Pause Purpose Play

In this episode, I talk to actor, personal branding coach and host of Dreaming and Doing podcast, Nicky Raby, about her career, how we find the courage to pause and reflect on what we want from our careers. We touch on making mistakes in business and finding play through flexibility. And we finish with Nicky's one piece of advice for you.

Nicky is a huge advocate of the portfolio career; she’s an actor, personal branding coach, writer and speaker. She is passionate about supporting other women (and men!) to create a business and life that defines their version of success. She trained at Mountview and continues to enjoy a thriving career across theatre, television, film and commercial work. She has worked with Stylist Magazine, Nat West, MTV, Google to name a few. 

Her podcast ‘Dreaming and Doing with Nicky Raby’ regularly features on the top 100 business podcasts on iTunes and is heard worldwide. She has worked with over 1000 clients to help them consolidate their personal brand and become visible so they can do more of what they love and get paid for it. 

She has a son and a daughter and lives in London. 

03:00 - The power of a portfolio career

05:41 - How Nicky has navigated the mindset behind self-promotion

08:30 - Allowing yourself to be a work in progress

12:00 - The limiting beliefs of ‘enough’

14:14 - Handling criticism in your career

18:46 - Achieving success without burnout

22:15 - How does Nicky pause? - pausing through movement

26:16 - Doing more of what you love

29:35 - Making mistakes in business

33:55 - Finding play in her work - flexibility

38:48 - Investing in yourself

44:08 - Nicky’s gift for the audience - finding the right answers

Website: www.nickyraby.com/

A tricky lesson from Eastern philosophy is about the impermanence of things, of how everything changes rather than stays the same. This is a hard pill to swallow in the Western world, where we focus so much of our time and efforts around chasing and clinging onto happiness.

Especially now, as we have spent almost half a year in the global pandemic of the Corona virus.

But these lessons are valid regardless of what pain or hardship we find ourselves in.

Join Michaela Thomas this week, as she talks about how hard it is to just let things be as they are, and reminds us that this too shall pass. Then join in with an exercise to Stop the Struggle.

In this episode, Natalie Costa, performance coach, author and founder of Power Thoughts, talks about how we support our children’s emotional wellbeing, to build greater confidence and resilience by noticing their inner critic and also sitting with their big feelings.

We end this episode thinking about how we can support children returning back to school in September, after the Coronavirus crisis.

Natalie Costa provides a teaching and coaching service designed to give children the ‘power’ over their own thoughts. With a background in psychology and having spent 12 years within the educational sector as well as becoming an accredited Performance Coach, Power Thoughts was born - which blends her past experience and deep understanding of children and their needs, now providing them with the tools to help them cope and thrive in the modern world.

Natalie has been featured in national press and TV, such as Stella Magazine, BBC Breakfast, The Sunday Times, The Telegraph and Good Morning Britain and had co-authored two books called "Find your Power" and "Stretch your Confidence”.

3:50 – Natalie’s busy mind, and what she does to take a break from productivity

7:02 – Switching off through pausing and being still, versus switching off with creativity 

10:20 – Rewriting the belief that it has to be hard work to be successful

12:04 – Finding purpose, fulfilment and opportunity in an evolving start up business

15:30 – Helping children to be aware of their internal dialogue, their inner critic

18:10 – Becoming mindful of Big Feelings, locating them in the body

19:54 – The power of breath and Take Five Breathing exercise

21:45 – The internal weather report of feelings, to get the power back and self-soothe

24:39 – How we create purpose and meaning for children, what lights you up?

28:35 – Working on our own confidence and inner critic alongside our children

29:40 – Coping with negative thoughts with the compassionate voice we use with friends

33:20 – The power of modelling to our children all the feelings, not trying to be perfect

35:16 – Returning to school after COVID-19, having done the best you could in a crisis

37:40 – The life lessons from lockdown around resilience, adaptation and dealing with grief

41:10 – The importance of play for both adults and children, helping them soothe feelings

Website: https://www.powerthoughts.co.uk/

It's hard to get started. When we fear something, we are more likely to procrastinate. The inner critical voice shows up and has an opinion. It’s fearful of failure, so naturally it would show up when we're trying to do something new. Something which means stepping out of the comfort zone.

But life isn’t just one mountain, it’s a mountain range of peaks and valleys. Of challenges and of rest.

If you also look back down, you’ll see that you’ve already wandered really far, climbed a few peaks on this mountain range already.

So the secret to getting up the next mountain, is to start the climb.

Welcome to this new podcast. I hope you’ve tuned in because in one way or another, you’re looking for some more pause, purpose and play in your life.

The first season has 12 episodes, with a mixture of solo episodes and guest interviews, to help you find more joy and vitality. 

The solo episodes cover psychology concepts such as procrastination, impostor syndrome, the inner critic, joy, connection and compassion.

The guest interviews dive deep into the guests' zone of genius and learning about how they have found pause, purpose and play in their life and in their work.