This is my last episode before a summer break with my lady friends so I thought it would be great for this episode to check in on my word of the year: Disappointment. I chose to play with disappointment in 2022 because I recognised it to be the psychological risk I’m most sensitive to. My self doubt is always trying to protect me from being disappointed but as we know, that’s just an illusion of safety. I wanted to be able to sit with disappointment, explore it a bit and get rid of the obligation to just get over it. It’s been a wonderful journey!

So what’s this episode really about? 

• Understanding the root causes of my tendency towards disappointment and the impact that my upbringing had on this.
• What I’ve learned about my own disappointment and how a lot of the circumstances are seemingly petty. 
• The mainstream advice about handling disappointment and why this doesn’t sit right with me.
• How I’ve been practicing sitting in my disappointment and being curious about what I’m actually feeling.
• The revelation of the complexity of emotions I’ve experienced underneath my disappointment.
• Disappointment needs somewhere to go. As adults, we can do this through journaling, talking to a friend, emotional release etc.
• How quickly disappointment can invite us to warp the meaning of any event that causes it.
• The difference between clean and dirty pain and how disappointment plays into this.
• How being more open to disappointment and sitting with it has led to more fun and joy.

Why you should listen

If disappointment is something you’re susceptible to, I hear you friend and this episode is perfect for you. I talk through my own learnings from the year so far as I’ve been open to experiencing disappointment, not just trying to make it go away. We’ll talk through the complexity of emotions underneath disappointment, learning how to sit with it and how doing this can actually help you experience more fun and joy. 

LINKS

Website: https://selfbelief.school/class/

You can quote me on that…

“I don’t want to anticipate disappointment before something’s even happened.” - Sas Petherick

“Disappointment, unlike a lot of other emotional states, is not a clean and tidy emotion.” - Sas Petherick

“Disappointment sometimes needs somewhere to go.” - Sas Petherick

“I’m just less bothered by being disappointed than I was in January. And as a consequence of that, I’m just having a lot more fun.” - Sas Petherick

Like what you hear?
Why not help me reach more ears (and give my self-belief a boost) with a 5-star rating?

Previous episode mentioned: 

Word of the year (but make it disco)

Today's episode is in response to two listener letters on issues that affect so many of us, mothering and friendship. I have guest Lisa Mabberley on the show today to share her expertise as a self-belief coach who works with people impacted by issues surrounding motherhood.

Thank you to Angela and Jen for trusting us with their stories.

So what’s this episode really about? 

• Lisa shares the concept of Matrescence - the ongoing process of changing and transforming as a human being into a mother. 
• Angela, the first writer, went through the greatest part of matrescence during lockdown when everyone was in a bubble. For many new mothers, it hasn’t felt how we thought it was going to feel and we talk about how Jen might support herself to rebuild friendships that support her in this stage of her life. 
• Jen’s letter encompasses feeling some relief at deciding to not have children and how this is impacting her friendships. We talk about the fixed narratives surrounding what a legitimate mother has to look like and how Jen has allowed herself to experience freedom and joy through being open and fluid in all aspects of her life. 

Why you should listen
This episode is perfect for you if you’re experiencing or have ever experienced friendships changing as a result of becoming a mother or deciding not to have children. We’ll discuss the false narratives surrounding these issues and how people can become boxed in and develop unrealistic expectations of others and ourselves that impact friendship.

Links:
Coach with Lisa at Self-belief Coach Match
Lisa's Website
Lisa on Instagram

Resources mentioned:
Ted Talk: Alexandra Sacks; reproductive psychiatrist

You can quote me on that…
“When you have gone through an enormous change during that time of global change, that need for getting back to normal is even stronger.” - Lisa Mabberley

“When you find that it doesn’t match your expectation, you can feel quite ‘other’.” - Lisa Mabberley

“Our biggest fear is that we’ll lose the relationship by addressing the conflict but I have found the opposite to be true.” - Sas Petherick

“All friendships of any length are based on a continued, mutual forgiveness.” - David Whyte

Like what you hear?
Why not help me reach more ears (and give my self-belief a boost) with a 5-star rating?

If there is only one idea that will help you navigate the path from self-doubt to self-belief – it’s compassion.

It can feel so normal to criticize ourselves when things go wrong and blame everything on our own shortcomings, but embracing self-compassion can be a gamechanger.

So what’s this episode really about? 

• Why compassion is so important and why we resist it.  
• I share the four myths and a truth about compassion to help get rid of any preconceived ideas that exist and show how self-compassion empowers leaders to succeed by using empathy, creativity, emotional intelligence and cooperation. 
• There is a strong body of empirical research that shows that self-compassion is enormously helpful as a skill and perspective – especially for working through major emotional struggles. 
• There are big differences between self-compassion, self-pity and self-indulgence – but it’s easy to get these mixed up! 
• How I work with clients to make space for compassion in the way they talk to themselves. 
• I share an exercise, from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which you can implement today. This will help you to understand your responses to situations and nudge yourself towards self-compassion.

Why you should listen

This episode is perfect for you if you’re struggling with self-doubt and you feel like if you don’t keep judging and criticising yourself, you’ll lose your ‘edge’.

Resources mentioned: 

• Book: Fierce Self-Compassion, How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive by Dr Kristin Neff

You can quote me on that...
“Self-compassion just means that when times are tough, you treat yourself like you would treat a very close beloved friend.” - Sas Petherick

“If you can offer compassion to others, you can absolutely learn to offer it to yourself” - Sas Petherick

“When we’re looking at what we believe and why, we can end up with a nice logical story that sounds good on paper - but it doesn’t touch us emotionally.” - Sas Petherick

Like what you hear?
Why not help me reach more ears (and give my self-belief a boost) with a 5-star rating?

Penny Wincer is an author, freelance writer, and book coach based in London. She writes about unpaid caring, raising a neurodiverse family, working life, and approaching life’s challenges with curiosity.

Her book, “Tender: The imperfect art of caring” is just brilliant. I’m delighted to have Penny as a guest on Courage + Spice today as we explore her experiences caring for her son and mother, her book, and the thread of compassion that runs through it all.

So what’s this episode really about?

• Penny shares the inspiration behind writing Tender: The imperfect art of caring. The reality of caring is just like life - sometimes it’s wonderful, sometimes terrible and often, it’s very ordinary.
• The cultural notion of who carers should be and that they require extraordinary levels of goodness. It’s a normal part of life to care for people with disability.
• Why perfectionism is so apparent for many parents and carers and how Penny learned to have self-compassion during intense pressure when her son was young.  
• Learning to live with grief and difficult emotions and how we can feel these things, accept and let go of the fantasy of the perfect child. 
• We talk about the privilege many carers feel to care for someone and the paradox of emotions that arise in the midst of their loving act of caring.  
• Penny shares about caring for her mother who was mentally unwell when she was a teenager and how becoming hyper-independent at a young age impacted her.
• Our reliance as a society on unpaid care is unsustainable and it systematically needs to change.

Why you should listen:
If you are a parent, a carer, or know somebody who is, this episode is a must-listen. Penny’s incredible wisdom and insights into life as a carer will add so much value to your life. Our conversation centres around the need for self-compassion, which is something I think we could all use a little more of in our lives.

Links
Penny's Website
Penny's Instagram
'Not Too Busy To Write' Podcast

You can quote me on that…
“Living with feelings of grief is about accepting that they do pop up occasionally.” - Penny Wincer

“All we can do is approach our situations with compassion and understand that they’re not going to be tidy.” - Penny Wincer

“Disappointment, I think, is one of the most untalked about difficult emotions.” - Sas Petherick

Like what you hear?
Why not help me reach more ears (and give my self-belief a boost) with a 5-star rating?

In this week's solo episode, I wanted to share something that feels particularly alive to me right now: female friendships.

I have just returned from a weekend ‘self-love’ retreat hosted by past podcast guest Karen Johnston (you can check out my interview with the marvellous Karen in episode 94) and my three beloved friends, Pippa, Philippa and Helen.

And because of them, and me and the way Karen held the space and the alignment of planets, something was healed in me in real-time about a deep source of self-doubt: female friendships – and particularly groups of women.

So what’s this episode really about?

• I share a bit about my past experiences with female friendships, the experiences of my teenage self and how it has shaped my self-doubt around groups of female friends. 
• I talk about how I have now been able to move into a place of safety with the female friendships in the hope that it can help some of us who may have a similar story. 
• How training to be a coach fundamentally changed the story for me; to a place of truly liking all parts of myself. 
• I explain how the sisterhood wound can present and how you can experiment with healing these stories. 

Why you should listen:
Many of us have had really heartbreaking experiences with other women: friendships that have ended with no closure – or the energy just goes out of it. We get ghosted. Someone decides they were completely wrong about us and actually we have all these character defects and that’s it – it's over!

If this sounds familiar, there is absolutely hope for finding our people and resting in friendships that uplift us, support us and keep us grounded.

Links:
Karen Johnston Retreats
Message me on Instagram

You can quote me on that
“Life is f*****g complicated and hard and confusing especially now with the increased facial hair and the night sweats. We need our women friends like oxygen.” - Sas Petherick

“Find the women that feel safe to you. The ones that would hide a body for you. The ones where you love who you are when you are around them.” - Sas Petherick

Like what you hear?
Why not help me reach more ears (and give my self-belief a boost) with a 5-star rating?

So many of us spend years as an employee, hankering to turn our passions into a business. But what happens when your longings are to give up the self-employed life and join an organisation? In this week's episode, I have the pleasure of talking to Zoe Berkeley: baker turned palliative care nurse. I met Zoe ages ago in her bakery in North London and over the last 10 years, I have watched Zoe make significant changes to her career.  It’s been a total joy to watch from the sidelines!

So what’s this episode really about? 

• We talk about the highs and lows that came with being a 24-year-old business owner. 
• How Zoe came to realise that she was ready for a new career after 10 successful years in business.
• How others were very surprised and not necessarily supportive of her decision to switch to nursing after having such a successful business. 
• Zoe shares the story of her nursing training and how much maths was involved, tricky when you are not a ‘maths’ person!
• What it was like to go back to studying as a mature student at 34. 
• Zoe’s life on the inside of the NHS during the pandemic. 

Why you should listen:
For many of us during the last few years, our relationship with work has been interrupted and the ways we work irrevocably changed. You might be rethinking and reimagining what it is you want to be doing.

Zoe's story is such a relatable one and she tells it with her enormous heart and practical can-do approach. From baker to nurse can sound like a leap, but as Zoe shares, she had surprisingly transferable skills.

You are not too old and it’s never too late to have the courage to change careers!

Links:
Follow Zoe on Instagram
Zoe's blog

You can quote me on that
“Timing is everything and you’ve just got to trust the process.” - Zoe Berkeley

“If you want to make something work, you can find a way with your own dedication and passion.” - Zoe Berkeley

“You need self-belief but you also need a plan.” - Sas Petherick

Like what you hear?
Why not help me reach more ears (and give my self-belief a boost) with a 5-star rating?

In this week's solo episode, we explore how Self-doubt shows up as an 'unreliable narrator'.

This means it will offer us a lot of stories and ideas that are not based on evidence and fact. When we don't question these stories, we end up making decisions from a place of trying to avoid discomfort.

Long time podcast listeners will know that I characterise Self-doubt as our inbuilt protection mechanism, its entire purpose is to prevent us from getting hurt. This means Self-doubt is like a smoke detector looking for any risk of things like judgement or criticism or failure (for example).

If you recognise yourself telling these stories, I’d love you to reach out on Instagram - let’s go!

So what’s this episode really about?

• I break down the three key ways Self-Doubt gives us unreliable information and I show you how you can spot each one.  
• I share a simple 3-step process that will help you get to the more reliable information that is underneath your Self-doubt. 

Why you should listen:
If you are as fascinated as me by the sophisticated nature of Self-doubt, you'll enjoy this exploration of heuristics - these are helpful, mental shortcuts that are designed to help us to interpret information and make decisions quickly.

Some heuristics can be really helpful and help us to access our sense of self, our values and our healthy beliefs.

But when Self-doubt is running the show, our heuristics can become disproportionate and unhelpful - we end up interpreting information and making decisions based on avoiding the discomfort.

If you’ve been feeling Self-doubt creep into any decisions you have been making lately, this episode is a must. I give you clear doable steps to try a different way, turn this around and build some robust Self-trust.

Links:
Come find me on Instagram

You can quote me on that!
“The worst part of 'globalising' I think, is that it’s a waste of your imagination.” - Sas Petherick

“I won’t make decisions after a drink, after 10pm, or after a big emotional experience.” - Sas Petherick

Like what you hear?
Why not help me reach more ears (and give my self-belief a boost) with a 5-star rating?

Anna Lovind is a writer, creativity teacher and mother living in rural Sweden. She is an introverted entrepreneur who helps feminist creatives & change-makers go from dreaming to doing. We have so many crossovers of creation, from creativity and self-doubt, I am absolutely delighted to have her as a guest on Courage + Spice!

So what’s this episode really about?

• I ask Anna her take on what holds us back creatively, as people who identify as women.
• We talk about our relationship with time and the seasons of our life and in our business, and what kind of relationship we want from these. 
• We discuss the fear we have of sharing our work, as women and creatives and the feeling we experience when we reclaim back our power. We realise how similar our approaches are in this! 
• How finding a safe space to be creative and to start small and expand, is the best place to reclaim that power. 
• We talk about how we can build something within a capitalist, patriarchal, racist society, without waiting for it to change. 
• Anna talks about how you can claim time to be creative as women, even when you have a very busy life - a place where we can step away from what is considered traditional work and professionalism. 
• We talk about how the pandemic has made personal and professional life collide in the most unexpected ways and how your reclaimed “commute” has become the perfect time for creativity to flourish. 

Why you should listen:
If you are in a place right now where you're feeling that something is missing from life and you'd like to start a new project or business, this is the episode you should listen to. Our conversation really validates those feelings as totally normal and we share the steps you can take now to move out of fear into creative power in a safe space.

Links:
Follow Anna on Instagram
All of Anna’s links including her book The Creative Doer

You can quote me on that!
“Nothing has gone wrong, you are just being human.” - Sas Petherick

“The world is not safe for un-apologetically powerful women.” - Sas Petherick

“You can claim it as soon as you're doing it.” - Anna Lovind

“We’re not meant to do this work alone.” - Anna Lovind

Like what you hear?
Why not help me reach more ears (and give my self-belief a boost) with a 5-star rating?

Hey folks, the episode contains references to drug use so please be mindful of where you are listening in.

In this episode, I am sharing a very personal experience.  Just before the new year, I went on a solo retreat and with the support of a guide, I took psychedelic mushrooms for the first time. 

Psilocybin is the psychoactive ingredient in mushrooms and this is still considered a Class A drug in the UK. But in other countries and in many indigenous and ceremonial cultures, it is used as medicine.

My beloved friend Karen King joins me for this episode. Karen is a Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapist who runs a clinic in Washington State in the US where she uses plant medicines as part of therapy treatments. I thought she would be the ideal person to share my experience with you.  

In the episode we talk about:

• How we all access states of ‘non-ordinary reality’ throughout the day (driving home and not remembering how you got there, lucid dreams and inspiration in the shower are common examples).
• I share my experience – what it was like to take a psychedelic trip, physically, psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually. There is a guest appearance by Noel Fielding.
• We also talk about what happened afterwards – the reality of returning to life in human density after such a profound experience.

Links:
Karen's details
Follow Karen on Instagram
Find Karen on Facebook
King Health Associates 

Research
Imperial Centre for Psychedelic Research
What does the UK think about psilocybin research?

Like what you hear?
Why not help me reach more ears (and give my self-belief a boost) with a 5-star rating?

This week, I thought it would be super helpful for us, as practitioners, to talk through the evolution of our work: namely the 4 times self-doubt shows up for us and how we can navigate these experiences. What I’ve come to experience and I hope you have too, is that our work is never linear. This week's episode explores my own coaching life and the experiences of the hundreds of coaches I have had the pleasure of working with over the last decade. Enjoy!

So what’s this episode really about?
There are 4 key evolutions in our work, with very loose boundaries between them all: 

• Fresh out of Coach School: Unlearning and Experimenting - where we start to unlearn the idea that coaching is easy! We get to experience clients in all their glorious, messy, human-ness. 
• Coaching Apprenticeship: how do I do this? - Your tools are now locked in and you start to become more present with your client. 
• I share the three ‘flavours’ of coaching: be it a person, a problem or a Paradigm and how it will help to deepen your practice. 
• Deepening into Practice: holding the contradictions - time to get back into learning and refreshing your skills. You could write a book, do an advanced degree, or switch up your business model. 
• Mastery - The idea of reaching mastery might always feel a little edgy but there are reliable signs that you are at a different stage of your practice.

Why you should listen
In this episode, I not only share my practice journey, but I also offer simple solutions to every step of that journey. Just starting out? Thinking of re-branding? This is the episode for you, as I’ll share the simple steps you need to take to do this. Feel like you're a seasoned pro at all this? I’ll share the reliable signs that suggest you are at that mastery stage in your practice and what you might do next. I am finding that as I dip into the edges of mastery what I really hunger for is expanding beyond the coaching world and seeing what piques my interest.

Links:
The ONLY chance to join SBCA is NOW! Advance your coaching practice and help your clients live their bravest lives - Join Self-Belief Coaching Academy

You can quote me on that
“Advice doesn’t work. It creates defensiveness and 'yes, but...' as well as reinforcing shame.” - Sas Petherick

“Experiment wildly with your business.” - Sas Petherick

“I really do wish there was a coaching sorting hat that just says–you coaching for business rebels, you supporting mums to reclaim their identity. You–THERAPY.” - Sas Petherick

Like what you hear?
Why not help me reach more ears (and give my self-belief a boost) with a 5-star rating?