Carla Miller 00:00
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?

Do you find yourself worrying? A lot? Perhaps you worry about the past you ruminate on what's happened. And you think, Oh, why did I say that? Or why didn't I say that? Or why did that person react like that? What does it mean? Why didn't I think of something really clever to say in the moment when I needed to. Or perhaps you worry about the future, what might happen, what might not happen, whether you're going to be able to cope with it and deal with it or maybe you worry that you're not good enough at your job, you worry that people are judging you, you worry that you're not going to be able to deliver on all the things that you have to deliver on at work. If that's you, firstly, you're not alone, I've been running my Be Bolder confidence and assertiveness course recently and put in some extra bits about worry. And they have really resonated, it turns out lots of us are worrying lots of the time about lots of things.

So this is the first of two episodes that I have created to help you take control of your worrying, and have some practical strategies that can help you to worry less. And I've done it in two parts, because it's a lot to take on. And if your brain is already full of worrying, I want you to be able to listen to the first episode, get a few insights and strategies that you can use, put those into practice. And then come back next week and listen for even more strategies and insights that you can use. Now, before we get started with that, I recently got my Spotify unwrapped figures for the podcast. So Spotify are doing this really cool thing, where they'll tell you what you've listened to, in 2022. And they also do it for the podcast if you own a podcast. And so it turns out that on Spotify, this podcast is in the top 5% most downloaded and also the top 5% most shared podcasts in the world, which is kind of crazy, because I think there's quite a lot of podcasts in the world. I think also it's been listened to in 57 different countries. And hundreds of you have got it in your top five or 10, podcasts and 119 Have you listened to my podcasts more on Spotify than you listen to any other podcast. So thank you very much to those 180 interview. So really, I just wanted to say thank you, thanks for listening and it turns out, I created over 1500 minutes worth of podcast content in 2022, which certainly explains why sometimes lose my voice every now and again. And why I'm feeling tired as we get towards December as we get towards the end of the year.

So thank you very much to everyone who listens. And please do keep spreading the word letting people know about the podcast. So if you know someone else who worries then do share this episode with them. In other news, we will have more be bolder open programmes running next year. So if you didn't get a chance to attend this year, where you heard about it from one of your colleagues and friends and you're thinking, I need more of that. I want to tackle impostor feelings and self doubt. I want to master my mindset. I want to speak up more and get my voice heard. And I want the courage and the tools to have challenging conversations. Then head over to my website, Carla Miller training.com. And there is a waitlist for be bolder there and we will be releasing the dates for the first one in 2023 very soon.

So I would love to have you on that. Or maybe you're thinking someone in your team could benefit from going on that. In which case, do sign them up. Other than that, I am looking forward to Christmas. We had a really nice birthday party for my little boy chocolate pizza making which turns out by the way, super easy craft activity to do. It's basically just chocolate on chocolate and lots of sprinkles and stuff on top but the kids loved it. And I haven't done elf on the shelf and having really grasped the concept of alpha on the shelves, I'm saving that for next year. But we do have a nice advent calendar with some nice advent activities to do. So I'm looking forward to those. And we will see whether making gingerbread houses is as fun as it looks, or my cleaner told me today that when her kids do it every time they try and push things, on to the gingerbread houses to decorate them, they fall over. So Charlie, and I may be getting very frustrated and just sit and eat the gingerbread instead. So that's what's going on in my world. Let's roll the episode. In this first part of our two part series on worry, I want to start by talking about why we worry. So the next part is going to be about how to stop worrying. But in order to do that, we need to help our brains understand that worry isn't actually serving us. We worry because at some point in the past, our brain has decided that worrying is a useful coping strategy.

So for me, I used to think through all the things that could possibly go wrong. And I thought, well, if I can just think of all of those things, then I'll feel more prepared, they're not going to take me by surprise. And I'll know how to deal with them. And I'll be able to cope with them better. And I like the logic of that. But the reality is that I was really focused on the things that could go wrong. And my brain really, very rarely got to the bit of thinking or how can I mitigate against those things happening. Instead, I was on a hamster wheel, just thinking about all the things that can go wrong. And we know that when we fill our heads through full of negative content, it actually impacts our view of the world and distort set. So there's something called confirmation bias, which means our brain is overwhelmed with information coming at it all the time. So it has to filter that information. And it filters the information based on what it knows to be true about the world about life about you. So it will only really notice and let into your conscious, the information that agrees with what it already believes. So if you worry a lot, then you are filling your mind full of negative thoughts, all the things that could go wrong. And you're basically then sending a signal to your brain that says make sure you notice all those other things that could possibly go wrong, or signs that things actually are already going wrong. And your brain completely fails to notice the things that are going well, or the things that are positive signs.

So we're focusing our brain on the negative when we worry, which doesn't serve us, we're also going round around in circles worry tends to be quite very cyclical. And it repeats in our mind a lot. So we know that the average person has something between 60 and 90,000 thoughts every day, we also know that lots of those thoughts are repetitive. And scientists suspect that many of those repetitive thoughts are negative. So we're just repeating the same unhelpful thoughts all day, every day. And it's not moving us forward or preparing us for anything at all. And we worry about all sorts of things. When I've been doing these sessions for be bolder. Recently, I've been saying well, what do you worry about, and lots of us worry about what other people think of us. Lots of us worry about whether or not we're good enough in our roles. Lots of us worry about the past and about the future. So one of the things I wanted to do is to signpost you to a couple of relevant places to help you with that. So if you worry about what other people think of you, then there is a great episode that I did a while ago, on how to validate yourself instead of looking to others for validation. Because when we validate ourselves, and we learn how to do that, then we are not living forever in fear of judgement by other people and needing their validation.

So if that's you, I would go and check out that episode. If you're someone that suffers from anxiety, there's also an episode about that where I share a really helpful meditation that works for me in terms of anxiety, and being able to sit with difficult emotions rather than suppress them and experience anxiety instead. If you worry about what you're going to be capable of in the future and future scenarios, coaching can really help with that. One of the things we talk about in beat Boulder is something that people worry about a lot looking backwards and looking forward, which is how to confidently speak up in meetings. And often it is worry that is stopping us from speaking up in meetings. So within Be Bolder, we do a lot of work with your inner critic, that voice that is telling you that you shouldn't speak up that you're going to be judged that people are going to think you're stupid that you might get it wrong. And then when you don't speak up, and someone else does that same voice, start saying, oh, you should have spoken up, are you coming to these meetings and not saying anything, and everyone's judging you. So that inner critic can really be distracting sometimes and draw us away from being able to contribute well in meetings. So we cover that in the be bolder course, as well. We might also worry about what's happening in the news. So I don't know if the news has always been depressing. I've never actually found it helpful to listen to the news. I don't know how people watch the nine or 10 o'clock news and then go to sleep, I would just be sleepless nights all the time. But I'm obviously aware of what's going on in in the news. And if different things to worry about all the time, I found myself worrying today.

So I'm, I often use the techniques and strategies that I'm going to share with you in this episode and the next episode. And so I don't worry as much as I used to, I used to be a huge warrior. But today, I found myself worrying. I am the parent of a primary school aged child. And in the UK at the moment, we have a lot more cases of strep a than we have done in previous years. And unfortunately, children are dying from it. And if you're in the UK, obviously you're aware of that. It sent me into panic and worry mode. Maybe panics are a strong word for it. But it certainly kind of put me into that adrenaline response, thinking about that, and thinking about how I can't do anything to prevent it. And thinking about how when I've gone to doctors in the past, they haven't necessarily taken me seriously, when I've asked for particular things for my child, and just running into all sorts of scenarios. Like, what if he does get sick? What if he gets sick on a weekend when he can't get hold of the GP going into a spiral of things that can go wrong. And one of the things that I do when I'm worrying is I try and get some perspective. Because often when we're worrying we've completely lost perspective. So whilst this strep a situation is definitely concerning, and it's heartbreaking for the families that are losing their children, what it's actually doing is shining a light on the fact that we don't have control over life that I and everyone I love are out there wandering around in the world at the moment if something bad could happen at any time. But we just suppress that, put it out of our consciousness altogether. And then something comes up like this, that then makes it worry I had this when COVID That makes us worry I had this when COVID happened initially as well. And I really was in the state of worry and panic. And as I went for my walk today, I realised that this is happening to very few children.

And so for a start, it's unlikely that it would happen to my child, it is possible, yes, but it's unlikely because it is a small percentage of children. Secondly, I recognise that there is absolutely nothing I could do about it. I mean, short of pulling my child out of school, wrapping him up in cotton wool, and sitting at home with him all day, every day, which trust me with this, it didn't occur to me that that was an option. There wasn't anything I could do to stop him being exposed to all the different bugs that go around schools, you know, we've both got a cough in the cold at the moment. And, and so rather than worry about something that's out of my control, I decided to just think more philosophically and think, right, okay, I can't do anything to protect him if he does get sick, but I'm informed enough that I know what I need to do. And I know to really insist on getting the help and support that I need for my child if they're sick and just not to budge on that. So I've resolved okay, if the worst case happens, this is what I'm going to do about it. And then I thought, well, what can I do rather than worry. And the fact that this had shone a light on the fact that actually life is much potentially much shorter than we think it is. We take it for granted and we don't really think about the bad things that can happen most the time. Instead, what I want to do is is take that as a wake up call to live every moment. So in Buddhism they talk about we we die a death every night.

We wake up a new person in the morning. And, and to wake up and be grateful for seeing the sun. And I thought actually, that is how I want to approach this, what I would like to do is to actually just be really, really grateful for the fact that right now everything is okay, and to be present more with my son or with my other family members that I love all my friends, and just be grateful for actually the good things that are going on at the moment. So I reframed it so that my mind was focusing on the positives, rather than focusing on the negatives. So that that confirmation bias can work in my favour and look for the positives rather than the negatives. So that's, that's just an example of a worry that is present for me at the moment and the different ways that I went about trying to get to a point where I felt calm, and able to let go of that worry, rather than it just going round and round in my head. So the first thing we need to do, in order to worry less is to recognise that it's not serving us. So our brain thinks it's helpful, but it isn't helpful. And another way that we can identify that it's not helpful is to start seeing your mental and emotional energy as your most precious resource. And it is a limited resource. So if you think of it like a battery, when you go to sleep at night, in the same way, as you might charge your phone up at night, you're charging up your mental and emotional energy, sleep is the most powerful thing we can do for that. You could also charge it up by spending time with people you love. And walking in nature, exercising, meditating, you're all the things that we know are good for us.

But once it's charged, where elsewhere in the world, we are expending that battery power on different things all the time. So we expend it, when we check our emails, they expend it when we get a frustrating email. And that brings up emotions, we expend it in meetings, we expend it with decisions, in the same way as we know that willpower is a limited resource. And by the end of the day, we have a lot less willpower than we do at the start of the day. We also know that about our mental and emotional energy. So it's a limited resource. It's also a precious resource, because it's our get up and go. It's our mental and emotional energy that enables us to do our work to engage other people to influence them, to inspire them to make decisions, to write the emails or the copy or proposals that we need to write to have the phone calls we need to make all of those things use up mental and emotional energy. And you know that if you've had a long day, which has been back to back and you haven't had any space, then you don't have much of that energy left. In fact, I have had one of those days. So in trying to record this, I have stopped and started about 10 times so far. I'm going to persevere for you. Now, what's interesting is that worry also uses up your mental and emotional energy, because it's thinking, and it may be thinking the same things all the time, but it's still using up that energy. And so the question I want to ask you is if you think about the last 24 Or maybe 48 hours, what percentage of your mental and emotional energy have you spent worrying?

So what percentage of your mental and emotional energy have you expended on worrying in the last 24 or 48 hours? Now, if you're not going through a worrying stage, it might be quite low bar, if there's something on your mind that you are stressed about, it could be incredibly high. So it's not unusual for people to typically answer 5060 70%. I asked this question today in a group. I think someone said 90 Because they were having a really bad day, someone else had 10% Because actually, they were focused on lots of other things. They just didn't have time to worry. Lots of people said 5060 70%. So just think about that, for a moment, your most precious resource, you are allocating a substantial amount of it to worrying which isn't achieving anything at all. So if you took that 50% and put it somewhere else, what can you do? What more could you achieve? How much more focused? Could you be? How much more productive Could you be?

How much more energised might you feel? I At the end of the day, if you still had some leftover, so never mind work, you still had some leftover to have a great conversation with your flatmate or your friend or your partner, or to actually sit down and be really present with your children and serve in stressed thinking about work. So that's just a really simple way of helping you to recognise that worry, isn't serving you. It's not helping you. And in fact, it's probably stopping you from doing some of the things that are really important to you.

So in the next episode, I am going to talk through some really practical strategies that you can use when you are worrying to switch out of that. But I would like to leave you with an invitation that every time you find yourself worrying, because when we worry, we are often stuck in the past, or thinking about the future. We're not living in the moment. And we can't cope with things that have happened in the past, because we're not in the past. We can't cope with things that are happening in the future, because we don't know whether they're going to happen. And we don't in the future, all we actually have is this present moment. And there's a really great book on that called The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. And when we are truly in the present moment, our mind doesn't worry so much. So if you think about if you've ever done yoga, and you do all the stretches, and movements and everything, and then at the end, you get the best bit in my mind anyway, which is you let me get to lie down and not do anything. But it's not like a normal lie down where you lie down in your head feels worried. It's this really peaceful, lying down, because you through using your breath and moving your body, you've come out of your brain a little better, and really started to embody your body. And, and it's calmer in there than it is in your head. So what we want to do is to be more in that present moment to experience more of that kind of Zen feeling.

Whenever I don't do Yoga very often, my shoulders don't like it. But when I used to walk home from yoga, I'd be walking home and going, wow, that tree, wow, look at that sunset would suddenly be really, really present. Just noticing the beauty and the simplest of things clearly felt very happy. And very content. I didn't have any worries floating around my head. So how can you be more present? It might be about noticing what's going on around you? What can you see? What can you hear? What can you smell, or taste or touch, maybe you're eating your dinner or eating a snack, instead of thinking about all the things you've got to do, you're actually focusing on the taste of your food. Or maybe you can have something that smells really nice. And when you are worrying. Instead, you use your senses and you smell and maybe it's something that reminds you of a place. Maybe you go for a walk and just notice what's around you or be really present with the people that you love, and just really grateful to be there with them. It sounds so simple.

But that's what we want to do. Whenever we find ourselves worrying. We want to bring ourselves back to the present to the moment and ideally to a place of gratitude because that completely shifts our state from panic and scarcity to a sense that there is enough of everything, we are already lucky and everything's going to be okay. So that's that's my invitation to you practice being more present this week, particularly when you find yourself worrying but just proactively practice being more present. And then in the next episode, like I said, I've got some great practical strategies that you can use to turn some of that overthinking into a really positive force for good to identify what worries are productive or what or is unproductive and what to do about each of those. And just some really practical day to day tools that you can use. So I hope you have a worry free week and I will speak to you in the next episode. 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