s think about this in a different way. Let’s think of an alternative view because yeah, if you take that word balance, it’s meaning that even distribution of weight, enabling someone or something to remain optimal, upright, and steady, and they offset, or you can compare the value of one thing with another.

Speaker 3 (05:03):

And that is where it gets confusing. I think that’s where this, this lie comes from. So when I talk about what life balance I want to think, I would really love you to think about an alternative view. I really hope this inspires you to think about it in a different way and think about instead making a choice. So what I like to, what I love to talk to my clients about is what is the season of their life right now is the season of your life. That you’re incredibly focused on your career and games to the next level. Is it that you’ve just got married and you want to focus on your relationship? Is it that you’ve just moved house? And actually you want to, it’s a renovation and a project you really want to give time to, is it that your you’ve just become a mum or your children are about to leave home and you’re about to have an empty nest.

Speaker 3 (05:50):

So what is the season of your life right now? And how does it feel for you and what does balance to you feel like within that and what a better questions that you can ask to help you get that? Because like we said, balance is not a particularly out helpful word, that idea, that career and home weigh the same at any time, because life isn’t like that. Life is messy. Life is not nice and neat. We can’t just put it in a box. It can’t just be all tied up with a bow. It won’t just be balanced and equalize it’s ups and downs. It’s absent flows is awful one day amazing the next. And it’s just how life is. It’s not about everything having to be nice and neat and tied up with a bow and anything less than a failure. We’ll have this great leadership role that we have at work and with flying along and feeling on fire.

Speaker 3 (06:40):

And then we also come home and the house is tidy and the children are happy. The dog is walked. Like I said, this isn’t about stop, leave behind that assumption that you need to be superwoman and you need to be everything to everyone and actually embrace this idea that actually life is a bit messy. Life can have ups and downs and that’s all, okay. That’s perfectly natural. That’s perfectly normal and less think of an alternative word instead of balance. So some clients talk about feeling in, it feels good for them to feel in control, or it feels good for them to be on the front foot, or it feels good for them to be building right now or focus on themselves. And like I said, think about what is your season of your life right now? How does it feel for you? Um, and just have a different perception.

Speaker 3 (07:30):

So when we look at it, when we talk about work-life balance to me, the truth is that it’s actually a lie. It’s actually a myth. It’s actually something that we benchmark ourselves gangster. Isn’t even real. It’s not a thing to achieve. And I’m not saying you can’t have it all, but not in the way that you think, not in exhausting yourself in every single role that you have, but thinking of your seasons of your life and then making choices of the back of that. And you can have your life. So your family, your home and the passions and things you love doing and the career, but it’s all about making those choices. And I’ve got this brilliant quote that I love Glennon Doyle when she talks about, I’m not a mess, but a deeply feeling person in a messy world. I explain it now when someone asks me why I cry.

Speaker 3 (08:18):

So often I say for the same reason, I laugh so often because I’m paying attention. And I, I tell them, yeah, we choose to be perfect and to be admired or to be real and loved. And we must decide, um, what that quote sums up for me. And I love the eloquence of her words and the stories that she tells to bring to life. This idea of women are untamed and we should feel untamed and we should be able to, we should come back to and look what we want and what our desires are. Um, for me, a lot of that is about living truly and deeply, deeply, and consciously, and not just creating a list, a life that is a tick list of I’ve got the great relationship. I’ve got the lifestyle, I’ve got this beautiful family that I love. I’ve got this house, this renovation project.

Speaker 3 (09:05):

That is my dream house. Then at work, I’ve got this great career. I’ve got this job title and salary that goes with it. But the pressure that goes to that, and it stepping beyond that checklist life and is stepping into who am I? What do I want for my life right now? And really it’s, it’s not about work. And home being separate work is a really important part of our lives. But then so is our home life. And for me, I, what I love helping my clients do is find their fire. So do something to find their fire, what they’re already doing, or do something that fills you up that makes you heart sing, but it isn’t the only thing in your life. So what this comes back to and something that I really wanted to talk about again, this is something inspired by Glennon.

Speaker 3 (09:51):

Doyle is where she talks about life balance, being in the choices that you make and to find the balance that works for you. And when she talks about this, she talks about making choices. And she talks about, think about not just all the roles that you have in your life. So that might be that you’re a colleague, you’re a boss, you’re a director of a business, and you’re a leader at work. It might be that you’re a partner at home. It might be that you are a daughter, a sister or a relative. It might be that you’re a mum to your children. You might also be a dog mum, potent role. Definitely. It’s also your role of being a friend for your closest people, to you, and also your relationship with yourself. So all those roles in life takes time. They take love, they take energy and it can be all too easy to spend your time just trying to be everything to everyone within those roles.

Speaker 3 (10:47):

And part of finding your balance is also about not just fulfilling those roles, but also thinking about having time for your sock soul. Because what I meant, what I mean by the essence, I just see many women hide behind their roles. So almost they’re thinking of their life in terms of those roles I’ve just mentioned. So it might be the role at work, their role at home. And they’re thinking about what do they need to do to be themselves in that role? And they almost hide behind it. They almost hide who they are behind it. They hide making themselves a priority. They hide their, their fire, their dreams, what they really want behind those roles. Whereas actually the work that I do, my clients is very much to go behind those roles, go back to the heart, go back to their soul, get super laser focused, clear on who they are.

Speaker 3 (11:36):

And then really from that flows so easily what they actually want and what it means for them. So the big messages I want you to think about today. So first thing is that work-life balance is a lie. Balance is not a helpful word. So think about your, think about your, think also about the roles that you have within life and the choices you can make. Think about the seasons of your life. So what do I mean by seasons of your life? So very focused on your career right now, are you very focused on being a mum, all you very focused on actually slowing your life down. So what, what season of your life are you in? And then what does that mean for the choices that you make, about how you spend your time, your love and your energy. And if you think of those roles that we’ve just talked about, that’s a lot to balance out and they’re all importancy because they, they make up your life and they are part of you and they’re part of your identity.

Speaker 3 (12:35):

And you want to give those roles, the respect they need, but also you need to find your balance within that. So Robin, just thinking about roles, thinking about your soul. So what do I mean when I say, think about yourself, so what’s in your heart, what do you love doing? Do you feel like you’re missing out on at the moment? What do you feel like you’ve given up? What do you feel like you’ve not made time for? What is something that you always drawn to that you don’t really have time you haven’t committed time, see what your passions G love. And this is a huge part of the final fire process. All my clients go through, but you can start it right now. You can start it in some super simple ways by looking at what you have and starting to really just create the life that you want to.

Speaker 3 (13:18):

So how do you start to find your balance? How do you start to find what feels right for you? How do you take that superwoman Cape off and start to really just create the life that you love? Yeah. Without that sacrifice or neglect or compromise. So point number one, and this is what I help my clients do at the very beginning. When they first started working with me, it’s helping them to find that balance. So what is your balance? What does it mean to you create a definition of balance. How do you spend your time when you feel balanced? What does it, how do you, who are you within it when you feel more balanced? So when women first come and start working with me after we’ve set our goal for our coaching together, the very first part of our focus, especially for my longer-term VIP clients, is helping make the day-to-day better.

Speaker 3 (14:08):

Um, and that might not sound like a lot, but actually yeah, for all of my clients is incredibly powerful because if they don’t have the time, the energy and the focus to really give to the work deeper work that they’re doing, the work’s not going to have the impact that it deserves. So it’s really about honoring their investment of the money that they’ve invested with that time and energy. So a big part of that is helping at the beginning, meaning finding that balance. So that’s very much about setting boundaries. That’s about helping them to say no. That’s about helping them to see where they’re giving too much. It’s about helping to identify where their energy is drained by something or someone or where energy is lifted by something or someone. So it’s very much at the beginning, that first session, when we go through their diary, we go through their commitments.

Speaker 3 (14:59):

We look at work, we look at home, how do they balance across each other, but also within work? How much are they giving away at work? Where are they doing things that are outside their responsibility? What things just drain their energy, what excites them and how do we balance that out across their diary and also setting boundaries. So it starts home for work and end time for work working weekends or not working weekends and just being super clear on what balance actually looks like. So that’s point number one point number two is to think about your season. So what season of life you, and I’ve mentioned this a few times today, but think of season is almost, um, and this is something Denise Duffield-Thomas talks about, which I absolutely love. It might be that you’re early on in a new job and you’re just really focused on your career.

Speaker 3 (15:48):

So what does that mean for your balance? What does that mean for your diary? What does that mean for your lifestyle and be really clear on that and make the decisions to fulfill that and to honor that, or if you’re a mum whose children are going through a lot, they might be going through exams. For example, it might that you want to be more of a mum at home and that’s okay. It’s just, it’s a season of your life. But the biggest thing here, if you take the milk and knowledge is just being able to label that season of your life, to be able to set your diary and set your lifestyle around it, you’re creating prediction response. So you’re creating that understanding. So you’re not having to make decisions on the fly that feel uncomfortable. You’re not having to decide in that moment, whether something’s a yes or no, you already clearly know.

Speaker 3 (16:36):

So for example, if you’re already very busy at work, but actually your focus is more at home at the moment. It’s okay to say no, it’s okay to be clear that there’s no more room. It’s okay to say, to take on anything else, something else needs to stop. So it’s just really important to think about the season of your life. So for example, I’ve had clients that have been through a relationship breakdowns and the season, their life they’ve worked with me for is coming out of that and reaffirming their identity as themselves. But also what does that mean for their career? What does that mean for them as a female leader? How do they re-establish themselves after being in a relationship for a long time as themselves? Um, so that would be an example of a season. So think about the season of your life.

Speaker 3 (17:18):

Think about how that reflects in your diary, think about how that reflects in your lifestyle and what choices does it mean that you actually make right here right now, point number three is a massively important one. And I think we downplay the impact of looking at your diary. But when you look at your diary, does it reflect that season of your life? Does it reflect, does it lift your energy and get you excited about the things that you have in your week or does it actually drain you and you just dread the week ahead. So use your diary to really reflect the season of your life. So does that mean more family time? Does that mean be very clear about working hours? Does that mean that actually you’re in the middle of a launch? Like I would used to be, which meant for a couple of weeks.

Speaker 3 (18:00):

I’m just, I’m very focused on work. Therefore I would need that support at home. Therefore I’d probably get food pre preps, so I can just go home and just eat something and nourishing quickly. So your diary, reflecting the lifestyle, um, and the season of your life. And it’s just such an important thing. And I think it was Robin Sharma says you can’t have a life that you love without a diary that you love and something that often gets overlooked. And again, I work with my clients on this at the very beginning. How does your work, when you look at your diary for the week or for the month, how does it feel? Do you get excited and, you know, pinch me moments and giddy hearted, or does it drain you and you dread it and you just want to, you just don’t want to get out of bed in the morning, cause it’s with you to really shape that it’s we’ve you to really own.

Speaker 3 (18:50):

It is again, it’s another huge reflection of your value and your worth. So when I’ve worked with clients on this, um, a client recently, when we looked at her work diary, for example, and the number one to one she was doing when we kind of reframed it, when she realized that some of those people weren’t really at the level to need a once one, but could, you could just have a weekly report on the big project she needed to be aware of. She saved five hours a week and in those five hours a week, best part of the day, she could do the strategy work that she loved and that she was actually, that was the focus of her job. So think about your diary, think about it, reflecting, really reflecting the season of your life on your lifestyle, and then set that in place.

Speaker 3 (19:32):

Other things that you can do is if you’re feeling overwhelmed, like there’s too much, and you’re struggling with that balance, just think of the things that you can take out and you can, it’s not for now. It’s not forever. It’s just for now. So what are the things that might go later into the year? What are the things that might need to wait until next year? So for example, had a client who had recently gone through a relationship breakdown. Um, she was a mum. She had a big role as well. So as she was going through that, she wanted to change her house to kind of feel like her own after a separation. And she wants to do this big renovation project. Um, but actually for her, when we looked at it and we broke it down, she wanted to get into pattern. She wants to get into routine season of her life was focusing on being great in her job, but also supporting her children through this change.

Speaker 3 (20:16):

So that renovation project in the house, reading like hers and making some changes that just went into the next year and that just took it off her mind and took some pressure off her because it wasn’t something she needed to think about there. And then, so look at your diary, 0.4 is get organized. So with balance creating balance, where do you need some support? Where do you need some support on how so is it that you need a bit more help at home? So is it the, actually it would be brilliant to get some meals perhaps. And, and would it be great to have some help getting a personal trainer, for example, to focus on your health more and be accountable. So where do you need to really get organized? And are there any simple ways that you can make life easier for yourself? So can you automate any bills?

Speaker 3 (21:01):

Can you set up some direct debits? Can you go through and check payments that are coming out and make sure everything is just as it should be? And there’s not anything you’re paying for that you shouldn’t be. Um, and that’s something that I do every quarter with my business, but I also do have home my home accounts as well, just to go through and look at everything that I’m spending and make sure that everything’s right. And as it should be, I’m ready to get myself organized and make it as simple as possible. So for example, with my teams setting up automatic payments and just making sure that I’m feeling like I don’t need to think about those things. So getting really organized, we also have a cleaner that comes in every couple of weeks. So day-to-day, we’re fine have some pretty tidy, but we do have dogs that like to walk in everything and go to the beach quite often, I’d come home and just lie everywhere before we even let them.

Speaker 3 (21:51):

So that’s just someone that comes in and she’s just, she’s brilliant at just making the house look great and doing like a proper deep clean, and I had to get past my own shame that I couldn’t do everything or that I should be asking my partner to do more. We both have busy careers. We both have careers where we want to be able to have a house that we can relax in rather than just seeing all the things that we haven’t done. And just that every other week really helps to have that, that just knowing that the house is going to be completely clean top to bottom and someone who does a much, much better job than I could ever do. Anyway, something else that I’ve done in really busy times as well is order meals. So pre prep meals just had them in the freezer or had them in the fridge ready to go.

Speaker 3 (22:33):

So just think about how you can get yourself organized and how you can support yourself with creating the balance based on the season of your life. And the final point is an interesting one, but it’s just this really think about how can you be more in the moment and how can you trust more? So essentially what that equates to is how can you let go of control? How can you really know that you don’t need to do everything you don’t need to know the next step of everything in your life. You don’t need to have every single answer, but what would help you to be more in the moment and to trust more, to know that actually once you get really clear on what you want and you make that intention clear to the universe, that the universe helps you, the universe brings you to things or to people or to situations or to scenarios.

Speaker 3 (23:18):

And this might be a little bit where for some, but we’ll talk more about focusing, getting super clear on what you want in another episode, but how can you be more in the moment and trust more and just let, let go of control a little bit more. And if you’re more organized, for example, is a, is that going to help you to be more in the moment and trust more? So that’s everything that I wanted to talk about today. So really the summary from today is the, the idea of a work-life balance is it’s a lie. It’s a myth. It’s something that we feel that we need to do everything and be everything to everyone to have it all, and to have a life, it feels like it’s on fire, but instead what I help my clients do. And what I would really invite you to think about is think about the seasons of your life.

Speaker 3 (24:02):

Think about the choices then for your diary, for your lifestyle, for the help that you need, and to get organized and to really take that season of your life and make it a reality in your diary. And also just to be in the moment more and to organize things in the background so that you can just trust and you can just let things flow rather than needing to make everything happen. And it all being with you and feeding that pressure. So that’s, if, to say I’d love to know what you think, if you are feeling like you just have too much on you’re feeling overwhelmed at the moment, trying to create that balance. Um, you can download my free guide to going from feeling overwhelmed, feeling on fire. So it’s going to help you to really clear your hat, um, so that you can start to find your balance. Um, and if you’re interested in working with me, um, drop me an email. All the details are in the show notes, the different ways that you can work with me. And, um, I really look

Speaker 2 (24:58):

Forward to beacon cheer next week, where we’re going to be focused on overthinking and how female leaders can really get stuck. [inaudible].