You're in a gap between who you were and who you're becoming. Your communication confidence can feel borrowed. Your sense of self can feel like it needs a new address. Each edition delivers one small step to help you communicate with more confidence, and move through change without losing yourself. Read one below, if you find yourself in it, you're in the right place. Written by Susan, Director of Blossoming Speaker and creator of the Speak Afraid Method.
Have you been showing up for everyone lately except yourself? Bet it's exhausting.
InsightThere is a tiredness from change that I feel is not talked about much at all. The kind that comes from still showing up for your team, your clients, your family, lets face it, all the people who need the version of you that feels most like yourself. Yet here you are in change. A change that is currently transforming who you are becoming, so their ask and your desire to show up as yourself becomes a little harder. Especially when you are in what I call the uncertainty gap where you are not who you used to be, yet not who you are becoming. So you tend to hold on to both and this is where exhaustion comes. When you and I try to hold on to both versions of ourselves everyday, with the aim of speaking up and showing up with confidence, this is one of the hardest things to do. This holding on to both makes us carry more weight, and this contributes to keeping us stuck in the uncertainty gap. We really need to release both so we can move through this gap. So WhatWhen you feel this weight or pressure which leads to exhaustion, you may be holding on to both versions of yourself. Doing this while going through change and showing up as confidently as you can is an ask you and I were not meant to carry, and if we decide to carry it, it is not sustainable. It burns through our energy so deeply. When we decide to release both versions of ourselves, we have energy to let our curiosity flow freely, and we can freely explore, adapt, and experiment. This is what enables us to be ourselves as we figure out who we are becoming during the change. It grows our communication skills. It opens us up to be courageous, and each step we take through the uncertainty that change brings, well. It delivers something we were not expecting. The missing pieces of who we are becoming. Change does not just challenge who we are. When we decide to move through it, it completes us. And guess what?In change you may have to do some things alone but you are not alone. For me, for over a decade, I felt change pressing its foot down more heavily on the gas pedal, accelerating the pace of it every year. I found it hard to keep my head above water. I was burning out and burning relationships from being unsure of how to handle the stress it brought. Many times I was shaken by the way change shifted my identity in different settings, faster each year, making it harder to figure out who I was amongst it all. Life was progressing well, please don’t get me wrong, but the weight and confusion of this while displaying confidence and striving for results, gee, it burnt through my energy way too quickly. This flowed into other areas of my life too and I became so sick of the fear and doubt crowding my mind. The more I coached and spoke to people while growing Blossoming Speaker, the more I realised I was not alone in this. If you relate to any of these things, well I guess this is my opportunity to tell you that you are not isolated in feeling or experiencing any of these things either. So I became open to my courage to relaunch the Blossoming Speaker Podcast. It was something always in my heart to do but I stopped for the very reasons I now am passionate about helping others keep going through. Because change is one of the most disorientating and fearful experiences a person can go through, even the good and positive changes. Most of the time we go through it by chance without language for what we are feeling and experiencing. With a feeling of loneliness without someone who genuinely understands it and craving some sort of support to help get through. This podcast aims to give you the words for the experience, the company of someone who has lived it and chooses to go through it, and the encouragement to keep moving through it with more of yourself intact. So please check out the first episode…ah, well, it’s actually episode zero and titled, Welcome, this one’s for you. I’d love your support getting the work out about it so please share it with everyone you know :-) Below is a link to Spotify to listen to it, but you can also find it across other podcast services. A new episode will be released each week.
All the best, Susan. P.S. Please keep an eye out for the training membership coming up. |
Minute Insight by Blossoming Speaker
You're in a gap between who you were and who you're becoming. Your communication confidence can feel borrowed. Your sense of self can feel like it needs a new address. Each edition delivers one small step to help you communicate with more confidence, and move through change without losing yourself. Read one below, if you find yourself in it, you're in the right place. Written by Susan, Director of Blossoming Speaker and creator of the Speak Afraid Method.
Insight I sometimes think that being under pressure is like being a boiling potato. Yes, thanks to me practicing the Speak Afraid Method, I am becoming more courageous and confident in sharing different perspectives to help you communicate through the uncertainty gap of change. Now back to boiling potatoes. Pressure is required for the potato to boil and for it to change its state from raw to cooked. Pressure here is not a problem but something required to help the potato transform. It’s when...
Insight I’ve said “you are enough” to other people more times than I can count, I even included it as my first affirmation in my book Confidence Booster, Affirmations to Reframe Your Mindset and Boost Confidence. I meant it every time I said it and wrote it. I can see it in others clearly, and know it is a truth. But believing it about myself, in a way that sticks, well, that is a different conversation. So I spent time learning why and so far, I came across two reasons. I will discuss one...
Insight For years I believed courage was something I needed to dig for. The deeper I went, the more I’d find. So, when change arrived and shook something loose inside me, I kept digging, head down, inward, searching. I didn’t realise that all that digging was actually my most convincing excuse to stay still. I was in the uncertainty gap. No longer who I was, not yet who I am becoming, and in that in between space, I couldn’t articulate much. The words sat at the tip of my tongue and wouldn’t...