Links to Dr Hayley D Quinn Resources
Reclaim Your Time and Energy: 6 Key Boundaries for Women Business Owners
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This transcript is computer generated and may contain errors and not be an exact representation of the audio
Hi this is Welcome to Self® and I’m your host, Dr Hayley D Quinn, the anti-burnout business coach. I’m a speaker, author, former clinical psychologist and a late identified auDHDer.
Welcome to Self ® is a podcast for business owners like you who want success but not at the cost of your well-being. This is about transforming self and transforming business. I’ll be here to remind you that you’re human first and as well as being a business owner, you have different roles in your life that need your attention and to manage those well, you need to take care of yourself in the best way possible.
Here you’ll learn about practices that’ll help you navigate not just your business but your non-work life as well and you’ll realise that you’re not alone in the ways you struggle. You’ll have your curiosity piqued on various topics as I chat with wonderful guests and bring you solo bite-sized episodes.
I’m here for service-based business owners and entrepreneurs like you, to help you increase your self-care and compassion, change your relationship with yourself and your business, and elevate your business to a new level so you can live the full and meaningful life you desire.
This is a place of nourishment, growth and helpful information. A place where you can learn ways to assist you and your business to thrive.
We’ll talk all things mindset, strategy and well-being and I’m so excited you’re here. If you haven’t already, go and hit subscribe so you don’t miss an episode.
So, let’s get started
Hi, and welcome back to another episode. It’s so nice to be back recording another season with you. I mentioned last episode that I’ve got the wait list for the book. So if you’re not already on the wait list, get yourself over there. It’s going to start getting really exciting. The 1st draft is written and I’m in the process of doing the edits for the 1st kind of read through.
What if I told you that you could get more done, or progress more quickly if you allowed yourself to calm your nervous system.
Now I’ve mentioned this before the trainings. I did when I was a psychologist with the wonderful Dr. Kelly Wilson. He always used to say, we’ve got a lot to get through, so let’s go slowly, which might sound counterintuitive. But let me explain, when we think about the nervous system, and I’m going to keep it simple for this, because this is just a bite-sized episode.
We have the sympathetic nervous system which is almost like the accelerator on a car. When we breathe in, we activate the sympathetic nervous system and that kind of revs up our nervous system and we have the parasympathetic nervous system which I like to think of as like the brakes in the car. So as we breathe out. We take that nice, long out breath. We start to activate the parasympathetic nervous system.
We’re told. Take a big, deep breath and I always think back to kind of PE classes at school and they say, take a big, deep breath in like breathe into your chest and what I now know is, we really don’t want to be doing that. We want to take a big, deep breath into our belly, and then, when we’re breathing out, make sure we’ve got an equal to or longer out breath because this is what activates the parasympathetic nervous system.
Now, when our sympathetic nervous system is very activated, we can be in our threat system, we can be quite activated. We can be starting to get quite agitated. Things feel like they’re more urgent and our decision-making can be tricky.
So whilst we might be getting lots done, we might be kind of jumping around thinking about different decisions or moving from activity to activity.
And we think we’re getting a lot done. Oftentimes we’re actually just being busy for busy sake and if we are in our threat system we might be being busy because we’ve got some things going on that are telling us that you know, we need to be more productive. We need to be getting things done. We shouldn’t be sitting around.
But this isn’t actually helpful. In the long term.
If we can have a calm and grounded nervous system, we can access our wisdom.
And when we can do that we can start to think about what are the things that are actually going to be really helpful for me to do.
How can I take my time on this particular task to make sure that I do it well, and it gets finished before I get caught in a flurry of a million other tasks.
Now for some of us neurodivergent folk that can be tricky, and our mind is going to jump around.
And for me. Personally. I have some things that I have set aside of what I call my productive procrastination.
So if my mind is wanting to jump around, I kind of encourage it to jump to something else that I know I want to get done.
We do need to accept, though, that when we are jumping from task to task that it takes time for our attention to kind of catch up and for us to get back into focus.
Sometimes we’re going to be able to be in hyper focus and get that thing done. And other times we need to accept that. We’re perhaps not going to be, as let’s call it efficient as we might be if we were just focused on one task.
But the general thing is, if we can keep our nervous system calm and grounded, we’re more likely to be able to stick with the things that are important to us.
One of the things I’ve started doing. I love a list. I do a to-do list because I like the dopamine hit of ticking that off.
So I work in a platform called Notion no affiliation to them at all. But my Va. Put me onto it, and I found it really helpful and I noticed that I was putting a lot of things in just everything I knew I needed to do. I was putting it on the list, and they were all ending up on the same day.
So when I actually went to look at that list it could feel quite overwhelming.
So one of the things I’ve been doing is starting my day with a gentle breathing exercise where I am doing my soothing rhythm, breathing so equal in and out breaths or if I’m feeling particularly heightened or anxious that morning, I’ll make sure the out breath is longer than the in breath and once I feel like my nervous system is calm. I go back to that list and really look and be really honest with myself around.
What are the important tasks that need to be done today and the others I just schedule to another day.
Once I’ve done that I can look at that list and feel like, yeah, these are actually the things that I know that I can get done today. There’s not too many.
If they’re small tasks, then there can obviously be more of them. But if there’s bigger tasks in them in the list, then I make sure I move some of the other tasks to another time and then I, as best as I can, go systematically through that list.
And as I’m doing this, I’m checking in with myself and making sure that my nervous system is feeling as calm and regulated as it can feel on that particular day.
So my question for you is how often do you slow down and check in with yourself?
Really check in with how your nervous system is feeling?
How are you feeling in your mind and your body for me. Doing this on a regular basis has been really game changing.
It’s also meant that I have stopped and taken the rest I need when I need it.
It allows me to factor in what’s going on in my life.
How I’m feeling emotionally
I’m in menopause. So my cycle doesn’t quite work the same as it used to. But for you, if you are premenopause, you may want to factor in where you are in your cycle, how you’re feeling physically and emotionally thinking about the things that you have on outside of your work that may be impacting, how able you are to do the things you need to do in your work but really just slowing down and checking in with yourself and asking yourself, what do you need.
How can you calm your nervous system?
I speak to a lot of people, and this isn’t something that we tend to do a lot of for me. It’s become a daily regular practice, and I would really invite you to bring a practice like this into your life as well.
So my second question, would be when would be a good time for you to intentionally do that check-in.
Now, as I mentioned, I do this before I start my work in the morning as I, as I go to look at that to do list.
But then I also check in at minimum midday, midway through the day and then also, after I decide to finish my work for the day.
So that I can think about what it is that I need for the evening.
Sometimes it might be that I need some movement that I feel like. Perhaps I’ve been sitting for a long time, and I need to move my body more other times I may have been quite active through the day or I may have been doing a lot of thinking and had a lot of cognitive load, and I really just want to tune out and rest.
So those are the questions I’ve got for you this week.
When was the last time you slowed down and checked in with yourself and then thinking about starting a regular practice of doing that when would be a good time for you to intentionally check in.
And when I 1st started doing this I used to set an alarm in my phone because otherwise I’d just forget, like I’d have all good intentions. And my Adhd brain would be like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ll do that later.
Sorry, do what later. So, setting an alarm in your phone, I think can be really helpful.
I hope you’re enjoying the season being back. I’m really enjoying being back next week. We have a guest episode with Caitlin, who is an amazing creative woman. And I look forward to bringing that episode to you.
You’ll find details of the book. Wait list in the show notes.
I’m excited to be back with you next week. In the meantime, go well and go gently with yourself, and remember, if you thrive, your business will, too.
Bye.