Confident Conversations is a weekly podcast show for ambitious women about confidently balancing work and life, hosted by me, Sherry Bevan, Author, Coach & Speaker. Because I love having conversations about career and confidence.

This week, I talk to Aleksandra King, Communications Consultant, and better known (this month) as the BBC Apprentice candidate who quit before she was fired. The day after she quit the show, I wrote a post for Birds on the Blog about whether she was right to quit. My take was that she had quit BECAUSE she is strong not because she’s not. And that she recognised the conflict with her core values.

In this conversation with Aleksandra recorded a couple of weeks after she left the show, we discussed how your values affect how you work and who you choose to work with.

We also discussed:

• the friendships she developed in the house
• how it was love at first sight when she met her husband
• how women are so often tough on ourselves and don’t ask for help
• her love of spreadsheets (music to my ears being an Excel geek myself)
• how she balances work and life
• her personal values and how these affect the way she works and who she chooses to work with
• whether or not The Apprentice is intrinsically biased against parents

Aleksandra’s top tip for ambitious women “Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Asking for help doesn’t take anything away from you.” 

GUEST: Aleksandra King
HOSTED BY: Sherry Bevan 

Aleksandra’s website: AleksandraKing.com or connect on Twitter @AleksandraBKing.

Ask your questions or share your feedback

• Comment on the show notes
• Tweet me @SherryRB quoting CC003 #ConfidentConversations
• Email [email protected]

• On Twitter @SherryRB or search #ConfidentConversations
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Confident Conversations is a weekly podcast show for ambitious women about confidently balancing work and life, hosted by me, Sherry Bevan, Author, Coach & Speaker. Because I love having conversations about career and confidence.

In a previous episode (CC001) I talked about overwhelm: signs we might notice, why we experience it, and how we can cope or even better prevent it.

This week’s episode is about how to spot the signs of stress or overwhelm in our partners and how to deal with it.

I turned to Gill Walton at Purple Skies Consulting to find out more about this topic. Gill works with people who are stuck in their careers and need help getting unstuck. And sometimes it’s stress that’s keeping them stuck.

In the show we discuss:

• Signs of overwhelm, stress or burnout in our partners
• What we can do to support them
• How men deal with overwhelm and stress differently, putting emotions to one side
• Why men walk out of the room when they come home to a stressfest
• The caveman’s reaction to a fight or flight situation

Gill’s top tip for ambitious women “It’s not the stress that is destructive, but the way that we respond to the stress”. 

GUEST: Gill Walton
HOSTED BY: Sherry Bevan 

Gill’s website: Purple Skies Consulting or connect with Gill on Twitter @PurpleSkiesLtd
The Compassionate Mind by Paul Gilbert

• Comment on the show notes
• Tweet me @SherryRB quoting CC002 #ConfidentConversations
• Email [email protected]

• On Twitter @SherryRB or search #ConfidentConversations
• Join my Facebook page
• Subscribe, rate and review in iTunes
• Sign up to my weekly newsletter

Confident Conversations is a weekly podcast show, hosted by me, Sherry Bevan, Author, Coach & Speaker. I love having conversations about career and confidence. In my podcast I interview ambitious women as well as those employers who value female talent.

This first episode is about how to cope with overwhelm.

My name is Sherry Bevan and I run The Confident Mother. After more than 25 years in professional services, I set up my own business so that I could balance work and life more confidently.

Now I help other ambitious women get clear on what they really want and then find the confidence to go and do it.

Many of the mums that I talk to sometimes struggle with how to cope with overwhelm.

In the show, you will explore:

• the signs of overwhelm
• the reasons that we experience so much overwhelm
• how choice overwhelm makes it difficult to decide
• information overload
• how women take on too much: our need to please and the need for perfectionism
• five ideas that help my clients cope with overwhelm so that they get more done.

The five ideas to cope with overwhelm:

1. Acknowledge and accept your feelings of overwhelm
2. Prioritise and focus to free up your creativity
3. Self-care to boost your resilience
4. Ask for help
5. Boundaries - when to flex and when to hold firm