Sparks and Space

In this episode I covered:

• Why words are so powerful
• The Neuroscience of words + the effect it has on our bodies
• 1 Affirmation that changed everything for me
• 3 Questions to ask yourself to create an affirmation that works for you
• 19 Business affirmations for you to test out

If you would like to learn more, just head over to ailishlucas.com

I'd love to connect on Instagram too, my new account is: https://www.instagram.com/iamailishlucas

In this episode I cover:

• How to have honest conversations with yourself
• 3 Questions you can use to help you reconnect and find out what you really want
• A personal story of burnout and how I recovered through honest conversations
• The steps I took to find my joy again

If you would like the full show notes just head to ailishlucas.com

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My oh my, this is a juicy episode. Why? Because if you’ve been in business for a while, you’ll know that motivation is like bathing, it doesn’t last which is why we have to do it every day. The late and great Jim Rohn said that quote so i can’t claim it as my own. It’s a great one right? 

But the problem is, what happens if you just can’t find that motivation or your way back to that energy you once had? 

I get it. I really get it. Particularly with the shit show that was the last few years. We have collective PTSD from everything and it can be so so hard to pick yourself back up again and start again when the momentum is gone. 

You see,  we are spiritual beings having a human experience, meaning, no matter how enlightened or whether we can get our foot over our head in yoga means nothing when global pandemics happen, grief hits or business revenue drops off a cliff. 

Side note - I am still trying to get my foot over my head in yoga. Tried it last night. I wish I had filmed it, it would have been some comedy content. 

Definition Motivation is the human need or desire to change something about themselves or their environment. 

According to the Self Determination theory, people are motivated to grow and change by three innate and universal psychological needs.

1. Autonomy - people need to feel in control of their own behaviours and goals. To take direction action that will result in real change. 

1. Competence - people need to gain mastery of tasks and learn different skills .when you feel you have the skills needed for success they are more likely to take action to achieve your goals. 

1. Connection - need to experience a sense of belonging and attachment to others. 

So if we can link our vision of what we want to each of these three categories, it can help to motivate us again. 

Now the only tricky situation here is that sometimes our personal lives can stop the motivation completely. If we were a cup, it’s overflowing and not in a good way. We are so exhausted that we don’t have space for motivation and following someone’s theory. 

So let’s look at a real life example to bring colour to the situation and see if it will help. 

Let’s take a fictitious name, Alysia here. 

Maybe you’ll be able to identity with Alysia here to let’s see. 

What do you want? I want to feel more motivated in my business. 

Why do you want it? I want to feel joy for me, I want to help others and it’s part of my legacy work. 

What’s stopping me from getting there? I’m tired. I have a huge amount going on personally and I can’t concentrate. I feel like I’ve lost my spark and I don’t quite know how to get it back. I feel a film of fog over my head and can’t seem to clear it. 

So what do we do first? 

Let’s look at tiredness. If you’re tired, the greatest thing you can do is show yourself some compassion and rest. Business is a marathon not a sprint. Let’s not buy into the time is running out mantra right now. In order for us to speed up, we must also slow down. Rest is revolutionary and one of the greatest acts of self care we can give ourselves. So let’s give yourself permission to rest. And rest indulgently. More on that in another episode.  

Let’s now look at what’s going on personally. If there is a huge amount; maybe grief, your child is worrying you over illness or behaviour or school or you’re having relationship troubles, it could be anything but it’s distracting you, let’s allow ourselves to actually feel those emotions so we can move through them.

This is where we can take autonomy over the lack of motivation, release what we need to emotionally so then our completely full up cup can have a little space to let some joy and maybe motivation in. 

To add to this, we can then develop a mantra, which I have personally used that I created with my therapist a while back which helps to realign. It goes ‘ i can feel all the feels AND be a badass in business’. Feel free to create your own or 

Once we are feeling like we have control a little more through these self care practices, that’s when we can look at competence. Our belief that we can figure things out is paramount here. And given the personal situation we could apply a new theory here call the marginal gains approach. This is where we can tiny changes, 1% changes each day to get towards our goal and then once we have done that 1% change we go back to resting, to emptying a bit more out of our cup so we can then have a bit more capacity the next day. So what one task could we do today that would make the most impact to move things forward and get us closer to our goal?

Then we can move onto connection. Is this a case of us needing a coach to help us move through this more or is it just a great meal out with a friend? The connection here is one to help us feel understood and held by someone before we then move on to being held accountable once the personal situation is better. 

And this process can be repeated again and again until you start to gain more motivation back into your day. And it will come my friend. Because you have survived 100% of your hardest days. Every thought and moment you thought you couldn’t get through you did. You got yourself through it. This time too, shall pass. So honour yourself for how far you’ve come, rest now for it is a revolutionary act of self care and then once you’re ready, the motivation will come again. 

Bye for now.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Sparks and space. To receive all the joy I’m offering please subscribe to the show, and if you’d like a weekly dose of joy in your inbox, sign up to my email list at ailishlucas.com 

If you think today’s episode might be enjoyed by someone you love, please let them know about it. So we can be the joy, see the joy and spread the joy a little more in life. 

The Joy of Feeling Good about Business by Ailish Lucas, Mindset + Business Coach

In this episode we talk about the ways we lose joy in business, how to regain joy and some simple exercises for you to try at home to reignite your spark.

Exercise 1 - Write down where you were 5 years ago and all the amazing things that have happened since then.

Questions to ask yourself.

• What stories am i telling myself about who i am and my business? What is a more empowering story that makes me feel good? 
• What do you want? 
• Why can’t you have it? 
• How can I believe that good things are coming when times are tricky?

If you would like to learn more about how to work with me then just head to ailishlucas.com

If you are interested in private coaching then head to: https://ailishlucas.com/private-coaching/

If you would like a one off spark session with Ailish then head to: https://ailishlucas.com/one-off-spark-sessions/

If you are a beauty brand looking to grow your e-commerce brand then head to: https://theglowgetter.co/join-the-glow-getter-eg/

Hello and welcome to the sparks and space podcast. I am so excited that you decided to press play and I wanted to share a little bit about me and what you can expect from the show. 

I’m Ailish, a mindset and business coach and I specialise in helping women bring more joy into their business and their lives. For me, as a coach this is around channelling JOY into everything we do. So what do I actually mean by joy? Well the dictionary definition of Joy is a feeling of great pleasure and happiness.

These are feelings that we have when an idea of starting a business or doing something different in our lives is dreamt up. 

What is interesting however is that these big plans then generate feelings that the life we currently lead isn’t enough. Now, at the very moment in time, it might not be enough and those feelings of ‘is this all there is? Is this it?’ can arise. 

But what we are led to believe for the most part is that until you then get ‘the thing’ or reach that goal we’ve set, is that we’re a failure. Or we’re not enough. Or we lack something or someone. 

And this my love, isn’t true. 

We can have one foot in joy being utterly grateful and happy for everything we have now, whilst simultaneously having one foot in motion to help us achieve the magic we have visioned up. Which is why you’ll hear me talk about joy + motion = magic a lot. 

Following the joy is something that I’ve done throughout all of my life. And one of those joy’s was dreaming of starting something of my own 11 years ago.

It starting off as an award winning blog, which then evolved into running the largest online wellness event in the UK interviewing amazing leaders such as Christine Northrup, Terri Cole, Sahara Rose, Christine Witman, Dr Libby Weaver and many more and the next iteration became an award winning online membership to help beauty brands learn marketing to grow their e-commerce brands. 

This next evolution of joy is the sparks and space podcast is less about The Glow Getter + more about an evolution of me, Ailish Lucas, brand me, that cannot be replicated and helping you to take your business, whatever that may be, and focusing on bringing more joy into what you do, how you do it and with whom you’re doing that with. It’s about creating a business that whilst you’re striving for those juicy goals, you’re also creating those moments of magic and enjoying the process too. 

My hope is to help people to reconnect with their own version of joy to create a business and life that's right for them, that sparks inspiration and helps them to live life to the fullest.

This is what sparks and space is all about. It’s about creating sparks of inspiration for your business with questions to ask yourself, personal stories from my own journey on what I've learnt along the way and space within each episode to remind you who you truly are. 

As Victor Frankl said there is a space between stimulus and response and within that space is choice. And what comes from that choice is the power to remind yourself who you truly are. And that creates true freedom. And joy. Obviously. 

So there will be well researched episodes (because I value science and the woo woo world) weekly stories and metaphors because this is one of the best ways of learning on a deeper level, fun interviews, solo episodes, shorter sparks to ignite that inspiration and longer episodes to give you space to percolate on those golden nuggets you’ll hopefully hear. 

Thank you so much again for pressing play. I really hope that if you enjoy the podcast, you’ll subscribe and sign up to Sparks and Space newsletter so you can keep up to date with the joy that’s being created in this world. 

Chat soon, bye for now.