Have you ever felt like you didn’t belong in a room… even though everyone else seemed fine?

Maybe nothing is wrong with you.

Maybe you’re just standing in the wrong soil.

In this episode, I share the metaphor that changed everything for me:

When my roots are nourished, my tree thrives.

When I live in alignment with my values, my ecosystem is healthy.

🌳 This one is for anyone who’s tired of earning belonging.

Sometimes we contain our feelings to keep the peace — not because we don’t care, but because we care so much we don’t want to break anything.

But what’s meant to be shared doesn’t heal by staying inside forever.

Coming Full Circle with Vulnerability .. The Bridgerton Way

Many of us live our lives in fear of really being seen and heard for who we are.

We don’t feel good enough or bright enough, or thin enough, or educated enough or whatever enough.

We will do anything to fit in. This can be at work, with friends and even with our family of origin. However, to “fit” in requires us to change or to hide a part of ourselves, meanwhile, sabotaging our authenticity.

In the first paragraph of his book The motivation manifesto Brendon Burchard asks a question - why having being endowed with the courageous heart of a lion do we live as mice?

This is a very profound question to ask.

One of the ways we can lean into this question and find out why we may be living like a mouse as opposed to like a lion is to find out which dial our mindset is set on

is it set on a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. Because our actions are fueled by that that mindset. Some of those actions are conscious but most are unconscious.

To be conscious is to be aware of what is motivating you to do what you do. To be unconscious is to not realise what is fuelling your actions. Most of what you do is fuelled from this unconscious place which is home to the habitual patterns you run on, I will speak to that more later.

The unconscious is also where you store the parts of yourself that you disassociated from in order to fit in and feel like you belong.

As humans, we all strive for, a sense of belonging, a sense of belief in ourselves and others, a feeling of security and safety, and connection with others.

When these needs are met we will then be able to develop personal skills like boundary building, becoming assertive, and be able to be emotionally aware, and not let stress overtake us.

With these building blocks, we can then thrive in our leadership role

Our comfort zone is our safe place. It’s fuelled by the things we do automatically that feel safe to us.

If you have ever tried to do something outside of your comfort zone you might know that feeling you get when you think to yourself “ok that’s me done, I need to stop here, it isn’t feeling good or safe anymore”.

Sometimes though we don’t hear the self-talk, we just know unconsciously stop ourselves from going any further and this may be in relation to applying for a new job, looking for a different type of relationship or whatever.

It's as if we go to the edge of the comfort zone and there’s something there that stops us from going any further. But it is as we know and you have probably heard before that outside our comfort zone lies our potential.

So let’s explore this further.

On this episode of the podcast we are talking about beauty and the fact that ,,,, and I will quote our guest today Sharon D Founder of Irelands Got Curves who says

Beauty isn't a size and size doesn't define you.

Sharon you are welcome to the podcast.

I want to talk to you about this topic of what defines us and how we can let that get a little ashew.

Nicola is a passionate advocate for empowering women to take proactive steps to optimise their physical and mental health during this stage of our lives.

The more clarity we have the more we will be able to be actively involved in our own healthcare decisions armed with the correct information.

A very informative chat with Nicola whose background is in nursing, education and mental health.

The tale of the Little Mermaid is a typical heroine’s quest.

Although Ariel, the Little Mermaid seems to have it all, she comes from a beautiful place, has the love of her father and sisters and grandmother she yearns for something more. Something outside of what she has. She is blessed with many things in her life; she has the most beautiful voice in her kingdom, she is the most beautiful dancer and her beauty is astounding.

However, she doesn’t feel whole. She desperately wants to grow a pair of legs like the humans she hears about and to have new experiences and to experience love.

However, it is forbidden for her as a mermaid to interact with humans.

Her yearning itches away at Ariel until, against the wishes of her family and friends she sets off on her quest.

In order to do this, she has had to make a huge sacrifice. She goes to the dark witch who takes her voice from her in return for a potion that will change her mermaid tale into a pair of legs. The dark witch warns her that it won’t be easy and that she will suffer excruciating pain in her legs when she walks.

And true to what she has been told what follows for Ariel is a series of trials and challenges. Without her voice she cannot tell the handsome prince she has fallen in love with that it was she who in fact had saved him from drowning. Instead, she has to watch as he falls in love with a beautiful girl who was the first woman he saw when he was washed up on the beach where Ariel had left him. He in fact believes it was this girl who saved him.

He does fall in love for Ariel but it is more of a sisterly nature and when he finally meets the girl he remembers seeing on the beach he marries her.

Because Ariel has lost the challenge of making a human man fall in love and marry her she is destined to die on the prince’s wedding day.

Hearing about her demise her sisters visit the dark witch and ask for something to save her. The dark witch gives them a knife to give to Ariel. Ariel is faced with a choice; kill the prince and save herself or die (mermaids don’t have immortal souls).

She cannot bring herself to kill the prince and instead decides to forfeit her own life.

On seeing her brave deeds of first saving the prince and not killing him to save herself she is taken by the elements of the air. There she gets her voice back and has the opportunity to become a immortal soul by doing good deeds for 300 years (with a few extra few deeds she can reduce the number of years!).

What lessons can we learn from the Little Mermaid.

She was courageous and in the end her quest brought her closer to what she wanted an immortal soul or the hope of it.

In this episode of the podcast, I discuss living in alignment with our core values with Business Owner and Coach Gill Caroll.

Gill takes us on a journey of exploration around tuning into our values via our feelings. When we show up in our life coming from a place of being aligned with what brings us contentment and joy we will be more in flow with our life.