How to Find Your Purpose and Stop Procrastinating, with Katy Murray
Financial Planning Explained, with Cathi Harrison
👉 Do you often wonder, ‘what is it that I really want’?
👉 Are you keen to make a difference to your life and the world, but don’t know where to start?
👉 Are you struggling to manage your energy levels and don’t know how to work toward your goals without burning out?
💸 Today, Katy Murray, leadership coach, diversity and inclusion consultant and speaker, outlines how we can recognize our own individual power, how to own it and how to use it sustainably without burning out.
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You can listen (20 min) and subscribe here:
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We can all be change makers
“Our culture is A to Z. Linear, always on pushing through, and the expectation is your energy battery is always high. The reality is our bodies and our minds, our spirits, they drain of energy, and we need to be topped up. ”
Katy works alongside women who are making changes in their workplaces, addressing a range of issues from the pay gap to inequality or microaggressions that people are facing. They want to make a difference in their own workplace for themselves, but also for others.
She also works with women who care about a range of issues or causes like reproductive justice, climate change, or HIV/AIDS.
Katy believes we all have the power to be change makers: whether we choose to be in that kind of role with the work that we do, or just in how we think about money, how we spend our money, how we save our money or where we invest it.
This means that we can be thoughtful about how we use all of our resources, time, energy, money to make a difference in the world and to support those things that we care about.
All of this is especially pertinent right now, because we need to use our voices and our collective energy to collectively make a difference.
It’s important that we are deliberate in where we choose to put our energy. Exhausting ourselves for whatever change it is we want to be part of, that's not a good result for anybody. Focus on your resilience and wellbeing instead.
It's all about finding the things that actually energise us and give us a boost, so we're not just adding more heavy load onto ourselves.
Make sure your definition of success is yours
Live recording in Manchester at Huckletree Ancoats!
Whatever part of the world we live in and whatever culture we're in, our culture will also tell us what success means or should look like. There are far too many expectations from outside ourselves, which is why it’s important to get really quiet and listen to ourselves.
The things that you love to do, the things that are your strengths, the things that give you energy — those are clues as to where your change making contribution can be, where your success can be.
It’s also about exploration — because we don't immediately know what brings joy in our lives, we have to push a few doors, and we have to try a few things and get feedback and fail and enjoy things and then think, ‘oh, that was good, let me do more of that.’
Unfortunately, we are socialised for competition and comparison — we grow up and we learn that there's not really enough, and so we have to fight for whatever place there is. There can often be that sense of there's not enough space for all of us, so success can be very loaded and there can be so much judgement around it.
But it’s about knowing what we each individually want, and being able to stay in a mindset of abundance because there's room for all of us.
Ask yourself what you want, and let it marinade in you for a bit. It’s important to do this at depth because often, what initially comes up is everyone else's expectations for us or what we think we should want.
Don’t forget about visualisation: it can really help your imagination, and it can help you tap into your creative and intuitive insight and wisdom.
Always celebrate the small steps and don’t get overwhelmed by the big things you want to achieve.
Top up your battery and embrace positivity
When we reflect on ourselves, our brains will tend to go for the negative stuff — but we can take some time to think about, ‘what did I contribute today?’. It can be minimal things — like a smile as we were crossing the road, or something that you did that encouraged somebody else. It can also be something massive that you did at work.
Regardless, when we start to notice the things that we're contributing, we're again getting to know what it is that lights us up. Beginning to know ourselves is a lifelong journey: to know who we are, listening to our inner dialogue, feel our feelings, connect with our body — it is all worth doing to understand where we are.
When it comes to managing your energy, think of yourself as a battery — it is an image you can clearly picture. Through the day, you will notice that you have all these different ebbs and flows, which is really normal as women. Connect with yourself and figure out when it is you need a recharge, when you are fully charged, running on almost 0 etc.
Resources:
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*** Our podcast partners PensionBee are also offering you a £25 pension contribution (£20, plus £5 in tax relief) when you sign up. To claim the offer, follow this link: https://www.pensionbee.com/vestpod. Capital at risk. ***
