I love this time of year as we prepare for Christmas. Christmas this year though is going to be very different. Things that we normally look forward to won’t happen and family gatherings are going to be smaller. But in the wise words of my eight-year-old nephew, “The most important thing is that we keep granny safe!” I have to admit to feeling a huge amount of pride when he uttered those words!

Last week we were talking about the cost of perfectionism to our happiness and confidence. My desire to be perfect meant:

• I held back from things I really wanted to do.

• Things that should be fun lost their enjoyment.

• I was in a state of self-induced fear far too often.

• My anxiety levels were high all of the time – anxiety had become a habit – my go to emotion.

• I felt guilty about things that just didn’t matter.

• I didn’t recognise or celebrate my successes because they were never quite good enough!

• I didn’t believe I was good enough.

All of which resulted in my confidence being far lower than it should have been.

I’ve stopped striving for perfection and one of the really helpful methods I used to do this was to make “Start before you’re ready” my new motto.

I worked with a lovely client who by the end of our time together was refusing to even say the word perfect. In fact, when she wrote me a testimonial she wrote it as p*****tionism! That really made me smile because she’d recognised just how detrimental the idea that she had to be perfect all of the time or she would be letting down everyone was to her happiness and well-being.

Halloween and bonfire night have come and gone, the clocks have gone back and the Christmas adverts are on the television. It well and truly feels like winter. It feels like it's dark pretty much all of the time here in Britain at the moment. I'm so glad of all my cheery fairy lights in my living room – fairy lights are not just for Christmas in my house!

How often do you catch yourself thinking that it’s alright for someone else because they’re more confident?

Far too often I hear women saying that they’re not going to do something – go for that new role, volunteer to speak, ask for that pay rise, volunteer for an organisation they admire – because they’re not confident enough.

It makes me so sad.

What do you think it is that makes me and the other confident women you admire so different to you?

Action – that’s what!

Action builds confidence!

I talk about success a lot when I’m working with my clients. At first I find that some women try to avoid the word as for them it has associations with ruthlessness, of lusting after private jets and very visible consumerism. And while some may define success as acquiring wealth, prosperity and/or fame for many of us it is something very different.

For me success is living a life that reflects what’s important to me. A life where I can take care of my mental and physical health. Where I can live with integrity and feel economically secure. A life that feels balanced and gives me the freedom to focus on the people important to me. A life that allows me to be creative and feel like I am growing and developing and helping others to do the same.

What do you prioritise every day?

Those of you who have taken part in my Grow Your Confidence challenge will know that I'm a great believer in the importance of not only prioritising but prioritising YOUR priorities before everyone else’s.

No, this doesn’t make you incredibly selfish or self-centred or any other negative description of yourself. It’s the action of a confident person.

The action of a woman who knows that when she is prioritising her own needs she is much better able to be there for the other people in her life. We can’t expect to keep making demands of ourselves without giving anything back to ourselves!

I was 23 years old, three months out of university and in the job I imagined I’d have at the end of my career!

Success? It didn’t feel like it. I felt an utter fraud, there by default rather than any merit of my own. The talented, professional woman who had employed me had been made “redundant” and I was promoted into her position.

Instead of success I felt guilt and overwhelm and like an imposter. I didn’t feel as though I was there by any merit of my own. I was waiting to be caught out. For everyone else to realise how out of my depth I felt.

At 23 I’d never heard of imposter syndrome but that’s what I had. I’d been put in a very difficult position but I was perfectly capable of doing the job. I couldn’t see that though.

“Don’t wait. The time will never by just right.” Napoleon Hill

I love this quote. The first time I posted it on social media I had women from their 20s to their 70s commenting on it. It seems to speak to us all.

We wait until Monday, the New Year, until we’ve lost weight, until we get the next qualification or promotion, until the children are at school, older or leave home, until we retire, until we’ve saved more money, until we win the lottery. The list of reasons to wait is pretty much endless.

I've been doing lots of exciting behind the scenes work over the last few weeks to make what I do for you bigger and better. A really enjoyable part of that has been working with a very talented brand specialist. Part of the process was sharing what I do and why. What my vision is - what my manifesto is. I loved sharing it with her and it made me realise that I haven't shared it here enough. So here it is - my manifesto - why I do what I do!

How many times a day do you say something negative, unkind or downright mean to yourself? Are you even conscious that you’re doing it? What would happen if you replaced that mean, negative voice with a loving supportive voice? What would happen if we spoke to ourselves the same way we speak to someone we love and respect?

I’m a real lover of the summer months but have worked hard over the last few years at embracing autumn and all it has to offer rather than dread the nights drawing in!

We can be great at making progress on our goals, getting our work done and keeping family life flowing smoothly and in all that busyness forget to make time for and appreciate the little things that will bring us joy. This is my list of things that will bring me moments of joy this autumn and that’s so important, especially this year.

Working with the women in my course last month was such a fabulous experience. The work we did together on values made me want to revisit this post from last summer as I think it’s so important to understand what motivates us.

Do you know what motivates you? It seems a simple enough question, but the answer can be many layered.

We often think that we’re motivated by things or achievements – having more money, a bigger house, a better car, nice holidays, a promotion. But, when we dig below the surface very few of us are motivated by these material things. What we are motivated by is our values. That’s not to say that we can’t or shouldn’t have material goals, but we should know how they fit with our personal values.

Here we are – September. Often referred to as the other January as children return to school (we hope) and it’s back to work after our summer break. An opportunity for a fresh start. But let’s not pretend that this is just like every September. For some of you work will still be from home. Others I know are job hunting after redundancy and there are some of you who are still furloughed. No, it’s no ordinary September. That said, there’s no reason we can’t see it as a fresh start. A chance to refocus on what we want from this year. No, we can’t predict what the next few months will bring. But, really we never can. It’s just that 2020 has really brought home to us that things can change quickly and dramatically with little or no warning.

So what do you want from the rest of this year? Where do you want to be come 31st December when we are looking back and reflecting and thinking ahead to 2021?

When I was in my early twenties one of my mum’s friends used to pass all her copies of “Woman and Home” on to me when she’d finished with them. I was most definitely not the target audience of the magazine, but I absolutely loved the articles about the women who’d given up their corporate jobs and started their own businesses, whether it was bee keeping in Cornwall, a gin distillery in Scotland or a florist in Yorkshire.

I used to read the articles with a pang of envy and tell myself that it was because I was unhappy in my corporate role and saw these articles as a sign that it was possible to escape. What I never told myself was that it because I was a budding entrepreneur. That was not the path that people in my family took or people like me in general. I saw it as a signal that I wanted to escape my current job, but not a signal that I wanted to be my own boss. How wrong I was but it took nearly two decades before I realised that.

Despite what the weather is doing it is the height of summer and time for me to check in with the intentions I set for this season. It was a modest list year as it was written when we were very much in lockdown.

This week we're continuing our summer tour of blogs from last summer. The weather can't actually make its mind up whether it's summer on not here in the north west of England. We have one day when it's 30 degrees and two days later I'm in a thick cardigan and thinking about putting the heating on! I'm going to resist the heating but I'm definitely going to put a pair of thick socks on as soon as I finish this!

Last July I wrote about visiting the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. I began by saying that I rarely miss it. This year of course it was unable to go ahead. Cancelled by the pandemic like so many other things. All the more reason to have a little revisit of this post.

A little while ago I needed to call out the washing machine engineer. Whilst we were waiting for the machine to do the thing that had made me call him out (which of course, like an obstinate toddler it didn’t) he noticed my trainers by the door and asked if I run.

I’d not been running long. I’d started it to keep myself sane during the dark winter months and to raise money for Macmillan nurses in my dad’s memory. The repair man was a very keen runner and when he found out that I was a newbie and, like him, I ran in the local nature reserve he told me that he had a very important piece of advice. I was expecting words of wisdom about staying safe or hydration. Instead he said, “If the Canadian geese are in your path, just carry on, they’ll hiss a bit but they’ll scatter and get out of your way. If there’s a swan in your path run the other way!”

We’re all so good at looking back at our day and listing all the things that didn’t go to plan and are still on the to-do list for tomorrow whilst ignoring the good stuff. It’s no wonder our confidence is low when we spend so much time on what went wrong and barely register everything that went well.

Last year I wrote about the need to celebrate. Not just birthdays and anniversaries but our successes. The reaction to the teaching about the need to reflect and celebrate what has gone well was so great that I thought it was about time we revisited that post. As it was last summer and my readership was small at the time there’s a very good chance that you’ve never read it. So, here it is. Enjoy and take note! It’s time to celebrate you.

“I’m not important enough to prioritise”

Most of the time when I’m working with clients these words aren’t spoken out loud. Instead they are inferred by other statements.

• I can’t do that because the kids need me.

• I can’t do that because I shouldn’t be spending money on myself.

• I can’t do that because it wouldn’t be fair on my partner if he had to cook when he gets in from work.

• I can’t do that because I should be available for the children’s bath time.

As women we’re trained – consciously or unconsciously – to be of service to others. We put the needs of others before our own. We stop even thinking about it.