Nicola: [00:00:00] hello. Welcome to the female leaders on fire. I am your host. I’m Nicola Buckley. I am the coach working with women at the very top of organizations and aspiring future. To help them to find their fire. So that passion, that purpose, that excitement, so that they can have more impact, more influence and income as a result and be a real force for good driving change, much needed change in corporate organizations.

So today I’m super excited about the episode and what I’m going to be talking about. And it’s all about prioritizing your self as a female leader. So I’m going to talk in about what it means and why it’s a problem. I’m going to be talking about some incredible stats that I found that go into a lot of detail about how women.[00:01:00]

Tend to self, self sacrifice and put themselves last I’m then going to talk about how this affects women at the top. I’m going to talk about how to just reframe and change the story. And I’m finally going to give you some hints and tips to get started. So you might want to get a pen. You might want to get a journal, grab yourself a cup of tea and just, yeah.

Get ready for, um, just something that I think really, really help you. And this episode came about really just through. Working with an incredible lady, a new client who is on the way to let’s just say a milestone birthday. And for her, she just didn’t want to keep having the life where she didn’t know who she was.

And our mission brief, if you like for working together is really, I want to know who I am right now. I want to know me as I am right here right now. And out of that, I want to know what I want. And this incredible [00:02:00] lady is a mum. She’s, we’ll say apart there, she’s also got an incredibly senior job in an organization and she’s also a friend and a daughter, and she gives a lot to those different roles in her life.

And she’d also given so much at work for so long. And taken on more because she was so incredibly productive and incredibly successful that she would just be given more responsibility, more to do more of a remit that actually she had just lost herself in her work. And she had lost that sense of who she was.

And when she wasn’t in work, given that everything that she had, she was at home being a mom. She was at home being appalled. She was there for her mum. She was there for her friends, but nowhere in all of this, that she’d been there for herself. And it was almost this sense of self sacrifice and almost martyrdom that she’d let herself work on weekends.

She’d let herself work in the bangs, [00:03:00] let herself respond to emails that the weekend. Not even when it was emergency, just because that’s how people are dictated that she worked. And she had completely lost herself in prioritizing work and prioritizing everyone else first. And that client just really is inspired me because her journey has been incredible.

And hopefully we could come on and share her story at some point soon because she’s just started to really turn those things around. She started to prioritize what she needed. She started to say, no, she started to set boundaries on the difference in her energy and the difference in her vision and the realization of the impact you can have.

It’s just like night and day. It’s just incredible. So it really inspired me to come on today and just share an episode. Yeah. The importance and the ways that you can precise yourself as a female leader. And the other reason that this was really important to me, something that I’ve really struggled with is prioritizing myself.[00:04:00]

And before I changed my business in the middle of last year, I was giving so much to my clients. I was working evenings. I was working some weekends. I always felt like this is how I marketed my business. I felt like I always had to be online. I could never really switch off. And it was just incredibly anxiety and juicy.

I just constantly felt under pressure. I felt like no matter what I did, it was never enough. And even though I had this successful coaching business, a six-figure business, I didn’t feel excited about it. I felt it was heavy. I felt like it was a chain that I wore around my neck. And that was with me because I.

To become that. But also as part of that, I wasn’t prioritizing myself. I wasn’t prioritizing what I loved and that meant I was tired. I felt anxious. I was easily triggered. I could easily just get caught up in work and not eat any lunch. And it would be four o’clock. So. That’s the other reason is because I think my experiences over the last few months, I’m really starting to [00:05:00] prioritize myself and I’ve changed my business to enable that.

And then this incredible client journey, it’s just really inspired me stay to share this. This is super GC app sewed. I think you’re going to get a huge amount from it. And just as a reminder, as I say, in all my episodes, this is no judgment. If you’re someone that at the moment, you’re at the bottom of your own priority list, this is no judgment on you.

Be open, be curious. And just if this resonates with you, reach out and ask for help, or just take some of the different hints and tips that I’m going to share at the end and just start to implement one or two. I just start to make some small changes. You’re not going to change a habit of a lifetime in a, in a podcast episodes.

What does, I’m great at what I do. So take that pressure off. Just be open, curious, no need to judge yourself would be harder on yourself wherever you are in this journey. Right? So the first thing I want to share was just a story of a client from a long time ago. When I first started coaching and I had my gym business, I’ll tell you all about one day.

So I ran a gym in a rugby club and ended up being really [00:06:00] successful. I had incredible clients that I loved working with and. I also started coaching. So I studied neuroscience for six years. I’m a mind master with, uh, one of the world’s leading coaches called Dax Maui and that program. And that, that methodology is really all about understanding neuroscience of change.

So that really inspired me. So I bought coaching into my gym business with I’ll be honest, mixed results because. It just didn’t necessarily have I was trying to put it into something that already existed and already worked. That’s a story for another day. So I was coaching this one particular client and this lady was absolutely brilliant lady.

She came to the studio and she gave her all, and she had two small children. She had a busy job in London and she was a wife and she was a daughter and she was a friend. And she had all these different roles. So when we first started coaching, we talked about what she wanted to get from the coaching. And she, she said, I want to [00:07:00] understand myself and know who I am now.

So that was great. But one of the first exercise we went through was just for her. To write down the priority of where she sat in the priority of her life. So we then went through and we did a coaching kind of session around this, and it was really quite stark. So in terms of the priority of her life, it was first of all, it was her children that it was her husband.

Then it was her work. Then it was her house. Then it was her family. Then it was the cats. So as she was saying this to me, when she got to the point where she said the cat and she still hadn’t mentioned her own name, and then she said her name, eventually I just reflected back to her that I was actually, you’ve picked yourself as a low priority than your cat.

This is a cat that just needs to be fed and it’s really independent and it can go out and it can, it can survive and it will be fine. And it would just give you what it wants when it wants, but you’ve [00:08:00] put eight things above you. You’re literally at the bottom of your priority list. There’s nowhere further this for you to go for you to fall.

When I said that and I replayed that back to him and helped her reflect on it, it was something that had happened over time and it was something where she had just got into this habit of everything else coming first, she. Really set the Brahm and serve her life and how successful it was by what was going on in work.

And had she got the promotion, how she got the pay rise and what was the priority? What was the barometer of her life? And then when she got home, she was there for her children. She was a really present mum, but it meant that she was all in on everything and she had nothing left for herself. And the biggest thing I would say to start with, it’s just a huge, huge lesson.

Yeah. The I’ve learned and all my clients I share with my clients as well. If you’re trying to be everything to everyone, you’re trying to be a great and present mom. You’re trying to be this really supportive partner. You’re trying to be in my case, a [00:09:00] great dog mum, if you’re trying to be a really ever-present daughter, a friend, and if you’re trying to do that, and you’re trying to have trying to give everything at work.

There’s just nowhere in that that’s left. So you, if you’re trying to be everything to everyone, you’ll end up being nothing to no one, because you’ll be burnt out because you’ll be exhausted because you’ll be resentful because you’ll be frustrated because you’ll be so you’ve forgotten yourself for such a long time.

That you’ve lost connection to who you are. You’ve lost connection to what you love. You’ve lost connection to what makes you an incredible leader. So at work, when you get to that point at work, you’re going to feel frustrated. You’re going to compare yourself. You’re going to feel jealous that people are moving ahead of you.

You’re going to feel unheard and unappreciated because you’re just in that really negative mindset. And then at home, you’re just going to feel resentful. You’re just going to feel like screaming inside because just, no one’s asking you how you are and how your day is, and no one’s offering to support you [00:10:00] misses you at the moment.

Just think of it like this. It’s almost that it’s this scale. So it starts with kind of a lack of prioritizing yourself a lack of self care, then it’s really self-sacrificing. So even if you know what you want, you’re not letting yourself have that. And then find this into almost kind of martyrdom you’re into almost like a bonding your needs because everyone else comes first.

So just have a think about where you might sit on that scale at the moment and how you can start to shift yourself up and I’ll give you some, um, I’ll give you some help with that. So I found an incredible survey. I’d like to share some stats with you just around this. Ready. Um, and this was from an American survey that took place it’s called the self nurture survey.

And it was part of the time limited take times for yourself public awareness campaign. So this is a huge campaign, this telephone survey of over a thousand women, and it revealed some quite stark statistics. So for example, [00:11:00] 80% of the women that were spoken to admitted that doing something for themselves would help them to feel relaxed and refresh.

So that might be a bar that might be doing something you love might be taking a walk. Yeah. On the alarmingly, a third, the women’s survey spent 30 minutes of. A day doing these nurturing activities, just for themselves doing something that was solely for them. And in contrast to that, 76% of women spent up to 10 hours, daily, caring for partners, husbands, or children, and one in five spent more than 10 hours a day, caring for others.

So, if you look at that time difference, 30 minutes or less versus the 10 hours, that’s just absolutely huge. And whereas at any time in the day, apart from then to sleep apart from just to the very basics of life, rather than the things that help you to feel fulfilled and nurture survey also revealed that married women have less time for self care.

So. [00:12:00] Women that were married more than twice. As I say, they have less than 10 minutes a day to spend on themselves compared to single women. It’s not an indictment on marriage. It’s just a statistic that came out. Kids take up a lot of time, not surprisingly women with children. Alarmingly less time for self care.

So only 8% of mothers with one child say they find the time to spend 60 minutes throughout the day to care for themselves. And if that child was a really young child, that figure dropped to 4% and one out of four women with a single child admitted that they have less than 10 minutes day to calf, their own needs.

It’s just incredible. Again, just everyone else coming from. And one of every five women’s survey, 20% admitted. If they took even an hour off to do something to themselves, they would feel selfish. They would feel guilty, or they would feel anxious that had settled and married women were more likely to feel selfish.[00:13:00]

And when asked about the opposites, stopping, caring for themselves, It was really around that, those feelings, those feelings of fit, being selfish, feeling guilty and feeling like I don’t have the time feeling under pressure and the really striking thing that came out for me out of the survey and just out of the findings that so many, women’s such a high percentage of women admit that they take relatively little time to nurture themselves, but they know at the heart, they know that they would be healthier.

They know that they would be happier. They know to have a longer. And they know that they have more impact work. And just as that contrast between what they know they should do and between what they actually feel that they can do. So that was absolutely huge. I’ll pop the link in the show notes to that survey because it was really, really impactful and just such a.

Just so stark in terms of some of the, some of the findings. So if we dig into now, what I’d love to dig into now is almost where does this all stem from? [00:14:00] Where does this everyone else coming first stem from? So this is where I’m going to refer you to the incredible Glennon Doyle and her book. Untamed. If you haven’t read it, go away and read it, or just have a look at some, some of the findings from it.

And just some of the things that. The says, and she covers it now. And that’s really just around women. Self-sacrificing women have in this example, the hole in their childhood that everyone else needs to come first. And that actually this, this selflessness, this idea of abandoning yourself and what you need.

And this martyrdom to the point of martyrdom and just forgetting who you are, treating yourself as afterthought, that that’s love. That’s how did high esteem, it’s a compliment for women to be called selfless. It’s a compliment for women to be told that they think of everyone else first. You’re so kind.

You’re so caring. But what this leads to this, this framework. And I know for me, my example [00:15:00] growing up was my mum. My mum shows fluffery food, so she would always be cooking to the capitalist. She would always have someone there for dinner. She’d always be sewing our clothes. She would also, she would just be dropping us off, picking us up.

And my mom actually stopped work for the first four years of my life. And when my brother was young so that she could be a stay at home mum and they sacrificed a lot to do that. So, I’m not saying that’s right or wrong. I’m not here to comment on your situation at home, but that was my example. That was my framework of how, what a good woman should do.

And I love this quote from Glenn and Doyle that really, and I love how she really challenged that convention of women needs to be selfless. We need to, we applaud women that everyone else first, and they sacrifice their own needs. And it’s no surprise that as women we’re conditioned to put everyone else’s need before.

So it means our, what we want and what we need. Our self-care just takes a back seat to just about everything. And it go back to that statement. I [00:16:00] started a podcast with, if you’re trying to be everything to everyone, you’ll end up being nothing to no one. And it’s, it goes back to the idea. As women, we are really accepting that it implies selfish listeners equals love.

And the more that we give to others, the more would be acknowledged more would be appreciated. The more we’ll be loved in return. And this isn’t true. This is bullshit. This is a fallacy and women have been sacrificing their own needs for generations. And we want to please others, and we want to support other people.

And we want to give so much for south, but it’s a dangerous, it’s a dangerous slippery state because in doing that, we leave nothing left for ourselves and it can mean that you lose yourself in the roles and who you are. You can lose yourself in the barometer of a good day at work, being a positive on a bad day at work.

It just leaves you exhausted and feeling negative. And this is catched really Glennon, Doyle, this fantastic quote from her and [00:17:00] just really explains this outcome of women often abandoning themselves in marriage and motherhood and work, and just really negating their own needs. I’ve seen it. What happened?

Out in the world and inside a relationship when women stay numb, obedient and small selfless women make for an efficient society, but not a beautiful, true, or just one. When women lose themselves, the world loses its way. And I would really recommend that you go away and you have read of some of the things that Glenn indoors rest about in relation to this.

What does this mean? What, how does this affect women at the top and how does it affect that? Impact and that influence. So women that are not prioritizing themselves, women at the top that put everyone else first, it might mean that lacking in energy, you know, that tired, that bone tired, that you just don’t know how you’re going to get through the day.

You look at your diary and your heart sings, the email’s already piling up. You just don’t have the energy to tackle it. All the normal stuff and your job, plus the extra energy and determination drive that you [00:18:00] need as a woman at the top as well, to get past those, the unconscious bias to get past the boys’ network.

I’m really challenge it. It might be that you’re sometimes snappy. It might be that sometimes you’re just reacting rather than responding, because you’re so tired because you’re so drained because everyone else comes first. It might be that you’re less decisive. You’re less impactful in your decisions.

And sometimes you don’t speak up because everyone else comes first because you’re lacking in that energy and that drive. And just because you’re not prioritizing yourself, who am I to speak in this meeting? I can’t speak over other people that would be rude, but actually the men are doing it. Why you not doing it?

Why aren’t not making your voice heard and the prioritizing yourself as well might make you seem like you’re lacking in confidence. You might defer to your team too often, but you might ask your peers for that perspective. It might just make you seem less of a influential, impactful leader. And again, don’t take this as a criticism.

It’s [00:19:00] just what I see from working with my clients and never part this. If you’re giving more and more of, you’re just not prioritizing yourself and you give more and more to your. And what becomes, where that priority in a barometer of a good life just means you become almost invisible. You’re the one responding to emails that we can, you’re the one going into meeting that you don’t really need to be in.

You’re the one that’s just doing extra work, just so that you can raise your profile so that you can be seen so that you feel visible. Yeah. Ironically, when you do that, you become more invisible. And if you want to go back to my podcast, settled on self promotion, that will just help with that visibility in a way that’s sustainable.

So I’ve really invite you here to change your story. We need to break this model. We need to be the drivers of change. We need to change the cycle here of women, just having this idea that selflessness and self-sacrifice a martyrdom is going to help us to feel more appreciated, more accepted, more loved, because it’s just not true.[00:20:00]

It’s actually the opposite. And if we think about where that leads us in the relationship herself, when I’ve, when I’ve really abandoned myself and I’ve, I’ve got some point of martyrdom, I’ve hated myself. I didn’t like what I saw in the mirror. I didn’t like the fact that I’d taken no care of myself. I didn’t like the fact that I hadn’t, I hadn’t showered for two days because actually I felt like I was just too busy to spend any time on myself or hadn’t eaten properly.

Or I was binge-eating at times, I just felt like I could grab something quickly is down to our, all of us to change your story and to be a role model for women that a woman at the top that’s prioritizing herself and be an incredible role model. So changing the story. So what can we change it? How can we reframe this?

Prioritizing yourself? So the first thing is to just challenge the word selfish. It’s not a bad thing. It’s not that you’re a bad person. It doesn’t make. A bad leader to be a little bit selfish at this [00:21:00] word. Selfish has got such negative connotations, especially for women. There’s nothing more to stay civil society than a selfish woman, but actually selfish.

It’s not bad to be selfish. It’s essential, it’s needed. It’s just something that’s needed within this world as a change that is so needed. The second way to reframe and change your story. Just think, what example do you want to set your children and those around you and your loved ones? Do you want to set an example of a woman it’s burnt out frustrated and unfulfilled or of a woman that’s full of love and happiness and doing things she’s passionate about.

Just really think about what you want to role model to your team and your peers and your juniors. What sort of leader do you want? And this isn’t about abandoning work. It’s not about giving up. It’s not about that tool. It’s about what you want to role model and also change your story. That it’s all or nothing that you can either be processing yourself or everyone else.

And it’s just one or the other. It’s not, it’s actually [00:22:00] about the small check-ins, it’s about taking some time to do things that you love. It’s about bumping yourself up the priority list, especially if you’re at the bottom at the moment. So for example, I’ve recently started a photography course. I’ve talked about doing course the entire time that I’ve known my partner.

He’s got a great camera that used to use for diving, and I’ve just never got round to it. So this year, I just sent them a link to beginners of soccer called, seen, and I’m now on my third week and I absolutely love it. And that’s prioritizing myself. That’s about making something that I, I knew that I love.

I would love just more important. So let’s go through some tips to make yourself to really start to change and start to bump yourself up the priority list. So what are we actually going to do about that? Super simple ones to start with is to really think about where do you sit in the priority of your own life.

So [00:23:00] go through that same exercise I did with my client of just literally listing out the priority of where you sit in your own life. No judgment, not to be hard on yourself, not to be critical, just be honest, be open and think of it like this. When you’re on your plane, what does he say? Prioritize yourself, put your own oxygen mask on first.

It’s the same thing. So think about that priority order and then think about where you want to be in that priority order. Second tip is really around just visualizing, visualizing, picking yourself further up the priority list. And who are you then? How does it feel to be that person it’s more of a priority?

What’s the impact going to be on your work? What sort of role model are you going to be for your team and peers and people that are junior to you? What sort of example I’m going to set for your children step into that energy and just know that actually this is a coat that you’re trying on and you can start to really own it and you can start to put it on and feel good.

So the visualization [00:24:00] number three is really around using your diary and honoring it. So pen, the things that you love doing for yourself, not for others, but honor them. Like you would a meeting with one of your direct reports or honor it, like you would meet up with your best friend. How often do you let those things fall to the side?

Because they, you, how often did you just, not, not only you’re running late for them, but you just abandoned them completely. Pick those things in your diary that helped you to feel good and honor them. Number four kind of building on that as well. Right. I love list. And this is super, super simple, but it’s so powerful just to, you might have over the years, lost those things that you love doing.

I’ve had clients that loved dancing and I’ve loved baking. So I’ve loved reading, but they’ve got themselves so busy that they’ve just not let themselves. Do that they’ve just, it’s just dropped up there to do less. It’s not something that they’ve honored. So write yourself a love less. So this is just a list of things that you love doing for yourself [00:25:00] and write that list and then start to put those things into your diary and honor him in the way that we’ve already talked about.

Number five. Number five is all about your value. So find out what your values are and really aligned to them. So if you’re not prioritizing yourself, it might be that you don’t know what your values are, or you’re not honoring them and not aligning to them. So you’re letting yourself do things that are just not in don’t fit with you and don’t fit.

We all values and they just feel something feels off, something feels wrong, but you don’t know what. So values is something that I go through with all my clients. They are the anchor in who you are. They help you prioritize. They help you create a filter for what’s important view. If you need help with that, do drop me a message.

It’s something that I go through with all of my clients and something that’s just absolutely transformational. And then number six is really. No that it’s okay to say no, no, doesn’t make you a bad person. No, it’s not that it’s, you don’t like someone or you’re doing something bad. It’s just no to that thing in that moment and set boundaries.

[00:26:00] So be really clear on when you finish work, when you start work, how are you going to make sure that you have time for lunch? I’d just pick one of those one or two of those to your toolkit to start with and really go from there. And I, I know for me, I’ve really focused on just I’ve decided I decided years ago to stop abandoning myself and just really to stop sacrificing the things that I love and just thinking I’ll do it later when the businesses here or when I, when I reached this point in my career, and what I want to do now is set an example for my children and for the people that work with me, that it’s more about.

Having a balanced life. It’s more about having a life that I truly love. And that makes me a more inspiring that makes me a more rounded leader. And to now carve out time to do the things that I love and I carve out, I just let go of things that aren’t for me and that’s okay. Or people that aren’t for me.

So. That’s it really, I would love to know what you think [00:27:00] this episode. And I would really love to know what you’re going to do to start prioritizing yourself as a woman at the top and become that incredible role model and set an example for your children and your loved ones of a woman who. At the top of her game, but she’s also prioritizing herself and that’s only gonna make you a more impactful and influential leader.

If you need some help with this, I do have a couple of places at the moment for VIP or coaching focus clients. So do drop me an email. Nicholas Nicholas school code.com. Spelling’s the easiest. So all the details in the show. I look forward to hearing from you.

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 focus. [00:28:00] 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 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’s 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 a bigger organization and a bigger role with a bigger pay rise and just a quote from a client that particularly. I’ve gone from the pit of [00:29:00] 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 overwhelmed 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, helps you to come back to what’s important to you, and it helps you 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, 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 [00:30:00] subscribe so that you never miss an episode.

And you’re always going to have the, when that release and doing that as well. Not only helps you, but it also means that we’re going to reach more women and we’re going to be able to start that revolution to helping female leaders to keep that. Find that fire and keep it. So keep that passion, that purpose side excitement.

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