Carla Miller 00:00
Are you trying to do it all? Are you at full capacity? And still saying yes to whatever is asked at you, at home and at work? Do you ever want to take a day or a week off and just hide under the duvet so that no one could ask anything from you or need anything from you. If that resonates with you, then this is the episode for you. Welcome to the influence and impact podcast for female leaders.

My name is Carla Miller. And I'm a leadership coach who helps female leaders to tackle self doubt, become brilliant influencing and make more impact at work. I've created this podcast to help you to become a more inspiring and impactful leader. And I want to become the leadership BFF you didn't know you were missing until now.

This episode is inspired by a brilliant LinkedIn post that I came across I was tagged in last week about the mental and emotional load that this director of fundraising and communications or was holding on to she was sharing just some of the things that were going through her mind at the time, things like I must send an email about training. Who is taking the kids to clubs tonight? How can we get 1% better at chairing meetings? Are the uniforms washed? What can I cancel next week so I can get the board papers done? I need to help the kids to learn to love failure. And we're dyslexic, the dishwashers got an error code, can I fix it myself? Or do I need to call someone in? How quickly can I embed talking about biases and one to ones? Is our ambition and workload realistic for next financial year? When will morning's get less stressful? What are we having for dinner tonight? And it hugely resonated with me because going through my head at any time or a ridiculous number of thoughts and tasks, and expectations of myself.

So I wrote my own list of the things that had gone through my head in the last hour. And they were what am I feeding Charlie tonight. And just how bad is it to eat cereal for dinner? Three nights in a row. I have to say that's me, not him. He eats proper food. Why didn't I communicate my point better and that call this morning? Really must chase the roofer again before the dam sets in, and my house is destroyed, too. They order balloons for the birthday party? What is the next evolution of influence and impact look like? Is it meant to be this exhausting running a business? Do we go for a walk? Neal looks like it might rain all day? I think do the things are on my to do list? How do we hire someone to help me when I haven't got time to hire someone to help me? How can I help Charlie so that tonight he doesn't have nightmares and end up in my bed? And how bad is it to send him to school in trousers with holes in them? Bad enough to get out the sewing kit? Do I even own a sewing kit? Why aren't I the sort of person that owns a sewing kit, and so on.

I suspect that neither I know that director of fundraising all alone in that life comes with a huge mental and emotional load. And it can be overwhelming for any of us. But as women, we know that we take on more of that. So we know that in the household, women are much more likely to take on more of that mental and emotional load.

We also know that women are more likely to volunteer for be asked to volunteer and say yes to what's known as office housework. So things that need to be done in the workplace that aren't valued. They're not promotable tasks that will help you to build your career. And women get stuck with them most of the time. And we've actually talked about those two topics in previous episodes. So we've talked about equality at home in a previous episode, which I'll note in the show notes. And we've also talked about breaking the bias and those non promotable tasks the office housework so you can listen to more about that in that episode.

Now, what I would like to do in this episode is to give you some tips and strategies and ways of thinking and reframing things. If you are someone who is trying to do it, or if you are someone who feels like you're not succeeding at life, unless you're doing it all, if you're someone who generally feel like you're not succeeding at life, despite the spite the fact that you are trying to do it all. It's a very familiar way of thinking that I see an awful lot of my clients But I think at the heart of it is these ridiculously high expectations that we set ourselves. We think that in order to be successful in life, or actually, in order to even be doing okay, at life and not failing at life, we have to be doing multiple things. And we have to be doing them to a really high standard. So we need to be this a fantastic leader, this fantastic colleague, a brilliant friend, for those of us that are parents and incredible mom, or a great Auntie or godmother, a great sister, a great daughter, we should also be cooking great healthy and interesting meals, encouraging our kids to eat more healthily, we should be looking after our animals, we should be doing good things for society and volunteering, we should be exercising, we should have fascinating hobbies, this, the list is absolutely endless. And I find that certain things really fuel it.

So one of the things that really fuels it for me, is Instagram. So Instagram really sets off my comparison monster. So I might go on Instagram, a little bit bored. Although I have no idea how I even find time to be bored. Social media is absolutely the thing I need to be removing from my life because I do it when I say I'm bored. And actually, I'm not bored. I just have a short attention span, partly because of social media, because we so engaged in it that our attention spans are really short. And so we quite often reach for some kind of distraction, when actually we're in the middle of what is a really important task. But when I reach for Instagram, I might be feeling okay about my life. And then I see oh, look at that person's incredible house, or look at that person's happy family. Or look at that person's great hobby, or the food that they've cooked or the marathon that they've just run, or whatever has happened to them. That is super exciting. And alongside feeling pleased for them, one of the first thoughts that comes into my mind is while I'm doing that, why have I not achieved that why haven't I prioritised that? Why is my food just very ordinary? Why have I not exercised even three times this week? Why am I not in this perfect family situation. And so one of the first lessons or things that I want to share with you is, was a stay off the socials if you can, particularly if you know like I do that. It feels that feeling of not enough, and not being enough, which is one of the the fundamental thoughts and feelings that most of us have, as human beings is that we're not enough, we're not good enough as we are.

So if you're like me, and you know that that gets exacerbated by looking at the social media, then you can spend less time looking at it. But also, when you do look at it, then take a moment to think well, these people have achieved these things by making certain choices. We all make choices. And we all have to choose what not to do as well as what to do. And so what's actually, what we need to do is think about what's important to me, what does success look like to me, because it's very easy to buy into this external version of success, particularly when that's what's celebrated all around you, whether that's the job title, the salary, the size house, the number of holidays, you go on how fit you are, whatever it is, it's very, very easy to buy into that. But actually, we all have our own personal definition of success. And I think when we sit back and we think what's actually important to me, what are my values? What do I think a successful life looks like? It usually turns out to be really simple. And whilst you get a fantastic job title, or flashy holidays in amazing places, I'd definitely nice to have that actually, it usually comes down to the simpler things.

So for me, it comes down to family and love and making an impact and giving back in some way. And actually I have all of that in abundance as trumping the word they're not excess. I have all of that in abundance, and I don't actually need my meals to look like gourmet meals. I probably do need to eat healthy enough and exercise well enough to try and keep myself alive as long as possible. And but I don't have to really be anyone other than I am and I think that's often what's driving This need to do it all. So firstly, stay off the socials.

Secondly, recognise that your your value as a person, your worth, as a person isn't determined by how much you do, or even how well, you do it. I'm going to repeat that for you. Your value as a person isn't determined by how much you do, or how well you do it. Because I think some of us are running that subconscious script that says, if I just do it all, if I do more, if I take on more than or somehow prove to myself and to everyone else, that I deserve to be here, maybe that's in the workplace, or maybe it's just beyond that, maybe it's thinking, Well, I have to be constantly adding value, I have to be giving back, I have to be helping people all the time, in order to kind of justify my existence and to be living a worthwhile, valuable life.

So we need to detach of value and worth as a person which is inherent to us. It's about how we show up who we are what's in our heart. It's not about how many things we can tick off a to do list, or you know what other people think of our status in our job. Now, another thing that we can do is to recognise that, yes, we might be really capable, and it makes us feel more capable, the fact that we can do all of these things, even if we're not managing to do them all as well as we expect ourselves to. But just because you can do something, doesn't mean you need to. And that can be a really freeing thing to recognise, just because you can do something doesn't mean you need to. So yes, you are capable of taking on all those extra tasks. At work. Yes, you might even be more capable of doing those things of people in your team. But just because you can do them and do them well, doesn't mean you need to. And other people are never going to get the opportunity to do them as well as you do if you don't give them the opportunity to get involved to take part to take on tasks and activities themselves.

So look at what you can delegate, it might be what you can delegate at work. And many of us struggle with delegation, but it might be what you could delegate at work, or it might be what you could delegate at home. So we talked about everything about how women take on more of that mental and emotional and social load at home, could you be sharing that thought, if you're within a family environment with others in your family, so you've probably heard me mentioned before that I delegate the dusting to Charlie, and they get him doing lots of little tasks around the house and being helpful, because I don't want him to grow up thinking that I am his slave, and that women are here to serve the needs of the men around them. However small those men are. If you're someone who in the workplace, goes into a meeting, and comes out with a long list of things to do, again, recognising that just because you're capable of doing those things, doesn't mean you should and doesn't always mean that you're the best person to do it. And our job is not to protect other people all the time at the expense of ourselves. I think often as leaders, we go or no one else is going to do it. I don't want to ask anyone in the team to do it. So I'll just do it.

Doing that occasionally is fine. But when you are doing that consistently, and it becomes your default, then you get absolutely overwhelmed and exhausted, that's not sustainable. And it doesn't help anyone working for and with someone who is really stressed out and overwhelmed and exhausted. It's challenging to do, we're not serving them by doing that. So if you think well, no one else volunteers. Try a little bit of silence. So when it's time to volunteer, to stay quiet. Everyone will be expecting you to volunteer, they might even look to you because you normally do it, but just hold your nerve, stay quiet, it's gonna feel a bit uncomfortable. But eventually, it'll feel so uncomfortable that somebody else will volunteer and they'll be perfectly capable of doing it. So you can do that. Or you can say who's going to take this on, or even allocate things to particular people if you've got the authority to do that. So just because you can do something doesn't mean you need to and think when you're deciding whether or not to take something on instead of thinking well they want me to do it, which is I think our default often. We want to meet expectations. We want to live up to expectations we want to please people I love doing an episode on people pleasing as well.

So often we're thinking about what other people want. But what we want to do is think, do I want to do this? Or even just do I want to do this? Because often we think I should do something I need to do this. But let's start with just asking ourselves, do I want to do this? And if you don't want to do it, then question, what do I really need? To do it? I think should is a word we use far too often, much more than men do. I think, and we are constantly thinking I should do this. I mean, I, I'm not sure exactly what I read out. But I suspect that quite a lot of the thoughts that I shared with you and that I shared with you from the director of fundraising and marketing. involved the word should, or were based around things that I felt I should do, or what's expected of me like for example, sending my son to school, his pee cat, I keep buying him new trousers, they have PE twice a week, and buy him new tracksuit bottoms. And he comes home two weeks later with a hole in them. And a week later, that hole is gigantic. And I think well, I can't send my kid to school, in trousers with holes in them, but it's not me that's creating the holes in them is whatever they're doing at school, he doesn't get holes in them at home. So, but it's that feeling of should, how will I be judged? Will people think I'm not a good mum? Will I be failing at parenthood, if I send my kid into school with clothes that I cannot get the mud and the pen marks out of? And trousers with holes in them? And then actually do we want but what I should be asking myself is how much do I care about that? And do I want to spend my time, my spare time of which there is very, very little, instead of doing something that's good for me sewing holes in trousers that are going to be turned into more holes.

So ask yourself, do I actually want to do this? And then finally, if you decide you don't want to do something, and someone's asked you, it's time to get good at saying no. Many of us find it really, really hard to say no. So my top tip for this is if you know you find it hard to say no. Just stop saying yes. So often, we're asked What if we can do something? And our first response is to say yes, because that's what's expected of us. And if you find it too hard to say, no straightaway, then asked to think about it and say, or just tell them, you want to think about it to say, Let me think about that, and come back to you. That's something I need to think about. Or I need to check my diary, or I need to look at my workload, let me do that. And I'll come back to you. And you can say when you're going to come back to them, but what you do is you get your you buy yourself some breathing space and thinking space where you can go away and think do I actually want to do this? Is this the best use of my time? And if not, how do I communicate that in a way that feels comfortable? To me? And then if you do need to say no, then you can just say it really simply you can say,

No, I've got I've not got the capacity, or the bandwidth or the time to take that on at the moment. And then if you know someone that can do it, then do it. But actually, it's not your problem to solve. And I think that's what we do, we try and when we say no to things, we so feel so bad that we try and solve the problem. For them. Sometimes they end up spending just as much time and effort doing that is not your problem to solve whoever is asking you to do it. It's currently their responsibility to make sure it gets done. And it's their problem to solve. And so we don't need to sit there and feel guilty. I mean, even if it is our line manager, if we're saying no to something they think is important. The note is part of a bigger discussion about priorities and workload and the fact that you only have so much capacity, you can consistently be going above and beyond, you don't have the time to do that you have a life outside of work as well. So even if it's your line manager, there are ways of having that conversation. Just to summarise what we have covered so far. First of all, it is completely normal to be trying to do at all and to think you should do it all and be exhausted as a result. But actually we don't have to live that way. We are choosing at a subconscious level, to some extent to live that way. There will be some things that we have some control of there are times in life where we don't have control, when there's stuff going on that it's really difficult, really onerous, and we just have to get through it. But there are other times in life when we are saying yes to things that we want to say no to because we don't like saying no because we want to please people because we feel we should because we've just got in the habit of doing it because everyone expects us to do it. And that you do have some control. over that. So remember, if you're comparing yourselves to other people and thinking,

Oh, I must be, I must do it more, I must do more. And I do that quite often. There are definitely things I've taken on more, I've gone, oh, that person's done that, and it looks impressive. Or if they've done it, I really should have done it, or I'm comparing myself to them. And then I ended up going off and signing up for some course or something that is incredibly onerous. And I really resent doing all because I compared myself to someone else found myself lacking, and thought I really should do that. And it wasn't a priority for me at all. I just completely been caught by the comparison monster. So think about what's important to you and how you define success. Stay off the socials. Question the things that you think you should do and think, do I actually want to do it?

Remember, your value isn't determined by how much you do. And just because you can do something doesn't mean you need to, and get really good at saying no, I would love to hear, let me know, on LinkedIn, which is generally where I post about podcast episodes, you can send me a message on LinkedIn or you can just comment on my post. I would love to know what you do with this episode. What are you going to start doing? What are you going to stop doing? What are you going to start saying? No to? Let's all get much better at saying no. If you do, then I will give it a go to have a great week. I will speak to you next week and take care if you've listened to the podcast and you want to know more about how we can work together, here are a few places you can look.

First of all, I've got a couple more freebies, I've got a free PDF on increasing your leadership impact at work, and I've also got a free masterclass on becoming a more influential leader without letting self doubt hold you back.

So head on over to the website to book yourself a place on the masterclass or to download that PDF. There are my open programmes influence and impact for women at management and leadership level and be bolder a four week live assertiveness and confidence course for women at any level. You can preorder my book closing the influence gap, a practical guide for women leaders who want to be heard. You can also work with me one to one particularly if you're a senior leader, and you can hire me to work in house to do talks for awareness weeks, one of workshops, a series of workshops or to run my influence and impact programme or be bolder programme in house as a women's leadership or women's empowerment offering. If you want to talk about any of those on my website, you can drop me an email or you can also book a quick 15 minute chat so we can talk about what you need and how I might be able to help you or your organisation so I look forward to chatting to you. Take care