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 at influencing and make more impact at work. I've created this podcast to help you to become a more inspiring and impactful leader. We'll be talking about all the different topics that affect you, as a woman leading today. Think of it as personal development meets professional development. And I want to become the leadership BFF, you didn't know you were missing until now.

Hi, and welcome to the influence and impact podcast. In this episode, I'm going to be talking about the relationship that you have with yourself, because it's the most important relationship that you will ever have. And learning how to be kinder to yourself, and how to love yourself better, is the most powerful way to lead a happier life. And it makes leading a lot easier, as well. So that's what we're going to chat about in today's episode. First, a little bit of an update about what I've been up to. So as I'm recording this now, the week before you listen to it, I have just got back from a few days glamping on the Norfolk coast with my three year old Charlie, not been to that area before, totally loved it, the beaches are just so beautiful, just incredibly beautiful and feel really spacious and wide. So that's great. I'm feeling I'm still in that post holiday, quite relaxed mode. But I also came back really wanting to do things differently. When I come back. I think holidays can be perspective, don't they and I'm taking that step back, even though it wasn't super relaxing, because it was camping. And I was on my own with a three year old, and there was some rain. And it still made me realise just how hard I'm working the rest of the time and how all the days and weeks blur into one. And that isn't actually how I want to live my life. So I'm making some work changes in terms of how my how I spend my days, and I'll probably share some of those in a future newsletter episode. If you don't get my weekly newsletter, you're missing out, go to my website, Carla Miller training.com. And you can sign up for it there.

This week, I'm working on recording for you a version of my how to be an influential leader. Without letting self doubt hold you back free masterclass. For a few months, I am going to make that available for you on demand. So to watch completely at a time that works for you. And we also have the doors open to influence an impact for a few months. So normally, we only open them a couple of times a year. But I've been having lots of conversations with people and they wanted to join and I thought you know what, let's just it's summer, I'm chilled out. Let's just have the doors open so that people who are ready to join can join at a time that works for them. And then finally, I've got my monthly free bite sized workshop coming up this month in August 16 of August, it is about developing your personal leadership brand. So that's all about really understanding your strengths, and creating your own authentic and powerful way of leading. So again, you can go to my website or look at the link in the show notes to book your spot on that one. And that's already proving to be popular, I think got about 140 people booked on at the moment, which is great.

Okay, so let's talk about being kinder to yourself. Now, many of the issues that come up around negative self talk around the high expectations that we place on ourselves around overworking can be reduced almost completely by just being kinder to yourself. I share a lot of exercises within influence and impact. We do work on your inner critic. We do work on your inner leader as well. We work on some of your limiting beliefs and all of that is super powerful. But I have absolutely coupled that with a conscious decision to get better at loving myself to get better at being kind to myself. Now, I don't know about you, but when I was younger I remember being at school and why One of the biggest criticisms you could say about another girl was, she totally loves herself. I don't know if you ever said that, or had it said about you or heard it said, but certainly in what for Girls Grammar in the 80s and 90s. There definitely was a sense that the worst thing someone could do was totally love themselves. And in fact, just being seen as confident and comfortable in your own skin was something that you were judged for, as well, sometimes. Where does that come from this idea that loving yourself, thinking that you are great, is a really negative thing. I have no idea if that happened at Boys schools as well. Or if people said that about boys, I was in my own little girl bubble back then. But I think that certainly for women, the idea of ever being seen as arrogance is terrifying. When I coach people on that inner critic, I quite often get the question. But if I don't have an inner critic, or then aren't I going to be arrogant aren't going to be too confident? If you're even asking that question, it's highly unlikely you're ever going to be arrogant or too confident.

It's rare that I come across a woman that takes confidence and pushes it over to arrogance. And there is a time and place for arrogance. You know, there might be situations where actually that's the appropriate place to go. But for most of us, we don't want to be seen as arrogant, but confident is different. And liking yourself, knowing your strengths, being able to say I'm great at that, or I really like this about myself. It's just I think it's just fundamental to leading a happy life. That doesn't mean thinking that you're perfect. So I can now say hand on heart that I love myself. I love myself, even with all my flaws, and I have as many flaws as everybody else. I probably think I have more flaws than everybody else. But don't we all. So it's not about thinking that you're perfect. It's about accepting and loving yourself exactly as you are exactly as you are when you're having a good day. Exactly what as you are when you're having a bad day, exactly as you are when you're thinking I just did some great parenting awesome, great leading, and loving yourself when you think I just did some bad parenting. I had one of those moments this morning where I lost my temper. But I chose not to beat myself up for it, I chose to learn from it. And to love myself. Even though I am someone that sometimes loses their temper with their small child when they're having a meltdown. I think that's a part of the point I wanted to make is that this isn't about thinking you're perfect. It's about embracing and accepting who you are.

I have noticed increasingly over the years that I am drawn to women who know who they are, who liked who they are, and who totally own it. It's just so refreshing, and just incredibly refreshing. And I really hope that I'm starting to become one of those women where people can see that actually, I do like myself exactly as I am. That still means that you can want to evolve, it still means you can want to learn and grow and become a better leader, a better partner, a better parent, a better friend, a better furbaby parent, we can still want to improve and grow and learn and develop ourselves. But coming from a place of you as you are right now. Fine, you're good. There's nothing wrong with you as you are now you don't need to change you might want to change and evolve. But you need to change you well, good enough as you are. I was on a coaching call recently. And we were talking about a comp member while we were talking someone someone to raise a question I said when I partake in self care, I always worry that I'm going to end up being lazy. How can I avoid being lazy? And my answer was, why aren't you allowed to be lazy? Sometimes? Why aren't you allowed to just rest? Men do nothing. Sometimes, if we look at kids running around full of energy, they need to go and lie down on the sofa for a while or have a nap and restore their energy before they can get up and run around again. And we need to do the same. I think that particularly as women we're very focused on the needs of everybody else around us and getting things done and the idea of taking time out just for ourselves feel selfish.

But if everybody He else gets to be selfish sometimes why don't we get to be selfish sometimes, too? Why don't we afford ourselves that same luxury that we allow other people to have? So I think it's okay to be lazy. Sometimes I think it's okay to be selfish. Sometimes you don't want to live your whole life being selfish, obviously, or lazy, you wouldn't have any friends and you wouldn't get much done. But sometimes, that's okay. You don't have to be on your best behaviour and his best version of yourself all the time. And I think it's also worth bearing in mind, what are we modelling for other people? So if we don't show that we love ourselves, if we can't accept criticism, sorry, if we can't accept praise, if we can't accept praise, if we can't take any time out for ourselves, if we can't just relax, if we don't seem like we're happy with who we are, if we're always looking in the mirror, and being critical of ourselves, what are we modelling for the children around us? Whether we're parents or aunties or godmothers? What are we modelling to the next generation, a generation behind that about what it's like to be a woman, I want my niece, that's the only little girl in my life, she's now nine, which is crazy, I want my niece to be able to look at me and see that it is possible to be yourself and be lovable, to love yourself. And for other people, to love you as well, that you don't have to constantly edit yourself. That's why I think this is important. I've got a little bit on my soapbox, there. But I think that it doesn't get talked about it really doesn't get talked about on most leadership courses. Because what hasn't love got to deal with leadership? Well, that's probably a whole different topic.

I actually think love does have something to do with leadership. But certainly, if you love yourself, then you are operating from a secure place, which means that you are not pushing yourself ridiculously hard to prove to yourself and everyone else, that you're good enough that you are not thinking that the quality of your work defines your value as a person, that you are not being super sensitive to any kind of feedback that's constructive or potentially negative. Because you know that fundamentally, it's not threatening your sense of security as a person, it means that you're not looking to others for validation, all the time. And I know a lot of us do that both in the workplace and personally, and I've done a whole podcast episode on that as well. And if I think about the old me before I worked on these things, I would just plough on and push myself harder and harder and harder. Because I was driven by either fear of not being enough of not getting things done and not achieving enough, or an addiction to doing that still comes up for me.

Sometimes I would work all the time, I would really focus on negative feedback, it would go around my head for ages, I really wanted to be liked. And the idea that someone might not like me, or would think that I had made a bad decision would really, really, really stress me out. Now having worked on these things, and I've worked on these things for a lot of years. But I would say it's probably only about the last, maybe five years or so that I've really worked on being kinder to myself on being more loving to myself. I have started to do things differently. So when I'm physically tired, emotionally tired or mentally tired, I have a rest. Instead of ploughing through I've learned to listen to my body and not do that thing. And even when I was in a job, I would still do that if it got to four o'clock and I was getting no work done. I would say to my colleagues, okay, I've reached the point where I'm just being unconstructive. Now, so I'm gonna go home, and then I will be in ready start with a fresh brain the next day. So now I work for myself. And if I'm having one of those days, there are even days when I will go to bed for an hour with a book because I've just realised that I'm just wasting time sitting at my laptop because I'm not actually being constructive. I do things that make my soul feel good. I can't think of a better or less hippie way to describe that. Like for me, a walk in the woods just makes my soul feel better. It feels restored, it feels calm, it feels energised, it feels ready to deal with the world. So I do things that make myself feel good. And for you that's about working out what are those things? I congratulate myself sometimes. So if I have a workshop that goes really well I'll kind of give myself a virtual High five, in that I'll say, Oh, really well, well done, Carla, because I don't have a boss. And many of you might not have a boss that is great at giving feedback and compliments.

So recognise your own achievements, you don't have to shout it to the rest of the office. But you can just say in your own head that went well, or if you keep a journal, I keep a journal and I write it at the end of the day, and there's some feeling too tired. And I will write things that went well. Another tool I talked about is doing an audit of what you've done and recognising what you've done, done well, as well as things that you might want to improve. I try and really listen to positive feedback and to accept it and to say, thank you, I still go read, I still, there's still definitely part of me that wants to downplay it. I quite often have calls where people call me inspiring. And that's one of my values. That's part of my own personal leadership brand. I love to be inspired to inspire others. But there's still most definitely part of me that finds it really embarrassing that someone thinks that I'm inspiring, but it also means the world to me, because it means I'm doing what I'm put here to do. So I try and really listen to that. And if someone sends me an email, I keep a file of those don't often go back and look at them. But it's nice to know that it's there. And I also scope out some time for me, time, and I'm not working time and I'm not parenting time. And I'm not doing life admin, just for me, it took me a really long time to do that after becoming a parent, particularly a solo parent who was addicted to her work. But I have started to do that. And to realise how important that is, for me, that's what loving myself looks like, is creating a sense of spaciousness in my day, rather than rushing from one thing to another. And I try not to look to others for validation anymore. And I try also not to compare myself to others, because that can be really damaging. And I find that that really, really drains my mood.

So I've got some suggestions, because it'd be a podcast for me if there wasn't some tips and suggestions and tools that you can use to get better at loving yourself, and being kind to yourself. So the first thing to do is to realise that not all that pressure that you feel is external. So yes, you may well be and I imagine most of you are in a job where you have a lot of external pressure from your organisation within your organisation to deliver things to get your team to deliver things. But actually, some of that pressure is coming from you, in all likelihood, do you actually need to be doing everything on your to do list? Do you actually need to be doing everything on your to do list to the standard to which you were doing it, I see a lot of women over delivering or taking on tasks that they don't need to take on.

For example, I see line managers who are relatively new, they have eight people who report into them, which is a bit crazy anyway, they have one two ones with them all, sometimes very frequently. And then they are the one taking notes, typing them up and sending them afterwards to have like 16 hours of their week or fortnight or month gone, when actually they don't need to be the one to take loads of notes and take, take them up afterwards, you can both do action points within the session. And if you want to have a note of them afterwards, then ask someone to send them to you afterwards. So that's just an example of over delivering. But I think quite often we want to over deliver to prove that we are good enough. And if we're in a difficult situation, I think that gets exacerbated even more if we just work harder if we just over deliver, then they'll really recognise the value that we add. And if you've listened to these podcasts for a while you're with it in my influence and impact programme, you will know that I don't believe that working harder is the answer to having more influence and respect within your organisation. I think that what you need to do is to work on the three things within the influence and impact framework which is about self belief. And this is this obviously feeds into that increasing your impact in terms of how you're showing up and developing your influencing skills so that you can get people to listen to you. Okay, so that's point number one realise that not all that pressure on you is external. Ask yourself what unnecessary pressure Am I putting on myself? It might be deadlines where someone's saying you've got two weeks and you're like I'll do it in a week. We'll promising you do it in a week. They don't need it for two weeks and yet now You're stressing yourself out doing it. In a week, it might be you've got all of these ideas, and you're trying to do all of them. And actually just picking one might help you make more progress and help you to feel more relaxed.

The second piece of advice to how to be more kind to yourself is to think, would you talk to a friend, or a loved one like that in in your situation. So that self talk in your head, that negative self talk that tells you, you're not good enough, or it's your fault, or you're not going to be taken seriously in that role? You're beating yourself up for things. You wouldn't ever be as harsh to other people as you are to yourself in your own head. So when you catch yourself in that, think, would I say that to my best friend, or to my child or my partner? What would you say to them, and then say that to yourself, instead. So this morning, like I said, My child had a meltdown. And I really did need to get him into his clothes before he went to nursery, there wasn't much choice about that. And I did get cross with him in the end. And afterwards, I was just feeling guilty and just feeling a bit achy about it, or, and I thought, well, and I started to think, Oh, you're not really very good at this parenting thing. And then I caught myself. And I thought, what would one of my fellow mom friends say to me, and they share their own story? And they'd say, you know, we all get cross, sometimes. And maybe they'd help me to work out a strategy for getting him into his clothes through play. I did try that. But I obviously need some new strategies. So I want you to think about that for yourself and think, what would I say to a friend? Another question that I laugh is, if I was being kind to myself, what would I do now? If I was being kind to myself, what would I do now? Or another one I love is, what do I need right now? What do I need right now? We often don't even know what our own needs are. And yet, we're so tuned into everybody else's needs. And I briefly tried therapy. And one of the questions they asked me is, what are your needs in the relationship, and I honestly have no idea, because I've never even really thought about it. But I think we all do that in different areas of our lives, we don't actually know what our needs are, we don't know that we need rest, because we haven't taken time to listen to our body. Or we don't know that we need to connect with our friends. Because we haven't noticed that our mood is though, because we're actually feeling lonely or disconnected. Or we haven't listened to our body enough to know that we need to eat some lunch. And we're actually being hangry. Because we've just been so tuned into our brain and getting tasks done.

So ask yourself, what do I need right now. Being kind to yourself also involves just letting it go when you make a mistake. We all make mistakes, we're human. None of us like making mistakes, but decide to let it go, to learn from it and to forgive yourself. You're allowed to be human and make mistakes. Just following through that example, if I spent the rest of my day, beating myself up and thinking I was a terrible mom, because I lost my temper. That wouldn't make me a better mom, it will make me a worse mom, I'd be making it all about me. Actually, what I want to do is recognise I need to find some new or try some new techniques in that situation. Or try and see it from his perspective as well. And also just recognise that sometimes it's hard and sometimes I might need a bit of help with parenting if I've been doing it on my own for a long time. Sometimes it's nice to have some grandparents step in for a little while.

So when you make a mistake, decide to learn from it, forgive yourself and let it go. You're allowed to make mistakes, it can be really helpful to make a list of the things that you love about yourself. And even that idea makes you feel a bit icky or weird. Start with the things you like about yourself. And note that note that you're struggling with the concept of making a list of things that you love about yourself because that indicates that there's some resistance there. So find things that you like about yourself instead, but I think it is important to recognise that you have got some good traits and they might not be the same traits that the people that love you value. I am quite direct and Actually, I really love that about myself, my sister who I used to have arguments with as a teenager would not love that, about me. It's really about not what other people think about you, this is about what you think about you. And like I said, this is the most important relationship you'll ever have. You know, they say that we're born alone, and we die alone. Yeah, that's a bit of a depressing concept. But actually, whilst we need other people, we are the most consistent person that is going to be this is the relationship that is going to be with us our entire life, the one we cannot escape from.
So we really want to make it not just a good one, a really great one, we don't want to waste any of our precious life, not liking ourselves, not being kind to ourselves, beating ourselves up for things. And we also probably, at some point, need to accept that not everyone is going to like us, and that's okay. Some people will think I'm great, some people think I'm really annoying, or really something else. And I'm now okay with that. I think when you when you do something to become more visible, whether that's becoming a manager or a leader, or in this case, me having a podcast or setting myself up as a coach, supporting others, you recognise there's going to be more eyes on you, there's going to be more people looking at you. You know, as a manager and leader, people will have more opinions on how you do things because they impact them more. And it's accepting that not everybody is going to be your best friend. Not everyone's going to like you as long as you can work with everybody. That's okay. As long as you've got healthy working relationships, as long as some people like you, then that's okay. You do not need everybody to like you to be a good person to be a nice person to be a likeable person.

Another thing you can do is consciously try and drop the comparison. Easier said than done, obviously. But we spend so much of our time comparing ourselves to other people and thinking we should be more like them. And when you just get better at loving yourself, you just don't do that as much. And now I noticed that now I noticed I spent a lot of time on LinkedIn. Now I noticed that if there's certain people whose posts bring out negative emotions in me, I just need to unfollow those people, so that I don't see them. Because I'm recognising that about myself, you can put yourself first sometimes as well, that's a way of loving yourself. And that might look like setting boundaries, it might look like saying no, it might look like creating time for yourself, it's going to be different for all of us. But try putting yourself first sometimes in terms of practical things, you could do some self care. So that might look like cooking yourself a nice meal, doing exercise that you actually enjoy, rather than forcing yourself to do exercise that you don't enjoy. Because apparently it's good for you find a way of moving that you do enjoy, you could schedule in something to look forward to each week. So you've got that little moment of joy in each week, that's just all about you. Another practical thing you can do is to meditate. And I know I mentioned meditating quite a lot. But someone wants described to me the idea that where you put your attention shows what's important to you. So where you put your attention can be seen as love.
And so meditating is about putting your attention on yourself. It's about checking in with yourself, spending time with yourself. And so that is a way of loving yourself as well. Well, even if you just did two minutes, or five minutes a day, and you just saw it as me time where no one needed anything from you. And there was nothing you were meant to do at that point. That's how I got started with it is just seeing it like that, basically. And then finally, the most powerful way I find to get better at loving myself, when I really need it is simply putting my hand on my heart apparently that does something to your nervous system that calms it down. And just saying, I love you. If you can say that when you're on your own. If you can say that out loud, then that's great. That can be a really helpful thing to do. That certainly really helped me at a time when I was struggling. I think yeah, I just broken up with someone to be more accurate. They had just broken up with me. And that rejection can make you feel unlovable and so I would literally put my hand on my heart and say I love you. I love you. And it made me feel so much better. That's not something I have to do very frequently but when I do it brings me wheel Comfort. And actually, if I just started doing it regularly and just regularly reminded myself, yeah heard that voice saying, I love you, that would be really helpful. So a whole host of ideas for you there and a bit of a stream of consciousness, as well.
But I hope that this episode has opened your eyes to the fact if they aren't already open opened your eyes to the fact that loving yourself is one of the most powerful things that you can do. And one of the best ways to lead a happier life. And I've given you lots of different ways that you can start to do that. I don't think we go from not liking parts of ourselves to allowing ourselves completely overnight, I think it's about little steps. The other thing I wanted to say is that if you are really feeling pushed back against this, it might be worth considering going to see a therapist of some kind.

There are some of us who because of the way that we were parented, or things that have happened to us in our childhood, or the rest of our life, we really do struggle with this concept and need some professional support to help with it. So if that see you, there's no judgement here, there is a decent percentage of people that will be in that same boat as you and if you haven't already sought therapy or found the right type of therapy, because there's so many different types of therapy, and just the connection and relationship between the therapist can make such a difference. It might be worth considering that for all of us. I want to leave you with one final question, which is, What's one way that you can love yourself more today? What's one way that you can love yourself more today, and feel free to share that with me, if you follow me on social media, I'll be posting about this episode, feel free to share that with me that, okay, take care. If you're new to the podcast, I wanted to share with you some ways that we can potentially work together. So if you've listened to this, and you're thinking everything she says resonates with me, and I think I might need a little bit more influence and impact as a leader, then these are some of the ways in which we can work together.

So the first one is my influence and impact group coaching programme is a 12 month group coaching programme. And that is aimed at women in leadership roles. So essentially, middle and senior managers, it's not for Chief execs. And it's not for brand new managers, because it's not teaching you how to be a manager. Instead, what it's doing is covering the three areas of my influence and impact framework. So strengthening your inner leader increasing your impact and influencing for success. And there's an amazing community of incredible women, there's over 170 of them. Now, that make up part of that programme. So there's the influence and impact programme. Your organisation can fund it, there's a discount for charities or there is also a self funding discount, as well. So if you want to find out more about that, you can look on my website, or you can contact me directly, you can also work with me one to one, so I work one to one with a small number of female leaders, they tend to be at the senior end of the scale. So directors and chief executives, and we work together for a six month period, working on whatever challenges they are coming up with, it tends to be people who are new to a particular role or organisation or getting ready to step up to the next level.

So again, you can get in touch about that. And I also have an online programme called lead from within which if you're not interested in the influencing side, but you do want to work on your inner critic, your inner leader how to tackle self doubt how to set some boundaries and develop a growth mindset. Then I teach all of that within myself guided lead from within programme and you can purchase that on my website as well. And then finally, I work within organisations too. So I've started to do quite a lot of keynote speeches for women's and equality networks. So if you've got one of those in your organisation, do put them in touch with me. I've got a series of really popular talks for that. I also run influence and impact in house you either as a full programme with a cohort of women, or covering particular topics within it, and we'll say I work, one to one in house and as an executive coach, as well. So those are all the different ways that you can work with me. And I love the fact that people get to know me through the podcast, I think it gives you a really good sense of who I am and how I can help you, and the sort of topics that I work with women on. So if this is resonating with you do get in touch. And you can always book a quick call with me, if you're not sure what's the right fit for you. You can always book a quick call with me on my website, and we can chat about what's going on for you and how I might be able to help you. If I'm not the right person for you. Or if I know someone else's programme that is a better fit, I will absolutely refer you to someone else. For me, it's all about trying to help you get the support you need, even if that support isn't me. So if you're thinking of working with a coach, and you think I might be the right person in one of these formats, then I would love to hear from you. I have set myself a mission of empowering 10,000 women in their careers by 2030.

So if you'd like to help me with that mission, there's a couple of things you could do. If you haven't already subscribed and rated and reviewed this podcast, please do so that would be brilliant. It really helps bring it to other people's attention. And I'd also really love to know what you have taken away from this episode. Take a screenshot of yourself listening to this episode, and post it on social media and tag me I am this is Carla Miller on Instagram, on LinkedIn. I'm Carla Miller one I would love to know what the main takeaway you got from this episode is so take a screenshot tag me and tell me what your main takeaway is.