Category: FEU Training Blog

There’s nothing like a world pandemic to shake up our assumptions and priorities! I’m pretty sure many of us used to feel quite confident about our career paths and definitions of success. But now all that doesn’t feel so straightforward anymore, when not just our careers, but some of our industries are largely on hold.

When we first entered lockdown the definition of success suddenly became finding toilet rolls and pasta at our local supermarket. Many of us had a crash course in sorting out new financial plans and strategies with little or no income, negotiating rent freezes or mortgage holidays, government help schemes and benefits.

After months of staying apart from our friends, family and colleagues, success developed into a socially distanced walk with a friend, connecting with neighbours you previously didn’t know well, or an online get together with people you care about.

As we slowly move back into circulation, many of our measures of success are still fairly modest, such as getting back on public transport or having a meal out. There is still a lot of anxiety about getting back out there and life is still far from normal, but I know I am slowly starting to re-engage with the outside world.

It would be wrong to suggest it has all been bad though. I reckon I have achieved a PhD in Zoom. And, an unexpected benefit of moving all the FEU Training workshops online is that they have become more accessible to people who couldn’t previously attend. Not just geographically but also for people with disabilities who can now attend because they can manage their energy better as they attend from home. Even when we can hold face-to-face training again, it is our intention to continue with online workshops to maintain this benefit.

Months of living life in a different way and at a different pace has given many an opportunity to really think. Some have been surprised by the conclusions they have reached. Many recognising that they have been on a tread mill, disengaged from the bigger picture, are now making plans for the future that takes them in a new direction, with a different focus and priorities.

I’m speaking to lots of people who are finding pleasure in exploring their talents, interests and passions in new ways without feeling the pressure of making it a permanent career strategy. For some, they are actually rediscovering what it is they love about their work.

At risk of being controversial, could this also be a time of opportunity? I speak to many of our members who have turned their creative juices onto working differently in this new environment and there have been some great ideas. I’ve seen zoom plays, online musical gigs and some community projects.

People are connecting with each other in new ways, and a by-product of whole industries being at home is that previously inaccessible people are now more available and potentially open to new approaches. There are opportunities for new alliances and partnerships.

So how are you viewing success for yourself at the moment? These past few months have been different for all of us. If you have not yet had a chance to ponder this, maybe take a moment and ask yourself the following questions:

• What are the aspects of your life before Covid 19 that you want to retain and re-engage with?
• What were you doing before that you don’t want to return to?
• Has the experience of that last months changed your priorities? If so, how?
• Is there anything you have been doing during the last months that you could develop into a career opportunity?
• What does success look like to you now?

Further info: view our 'Strategies for success' webinar recording.

For many of us at the moment, things are undoubtedly tough. And, as human beings, we have developed many ways to make it even tougher than it needs to be. For example, sometimes we catastrophise, taking a bad situation and imagining everything getting worse and worse with each decision we make. Or we can generalise strife in one area of our life into every area, by feeling upset about a work issue and then compounding it by picking fights with loved ones.

The best way to deal with both of these is to notice what you are doing and step back to see if you can find other ways to deal with or express your feelings.

What I want to consider in this blog though, is the way many of us narrow our choices in a complex situation down to just two option – I’ll call them X or Y. I remember working with a client who had a huge argument with their partner. They only saw two options: either to leave their partner of ten years or put up with their behaviour. Imagine being that person who has narrowed their choices to such dramatic extremes. I can disrupt my entire life or, I can put up and shut up. That is a difficult decision to make but also perhaps an unnecessary one.

And who amongst us has not put themselves in this sort of position where we only see two choices? I know I certainly have. I remember when I graduated, the country was in the middle of a recession and I couldn’t get work as a graduate. I finally got a Christmas job in a jeweller that went on to become permanent position. I was desperate to move on but convinced myself that it was that job or no job at all. It wasn’t until I got a last-minute opportunity to do Camp America that I suddenly realised that there were many other options open to me. As it turned out, ditching the job and going to America for four months was one of the best things I ever did.

So, if you ever find yourself narrowing your choices down to X or Y, you should train yourself to set off a warning flag in your brain. Having two options is not a choice, it is a dilemma! It is actually the structure of a problem. It shuts down all possibility for creatively searching for new possibilities. You just mentally stand there going, “On the one hand… on the other hand.”

So, if you notice you are doing this, stop, sit back and find some other options, three is the bare minimum, but aim for five. When we are thinking like this, it can be hard to come up with options, because usually we have convinced ourselves there are none. So it may be helpful to ask a friend or family member to brainstorm options with you. It doesn’t matter how seemingly bizarre some of those options might be because an outrageous suggestion can sometimes spark other more practical ideas or, when considered seriously, be a fantastic innovation that changes your life.

Going back to the client I mentioned earlier, I pointed out how her two options, leave or stay with no room to manoeuvre, were at two extreme ends of a continuum. We worked together to create other options, such as talking to the partner directly or with the help of a couple counsellor to consider how their behaviour might have contributed to the situation and what they could do about that, as well as talking about other events that were going on in other parts of both their lives.

As with most things in life, the main issue was one of poor communication. At the end of the conversation, neither of the two original options were even on the table as first steps. There was no guarantee that they would sort out the relationship, but my client had a range of options to try before they called it a day. This meant, instead of being stuck with a dilemma, they could take action to change things for themselves.

So, even though things at the moment might be tough, learning to pull back from narrowing your options down to X or Y and challenging yourself to come up with others is a useful way to ensure that you keep moving forward.

There is a real aura that surrounds someone who is truly confident. It’s an authenticity, a comfortable relaxed presence that in itself inspires confidence in others. A confident person is someone who knows what they want and how they think, but who doesn’t believe that their perspectives override what others think or want. Examples that spring to my mind are people like Barak Obama, Martin Luther King, Oprah Winfrey, Beyoncé and Bear Grylls. I’m sure you can think of many more.

It’s easy to mistake brash loudness and attention getting strategies for confidence. So much so that sometimes people on our Confidence workshop say they are not sure that they want to be confident if it means coming across as arrogant!

However, for me confidence is never arrogant, it is about being comfortable in your own skin - not necessarily having all the answers but open to learning. It’s a deep knowing that each of us has the right to take up our space in the world and when we are challenged or attacked, being able to deal with that without doubting our own right to exist, or our right to believe in what we do.

Confidence is about being prepared to change your mind if you are presented with new evidence or perspectives that, on reflection, you agree with.

So how do we all get closer to this? Here are some ideas:

1. “Be yourself, everyone else is taken.” Oscar Wilde

Many performers start their careers by copying others, “I’m going to be the next Adele!” The problem is that this position is already taken and, let’s face it, no one is going to do Adele quite like she does. Of course, we all emulate our heroes as we learn our craft, but it’s what we personally bring that makes our work stand out as special.

While we are trying to be someone else, we often edit out important elements of ourselves, for example, we may hide our sense of humour, or our resourcefulness or our compassion. So how do we come to appreciate that the special quality we have to offer in any situation is our uniqueness?

One way is to become more aware of our inner critic and work on making friends with it. Speak to yourself in a more kindly and supportive way.

Another way is to become aware of how you ‘do’ confidence. All of us have areas in our life where we are already very confident. Identify one of those areas and work out how you do it. What do you focus on, what do you tell yourself about it and how do you address any obstacles that crop up? Then see how you can use those same strategies and approaches in those areas where you would like to be more confident.

When we are comfortable being our unique selves, we don’t try to hide aspects that we are worried might not be good enough. The classic imposter syndrome thinking is, “If they really knew me, they would see what a fraud I am.” Imposter syndrome is very common, you can read more about it here.

Being yourself means that you are actually present in the room, in the job, in the relationship. It means you are not distracted by a lot of self-doubt and self-chatter that takes you off into your own inner world. Instead you are there, seeing and hearing, and able to react in real time to what is happening around you. And, with such focus you feel and appear to be more confident.

2. Find your courage

Fear keeps many of us from even trying to take steps in a new direction or from approaching a new opportunity. What are we actually afraid of? Making mistakes, being ridiculed, people being angry or hostile? Wild tigers jumping out of the bushes and eating us? How realistic are these worries? I remember someone saying to me when I was worrying about approaching new clients, “No-one is going to shoot you!” I laughed, but it made me realise that I was behaving as though that were actually a possibility.

So how can we alleviate some of those fears? Well, it’s often a matter of taking a leap of faith and getting on with it. If you make a mistake, say sorry and do your best to put it right. If people ridicule you, laugh with them or if it is cruelly intended, find another job. If people are angry or hostile, find out why and learn from it. Wild tigers? Well… avoid safaris.

On the whole, we treat all our fears as though they are all man-eating tigers. Our physiological responses of anxiety are identical to our primitive reaction to life or death situations. Learning to calm our fears can change our whole outlook.

Many of our fears originate from childhood when the adults around us had all the power and probably for good reasons wanted us to stay quiet, or compliant, or safe. We are no longer in that position and the more you take a chance or a risk, the more you will become comfortable in the knowledge that the outcomes from most situations are perfectly manageable. Of course, I am talking about taking risks in areas such as asking for more money or for a work opportunity. I am not suggesting you start entering tiger enclosures at your local zoo!

3. Please yourself

My mum used to say, “You can’t please everyone, so you might as well please yourself.” While I can think of many situations where she didn’t expect me to apply that (see the point above), the sentiment has stayed with me. I have learned the hard way that when you try to please everyone around you, you usually fail, and you end up doing things you didn’t want to do.

I’m not suggesting that we should all start marching round shouting, “It’s my way or the highway!” While there may be some situations where we do feel like this, there will be many others when we are given the opportunity to choose what we would prefer to do, where we can express our preference honestly rather than try to guess what the other person would like us to choose.

I’ve learned that everybody has a better time when we all take responsibility for ourselves and say what we want. And this is true in our creative careers too. If you spend all your time trying to please different groups, you may end up going down a creative rabbit hole where you have committed too much of your time doing work you don’t care for.

Being confident involves staying in touch with what youcare about and learning when you have the opportunity to choose a path, to choose the one that will most please you.

4. Don’t confuse confidence and competence

I often speak to people who feel they can’t be confident unless they are highly skilled in a specific area. To me, confidence and competence are completely separate. Of course, it is likely that if you are highly competent in a subject or skill you will also be confident in this.

But this doesn’t mean that your overall confidence is dependent on being an expert in any field. You can be confidently incompetent! By which I mean you can retain your inner confidence, which we have defined above as being present, open to learning and comfortable in your own skin, without knowing anything about a specific topic. Being confident allows you to admit to yourself that you’re not competent at everything but are open to learning if you choose to do so.

5. Keep an achievement file

Most of us to a greater or lesser degree operate a negative bias towards feedback, where we can remember in the most exquisite detail something that went wrong five years ago, while instantly forgetting all the praise and great reviews or comments we received last month.

Because it’s so easy to forget about all the great things you have done, it’s important to find some way to capture them all in one place. I find an achievement file is a great way to do this. Every time you get a complimentary email, letter, or review put a copy of it in this file.

Then, if you find yourself feeling a bit lacking in confidence and need a boost, you can pull this file out and remind yourself of how far you have come, what you have learned and achieved, and how many people appreciate what you do.

More info

I hope you like these suggestions for building your confidence. For more tips and advice, do watch our Webinar recording on Building Confidence or do our e-course on Overcoming Freelance Challenges.

Did anyone else watch the clock cross its annual threshold and feel a bit underwhelmed? I am surprised that I have come to feel this way, because I am Scottish, and New Year when I was growing up was a very, very big deal.

In Scotland, New Year was a much bigger deal than Christmas. In fact, Christmas day only became a public holiday in Scotland in 1958. There’s a very interesting article on this from The Scotsman.

I remember moving to London 30 years ago and being dumbfounded at how lavish the celebrations for Christmas were and how minimal they were for the New Year. I think nowadays this has largely evened out in both locations.

From my adolescence I remember the whole household being involved in the top to bottom cleaning of the house, which included polishing silver, washing out cupboards and cleaning mirrors. Even the cleaning cloths had to be washed and hung out to dry before the clock struck midnight. This was a bit of a downer for my poor my sister, who’s birthday falls on New Year’s Eve.

My mother would slump into the New Year, utterly exhausted. Only she didn’t get to rest. The ‘first footing’ then began, a tradition where friends and family visit each other after midnight, bringing coal or shortbread and a bottle of spirit to share, with with the aim of bringing good luck. This often goes on until dawn. Then my poor mum had the special meal of the day to prepare and serve. This is why the Scottish need an extra public holiday on 2nd of January!

I have not maintained these traditions, but have always previously had a deep seated, fresh start, attitude to the threshold of a new year. So, I started to wonder how I could make this a more useful marker on my calendar. Rather than come up with over ambitious ‘New Year’s resolutions’, maybe I could find a more grounded way to set myself up for 2019. I came up with the following ideas. Maybe you would like to try them too:

Review the year

I use my diary to track what I have been doing, so it’s a good place for me to see in one place what I have been up to over the previous year. I’m always amazed that I’ve forgotten many of the things that I’ve done. I go through it and consider what worked and what didn’t.

I usually make a few notes to remind myself of what I have learned and how I’ve developed new skills. I also jot down what I don’t want to do again, or how I would deal with things differently if I found myself in a similar situation.

I don’t limit this to work, it’s good to see how some friendships have expanded and others have contracted. Reviewing it like this can let you decide if you want to change anything going forward.

You can use this as a starting point for setting or updating goals and we have great resources on our website including a Goal Setting for 2019 webinarrecording and an ‘Overcoming Freelance Challenges’e-course if you want to do that next.

What can I throw out or let go of?

Just as the New Year is a time of beginnings, I also see it as a time of endings and like to set aside a day to see what I can throw out or let go of. I have a habit of accumulating things I am going to read when I have the time. I find it very liberating to admit that if I have not found the time to read them, I am not going to, so I bin or delete these items.

I sort out clothes or ‘treasured possessions’ that are either taking up valuable space or gathering dust. I once read an article that said you should thank the item for the pleasure it has given you, then let it go. I find it definitely makes it easier for me. What I love is the empty space this creates in my home.

I also take this opportunity to purge things that hover on the outskirts of my to do list such as people I always mean to spend time with but don’t get round to, new jobs I am going to pursue and chores I am going to get around to. My reasoning is that if any of these were truly important to me, I would have done them. Taking them officially off my list of ‘must do’s’ is incredibly liberating.

How can I be kinder to myself?

I have a habit of putting what everyone else wants before myself. I have spent some time this year thinking about how I can be kinder to myself. Things like saying no to friends and family when saying yes to them means saying no to something important for me.

I’ve decided to put some ‘me’ time in the diary, i.e., time where I don’t necessarily have an activity scheduled, where I can sit and think, read a book or go for a walk. Having it in my diary means I am far more likely to stick to it.

What new thing can I try?

I recognise that I am getting more stuck in my ways as I get older. I used to be pretty adventurous and now find I am far more stuck in my routine and comfort zone. So, I have made a list of new things I would like to try or things I would like to do more of, which includes:

• Joining a dance class
• Learning something new that is completely unrelated to my work
• Taking country walks on my own
• Doing something artistic

However you decide to start 2019, I wish you all the best. If you decide to try some of these ideas, do let me know how you get on.

Happy New Year!