Welcome. Good evening. Well, here we are, first, Q and A session.

Now hopefully you can all see and hear me, OK. If anyone's having any technical glitches or issues, please, click up your, in your chat box. Let me just make sure we're all on mute.

That's fine. Yeah, you too. So yeah, if you've got any sound or visual issues at all, just, type a message in the chat box, make sure it's to everyone, and I will see that.

Rich, also, I know you're listening in, so if you become aware of any issues, let me know as well. So, first of all, I wanted to say, well done, really well done, everyone, with the, the work that you've been putting in on the exercises, particularly the values exercise for the first module. And, I know that some people were finding it easy and enjoyable, and some people were finding it more challenging.

So really well done for, for tackling it. It's a great one to get started on. I also just want to say thank you for the engagements, that we're getting within the Facebook group as well, for those of you that are in there.

So, I think on Monday we're pretty much up to almost half the group. Having set some intentions, even if that was by Wednesday or Thursday. And also I can see that you're starting to kind of comment or like each other's posts as well, which is, which is good, cos I, with the best in the world, I can't be in there constantly sort of trying to comment as much as I can, but yeah, so thank you, that's really good, engagement in there too.

So, before we, thank you for all the questions. There's some awesome questions. I'm really looking forward to getting stuck into those this evening as soon as we can.

So I wanna try and get through as many of them as we can this evening. Let me just make sure we, let's just pop the panel on mute. .

Cool beans. OK, so for those of you that have are still finding the values exercise hard, that's absolutely fine. It, it's, it's maybe worth just pausing with it and just waiting till we've done a couple of the other modules because, it, it's, this really is a process and quite often we almost need the other bits that are coming later in the course to be able to then circle back and look at the value stuff again, perhaps with a slightly different or altered perspective.

So if you are hitting a point where you're like, I think I'm just really overthinking this now, and I'm really not sure. We, we, some of you have asked questions about the value stuff, so we will dive into that tonight. But otherwise, kind of pause.

I'm not expecting total clarity within the 1st 14 days. So just be, have, it's, this really is a process. Those realisations might come later in the course, they might even come after the course as you, as you reflect on them moving forward.

So, also tonight, obviously we're doing the Q and A styling on the meeting rather than the webinar. So this is a good example for me of, of the shift I want you to, to make as well to progress rather than perfection. So the easiest or safest, Let me just check and pop down on mute.

The easiest or safest thing for me to have done with this Q&A session tonight would have been to stick to tried and tested, do it as a webinar with a chat, do what everyone else is doing. But I'm in a lot of really cool coaching groups where we're, they're doing it with this format, and I really am excited to bring that into the veterinary space and give it a whirl and see how it goes. So, it might take a little bit of tweaking moving forward.

I reckon by about the 3rd Q&A, we'll probably have it nailed between us. So, Give me your feedback afterwards. Let me know what worked for you, what didn't work for you, and we'll kind of tweak and adjust moving forward.

So it's kind of a stretch out of the comfort zone for both of us, for you guys and for me as well. So we'll roll up our sleeves and get stuck in, . So I'm just checking, most of you are coming in, should be coming in, microphone's muted, yeah, that's good.

So now for those of you that are live on the call, like I say, we need to track who was live on the call so that Dawn can keep, looking after that for the CPD certificate. So for those of you that are live on the call tonight, can you just type into the chat box for me? #live.

If you can't find your hashtag key, just, just type live. But hashtagli, for those of you that are on the call tonight, hit return. Brilliant, thanks everybody.

I'll do a reminder in the middle of the call as well in case we get people, hopping on, a little bit all the way through. Also, what I'm gonna do, I've kind of had a, think about all the questions that you've asked. So if, we'll go through the questions, we'll get into those in just a second.

I'll give you the thoughts that I've had so far, and then when it's your turn on that question, if that answers it for you, that's brilliant. You can give me a virtual thumbs up. If not, and it would be quite good for us to have a dialogue, you can either type in when it's your questions turn, text, sound, or video.

And then if it's text, we'll just do it via the chat box. If you're happy, you don't want to be seen, but you're quite happy to verbally talk, I can unmute you and we can just chat, but you'll stay hidden. Or if you're happy to go live, you can write either live or, or video.

And we'll just give it a whirl and let's see, let's see what happens. . OK, so I think that's all the housekeeping out of the way.

So, that's great. Lots of hashtag lives. Everybody seems muted.

So let's get stuck in. It's 5:08. I'm gonna do a time check when we get to, 9 o'clock.

So we've got 15 duty questions to get through. I'll try not to waffle too much, and we'll see where we are at 9 o'clock. If we've only got 23 people left, we'll probably push on through.

If we're literally halfway through the questions, then we might save them for next time, or, or just think about that so that you're not all on the call until 10 o'clock tonight. Right, my drink. And without further ado, let's get stuck in.

I think, unable to type as wrestling a toddler to sleep, but listening, that's cool. I think, Allie, your question doesn't come until a bit later, so they might go to sleep by then. OK, so we're going to start with Bodie.

Dodie's question, so, Dodi, if we, if we do need to chat, if you want to type text, sound, or live in. So Dodie's question was that something was sort of troubling her a little bit from the last webinar, where we were talking about the zones of genius and excellence and kind of not languishing in the zone of competence or incompetence, to get a, a, a better work environment and not constantly struggle. But then what she was saying is, well, how do we grow, challenge ourselves and learn new things if we're going to remain in areas that we excel at.

Because she's saying, I'm the kind of person that responds very well to challenge. I love to learn, get bored without projects and, and new events on the horizon. So that concept of staying well within a comfort zone, doing things you're already super confident that seems at odds with a growth mindset.

So, what I would say to that is, yeah, absolutely. So, and then saying, kind of, have I misinterpreted it. So, yes, slightly in terms of they're sort of two separate things, and you actually get to do both.

So with, so. With the zone of genius, so with our comfort zone, absolutely do not want you sitting in your comfort zone. If you only do what you already can do, you will never be more or expanded from what you are today.

And for most of us, we, we don't want to stay the same, we do want to grow and expand. . The things with the zones of, so most, most of us kind of bob along in a zone of excellence, actually, we, we usually do find what we're quite good at, and then we sit there within that.

The zone of genius, and a few people are saying, how do I find my zone of genius? I don't know how to find it. And it, it's, it's, we're gonna talk about that a little bit later on tonight, because it's come up in, in someone's question.

It's probably a little bit of a narrower, more specific skill set than I may have made it sound last time. And sometimes it can take a while to figure out what that is. So what I want for you at the moment is just to have an awareness that you will have a zone of genius and just literally hold that as a concept, be open to it as a concept, and start to just get curious about it and wonder about it and think about it as we move forward over the coming weeks and in the months following the course.

Because it can take, it, it can take peeling back a few layers and lots of these sorts of exercises that I'm getting you to, to to find it. So for me, for example, my zone of genius is a particular aspect of coaching. And so, I have, eventually, I mean, I diversified 10 years ago now.

I've had 6 diversification hops within there to get to this point where I'm able to use my zone of genius on a daily basis. But am I sitting safely in my comfort zone? Oh boy, not.

I am so not in my, in my comfort zone. So taking, I've had to take so many leaps to, to follow my zone of genius to, to say this is what it is, but I'm gonna make a move in that direction. And the moves and the hops that sometimes you have to make require guts, courage, pushing past fears a lot of the time.

And so a good example of that for me would be coaching. Zone of excellence or zone of genius, really, really love doing that. I'm very in flow.

I know that I'm good at it. What's, what's outside of my comfort zone is quite a lot of the things that come with running an online business. So visibility, being out there on social media, creating content, marketing, sales, all those sorts of tasks that I need to be able to connect with the people that I can help with my zone of genius have been.

You know, my, my comfort zone is now expanding to include those, but in the early days, it totally wasn't. So, I'm, I'm hoping that that makes sense, though. So you get to have both.

You get to have things that put you in flow, but that doesn't mean you sit in your, in your comfort zone. And quite often you have to stretch a long way outside your comfort zone to be able to move in the direction of spending more time in a zone of, of genius or, or excellence. So does that, does that make sense?

Does that help? I'm not sure if you're live on the call tonight. Let's see.

You might watching on catch up. So, if you're not here live on the call tonight, let me know in the group if that helps. OK, so Rosie, Rosie Upton we have next.

So again, Rosie, hit me up with a text, sound, or live. So Rosie says, hi Jenny, I've got some values around being dependable and reliable that I do want to have. But I feel they've become a barrier to my being happy, because I've almost got too much sway.

So, and she's saying maybe due to limiting beliefs, but my, the, the question is, how do you reframe a value so that it becomes less prominent and more balanced against other values? Rosie, you're happy to speak. Brilliant.

so the first, the first thing, I'll give you my thoughts and then we can see if that, if that's worked. So. The first thing is exactly what you've just done already, which is forming an awareness.

So by completing an exercise that's helped you to look at what you feel your values are at the moment. Identifying them, and then having looked at them and said, I like this one, but it's taking over a bit, and having the self-awareness, A, to realise that and to get curious about it. That is kind of step one, really.

It, it's, it's having an awareness and starting to look at it and think critically about it. Step two in that phase is then saying, right, is that serving me or not? Is it helping me or not?

So they're good value, it's a good value to have, but as you correctly identified, if it's kind of taking over a bit, and it's perhaps stopping you from progressing in other areas that you, that you want to, then that might not be serving you and might need a bit of a tweak. So what's, and you've touched on limiting beliefs, which is brilliant. So the way, the way that I would be dealing with that would be to to start to look at it and say, right, OK, why does the being dependable and reliable, where does that come from?

Can you trace it back? Can you, can you trace it sort of back into childhood? Is it something that you felt you needed to have because of certain events, or, or is it something that you, it was an important value passed to you by your parents, or all of those sorts of things.

Let me just, See, where are you, Rosie there you are, . Oh, I've lost you. Rose, I'm just gonna unmute you for a second.

Hi, Rosie, are you there? Hello, can you hear me? Hi, yes, I can hear you fine.

So yeah, as you, as you kind of think back, is that, is that value something that has always been there for you? Yeah, definitely, I had . Not an awful childhood, but my dad has some fairly major mental health problems, so he's bipolar, so it was very, he's long phase, but very unstable, so you know, he wasn't that present as a parent because he changed from like one month to the next.

So I sort of ended up acquiring a lot of, I think, desire to make things stable. I'm the oldest sibling as well, so trying to, like, keep everything as normal as possible, which obviously doesn't work very well when you're 12, 130. Yeah.

But I just want to acquire responsibility, like a sponge. Like, if it's near me, I'm just like, that's my responsibility now. Yeah, absolutely.

And it's really, it's really, really interesting that you should say that. So, with, When, when you're in a situation that could be quite anxiety provoking, we have, we're gonna cover this in one of those modules, but we have two patterned ways that we tend to respond to that. Most of us fall into one or two groups.

We either overfunction or underfunction. So overfunctioners tend to step into the gap. They, they get into everyone's business, they feel like they want to control it, they become very, very busy and they're trying to act in a lot of stuff, you know, from that place of dependability.

Because, and often they will be first borns, because often where you are in the sibling sort of order makes a difference, because often the first child did have to have that bit more, more responsibility, as well. So it sounds like it's relatively easy to trace back where that value came in because you, as a child, you needed it. And, and I'm guessing you might have been trying to protect yourself and other family members, members and be there for your dad.

Yeah, I think that's fair. Yeah, absolutely. So, so it's almost like there's, there's a safety software programme in your subconscious now that's that, that is, is almost coming into force too, too much perhaps in areas where you, you could probably turn the bar down a little bit and still be dependable and reliable, but not at the cost of being able to move forward with whatever it is, that you're wanting to, to do.

So. Yeah, exactly as you put it, sort of not having too much sway over you. So.

The the step forward, so part of, part of this is just having that awareness. So having an awareness means that you can then have a, in situations, you can be mindful, and usually it tends to happen retrospectively, initially, and it'll be in a situation and go, right, well, so I try to be too dependable and reliable, did I, did I need to do that, or could, you know, could I have it made it OK for other people or trusted other people that they could handle it or that they could be there. And that might happen retrospectively initially.

But the, the step 4 in this really is just starting to think ahead of time. How, you know, especially if you're starting to work on goals or where you might like to move that in the, in the future, is thinking, how might that get in the way? How might it change my behaviour?

How might I show up differently if that it has got too much weight, and what I, you know, how do I practised stretching in a different direction with it? So that, does that start to answer it a little bit for you? Yeah, I think so, I think.

I've already realised a little bit things like putting in boundaries at work of saying, you know, like, I'm gonna go home now, even though there are repeats to do is very important for me, but it's like a constant, it creeps up on you. If you stop paying attention to it, you just slip back into doing the same things. Yeah.

Definitely. And it is that it's that kind of that you're in a team. Other people have to step up to the plate and and do that.

And also, there's there's a lot of times, I think, when we're phoning owners late in the evening, when it's not necessary, we could be doing that in the day afterwards. And we, we are more in control of that than, you know, there's that sense of obligation or, or sometimes we have to question. What is, you know, comparing to the medical profession and how long you have to wait for results there sometimes.

So, yeah, boundary setting is really, really important. So I think, see how that, see how that feels, see how when we cover the anxiety stuff and the, limited belief stuff, Rosie, let me know if that carries on helping, and if it's still, if it's still coming up as a query, then just fire it back in at another Q&A. OK, thank you.

Brilliant. Right, I'll pop you back on mute. OK, Sophie Baker, you're up next.

Sophie, are you live on the call? Yes, I think you are. So again, Sophie, if you want to write text, sound or live, or whatever, so yeah, Sophie, you're here, good.

So Sophie's got a couple of questions, so they're quite linked. So, so Sophie says, my first job was great for building up surgical experience, owning at the deep end and just got on with it. But then the company's values changed and the management created an unpleasant environment, so she ended up leaving.

And now I feel my surgical skills have stagnated, and although I'm fine with locuming, I think I do miss belonging to a team. I'm working for a place where your values are in alignment. The limiting belief is that you're 4 years qualified and going to struggle to find an opportunity to develop your surgical skills and you're looking for a bit of advice about how to find the right fit.

And maybe getting the confidence to take a leap, because she's saying I feel, I do feel I'm sitting comfortably, but maybe unhappily in more competent zone. So yeah, that's it, we can get into this this sort of linked in a bit with Jodie's question as well in terms of our comfort zone. Isn't always the best place, it's like we can stay there and it feels safe and it pays the bills, but there's often a nagging sense of.

What sort of frustration or or disconnect it that can come in there. So the first thing I would say is, as you've you've corrected correctly, is that even aware, you correctly identified there's a limiting relief operating here. So, that your 4 years out and therefore I'm going to struggle to find opportunities to develop the surgical skills.

So, . This one of the things that the these zones of genius excellence I've been talking about come from this book here. I can't see if you if you can see that it's called the big leap.

And within it, he talked about mainly not actually about the zone, he talked more about what he calls the upper limit problem, which means that we all have this kind of set point of how happy we've or feel like we're allowed to be. How much success we feel we can have, how much money we think we can earn. We've sort of got a set point with that.

And when something like moving towards a zone of excellence or genius would take a leap, and we get so far, and then when we reach the, the, the level of what we feel we can do. We quite often find subtle subconscious ways to self-sabotage. You call it the upper limit problem.

So we start that all these reasons or excuses or, you know, real reasons that they feel like big truths that I can't do that because I can't do that because, and that's us upper limiting ourselves and just, just not quite being ready to step through the, the fear barrier. If that makes sense. So, The, the first thing with, with any limiting belief, as I kind of said with Rosie, is, is writing it down.

So the belief that at 4 years qualified, you're gonna struggle to find an opportunity to develop your surgical skills. Now, I know for a fact that's not true. I know that, there are certainly the recruitment market the way it is at the moment, there will be practises, and I know it will depend on where you're, whether you're geographically fixed and other sorts of, it's not just that, you know, a single decision you make in isolation, and then there will be other factors.

But, would there be a practise you would be willing to take, take on someone 4 years graduated with all that experience who wants to further develop their surgical skills, then yes, I believe, that, that would be possible. So what might be more guessing in the way is, as you say, kind of the, the confidence things. Underneath it.

So the first thing with a limiting belief is to write it out and then really, really ask yourself, is that categorically true? Or is it just what I'm afraid might be true, or what I've heard, or just, usually the answer is that absolutely true, is usually a big fat no in almost every limiting belief. And so then it's about looking for evidence to the contrary and just using actually the, the vet part of our brain to, to critically analyse that.

Look for evidence that contradicts that. The other thing is putting yourself in a growth mindset. So, so with a growth mindset.

Fixed mindset says, I am the way I am. I have this skill set, and I can vary it a little bit, but I'm pretty much stuck the way I am. So it feels scary to try things because you might then prove that you're not as good as you think you are.

A growth mindset, perspective is when we believe that the state we're in this what we've been given sort of genetically, or talent wise or all that kind of stuff, is just the beginning. And actually, if we put in the time, the dedication, the practise, the effort, and the willingness to go through that bit where perhaps, yeah, you don't feel as good as, and this is where comparisonitis can really kick in. If you put in the, the cracks and the effort, then you can absolutely love skill.

Because you, because you've done it before, so you've got your surgical skills up to a level, they might now be feeling a little bit rusty from not having used them, but you've had them at that level before. So the unhelpful thought process there is the shoulds. I should now be at this level because I'm 4 years out.

I should be as good as her over there, because she's been out less than me and she's doing stuff more than I can do. The this external comparison that, that we measure ourselves by gets in the way of the growth mindset, which is actually just, actually, if I found the right practise, said to them, I want to develop my surgical skills, and then went on surgical CPD courses and scrubbed in with, with, . You know, the other people within the practise, could you upskill yourself back up again?

Yeah, absolutely. And when it, because when it comes to recruitment. Practises are, I did a lot of recruitment work with Vet Dynamics, with independent practise owners, and actually I've also done quite a bit of recruitment work with vet with vets now at the corporate level as well.

And I can tell you that good recruiters recruit for attitude and aptitude to the possibility because skills you can train people up in. So good recruiters will take someone who's got a good attitude, who's a good team player, who has, who has a more growth mindset way about them, who's willing to learn and take feedback and be, be a good, colleague, than someone who's already got the skills, but might have a core attitude or who might be a toxic person to have in that environment, or just might not have that much about them. So, again, it's challenging that I think that recruitment people are only gonna be looking at your clinical skill level.

Good recruiters recruit for attitude and aptitude, which you will have tonnes of. So hopefully that, that's a comforting thought as well. And then part of that growth mindset stuff is just the willingness to push through the icky bit of going to a new practise and perhaps feeling, if you do choose to compare yourself with people that have been out the same length as, as you, the, the, the, the period of time it would take for you to re-upskill yourself and then start to surpass that.

Yeah, it might feel a bit rubbish, but can you push through that? Can you tolerate the discomfort in order to know that you can upskill, yes, we, we, we can if we choose to. It's just that swallowing your pride and kind of getting through the discomfort of learning stuff.

I have to do it all the time in this business. You, you saw the debacle of me trying to get everyone into the Facebook group, and those sorts of things, they bruise your pride and you wish it was perfect and you wish you didn't have to go through the learning curve, but you never, as Dodi said in her question. You don't want to sit in your, in your comfortably in your zone of competence because you'll never get any better.

But that first bit of pushing through, we all we all do this when we're on the edge of our comfort zone, we wobble like. I think so. We wobble a lot.

So, is that, is that helping? Is there, are there some useful bits in there for you, Sophie? Yeah, OK, good.

I think that's everything that I put in there, right. A quick swing of me drink. Cheryl, you're up next, Cheryl, you're on the call live.

That's brilliant. And Cheryl, you've already said you're happy to, to, to talk via text. But Cheryl's question is, it's come up for a few people as well.

Cheryl is asking about the timeline exercise from the first module. So she had managed to think of a few themes or periods where life events had happened and was finding it quite useful analysing them. But there's one in particular, and this is similar, Rebecca Maudling, if you're on the call tonight, this is similar to your question as well.

There's one particular event for Cheryl that she's really stuck on finding any gift or anything positive. And Rebecca, you're here as well, brilliant. .

So because she's struggling to see what she can take from the experience other than huge amounts of regrets, so she had to rehome her dog, very sadly 8 years ago. It's something that she's thinking about every day, often getting really upset about, so she's therefore feeling that if 8 years down the line, this is still affecting her on a day to day basis, it must be impacting her in some way, like decision making, and we needing to learn more about behaviour, but she's struggling to reframe that into a positive at the moment. And reckon we'll answer all of your questions in a bit, but I know that you've had a, have a similar thing about what, you know, when you've uncovered a lesson in the timeline analysis that just feels negative.

How do you deal with that? So it's a brilliant question and I'm I'm, I'm glad it's come up. Although I'm sorry that you're going through that channel, that it does sound really, really difficult, as well, and I would, would really like to help you with that.

So pivotal moment, I the reason I've asked you to look at pivotal moments. In that exercise is that it is really useful with the benefits of distance, and when you come out the other side of an event, usually with time, you are able to see something that's come out of it through, through the negativity, something that has shifted or changed who you are, or that has given you something positive. But you can only pivot when you're kind of, when the event has finished.

So the other, the other reason that this exercise is useful is that it can, it can flag up things where actually there still is an ongoing challenge. And that's useful to know, because, so, you've hit the nail on the head, it absolutely will still be impacting you and not necessarily like a positive thing might be, it will drive you to learn more about behaviour and you'll become a brilliant canine behavioralist, and then that's brilliant, that's, that's a huge part of, of being in service and helping other people. And even though it's a painful reason that got you into it, that would be a positive in, in time.

Where it's not going to be impacting you positively is, like you say, around decision making, it might have broken your radar with your intuition. It might make you not trust yourself. It might make decision making feel really bloody scary, and that the impact of a negative decision might, that fear of making a wrong decision might be really, really strong.

So what this exercise is useful for is then flagging that up, because if you don't, if, if you hadn't flagged that up by doing this exercise, it would still be happening. It would just be happening at a subconscious level. It would be impacting you negatively, but not really.

Sort of waving a flag at you saying, this is something that needs to be healed and fixed and that you can move past. So now there's an opportunity to look at start doing that work, starting to do that work, and it might take a little bit of additional support. And now I'm gonna keep in touch with you offline outside the scope of this call tonight as well.

So, where, where there's a, where there's a, an event, when we are consistently looking back. In the past we were experiencing regret and we're ruminating endlessly about stuff that happened in the past. That tends to that those thinking plans tend to push us more towards depression, not, not you will become depressed, but it's, it's that that way of thinking.

When we are not so past focused, but we're very future focused and really, really worrying about what might happen in the future, that tends to push us more towards anxiety. And so you can see why it's quite easy to have, to have a little touch of both of those, of worrying of, of looking at an event from the past and looking at the event from. Future.

So I'm not saying that those are things that apply to you. What I am saying though is that if you're experiencing regret on a day to day basis, we don't want that to spiral into anything else. So that is just a flag that, it would be good to start the work, to do the healing work on that.

So I want you to see how when we get to limiting belief stuff and the self-worth stuff and some of the resilience work that we're gonna do in modules 4 and 5. I would be really interested to see if that starts the process of starting to shift and transform how you feel, about that event, Cheryl. If it doesn't, I want you to flag it up with me, and I think we, we, I can certainly look at what the right type of additional support would be because you absolutely can.

Get to a point, it's not about getting to a point where that event wouldn't feel painful to think about, but you can get to a point where it's not affecting you day to day and it's not impacting your decision making ability moving forward. Does that makes sense. What else did I have in there?

. Mm Yeah, exactly. So the, the other big thing here is, is we are going to talk about self compassion. So, yes, it all makes perfect sense.

Thank you. Good, Cheryl, great. So we're gonna, we've got a section coming up on self compassion.

So where, where there's been an event in the past and it's not panned out the way you want it, and there's, there's been impacts for you or for anyone else, those of us that are professionals that have had anything to do with animals, will certainly have experienced this in cases where there's been a mistake or a case that didn't pan out well, that's had an impact. We massively need to work on our skills, skills of self compassion. It's a really important part of healing.

Self-compassion isn't this kind of fluffy concept. There are 3 distinct distinct components to it, and you can work on actively increasing your ability within all of those. So we're gonna cover that, in the red module.

Cheryl, I'm glad that that's, that's helped. OK, so that segues me in nicely to Rebecca. Rebecca Maudling rather than Becca Howe.

We've got a couple of Beckers, . OK, so, Becca has kind of three parts to her question. One was around the values exercise, so she was asking kind of should, should her values reflect Yeah, what attitude doesn't work, should my values reflect me when I have felt that I have been at my best and most fulfilled or me now?

Because she's got some aspirational values that she would like to hold, but isn't really getting to fulfil them at the moment. So, Rebecca, you're here, aren't you? Let me just try and find you a second.

Oh, no, I don't, I don't know which. Rebecca, can you unmute yourself? If you wiggle your cursor over your box and click on unmute, just so I don't unmute the wrong Rebecca.

Hi, can you hear me? Hello? Hi.

Hi, can you hear me all right? Yeah, perfect. Brilliant.

So Becky, can you just expand on that a little bit for me in terms of the when you felt at your best versus now? So I guess my life was very different when I felt kind of at my best and most fulfilled, and I guess one of the big things for me was Kind of value around adventure and that was a big part of my life and it is not there for me at the moment I don't feel there's a value necessarily or not one that I'm living, so. It's hard to know whether it should be in there or actually whether because my life circumstances have changed, whether It should drop out, and that's normal and to be expected.

Is it, so if, if we could cryofreeze your children, put your business on hold, and give you a shed load of money, would you still want to do adventurous things? Yes. OK, so it's a value.

So it's so whether you so it is a value still, rather than it's, it's so what I'm hearing is, should I extinguish that value or sort of put it on hold because the lifestyle that I have at the moment means I can't really express it. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So, I would say that that's, I'm, I'm kind of thinking back to your HBDI.

Becca and I've done HBDI together. I'm pretty sure your yellow quadrant was quite high, wasn't it? Yeah, it was, yeah, surprisingly high.

Yeah, OK. So it's actually an undeniable part of who you are. So what I would say with that is, It, so that is part of who you are and actually trying to deny to, so that there's, there's a fine line between acceptance of the, of choices.

So it's about, I mean, part of it's about owning your choices, in terms of going, right, well, the, the situation I'm in at the moment is a result of some choices. I know there's, I know there's things that have cropped up that, that weren't choices, they've happened and that, but it's still that kind of . Keeping the that part of you, but and looking at.

Some ways of can you incorporate that in within, in a, in a smaller way, the life that you have at the moment. So it might mean that you can't go off checking in the pool, but could you be finding ways to experience a bit of adventure within your role, within some of the stuff you're doing with the children? So sort of bringing a sense of adventure in a micro, it's sort of in a micro level in some of the stuff that you're doing already.

Yeah. So that makes, that makes sense. And I guess that probably links to my second question was about the limiting of 5 values because if that comes in, then one goes out.

So. Yeah. So, so the first thing is, it, it's, it's, there's no data and evidence-based scientific paper that I'm aware of that says every single person on the planet has exactly 5 values that fit into these neat groupings.

It's a guide. So I would say, so basically, It it's, it's a guideline. If you feel that you're, if you're struggling to choose between them because you feel that you have more, you probably do have more.

I would say anything up to 10 is a good number, but even if you ended up finding 10 things that you found that were values to you that you cared a lot about, within that, I'd still be wanting to say, right, here are my 10 values of those 10. If I, if I, if someone said you could have to pick one that you'd never experience again, you had to trade it in for something. Which would that be and then work your way up so that you can rank them a little bit so that even if you have 10, you still know what your top 5 are because we're looking for focus.

Does that make sense? Yeah, that makes absolute sense. Yeah.

I like the way of framing it that if you had to get rid of one completely, like, which, yeah, that makes sense to sort them and prioritise them, definitely, yeah. In London, through, I was on a course of my own coach, with 100 women, and she made us do the values thing live in our journals at the time, and we, we, we came up with 10. And then she went through saying, right, you have to trade one for world peace.

And then she was like, Right, you have to train more, trade the next one for clean water for every child. And we were all going, Oh, I don't want to give up any of my values. But when, if, if the trade-off was world peace, well, yes, of course you'd give one up, but which one would it be?

And it was, and then we ended up seeing what our top three were. And that was really interesting. So yeah, you can, you're allowed more than 5, it's OK.

And then the, so that's those ones. And then what I was saying to Cheryl about the stuff in the timeline analysis, did that help a little bit? Yeah, I think it was interesting what you're saying about kind of when it ends, you're able to view it in a different light.

I think some of mine, I feel that they, the impact of them is lingering. So it's not, I don't, you know, really looking at them, I don't think they necessarily necessarily are still going on. I think it's probably just I'm feeling the impact of that.

Yeah. And sometimes they're both. So one of my pivotal moments was Becoming a vet, fighting to become a vet, because during my childhood and teens, I had to overcome a boringly long list of quite difficult and, and at times traumatic things to get there.

And I doggedly hung on when people were saying to me, you know, there are other things you can do. And I I just kept doing what I was just so blinkered of, that's my goal. I can't see it any other way in my head, I will achieve it.

And I did achieve it. And so that for me has given me a huge gift, but also limiting beliefs that I'm still working on shifting and, and improving. So the, the, the, the gift that it gave me is the absolute belief that you can, you can make something happen if you're 110% and, and you never give up and you have resilience and you just keep going, you, and you believe that you can get it, you will get it.

The, the, the, the limiting belief is that it's graft, it's hard work, it's blood, sweat and tears, it's a real struggle. How that shows up for me in my life is. I can complicate the most simple of tasks.

You give me a simple task, I will find a way to make it complicated because my belief is you can have what you want, but it's hard work. I've been working really, really hard. With my own coach in the last two years to just dissolve that resistance to shift to a new belief that it can be easy.

It can flow, it doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be incredible hard work to achieve a goal. And I'm now making that, that is now becoming my truth. So those pivotal moments sometimes give you both a gift and a scar.

And if that scars still impacting you, that's the work you need to do is, is shifting and transforming and look at how can I move past that? Oops, I hate in my mic. Does that make sense?

Yeah, that, yeah, definitely, that makes sense. And I think, I think the other thing about them is when they're in conflict with the values. So there's one sort of about fear of judgement, but also one of the values being recognition.

So, oh, so almost, so the you're, there's a fear of being judged and yet at the same time it would feel good to have recognition for your work. Yeah. So, so.

Then I would work on the, so when we do the self-belief stuff, that would be a really good one to take the fear, the fear of judgement through, because often the first place we need to stop judging is internally. Because we, we are our own worst critics, and when we judge ourselves really harshly, we've, we. The weird thing is, when you work on your own self compassion, you become less judgmental and all sorts of interesting things start to happen.

So there's ways of working on releasing that, that's whilst hanging on to a value of feeling like it would be important to get recognition. Because if that is an important value to you and you work in a role where you're not appreciated, no one notices what you do, no one ever says thank you, or you feel like your work isn't having the impact that it should be, that's gonna feel like a value to disconnect. So keep that part of it.

Work on reducing the fear of judgement. Great. Thank you.

That's really helpful. Awesome, thank you. Can you just mute yourself again, Becca?

Yeah, so I don't, that's lovely. Right, Nicky, Nikki Law, are you on here tonight? Nikki is live, brilliant.

Nikki, again, if you want to say text, sound or live, let's see. So, first of all, none of you need to feel silly about asking any questions at all. It, it's really, your question will be a big question on a, for a lot of people.

So, Nikki's saying, how do you actually recognise your zones of excellence or genius? And what, what are you meant to be striving for, or, or kind of know what to do to be working within those. So the the first two are relatively easy to spot.

I'm happy to speak. Great, Nikki. So there is, there's, most of the people that are here on this call tonight are probably not working in their zones of incompetence because, you know, the just the profession we work in, the, the situations that we're in, none of you would probably have jobs within the, within the veterinary profession, or those the two of you that are not directly within the veterinary profession either.

So we're we're probably not tipping that zone of competence is stuff that's OK, you can do it. It might be a bit boring. It's certainly not unique to you, but it feels quite safe.

And often when we're in a zone of competence, we can start to upper limit ourselves when we to move out of it. Some people don't, some people are quite happy to say, yeah, I'm, I'm really good at that. They can identify a zone of excellence.

Some people, I can see by the questions from tonight are going, I'm really struggling to say what I'm excellent at. So they probably they will have zones of excellence, but they're struggling to to name them. So sometimes that that can be A self-confidence thing in terms of, of having the self-belief, knowing that it's OK to say, I'm good at that.

And we can see when, one of the questions I asked live on the webinar last week when I said, how easy do people find it to say, I'm really bloody good at that. And a lot of people don't, can't, it's really hard. I don't know how to do that.

It doesn't come naturally to say that. So you may find that when we get to the self belief and the resilience parts, it gets, you can start to feel a bit more confident at claiming a zone of of excellence. If you've done the Thank you, let me just find you.

Do do do do. There you are. I'll meet you.

Hi, Nikki, are you there? Hi, I'm here. Oh good, fantastic.

Have you done the Not the desired conditions, the working elements exercise, yeah. No, not yet. Ah, OK.

So that one will be a good one to have a go at. You don't really need to have done it until module 3, so you've still got plenty of time, and it doesn't take that long. I, I need to cough.

So, with that one, you're gonna have, well, I think it's like 24 different aspects of work that range from things like financial, technical, admin, creativity, interpersonal, all those sorts of things. And you're gonna have to self-score yourself as I do this really well, well, OK, not so well, really not well. And your 4s and 5s are the things you, that you feel you do really well, really well, super well.

. So with that exercise, that will start to flag up what are possible zones of excellence for you. So they will tend to be your zone, your 4 and 5 scores, where I'm sort of forcing you to say what you're best at. Does that make sense?

Yes, that makes sense. Yeah. So it's, so you, so a zone of excellence is something that you just, you just feel there's a strength, it puts you in flow.

It doesn't feel too draining when you do it, and you can do it really well. And, you know, if we ask other people, if you went around the practise and ask the people that you knew closest to you, what would you say my top three strengths are, you would probably find a common theme coming out. The profiling can help with that as well.

So have you ever had any, psychometric profiling done? Yes, I had the Myers Briggs one done, which I read, I read through after the, the last seminar, which a lot of it did make sense, but some of it was a bit hard to see how it was relevant to the work environment and the vetting. It is a little bit with Myers Briggs, so because Myers Briggs is a personality type indicator.

It's very, very useful interpersonally, so it's really useful for helping you to identify sort of introvert, extrovert, and all those sorts of things and how you might fit when interacting with other types of personalities within the practise. But you're right, there's not so much. Within that profiling one that actually drills down into competencies, so that whereas there's a few other of the others of them that that do that as well.

So if you want a bit of guidance on that, you can pick offline and and I can point you in the right direction, for that. So the zone of genius, and this links in with, with, with Dody's question. Zono genius is probably smaller than we think.

And, and to find it, sometimes it's like, you know those Russian dolls where there's a big one and then you open it up and there's a smaller one and a tiny one inside. The way to start finding your zone of genius, the first thing is it's a bit of a process. It takes a while, and it takes confidence and belief to get there as well.

So there's there's kind of 4 questions that you can think about and I might, there's a couple of people have asked this. I might post it out into the group, . Or in an email later on.

So the first thing with, with the zone of genius is thinking what do I most love to do at work? And I'm not necessarily meaning a specific, like, . I love dealing with rabbit abscesses or I like, you know, and it's more kind of.

A kind of, what aspect of work you like doing. So how do, and again, when you've done that exercise with the different working elements, you might find that you can take a particular aspect I really love to do that. The second question is, is what, what do I do at work that doesn't really feel like work where it feels so good that you're kind of like, this is why I come to work.

And that might be a certain type of interaction with a client. It might be a certain type of interaction with a colleague. It might be nailing a diagnosis, looking down a microscope up in the lab.

It be, it could be, it could be anything. It's there's moments where you just go, this is why I do what I do. And if you never get a moment in the role that you're in at the moment where you go, this is why I do what I do, I would get curious about that.

You should, you should at least in scope of every 3 months or so, preferably more, have a moment. I, every time I come off a coaching call with a client, I'm like, that's why I do what I do. Every day I get, I get that several times a day because I've, it's taken me 10 years, but I am now sitting in my zone of genius, doing, doing work that I absolutely love and I'm passionate about every day.

So if you don't get that feeling at all, I'd be curious about that. If you do get that feeling, when does it happen? Think about that, think about the types of things.

And then What what in your work produces the highest sort of ratio of reward and satisfaction to the amount of time spent, it's something you can do for a a little bit of time, but you feel really good about it. They're quite similar questions. And the final thing is, is you, you're looking for something that's a unique ability.

So as a genius, it's not gonna be unique in the whole of the world. There might be millions of people who can also do that thing. But it does tend to be sort of unique either within your workplace or your group, your social circle or group of friends, .

And again, it's that Russian doll analogy. So, so the question to ask there is I'm at my best when I'm doing. Whatever.

And when I'm at my best, the exact thing I'm doing is, whatever. And then when, when I'm doing that, what I love most is, so for me, those three layers, I'm at my best when I'm interacting with people, when I'm working personally. I'm at my, when I'm at my best, the exact thing I'm doing usually is helping them to solve a problem.

And what I love most about that, and this is kind of the essence of my zone of genius, is that I just have this weird thing that I've had since being a kid where I can listen. To someone talk about something they're dealing with in their life, and I can just see how all the moving parts fit together, and I'm able to reframe that back in a way that gets people thinking differently and holds the space for them to figure stuff out. I've been able to do that to a kid.

Quite often, our, so it can be quite small. So when you're thinking of a owner genius, you, it might be that people are thinking too big, too broad, like it's a massive big thing. Often it's a very nuanced skill.

A little thing. And often it, this is the reason why I've got you to do the timeline exercise as well. It often comes to my childhood.

So where Rosie was saying, she's got her dependability and reliability from the experiences she had in her childhood. My zone of genius comes from my childhood as well. My parents divorced when I was 2.

I had to cope with a lot at a young age. I was absorbing the distress and upset of both sets of parents because they didn't part on good terms. And the influx of a new parent coming in at a very, very young age.

So I had to develop coping skills really quickly. That meant that as a young adult, I'd often dealt with more than other people had, and, and it just, it just kind of came from there. And so it's, that's that, again, looking back at those pivotal moments, and knowing that it might take a bit of digging.

A bit of reflection and a bit of figuring out. So does, does that help at all with identifying what they are? Yes, no, it does, it does make sense.

Yeah. Good. Thanks for that Nikki, it was, it's a really good question.

And right, I'll pop you back on how are we doing? 10 to 9, right, Han. Han Wilcox, are you on tonight?

Let's have a look. Yes, she is still on. Brilliant, Hannah, we're gonna tackle your questions now.

Again, let me know, text, sound or live, . Have a swig of my lemon and honey. OK, so let me remind myself.

Han says, I'm struggling slightly with my values, in particular, the section I've titled relating to work. I'm unsure if some of them truly matters to me or if I've chosen them because I think I should feel that way. Either influenced by high achieving friends or family, or feeling she should be a certain way from social media.

So that kind of comparison I think. . For example, ambition and recognition.

I'm not sure if these are truly valuable to me or if they really matter when I look at the values in my personal column. So Hannah's wanting some direction on on helping us clarify which ones are are really important. And also has the second part of her question is she's a little bit like Rebecca, Becca Ming in that, I've got values I would like to have, but currently not really achieving, so dedication, decisiveness, motivation, optimism.

Should I focus on how I can work on these in my career, or do I just need to work on accepting that they may not actually make me happy or be that valuable? And again, worried that she's comparing herself to others too much. And even finding that within the group, looking at some of the other responses within our, our group, of feeling guilty, that she doesn't, she feels she's feeling like she doesn't seem to be as dedicated or hardworking.

So this really brings up the comparisonitis thing. Comparisonitis, it's, it's, that makes us feel so rubbish. It, you know, there's a reason why people say.

Comparison is the thief of happiness, because nothing good ever comes from it. We, it just makes us feel rubbish. And even if we compare and actually do feel like we're better, then we feel like we've got our judgy pants on.

So either we go into judgement mode when we compare going, Oh, or we go into, oh my God, I'm not enough and I need to just crawl back under my rock. So it either sends us into judgement. And the funny thing is, When we're in judgement, there's usually an underlying, people, people don't judge when they feel really safe, secure, happy and totally confident in their own self-worth because you just don't need to.

So often where there's judgement usually. We're harshly applying judgement to ourselves, so often there's self-esteem or self worth issues going on under there, and, and being driven by a worry about what will people think. And Hannah, I know, from your form that that that is something that that you found tough, and being in that what will people think mode and you absolutely will not be alone in that.

I know there will be lots of other people, within the group feeling that as well. So when, when you're worrying about how you might be perceived or what people will think and focusing externally on managing perceptions, it then becomes almost impossible to figure out what your values are, because there's sort of that, well, my values will morph into what I need them to be so that I feel OK, so that I feel like I fit in, so that I feel like I'm doing the, the right things. So then it becomes quite difficult to discern what's genuinely my value and what's the value that will make me feel better if I express it and then I'm accepted more.

So what I would say, Han, is if you're struggling with your values at, at that moment, would be to just, you've had a crack at it, which is brilliant. I would wait to see how you feel as we work through the resilience and the confidence modules, and just to see if, particularly around the ambition and recognition, if that starts to shift it for you. Because I know from your form, you've got a lot of amazing hobbies and really creative stuff in there as well.

So we've got hiking, travelling, camping, outdoors, gym, reading, cooking, growing vegetables. You've got a lot of interest, you've got, you're multi-competent and you've got things in there that clearly I, I would imagine you feel quite passionate about or or enjoy. That are perhaps not.

But the thing with the vet identity takeover in that there are people within the veterinary profession where they don't seem to mind that it's completely taken over their life, and that's all they think about, it's all they talk about, it's all they're focused on. They don't want a half day because they don't know what they would do with it. There is a subsection of the profession who are like that.

How happy they genuinely are, I don't know. Some of them might be, some of them might just not know how to be any other way. But there's a massive chunk of the profession where they, that, you know, one of the reasons that vets now is in existence and became the giant that it is, is because more generations of us coming in as vets have gone, actually, I wanna have a life, or try and have a life.

I don't want to be not able to ever go to yoga at 7 o'clock on a, on a Thursday because I can't ever tell when I'm gonna be away from work. You know, I'm working more and more with clients now where they have a slash career. So they're a vet slash jeweller.

They're a vet slash pottery maker, they're a vet slash artist. And sometimes that's the thing on the other side of the slash is income generating, and sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's just the zone of genius might lie in that, and we all need to be in our zone of genius at times, but it doesn't necessarily have to be how we pay our bills.

It's great if it can be, but sometimes it just isn't. So, sometimes part of resilience is being brave enough to own what's genuinely important and work out what does feel like it should. I really care about that.

And actually, I would reference you, but if you've got your list of values that you've come up with so far. And I said to you, you've got to give one of those up. You have to trade one in.

You can't ever experience that value again. You have to give that to me and return something. Which one would you give away first?

And if it is that one around, that has ambition and recognition in it, then I would just get curious about that. Is it possibly more ambient? .

What else have I put on here, reading through this, also, yeah, look at when with all those other hobbies that you do outside of your vetting. Have a think about why you enjoy them. Why do you enjoy it?

Why do you engage in that? Why do you do it? What values are you expressing there?

So, is it that it helps you keeping balance? Is it that it connects you with the people, it's good for your health, being outdoors and exercising? What is it?

Because those you'll, you'll find the values that you connect with the most, as well. Also, you could try writing out the the the the sentence, recognition and ambition are important to me because And just write, see what comes up. And just then look at what you've written and see, is it driven by a need to manage external perception or is it genuinely coming from the inside out, .

A little bit like, I was talking to you with Rebecca, where, where I don't know if this is how Rebecca expresses her recognition, but I, there is a way of, so of recognition being about wanting to be appreciated and seen and and noticed for, for, for the work that you do. So try and write that sentence, recognition, ambition and important to me because, and then just basically analyse what, what you come up with. I don't know if you're still live on the call.

Does that help, ? I'm not sure if she's still here. Hopefully she'll watch that on the replay.

Yes, thanks. OK, good. So, just a let me see.

21234567. Some of these questions are related. So we're at 9 o'clock at the moment.

I might just crack on, if it start flagging up to me, people, if you're like, I've just gotta go, I need to go to bed, I need to do stuff. I'm gonna go on sort of till 15, and then we'll just have a review there. If everyone's brains are falling out of their ears, we'll, we'll, we'll stop at that point, but if we're almost there, we'll push on through.

So, hopefully, everyone's happy for us to just run over a little bit. OK, Nicola McCallum, you're up next. Sweet drink.

Nicola, I don't know if you're on the call. Give me a hello if you are. So Nicola's saying, I really struggle with self-doubt, and I find that whenever I start something new, whether in my career or in a new hobby, a small setback can make me feel like, I would just have to consider that might be something I could do that in the first place.

It doesn't necessarily make me give up, but it does make for numerous crises of confidence, which are less than fun. Yeah, absolutely. It, it, it really doesn't feel good when that happens.

She's saying, do you have any tips for keeping things in perspective and sticking with an area that you think you really want to achieve despite perceived difficulties, . So, yes, because she's wanting to look at moving into a behaviour and chronic pain field, and it's easy to look at other people out there who have far more experience than I have and wonder who I am to think I can do this. So again, we've got our old friend comparisonitis kicking in there.

So, like I say, nothing good ever comes from comparisonitis, and I want you all to start, being in this group is a really good thing. In that those of you who are, I want you to see what triggers your comparisonit within this group. So if you're in the Facebook group and if you're reading posts and stuff, what sort of posts, if you find a new read a post and just go, oh God, she sounds, or he sounds so much better than me, oh God, I don't even know why I'm bothering.

Why has that post triggered you more than a different post? So I want, this is, this is not just, you know, cause this is everyone. I want you to start looking over the next few weeks at what your triggers are, what are your comparison I triggers, because behind them will be the whatever self-belief bit of work you need to be doing.

So be on the hunt for, for comparison, there's never, there are no good aspects to it. There's nothing that says, if I compare myself to people that might motivate me to get better and be good. it just doesn't.

But you know when you're not in comparisonitis, when you're a lot of it's when your self-worth isn't on the line. So we're gonna talk about this in later models. When your sense of self and how good you believe yourself to be as a person is intrinsically linked to what you do and how well you do it, it feels really fecking scary to take action on anything.

To try and upskill, to make a different decision, to push yourself outside of your comfort zone, because if you fail, if you fall flat on your face, if it doesn't work, if you're not very good at it to start with, you feel like less of a person, and that's really emotionally painful. Most of us coming into the vet profession, to start with, we have got that. Our self-worth is woven into how what we do and how well we do it.

And ultimately, a big part of the resilient work is starting to do the work that's necessary to hoy your self-worth out of there. And I'm not saying that that's easy. I'm not saying it's a click your finger and it's done, it's a journey.

It's a journey that we're all on. We're all moving on that journey from what will people think. See I am enough.

And the thing about self-worth is our, our self-worth, our value as a human being is absolutely incontroversible. You have inherent value as a human being just because you were born. Nothing can ever take, nothing you could ever do is ever against that value that you have.

But that's not gonna feel true if your self-belief is weaved into to who I am, you know, what I do and how well I do it. So then we get that classic shame gremlin of as soon as you start to think, OK, well, I can expand in that direction. I'm interested in that.

The shame gremlin pushes you back down and goes, Nah, who are you to think about doing that? Oh, get you big pants. You can't, you know, and it squashes it down.

Well, the other Shane gremlin chimes in with you're not good enough. So if we manage to kick off the I'm not good enough gremlin, then we get the, oh, get you gremlin, and, and those two shame gremlins are like a vice that keep us not feeling great and not pushing. And it's, it's also interesting to look at who you're comparing yourself to, because, what, what, like you say, you're comparing yourself to people out there who have far more experience.

So, it's just looking at the logic of that. So if you're comparing yourself to someone who's been in the field for a lot longer, who's been on a lot more training courses, who's got hours of that type of work under their belts, they're going to be at a different skill level. And that comes back down to the growth mindset, fixed mindset stuff that I was talking about with Sophie, I think, .

In terms of Having not having a fixed mindset belief that this is, you know, your, your skills are fixed and you can only change them a little bit. If you put in the dedication, if you take the courses, if you start seeing cases, more cases in that of that nature, you will get better. You have the capacity to learn, you're a learning machine, you're a veterinary surgeon, so the capacity to learn is there.

It just, it's just where do you want to focus it. So I think, again, reading, listening, watching, surround drip feeding your stuff, get yourself, Nicola, with as much stuff as you can about resilience, about self-worth. The more you can hear the same messages about self-belief, 50 different times from 50 different people, that's the work it takes.

We need to programme a new neural network into your brain that says, I am enough. So at the moment, the settings aren't, I think I might not be enough. And then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because you don't stretch and you don't try.

So a drip feed of stuff and I'm gonna give you lots of references when we get to that section, and again, just kind of, of sit tight till we get to the to the mindset modules and again let me check back in with me then, let me know if that's starting to help when we get to that section. Nicola, let me know if that's, if that's helped if you're on the call still, . OK, Allie, Allie Hennon, are you on the call?

Let me see. Oh, Ali was wrestling a toddler, so I've droned on for so long now, the toddler might be a secret, but we'll see, . Ali's question is, I think I'm finding these exercises tough because I think I'm approaching it from an ideal perspective.

She's been off work for the last 14 weeks following a crush injury by a cow. Rather, I've got a divot in my thigh muscle from a cow injury that's never, I've got a, yeah, cows are, yeah, they hurt. Anyway, She's been off work, so she's doing the exercises.

Her ladyship is asleep, so text is good, thanks Ellie. Rather than actually being in work mentality, so you've been in off-work mentality and you're trying to do the values, but you're, you're kind of, not in the work mentality at the moment. And, she's saying, I have also just found out how important family life is for me compared with the constant pressure of on-call, and especially large animal on call.

It, it, it is different to small animal on call for sure. They're they're both really tough. I'm not minimising the difficulty of small animal.

I just, it, it, it's the small animal work, we have the option to not do on call. That's not really the case with, with large animal, . So I guess my question is, how am I best to approaching the exercises from a perceived ideal or where I actually am.

So it's a kind of a little bit similar to Becca's question. So what came up for me here, Ay, reading this was I think you might be in the middle of a bit of a values shift. Now I say that because one of my other clients, former clients, came up to to mind.

So, there's a vet I worked with, a while ago where she very nearly lost her life. She got, some sort of very weird encephalitis. It was really severe.

She was in ICU in the hospital, 56 weeks on a ventilator, serious stuff. And then she, luckily, the vibe came out the other side of that, went through a process of recovery, and then once her brain, capacity was back up to about 90%, she came back into the family. Workplace.

But what that had done for her was, during that time, because she had had to rest, she, she couldn't have continued her healing with, without resting, and I'm guessing the same if you've been, if you've had a crush injury and you've got musculoskeletal issues or anything like that, then you kind of have to rest . And by doing that, it's a bit like you're saying, sort of, sort of, it forces you to look at things from a different perspective and also you're spending your time differently and away from the normal pressures and strains of work. That can cause you to start to have a bit of a value shift, and especially when you have a role of of if you have the role of parents, which obviously you do, .

Parenting is a little bit like the vet identity takeover. We can have the parent identity takeover and it's another really strong, it's another strict really strong role, and that's no bad thing. So it may be that you, your values are potentially shifting at the moment.

So I think the thing to remember, a little bit like what I said at the back of it, it's not a black and white set in stone exercise. It's a, it's a guideline, it's really good to get you to start thinking about these things. What I would say is, again, tune into what you most want.

So again, good questions here to ask yourself, you know, to write down in the journal is if I wasn't afraid, if I knew I couldn't fail, if I didn't have to earn money, taking all the things off that are the biggest drivers of fear for us, off the table, how would I like to live my life? What would feel good? Of the, the, you know.

Ideal values versus work mode values, which ones do you like the most? Which ones light you up, and which ones would you be willing to trade in if I said you've got to give me two of your values? So, I think, you know, you could even try doing it twice.

You could do it if you could put yourself in a, in an old work mode and answer it from that perspective. I would say. It's a lot of this is getting back in touch with our feelings, and that's something that we've we've not, we're not taught to do at vet school, we don't, we, we, we tend to do a lot of cognitive intellectual thinking.

We often cut ourselves off from our intuition. Your intuition has all those answers inside it. And actually the best way to tap into your intuition is stillness, white space, periods of, of being rather than doing.

So it might be, at the moment, your no man's land is actually quite helpful because it might be allowing you to tap more into your intuition. The problem with our intuitive nudges is they're not always convenient. They don't always nudge us in a way that.

You have an instant easy solution for. So it's that thing of I, I know when I first asked to get the intuitive nudges that it was time to move on from vets now. I ignored it for weeks because I was like, I haven't got a blooming clue what to what to do.

I don't know what I would go to next. I've been non-clinical. Have I made myself unemployable?

I, my intuition knew that it was time to move on, but it wasn't convenient. It wasn't easy. It was gonna require me to leap.

It was gonna require me to face up to some fears. It was gonna require me to make a change, and let's face it, not most of us, most of us don't go, Woohoo, change, brilliant uncertainty, fantastic. Most of us are like, oh God, change uncertainty, so.

Our intuition can sometimes nudge us in a direction that we don't really know what to do with that information yet. And that might be why it's feeling a little bit like no man's land, but, I mean it it's, how's that . Is, is any of that making sense, Ali?

I don't know if she's still there, but yeah, so, da da da da. So I think again, the what I'd written in my notes is kind of we have a crack at the exercise, but then you might need to Nico's gonna leave now, OK, Nico, that's fine, hitting the nail on the head, thank you, perfect. OK, great, Ali, that's, that's fantastic.

. Nicola, have we done your question? If not, let me know and I can write you a response. I'll check back anyway afterwards, .

I think we must have done because I haven't got a Nicola left . OK, that's Ali Jenny. Jenny, is Jenny still in the cool?

Do do. Yes, she is. Hi, Jenny.

Oh, yes, yes, I am. Good. Jenny's Jenny's question is around values again.

She's struggling on how to apply, how to apply my values in daily life. She's appreciating that these things are important to her overall wellbeing, but sometimes finding the balance a bit tricky and or how to use them for her advantage. For example, being dedicated came up as a value.

She wants to be dedicated to a point, in most things, but not overly dedicated to stuff like work. So a little bit like Rosie's question of, that's an important value, but I don't want it to take over. Equally happiness came up, and she's kind of like, well, of course, I want to be happy in everything I do, you know, so, what, what, so what does that mean?

What does having a value of happiness mean? Does it mean that she should be looking for the joy in everyday things, in order to benefit from it as a value? So, Jenny, let me know if you're happy to chat via text or sound, and, because there might be some bits here, that we could chat about.

So. Let me remind myself, yes, can tap by sound. OK, cool.

So we'll start with the dedication one. Mm mm. Yeah.

So here, in terms of looking at how much you're able to express that, it's the type of thing where if being able to be dedicated to your project or to be able to see things through or whatever dedication means to you is an important value, so being able to stick with it, and you were in a practise where people are constantly interrupting you or pulling you off what you want to be doing to go and do something else because that's what's needed. And maybe a bit of a values conflict in there, and that might be a little bit annoying. So there's a lady I spoke to the other day, and she's in New Zealand, she works in a mixed practise, and she really wants to move more into sheep and sheep consultancy.

But because she's very capable with all the bovine stuff, when they're short staffed, they keep pulling her off the sheep stuff and putting her into that and it's kind of really, it's stopping her from being able to progress. So she's not able to be dedicated to her sheep role as much as she'd like. So there's obviously a values conflict for her there.

So that's kind of sort of how to be on the spot for it within a within a work situation. And then if it's, if it's more that you don't want it to take over. I would also say the same sort of thing, as it did to Rosie, in terms of looking at why you think it might take over.

I'm just gonna unmute you. Are you there, Jenny? Yes, hi.

Hi, Jenny. So did the stuff I was saying to Rosie about dependability and reliability ring any bells? Yeah, absolutely.

I felt like you already answered my question for that. OK. Yeah, definitely.

So, OK, so that's answers to that one. Then with the happiness one. Can you remember what you grouped it in with?

Yeah, I've got on my thing here. I might have to take a second. You probably hear me like leafing through.

I guess it was, it was all grouped with like family and friends and, you know, balance and peace and that sort of. Yeah. OK, so you've linked it in with connecting with people.

So it's about what's your brand of happiness. So some people might link their happiness in with adventure, exploration challenge. Some people might link their happiness in with financial security, stability, you know.

So the reason I was wanting to know is where you, what, what's the grouping, what have you put it in. So it's gone in with what sounds more relational in terms of the people that you love and care about and also work not taking over, . And nothing work related in that at all.

So yeah, absolutely, it's yeah, yes, exactly. So, so we can almost see how those two values are playing out with each other in terms of your happiness means I don't want to spend too much time away from the people. I, I don't want to take over.

Therefore, the dedication needs to be measured and where you want it to be, but so that it allows you to express your version, your brand of of happiness. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, that makes perfect sense.

Yeah, good. So let, let me know moving forward if there's other stuff that that crops up from that, . As well, brilliant, thanks, Jenny.

I've lost you. How can I, mm mm, where have you gone? Can you mute yourself, Jenny.

Oh, it's, I found you there we go, . Perfect. So Hannah's headed off, she said she hasn't asked the question, but it was relevant for her as well, that's good.

OK. Jackie, Jackie BC, I don't know if she's still on the call. She was on the call earlier on.

Sorry, Jackie, sorry for you guys that are having to wait till the end. We have so many brilliant questions this time, . Mm, so Jackie's question was regarding to working in your zone of excellence.

I realised I couldn't name a single thing related that to work related that I would consider myself being attacked, and she's not being mote, she would consider herself confident enough. Thanks, Jackie. That's brilliant.

Happy to chat. The things I would say I do well and others would say I do well. Leave me feeling drained.

OK. So they sound like they might be more zones of competence rather than excellence. Is this an indication I should divert my energy in a different direction career even, or is it possible to mitigate the negative effects?

So, Jackie, you and I have spoken before, obviously. I remember chatting to you, when I did one of my, my research studies. So obviously, I know, I know a bit of your background already.

Beck's been a vet for for 25 years. So you're very dedicated and, and I've obviously stuck it out, but you've got lots and lots of other things that you're interested in. Now what's interesting for me is looking back at the scores that you put on your, your questionnaire.

So in terms of your overall happiness as a person, not gonna share your exact scores, but your overall happiness as a person who was scoring relatively OK. When it comes to enjoyment of the role, balance, and direction, they were much, much lower. So I think that's.

An effect of being in a role that doesn't quite make you feel the way it should, rather than the cause being you not having a zone of excellence. If that makes sense. Because when I reminded myself of all the other things that you're interested in, because a little, a little bit, like the other lady that's got lots of interests outside, you're interested in conservation and garden, gardening, the doggy daycare stuff, the pet sitting, the property, so.

I would suspect that the reason that you're finding it difficult to identify a zone of excellence is that the work that you're doing, you can do it and you can do it really competently, but it's possibly just not lighting you up, in, in the way that it should be unmute you for a second. Jackie, are you there? I am, yeah.

Does that make sense at all? It does, yeah, yeah. So again, I think it may well be that your zones of excellence and certainly your unique zone of genius are being masked because you're possibly not getting you may maybe not have used your skill set in a certain way that where you go, oh my God, that feels really good, and I, I love that and I enjoy it and I could do that for hours and it wouldn't make me feel drained.

And so have you had any, psychometric profiling done, Becky? I haven't, no, I haven't. OK.

So again that can be, it can be really, really useful. I know when I got mine done. My preferences on the HPDI, because the reason I like the HPDI one is it's directly brain physiology related.

So you can see how you use the four different thinking structures of your brain. And my profile came out looking nothing like that of a, of a typical vet. And actually, that was really comforting because it allowed me a greater level of self-acceptance and going, oh, there's nothing wrong with me, and I absolutely can do the vetting, just doesn't.

It pushes my emotional buttons in the wrong way for me, and actually, I need to use my skills and talents in a different way. That don't, that doesn't push my buttons in the wrong way, and that allows me to stretch into what, what I didn't know was a zone of, I had a suspicion, there might be a zone of excellence. I certainly didn't even know about genius at all at that stage, but cos I think when, when you're stretching yourself into an area that you're competent in, but it's very draining and tiring and it doesn't make you feel good.

It's a, it's exhausting, and B, you then start to question yourself. You go, am I the problem? Am I just rubbish?

Am I just not, do I just, like, you know, have I just not got a zone of excellence or genius? Do you find yourself doing that? I do, yeah.

I was wondering, listening to some of the other conversations, whether I'm just not recognising it or whether it just does lie in other areas, really. Yeah. I think it will probably lie in other areas.

So I think, definitely if you've not had a crack at it, have a crack at that work elements exercise before we get to module 3, so you've got plenty of time to do that. You can chat to me offline about profiling, just has to be with me, but that again might be something to consider adding in at some stage, just to help give you a bit of a roadmap towards where your zone of excellence and genius might lie. And also, It's just interesting to know, does your, do your brain preferences look like that of a typical vest, or do they look a little bit different, and does that help solve a mystery?

It's, it's, yeah, it's there's there's a few things in there that I think might help so that you stop going is the problem with me, and stop being able to, to find. What those, you know, find something that that you do connect with that does feel really good. does that help?

It does, yeah, yeah, it's definitely something I'll look into. Good. Thanks, Jackie.

Great. OK. Louise is not on the call tonight.

We've got 3 questions left, guys. We're, we're, well, I, I reckon we can, we can close up by 9:30, and you'll get a special award for, for, for seeking it out so long. Louise's question was similar to Becca's, in that there are some things at work I really don't enjoy, and doing them makes me feel pretty exhausted, actually similar to yours, Jackie, as well.

Is it OK to move away from these things and focus on what I enjoy doing, things that energise me, would it deskill me? So I've written so many notes all of my papers. So in terms of is it OK to move away from things that exhaust you and drain you, yes.

Absolutely. That's not to say you might not ever have to stretch into it, but certainly it's about looking at if, The closer the competencies and day to day things that you do within your role match how you like to think, process, decision making, do stuff, the less tired you will feel and the more you'll, it will just, you'll feel like a round peg in a round hole. So in terms of, would it deskill you to move away from those things, remember the growth mindset.

Sometimes you don't know if, if the direction is the right thing to move in until you've tried it. And the worry is always, oh my God, what if I lose my scales? What if I get really rusty?

You learnt it once, you can learn it again. Tough in a growth mindset and, and remember that you can, you know, there, there are people that, that take breaks from vetting in entirety, like really long breaks, having children and talking 789, 10 years, and then come back into it and have to re-skill back up. So.

It, it, it might deskill you, but if it's in an area, my profiling, I've had it done every couple of years, that my vet quadrant, if you like, was just about a primary preference for me. And then two years later, when I'd given myself permission to move into what felt much better, it had atrophied. But that's not to say that I couldn't go back to being a good vet again if I wanted to, I just choose not to because I'm so much happier for me doing what I'm doing now.

So. It's getting away from the feeling that we must be omnicompetent in everything. And, again, I think there might be a second part of, Sophie's question I missed actually about if I move to being a consult only vet, does that, is that a bad thing?

Absolutely not. When you, when you claim a niche, when you move into something that feels really good and you're not tired and knackered all the time, you will give more, you will show up more, you will have more to offer, you will deepen your impact. So you might de-skill in a certain area, but you might massively, exponentially increase your skills and enjoyment in an area that really feels like a good fit, .

So, yes, and again, profiling can help with that, as well. So Louise, I know you're not here, but let me know afterwards if that helped. Right, last couple, Catherine and Richard, thank you so much for, for waiting till the end.

Catherine, I don't know if you're on the call tonight or you're still who still on there, you were on it at the beginning, . OK, so Catherine, I'm here. Well done.

Thanks for sticking it out. So. Excuse me, a quick swing.

Catherine's question, how do you define excellence in something? And Catherine, let me know if you're happy to chat or if you just want to text. As Jackie said, I don't think I excel at anything.

Maybe that's because of what I'm comparing myself to our old friend Comparisonittis. I work with exotics and none of my colleagues have much or any experience of treating these animals. So, what I do with my exotics cases I know is a higher standard than the average vet, or what my colleagues would do.

But at the same time, I don't think it would count as excellent if you compare it to what is done in cats or dogs or what is done by others working within the exotics field. So again, it's using that yardstick of external, comparison. Happy to text.

Thanks, Catherine. . Mm, it's what I enjoy, but I often feel a bit deflated by the fact that my best isn't good enough or has an invitation.

So Catherine, hopefully, hopefully some of the stuff that you've heard earlier on this evening might have have helped with, with bits of your question. I've had a look back at your questionnaire and your form, yes, it has, good. You run your own business, obviously you've taken that step, you've made that leap, you've claimed a niche.

There is nothing like running your own business for bringing up your baggage. There's nothing like running your own business for bringing up and flagging up any self-esteem, self attitudes, because it, it, well, for lots of obvious reasons really. And it, and it often brings to the surface self-worth work that we need to do in order to be able to enjoy the benefits of being a business owner without being hampered by the not good enough Kremlin.

The first thing is comparisonitis I've talked about that a lot tonight. Just decide you're gonna try and train, not try, you're gonna stop doing it. You're gonna train yourself to stop doing it because it, it will keep you stuck, it will keep you small.

So when you compare yourself upwardly. To a totally different species that, that we're doing open heart surgery in cats and dogs. So we're not doing that in exotics at this level, but does that make it less valuable?

Not to the pet owner, not to the person who owns that animal. So what can, what can help sometimes with this is shifting, shifting to a place of service and think about your end user. So by that I mean the, the, the exotic pet owners.

So I don't know what the other guys in, in the group feel. I certainly know when I was in practise, I just used to panic. If someone, if someone wants to bring in a water dragon or a bird or a, someone phoned me with a tarantula one night, I was like, how do you even know it's poorly?

I would be reaching for the bait drill, thumbing through various things, panicking, and just seeing if anyone else in the practise would see it, and I know that I'm not alone with that. It, it's not an area that, that, as you know, that, that, . Typical GP vets to feel confident in.

Therefore, your skills and your knowledge have value. They're really important to the pet owners, the exotic animal pet owners that you treat, and they need you to be in that space. We, we, we can't, there's got to be a process.

I don't know where your aspirations are, or, you know, what level you want to take it to, but not everyone can be in referral specialist practise. And also, it comes down to a thing when you look at Professor Stephen May has done some really, really interesting work on vets and their job satisfaction. You may have seen it, I don't know, he's .

There are two groups of vets who, or it's about what the vet views the vet role as vets who view the vet role about nailing a diagnosis and getting the diagnosis right, and really less satisfied and happy with their career than vets who see the vet role as about being of service and making a difference, i.e. If between you and that pet owner, taking into account your knowledge, their financial limitations and all the rest of it, if together as a unit you've moved that pet's care forward in any way, that's been a good day.

It's something to celebrate that. When you can frame it from that perspective rather than feeling like, oh, I didn't nail the diagnosis and that, and I know the referral specialist would have done, you're likely to. Make yourself feel more rubbish and it sort of damaged the potential job satisfaction that you could have.

I, I don't see if, I hope that's making a little bit of sense. So, . Yeah, I think it's about understanding the value that you provide and also, again, the growth mindset stuff.

There's a huge need for what you do. Can you continue to upskill yourself? Absolutely, totally.

Do, do you offer value while you're upskilling yourself? Yes, absolutely. But how do you feel when you believe you're best?

So that's a, that's a limiting belief. I really want you to examine when we get to that section that my best isn't good enough. It absolutely, that's, that's not true and we need to work on shifting that and I need to help you get to a place where, where you can shift it.

So is that helpful? Is that giving you some starting thoughts? OK, good, thanks, Catherine, that's brilliant.

Right, last but not least, Rich, so Richard, is, works outside the vetting profession but related to, well, as in not as a vet but related to it. So Richard's question is operating in the area is still here. Good, thank you.

Well done. You get the prize. You get, I should have a box of biscuits.

I can virtually give you, . Operating in the areas you excel in makes sense, but it's often the areas we don't excel in that take up the most time so they can drag you down. Yeah, again, it's kind of the stuff that feels exhausting.

I'd be interested to explore how we can start moving towards spending more time in the areas we excel without neglecting the other areas, especially when working in a small team where there's no capacity to reassign tasks to others. And we can start to have conversations with our line managers to realise this. OK, so.

It again, it's gonna depend on the organisation that you work with and what the line management is like and whether the company has a vision, a strategy, a 9 day plan. So, in the short term, it's about what's the practise, what practises all the organisations. And vision and goals for the next 90 days, for example.

So you want to know what, what the team, the team that you're in, what are you guys focusing on for the next quarter. . Then it's, ideally, you would get into the most highly performing teams that I've worked with have been ones where they have had profiling done.

They know, they know within the team, people's, zones of, of excellence and genius. They know within the team people's areas of competence, but not that, but where they, it's not gonna be good for them to be spending a lot of time in that area. And.

The best teams don't put people in, so in a practise setting, for example, the old hierarchical thing is you've got kind of the owner, then you've got the vets, then you've got the nursing team, then you've got the receptionists. Actually, all four layers of those people are needed, and they've all got different skill sets. So the best practises are the ones where People come out of those silos and are actually cross-functional in what they're doing, and a good manager will identify a persons in appraisals and talks and profiling and stuff will identify that person's zones of excellence and genius.

Please. You've got your completed wealth dynamics and you've got it in the wall. You're a supporter, OK, yeah, absolutely.

So it's, it's being able to. Look at your own strengths and skill set and look at the needs of that team and also look at the other people that you've got within the team. So each project that the team is doing, breaking that down and kind of, if, if there's something that you're spending a lot of time doing and it's a zone of competence, hopefully, you wouldn't be working on a zone of incompetence.

It just doesn't make sense to keep you there for a long period of time. So if you have to dip into that occasionally, that's fine. If you're spending a good chunk of your time in there, that's not an efficient use of you as a human resource, you know, looking at it from a, from an HR perspective, .

So I would be having chats, but it's looking within the team to say, right, who, who could be the lead for that project, who could be the lead for this project? Can we outsource this? We all hate doing this.

You know, if there's a, if there's an element within the team that's that's draining all of you, can you outsource it? Can you pay some, the, you, you will deliver more from a financial perspective when you feel happy and you're in a zone of excellence. It doesn't make financial sense to have you in the zone of competence, so.

That's in a short term thing, so I'd be looking to drive forward some changes like that or to instigate conversations and hold your hand up and say, look, I'm sitting in a zone of competency, it's not the best use of me. I'd like to be doing more of these things, but I know we need to talk about what's going to happen to these things and to see if you can change. Ultimately though, it's about putting a time limit on that and saying, right.

If it doesn't feel right, I'm gonna try really hard to change this for the next 3 months, 6 months or whatever, and ultimately, if you're constant, you know, more than you would like in sitting just in the zone of competence, it might be time to think about is that right well. But in the short term there's there's stuff you can do. So are there any bits in there that help rich?

Really useful, thank you. Right, that was a marathon session. Thank you everyone.

Well done. I'm, I'm, I'm guessing there's gonna be a lot of questions and a lot of juicy questions because it's the first session. If I get as many questions the next time round, we'll have a think.

We might sort of chop it in half and save some for the next Q&A, or, or we'll, we'll just see how that works. So I know it's been a long session. If you're watching it on the replay, you can watch it in chunks.

I thank you. That's very kind of you. I'm gonna release you all.

I'm not gonna keep you hanging on. Go forth, . Have a cup of tea, do whatever, have a glass of wine.

I think I might have a glass of wine. And I hope it's been useful. They've been really brilliant questions.

I've really enjoyed, working on them with you, and, we'll have another one of these sessions, as I say, in, in a few weeks' time. So, good, really good. I'm glad everyone's enjoying it.

That's fantastic. And I'll see you all on Tuesday for the Life Balance Builder webinar, which I promise absolutely will be an hour. Right, everyone, everyone's disappearing off, right.

Good night. Yes, thanks, Rich. I will enjoy my, I will enjoy my wine.

OK. I don't know how to end it, Rich. Do I just click end end.

Wine underway already, Becca, love it, loving your work. Yeah, just press on meeting. Brilliant, fantastic.

Right, good night all. See you later. Bye.