Good evening everyone and welcome to tonight's practise management webinar kindly sponsored by MWI Animal Health. Our topic tonight is taming the five most common self-belief saboteurs, and I have the pleasure of introducing you to our speaker, Doctor Jenny Guyatt. Jenny is a former general practise and ECC vet, personal growth coach, mentor, entrepreneur, BSABA regional speaker and founder of Vet Harmony, a personal growth coach service for the veterinary profession.
Jenny is also certified HBDI psychometric profiling practitioner and specialises in guiding people through career crossroads and helping them establish a healthy life balance. If you have any questions or comments for Jenny as we go along, please hover your mouse on the screen, click on the Q&A box, and we'll cover as many of these as we possibly can at the end of the session. Without further delay, let me extend a warm welcome to the webinar vet Jenny, and over to you.
Thank you very much, Jackie, and good evening, everyone, and yeah, thank you very much for being here with us tonight, or on the replay. It's great to be back speaking for the webinar vet again, and I'm really excited to share tonight's lecture with you. It's a topic that I feel really passionate about.
So in my business, et harmony, I coach veterinary professionals who are looking to find alignment, passion, and happiness with their career. And so when Dawn from Webinar Vett asked me what I wanted to talk about for this session. I thought, you know, what is the biggest thing that I see holding people back from finding that sweet spot?
Apart from at the moment, obviously, with everything we've got going on in the profession, but sort of pre-COVID, you know, what is the biggest thing that I see holding people back from, from, you know, just getting that perfect niche with within their career. Now I have a question that when I'm starting out with a client, after we've evaluated, you know, what's not currently working for you, where do you want to get to instead. And this, this question is where we start to get down really underneath the superficial needs and wants to what's really holding them back and stopping them from moving forward.
And the answers are always almost the same, and it's fear, big fear. So fear of all sorts of things really, so it could be fear of change and how they might handle it. You know, it can be fear of failure, you know, how might I be perceived.
It can be fear of a drop of income. What would that say about me if I was the cause of a drop of income in my household's income or lifestyle? Maybe, you know, what if I try and progress or make a change and I'm not very good at it or I don't enjoy it?
What if the problem is actually me, and I'm always gonna find work this hard or not as enjoyable, you know, whatever it is that I'm doing. Maybe it's, you know, I, I don't know where to start in moving forwards or making change, and that makes me feel a bit rubbish about myself. This next one's a biggie.
I compare myself to others, maybe, and perceive them as being more successful or happier, and that makes me feel not not good. And underneath all of these fears. Can, you know, when we're kind of thinking about moving forward and trying to sort of find alignment and and enjoyment in our career, it can be this kind of sneaky suspicion that maybe we're not good enough.
You know, maybe we don't have what it takes. You know, if I try and do something and it doesn't work, then I will be somehow less of a person, which isn't true, by the way, but this is what our subconscious tends to do. And it thinks, you know, I might be less, less a person and less worthy, so it feels really risky to try things or to put yourself out there.
Because if I'm gonna base my opinion of myself on what other people's perception of me is, or how I grade myself in comparison to others, then that means that my sense of worthiness is dependent on external factors. So the root cause of all of those statements and beliefs, which is what I see cropping up time and time again, is a, a lack of self-belief or or lower levels of self-belief. Now, we all feel this to to, from time to time to varying degrees, you know, I don't think anyone feels like they're the bee's knees at all moments and times.
And that's just a normal part of being human, right? You know, Brene Brown would call it having shame triggers. Professor Steve Peters would call these beliefs kind of gremlins in your human computer.
However, it's my passionate and belief and personal experience as well that we're not stuck with our current level of self-belief. You know, we can start to move the needle in the right direction, and it is so worth the effort. Because if you want to find happiness, if you want to be able to set healthy boundaries in your home and professional life.
That then allow you to live being true to who you really are and what you actually want. You know, if you want to expand and grow, or maybe if you want to actually downsize and do less. First of all, you need to believe that it's OK for you to want those things and that you're worthy and enough already.
And that you don't need to reach any kind of standard or become a better or more worthy person to qualify as being deserving of those things or able to make them happen. And yet, what I see happening so often is that we, we have a goal, we have something that we want to change or work towards or sort out in our lives. And we definitely want the thing, and we know why we want it.
And usually, you know, not always, but usually we know kind of what the next steps would be to move towards it. But we don't do it. We procrastinate and faff about.
We decide we're too busy, we're too overwhelmed to make the time to do it. We, we can sort of self-sabotage by refusing offers of help or support, sort of feeling like we have to do it by ourselves, and therefore I'm too overwhelmed and too tired and I haven't got time, so I can't do it. And the underlying reason, kind of what's going on usually at the subconscious level.
So if you imagine this is your conscious mind, and our subconscious mind under here. So, at the subconscious level, outside of our conscious mind's awareness, there can be multiple beliefs and old stories that are telling us that we can't do that thing, that we can't have it, or that we're not good enough. Or if we try it and it doesn't go well, we're gonna feel rubbish about ourselves.
Now, when it comes to sheer neurological processing abilities, The subconscious mind is like a million times more powerful than our conscious mind, and the subconscious's job is to keep us alive and safe. Now it's done a pretty good job of that to date if you're sat here listening to this. And so anything that contra contra contradicts.
What the subconscious mind's preprogrammed beliefs are, it will not let you do. And it that doesn't matter how much you think you want it with your conscious mind, or how much willpower you apply or how much you keep trying, the subconscious will not let you kind of do something that it doesn't hold in its belief system. So there comes this point, let me just get my other word up there we go, there comes a point then when we're trying to grow, expand, become happier, make changes, where we have to choose between the goal that we want.
And our kind of current or old beliefs and feelings of self-worth that we've had to date up to this point. Because we can't have both. If the thing that you want is something you've never done before, your subconscious doesn't have evidence that you've been able to do it before, then it probably sits outside what you believe to be true about yourself.
And because we can't outmuscle the, the subconscious mind, we have to choose. So if we want to move forward towards our goals, we need to learn how to update up level. And kind of tinker with our self-belief setting in order to be able to have and enjoy more in our lives.
And as I say, sometimes enjoying more can mean downsizing, not doing what everyone else is doing. So I'm not, when I say more, I don't always mean bigger, more qualified, you know, all of those things, just more fulfilled. And do you know what, it feels really, really, really good to be able to work on your levels of self-belief.
So that's what I'm gonna do tonight. We're gonna, I'm gonna kind of share 5 powerful techniques that will get you started with that tonight, focusing on, you know, what are the 5 biggest things that I see getting in the way of people moving forward with their self-belief. Right, let me just have a swig of my tea before we get going.
I have a frog in my throat. OK, so to take some baseline data, if I can get my picture to work, I've got the first of 3 poll questions tonight, so let me just have a wee look how many people have we got on, so we've got a few of you, . So, with this whole question, Jackie, you're kind of you can launch it, fantastic.
So I just want to take a little bit of a baseline of how you would rate your current level of self-belief. So it's anonymous, I don't get to see the names, you know, people don't get to see the names. It literally is just a scoring out of 10.
So 10 would be, I feel worthy and enough all the time, and I just know that I'm enough, but constantly all the time. One is the other end of the scale of I never feel good about myself ever. So obviously this is gonna fluctuate.
Up and down, we have some days when we feel really good, some days when we don't feel so great. So just kind of, you know, think of an average week, general week, nothing major happening, what would you say roughly is your general level of self belief right now? And it will be interesting to see whether you're all about the same or whether we've got quite a bit of variability.
So we'll give you a few seconds, and as I say, it's totally anonymous, no one's gonna see. It's just to sort of give us a bit of a baseline data. Just give it a little bit longer, Jenny, just give people a little bit of a nudge.
Come on, everybody, we've got to get these votes in. Get some good statistics in so we know what we're talking about. Yeah, definitely.
And there's no, there's no, no shame, no judgement, no nothing. It's, it's, there's no good or bad with this. It's just kind of, you know, you might not have even ever had to think about it before.
It might be quite a, a question of, oh, God, you know what? I've never thought of that. And if so, you can just pick something at random.
-huh. OK, so let me have a wee look. Thank you for that, Jackie.
Yeah, so we've got a little bit of a, a little bit of variability. So some of you hovering kind of around the middle, around a 5 or 6. So, and, a couple of you, slightly higher up at sort of an 8 out of 10, which is good.
And as I say, this often, it, it can vary. It can vary, I think, depending on what's going on in our lives at the moment. Quite often when we're, if we are making a transition or looking to make changes, it will sometimes come down a little bit because it, it's, there's a lot of courage building that needs to happen with that.
Sometimes if things are going quite well and ticking along quite nicely, then it's, it's easier to, to, to step into higher levels of self-belief. Also, it depends whether you've actively worked on it or not as well in the past. I know my baseline level, well, I'll, I'm gonna share a little bit of my story with you later on tonight.
I would have said mine was probably about -5 when I before I started doing all this work. And now it, it does vary, but I'm probably up at a 7 or an 8. So thank you for that, it's really interesting to just see sort of where our start point, is at.
And as I say, this is kind of really a snapshot for today, and it will vary a little bit. OK. So, and also, I think it's important to say that it kind of doesn't really matter where you're starting out from.
So, if you were at -5, and you're just trying to get up to ground zero, or if you're at 5 or 6 out of 10, and you'd love to nudge that up to a 7, or if you're 8 out of 10, and because the other thing I think it's important to state here is you can't Almost have too much self-belief. So self-belief is just knowing that you matter and knowing that you are worthy and worthy of love and belonging. And so it, it's not about becoming overconfident or, or arrogant or anything like that.
Like, the maximum 10 out of 10 is just knowing all the time that you're enough. And so it's safe in this instance to aim for a 10 out of 10. So when, for those of you who are at an 8, it's kind of like, right, what would it look like?
If it was a 10, for those of you of you that are a 5 or a 6, what would it feel like to nudge that up to a 7? That's sort of what we're looking to do. So you can start from any point and all of this will still have value.
OK, thank you for that. All right then. So, let's get started with the first of our self-belief saboteurs, so the things that tend to get in the way.
So number one, is not truly knowing who you are. So why is this a good place to start? Well, The clue really is in the title of the webinar, self-belief.
So if we're gonna start improving our belief in our self, our worthiness and our inherent value, then we actually need to reconnect with that self and start accepting and loving ourselves really fiercely. You know, I thought I'd start with a, with a tough one. Because often as veterinary professionals, we've experienced what I call the vet identity takeover.
Where the status, the achievement, and the identity piece of being a vet or a vet nurse or a practise manager in a veterinary practise, then starts to define us. You know, we've had to train so hard and so long. We've had to cone down our choices and options from GCSE age for a vet.
We've needed to be what has been required of us in order to get into vet school in the first place, or, or nursing college or whatever. And then we need to, we've sort of had to be what's been needed of us by the profession or our practise. And it's very easy for that to, because that starts at such a young age, before our kind of sense of self is really formed, it's very, very easy to then lose connection to who you truly are and what you actually want underneath your identity as a vet or a veterinary professional, if that makes sense.
So when I start working with my clients, for example, I don't often ask them what do you want? Straight away, because I know they'll either not know, or they'll answer with what they think they should want, which is not the same. You know, we often have to work down through several layers first to rediscover that person and to help them to give themselves permission to actually want something for themselves.
And we choose our profession in many cases, as I said, when we're younger adults, so our, our, our real sense of identity hasn't really even yet formed. So stage one of this process of sort of tuning back into yourself is doing some structured reflective work, to gather data on who you are, you know, what your preferences are, reconnecting to your emotions and your unique physical body. Which we've often disconnected from a long time ago because, because of the nature of our work and and how hard we've had to study, we tend to disappear all up in our thoughts and our mind and we ignore the signals from our body, which has a much better idea about who it is and what it needs than than our mind often does.
And it's usually trying very hard to communicate that to you. So reconnecting with that side of ourselves is important. And then once you've done that baseline data gathering, it's about starting to then let go of negative judgments, all the comparisonitis, the wishing bits of you are different or better, and starting to accept and appreciate and love who you are without shame or without that need for external validation that it's hard to let go of, right?
Because, because no one actually can do that for you. No one is going to give that to you and actually even if they did, if you don't believe it, you'll reject it and dismiss it anyway. So this, this is a choice that only we can make for ourselves.
So in order to do this, we have to start shifting away from self-approval and towards self acceptance. So self-approval is the I'll be happy when syndrome. So I will be happy with myself.
I know I'm gonna feel better about myself when I've achieved XYZ, lost some weight, got my certificate, stopped procrastinating constantly, you know, whatever it is. Self acceptance on the other hand. Is getting to a point of feeling that, do you know what, every last bit of me is OK, including all the bits I'd love to change, and all my weaknesses and the bits that I feel I'm less good at, and I choose to know that I'm an amazing, imperfect human being and I accept and know all of myself.
Now that is really powerful. We had to let go of a lot of shame gremlins to get to that point, but you can absolutely do it. And I know that it can be done because I've done it myself.
So when I was growing up, it was my title bit gone? There it is. This is me at about 17.
So when I was growing up, I, I had a lot of guilt-based messages given to me, by, by certain family members. And I was then quite badly bullied at boarding school between the ages of 10 to 13. I was then plucked out of boarding school, plonked in a local school, where the bullying, unfortunately continued.
And I also experienced a lot of physical and mental health issues growing up as well. So by the time I went to vet school at 20 years old, I had such low self-esteem that I actually couldn't look anyone directly in the eyes. So I just, I, I struggled to make eye contact with anyone.
Now, before you all get your violins out and think, why is, why is she sharing that? I share it purely because thanks to the healing work I did over the next decade, and thanks to finding out about self-belief, how to work on it, I've now got to a point where 80% of the time, I would also score myself at around an 8 out of 10 to, you know, be able to make that choice to know that I'm enough. And I do love and accept all of who I am, despite being very, very, very, very, very far from, from perfect.
And I share that because honestly, if I can do that. Because I wasn't just, I wasn't, when, you know, back in that, my start point really wasn't just low self-belief. As I say, I was in abject self-loathing, and I was crawling in my own skin.
I didn't feel like I fitted anywhere, and I didn't want to be here. So to come from that to where I am now as an adult, I definitely know that if I can do that, it is possible for anyone to move the needle on where you are. As I say, you don't need to be at that, that low level to benefit from this.
It's whatever your your current set point is. So two really good places to start with the fact-finding about, you know, who you are and what drives you can be getting some form of psychometric profiling done if you haven't already, or if you have had it done in the past, whether you've had disc, HBDI PRISM. Briggs, there's a lot of them out there.
You know, if you've had it done before, dust it off, have a look through, remind yourself, have a think about how it applies to your life and situation now, interpersonally and at work. If you've never had it done before, it's really worth considering getting it done. And, also looking at your core personal values.
So really what drives you as a person. Now there are lots more ways to connect and to get to know yourself. There are lots more ways.
I just kind of don't want to overwhelm you with too many different things. And this is where I would always start. So this is where I would start with, with my clients.
They're really good to foundational pieces to reconnecting and getting. To know yourself, to take it into a structured activity that you can do. Because I think just having self-reflection, it can feel a bit airy fairy, and, you know, I think for, for us, as veterinary professionals, like being able to have a structure and a process we can follow is really helpful.
Now, myself and the other coaches in the vet space will help people with this, and you can work it out for yourself, too. You know, if you Google core personal values, you'll find a shared load of exercises that you can have a go at. The profiling often has to be done via a certified practitioner, but there are ones out there like Myers Briggs, personality type indicator that you can do for free and they can be a good kind of toe dip and a good start point.
So, as I say, I would, you know, that would, they would be good ones to start with, or review if you've done them in the past. OK, so this brings us nicely on to self beliefs Saboteur #2. And that is not practising self compassion.
So if you're going to work on self acceptance and loving all of yourself and letting go of self judgement, then you're only gonna get there by cultivating your capacity for self compassion. So the definition of compassion varies a bit when you look it up, but the essence of it is a kind of warm-hearted sensitivity to suffering, with the desire, kind of coupled with the desire to help if you can. And compassion can obviously be given towards other people or towards ourselves.
And self compassion is really where we need to start, because you cannot truly give to others what you're not giving to yourself. I know we think we can, but because we're human too, if we're kind of compassionate to everyone else but not to ourselves, we're not truly being compassionate. So self compassion is, is, is a good place to start.
It's often really hard for us, really hard. And this again has to do with how our nervous system works. So our brain, particularly the subconscious, is like a pattern seeking storage organ.
And between the ages of 2 to 7 years old in particular, our brain waves are in the same, so our brain waves change from like newborn to, to up to 22 to 7, and they change again in terms of the predominant brain wave that's happening in our, in our brain. So between 2 to 7, we're in the same state that you're put into when you have hypnotherapy as an adult. So our brains are highly suggestible between those ages.
So the messages that we receive about ourselves and the world in general and how we see our parents or caregivers interacting with the world during that age, literally becomes hardwired into our subconscious. And often, even though our parents or caregivers might have had loving intentions, they may also have treated you in ways that were critical or shaming or belittling, or, or just minimising the importance of your feelings. And so we then internalise this and we grow up finding it really hard to view ourselves with kindness.
And then like in many areas, as veterinary professionals, we have our own added risk factors added into this as well. So for some people who are attracted into the caring professions like ours because they've been taught at an early age to put caring for the needs of others before their own. So as a consequence, they might not have developed kind of authentic self-care practises.
And then the heavy schedule during our training, the long working hours in practise can give the sort of message that our personal needs are irrelevant, and culturally, not having time to yourself to recuperate from work is just seen as part of the job. As is putting the needs of animals before your own, even when you're exhausted. And we're really seeing, you know, it's kind of like COVID in the last 18 months has just added to that even more because there hasn't been an escape from it.
And we can see the effects of that, everybody is completely exhausted. Well, not, you know, I'm sure there are people that aren't, but I'm hearing time and time again, lots and lots of people out there that are just, yeah, burnt out from, from not having a break. And then if you have children or elderly family members, for example, then this can add another dimension because you have to care for animals at work and then go home with enough compassion in your tank to fill your children's or partner's needs or other people.
So other people's need need things from us as well, and we tend to put them first. And then finally, it can just be really difficult to schedule good self-care practises like a yoga class or taking 15 minutes to yourself if your working hours are really long. So how can we start the process of training ourselves up to kind of increase our levels of self compassion?
Well, the first thing is understanding that compassion is just a psychological resource rather than emotion. So it's a learned behaviour, and it's rather than some sort of fixed personality trait that some people have and other people less so. So we can train ourselves, we can upskill ourselves and wire in becoming more self-compassionate.
So if we look at the evidence base, then this lady, Doctor Kristin Neff is a researcher and professor at the University of Texas in Austin. She runs the Self Compassion lab research lab where she studies how we develop and practise compassion. And her research has shown that we have 3 distinct elements to you.
Let me get that a little bit up. Come on, slide. There we go.
3 distinct ele elephants. There are 3 elephants to self-compassion. Oh, that would be a great slide.
Anyway, there are 3 elements, which is self self-kindness. Put my teeth in in a minute, common shared common humanity and mindfulness. Now, by breaking it down into these 3 component parts, then we can start to work on each aspect within ourselves.
You can actually go to Kristen's website here, selfcompassion.org, and there's a really brilliant free test to take, that's a a data and evidence based one. It doesn't take long to fill in, and it will kind of show you your, your current scores in each of those different levels.
And see, because you might find that actually you're doing OK in, in two of them, but there's one area where it's more challenging for you and then you know where to direct kind of focus or self-learning or practise. So that can be a, a good, another good practical thing. So self kindness, fairly, it's self-explanatory, but it's, this is how we speak to ourselves.
It's our internal inner voice, especially how we talk to ourselves when we have slipped up or made a mistake or we're struggling with something. Now the opposite self kindness is self judgement, and we're often really good at that one, right? I know I can be sometimes.
And then the shared common humanity is, is just the realisation that we all experience the warm wash of inadequacy at times. Or we're not always able to be our best selves, or we slip up, you know, it's not just you. The, the opposite to a shared common humanity is a sense of isolation.
So feeling that you are uniquely crap at things more than most people, or other people wouldn't feel this in your situation and that sense of lones. And then finally, the third element to self-compassion is mindfulness. Now this isn't so much about sitting, doing a body scan or breath work or meditation in this instance.
Mindfulness here refers to the kind of non-judgmental acceptance of what's happening in the present moment. And you know, without over or underreacting. So the idea here is that we need to see things in events just as they are, no more, no less, so that we can respond to that current situation in the most compassionate and therefore effective manner.
The opposite, if that helps to bring it to life a bit more, is over identification with an event or a circumstance. So, let's say you get a diagnosis wrong and you then identify yourself with a label of, oh my God, I'm not a good vet. Instead of taking a more balanced approach of, yeah, that was really uncomfortable and I'm not enjoying this, but other vets would probably have made the same call, and I was just unlucky in this situation.
That's kind of like mindfulness in action as opposed to over identification. So, we come to our second pole of the night here, and again, just, just a quick question of self-reflection. So of those three elements of self-compassion.
Which one do you currently find the hardest? So, you might find them all easy, you might find them all equally different, but if you, if you had to pick one that you think, right, that's probably my area that I might need to work on, what would it be? Do you have a particularly vociferous inner critic and self-kindness is the hardest?
Or do you find it harder? Do you often feel like you're the only one? Who feels bad about the things you feel bad about.
Or do you find that actually when stuff happened, when events happen, you tend to take it really personally and, and overly identify with that situation instead of being able to sit with the discomfort but then kind of let it go. So again, there's no judgement, no right or wrong. I'm just interested really to see what people would find the hardest.
I think for me personally, it's self kindness. I, I have a particularly brutal inner critic that I've tamed over recent years, but that's definitely my hardest one I think. About halfway there now, Jenny, so we'll just give another, another 30 seconds or so to see if we can get the last last few in.
Lovely, thank you, Jackie. I was trying to think which one I would go under and it it's a difficult one. It needs a little bit more thinking time this one, so I'm like, oh, it could be, it could be that one.
Tricky tricky question. Yeah, it is, it is, absolutely, and, and sometimes it can, it can depend on the situation, I think as well, . But also it's, it's good to, it's good to start thinking, to start thinking about these things.
Yeah, interesting. So yeah, so self- kindness, and is slightly more, but actually a good a spread across the three. Which is which is interesting as well, so, absolutely, and it was quite .
What was, I, I ran, so I've recently been doing, working with two different groups of people. One was, clients on one of my own courses, so people who were looking to make career changes. And the other group that I was working with were final year vet students at Surrey, and I got them both set, both groups to doristin Neff's, self, compassion test.
And. Because it also shows you the reverse, so it, it will look at kind of self-kindness but also self judgement, it will look at shared common humanity but also isolation and etc. And the scores for those who'd been out in practise for 5 to 10 years was, I mean, I didn't run any stats on it, but just eyeballing them, they were quite a lot lower.
Whereas the ones that were just about to go into practise scored much more highly, and it was that I was left then thinking, hmm, what is it that happens to us in that 1st 5 to 10 years of being a vet that that shifts that around. So thank you everyone for for having a think about that. I really just want to get, you know, your creative juices going in terms of pondering these types of questions so that you know the action from that is to then think, right, well if I was going to listen to a podcast or read a book or increase my knowledge on something, what sort of area would be good.
So thank you. OK, so now let's look at the, the biggest thing that's likely to then knock you off your pathway of getting to know yourself and practising self-compassion and reducing judgement of yourself and others. And that brings us on to self-belief saboteur number 3, which is getting caught up in or creating drama.
And we see this all the time at work, sometimes in our own families as well, so we can observe this in ourselves and our friends. It is one of the biggest drains on our energy, and the thing that's most likely to keep us stuck in low self-belief. So we might hear receptionists, for example, sharing the drama stories of what happened over the weekend, or we might hear our boss complaining about a drama they're having with the supplier or you know, when you think about the drama that can go on in our interactions with our clients and all of that kind of stuff.
And actually, again, this is a really human thing, you know, our brains like drama. It's what most TV programmes and films are based on. We really like to be able to create stories where we have a villain, a victim and a hero, and that's, it's super engaging to watch it on telly.
In reality though, in, in, you know, interpersonal relationships, it can be really destructive, and we're much more susceptible to getting sucked into it when we're feeling low in confidence about ourselves or when we are when we're, when we're doing that thing where we're looking for external validation or where what other people think of us becomes really important, we tend to get sucked into drama much more easily. So if some of you, if I can get my sizes to work, might have heard this already. It's a concept called Cartman's drama triangle, and it comes from the groundbreaking work of doctor and behavioural psychologist Stephen Cartman back in the 60s.
So his premise is that, and it's all research based, you can go and read about it, is that we as human beings tend to have this repeating dysfunctional dynamic between us that perpetuates negative and destructive dramas in our work and our personal lives. Now when we're not being mindful or conscious of what we're doing, it's very, very easy. I shoot onto this triangle, it's several times a day, I think, when I'm in parenting mode for sure.
It can be very, very easy to find ourselves in one of these positions on the drama triangle. Now, these labels, they're not, they're not descriptors of who a person really is. Very important to say that.
They're just psychological mindsets that we all fall into regularly on a daily basis. So again, no shame, blame, or judgement of yourself or others allowed when we're thinking about this. It's just a kind of psychological concept.
So, come on, OK. I think the one we're probably most familiar with here is the victim persona. Now I'm not talking about people who have been genuinely horribly victimised in serious situations.
I mean the type of, you know, where we feel victimised because it's raining for the 5th day in a row, or there's no milk in the fridge. It tends to happen any time, and it can be about more serious things than that, but you, you get the idea. .
It tends to happen anytime that we're unhappy about something, and but we perceive the cause to be something external to ourselves. We can fall into those kind of poor me thoughts, and we tend to be orientated more towards the problem than the solution. Come on, slide, there we go.
Now in the persecutor role, however, this is when we try and attack or exert control over the other person. So when we're in this mode, we tend to criticise or judge or blame, or belittle or kind of negate that person's feelings. Now typically, we seek control and power in this way because deep down underneath it, for some reason we're feeling insecure or uncertain or powerless or defenceless.
So actually underneath the position of persecutor is the deeper psychological position of the victim again. And then finally, we have the rescuer persona, which represents us in kind of saviour or fixer mode, which I think many of us in the caring professions can inadvertently fall into as well from time to time. So when I say rescuer, this doesn't represent genuinely altruistic rescuing behaviours, such as being a paramedic or when we're in theatre with a with an animal.
It's the part of us that needs to feel wanted and useful by helping or fixing others. And so when we're in this mode, we actually need to find victims, so we need to find people to rescue. So inadvertently we can actually enable them to remain as victims because we need to keep being needed.
So what tends to happen is people who are in victim mode and people who are in the rescue mode are often attracted to each other, because one is needed for the other. And I can definitely think of past relationships of mine where that's been the case for sure. So once again, underlying this need is a feeling of insecurity or powerlessness.
So again, the victim mode is also the deeper position underlying the rescuer as well. Now, when you think over back to the last conflict you were in with someone, whether it was a client or your 5 year old, or your partner, if you look back, actually, we had this on my, coaching membership last night, a, a, a situation in someone's personal life where we could clearly identify who was playing what role and how they were all switching hands. If you think back to your last conflict, you probably noticed that each of you might have shifted to different positions at various times.
So one of you might be feeling victimised and like the other person's the persecutor, but if you spoke to that person, they'd probably think it was the other way around. So what happens when we get onto this triangle is we tend to just shoot around and around it. Now I discovered this just as a side note, in a very, very useful book called Radical Responsibility by Fleet Mall, and he goes into it in much more detail, so it's a good one to add to your audible or reading list if you want to find out a bit more.
So in his book as well, he outlines 6 really powerful steps, come on slides, oh, come on. Hang on a sec, let me see if I go back, if I can make them up here. There we go.
He outlines these six really powerful steps for either avoiding getting onto the drama triangle in the first place or for getting yourself out of one. And to my mind, they're brilliant training for boosting your self-worth levels as well. Because to practise these steps, you need to be feeling like you're, you're, you are believing in yourself and that you're worth it.
So the first step is recognising that this is what's happened, that you're in a court in a drama triangle. So it's that, again, it's that moment of mindfulness and awareness and that links back to the mindfulness we just mentioned as being a component of self compassion. And it's so it's calling out for what it is in your own mind, which is why giving it a name can really help.
And then step 2 is to stop and not act when you're triggered. Now Brene Brown talks about this as well, so it's that knack of like instead of just reacting when someone angers or upsets you when we then are not often our best selves, it's just catching yourself, recognising that you've been emotionally hooked and just removing yourself from the situation or or not, not necessarily just responding. Step 3 is then to take some space and shift your state.
So this could mean stopping a conversation and saying, I, I hear you, but I, I just need to take a break. I need to think about this, can we come back and talk about this again tomorrow? It could be saying to your partner, look, I don't feel this conversation is going anywhere healthy right now, I'm just gonna nip it in the bud.
Let's talk about it again, I'm going on a dog walk. And so it's, it's getting yourself some space and then doing whatever it is that you need to do to manage your emotional reactivity and bring your limbic system back into calmness again. So that could be doing specific physical or mental awareness practises to regulate your emotional and limbic system.
So again, these are learned behaviours, so it could be things like breathing exercises, listening to music, it could be screaming into a pillow or punching a pillow. It could be, as I say, if you're going on a really long dog walk, whatever it is that allows you to just calm yourself back down again, get your neocortex back online, think more clearly, so that you can then decide how you want to respond. The 4th step is then owning your feelings.
So, when we're in that mode of it's that person's fault, it's not me, it's this, that and the other, then we've given away all of our power. So yes, they may have pushed our buttons, but the buttons were created within us by our own history and beliefs and growing up and everything else. So we own the buttons.
So doing some journaling to help yourself identify your feelings could be really handy here with, or, or just thinking, you know, with I statements. So I feel angry because I feel frustrated because I feel sad because, you know, what whatever it is, . That is the process of owning your feelings, so yes, you can't control what anyone else is doing, but you can identify what it's doing to you and what's going on within you.
And then once you've identified those feelings, you can then ask yourself, OK, what do I need? What do I need in this situation? And you can work towards communicating those needs, or setting boundaries, if you have to, that are then more in alignment with who you are.
And so taking these, these, so this one could be a good one to screenshot, if, if you want, because these are really good to, you know, I think. Again, certainly for me, I find that if I'm in a stressful situation, I can't always think clearly. And if I can go back to like a 5 step process and go, right, OK, well, actually I've done the 1st 2, so I'm about here and I'm, and just be able to kind of follow a logical process through, it can, again, just help to kind of calm us down.
And it's good practise, especially these last 2. You know, identifying your needs and then communicating them and being brave enough to speak your truth and stay in your integrity, you have to have self-belief to do that. So it's good you to practise.
And you can start small, you don't have to do this with really big conflict. You can start with small things. because it's that, it, it also this links into getting to know yourself.
Because when you just don't react willy-nilly, but you stop, pause, go, right, I've been triggered, why have I been triggered? What do I actually want? You're tuning into South.
You're going, what do I need? And it doesn't matter if that's not what everyone else would need or you know, that is also the process of getting to know yourself. So these things are all very interlinked.
OK, so how are we doing for time, not too bad. So as a recap. We've talked about why working on your increasing levels of self-belief wherever your set point might be is worth it.
We've talked about you know, starting by knowing yourself and accepting yourself is a great first step. And that if you're going to accept all of yourself, then you're probably gonna need to work on more on upping your levels of self compassion. And then the thing that might trip you up along the way of that progress is getting caught up in drama, and we've just looked at kind of what's shifting away from that blame, fear and survival mode way of being to a more compassionate, firm and accountable mode can look like.
So self-belief, subject number 4 is not having a regular mindset practise. And why have I picked this one? Well, if you think of a common thread.
That links all of these things, you have to actively work on them. You know, just, just listening, going, -huh, yep, that makes sense, I get that, I cognitively understand that. It's going to do absolutely nothing, or only a very little bit to shift your current set point of self-belief.
It would be like reading a book about playing the piano and then expecting to be able to sit down at the piano and bash out Mozart. So if you're going to identify and look at and change long held beliefs, you know, choose your goals rather than your beliefs. If you're gonna break old habits, wiring new thought patterns or behaviours, you actually have to do the work.
And it sounds super simple, and I'm not meaning to be patronising, but the the reason that most people don't improve their levels of self-belief is because they don't actually then do the work. And it doesn't have to take very long. It can be 5 minutes of working on this can, can make an effort, you know, make an impact.
So people will read self-help books, but skip the exercises. They'll listen to podcasts, but they don't then try out the journaling practises or commit to a new way of thinking. Now our subconscious programmes, which if you remember, are running the show kind of 95% of the time when we're awake, they can be changed.
And it's actually relatively easier and way quicker to change them than the time it took for those old unhelpful beliefs to be weighed in. But it needs regular repetition. You know, the subconscious loves repetition.
So just as you would practise scales on the, the piano repeatedly to, to wire in that muscle memory to allow you to then bash out Mozart, it's the same with making these sorts of changes. So, so this can where, where people can be like, well, I've done personal development, but it hasn't really made a difference, but it's like, yeah, but have you actually done it or have you just read about it? So again, final poll for tonight is, do you currently have regular committed set time for working on your personal development?
So for example, that could be journaling, doing written exercises, reading or listening to personal development material. And again, there's no, no blame, shame or judgement, it would just take some baseline data. So are you kind of, yep, most days I do something of that nature.
Are you more like, yeah, you know, about once a week. Maybe it's very sporadic, you know, maybe it's once a month, or maybe it's not something that's kind of really dialled in, for you at the moment, which is also kind of where I started out, for sure. So let's just see where people are.
Roughly, it doesn't have to be, as I say, perfect, right, have a good magic. Interesting, yeah, it's hard to fit it in, isn't it? So we've got, the slightly more people who are, don't have a regular practise or or very rarely, and again, given where we've all been in the vet profession for the last 18 months, that doesn't surprise me at all.
Or there's, there's a couple of you who are about once a week, so you are managing to, to fit them in. And that kind of fits with, with how I thought. So thank you, that's really interesting, really interesting to know.
Brilliant. OK, so, do, are we still all right with that, . Come on, title side.
I don't know what's going on with my sides tonight. I would say. Categorically, in the last 3 years, the thing that has made the biggest change to my speed of progress in my personal and career development has been committing to regular reflective practise.
I've gone from not really being aware of what it was. I'm just reading a lot of self-help books and becoming more knowledgeable, for sure, but not really seeing much change to doing it intermittently, but not kind of counting it as, as important as work or parenting. So never prioritising it.
It's like I would fit it in if I happened to get a chance, which was once in a blue moon. To where I am now, where now the first hour of every working day. So I work from home, I run my own business after the school run and before I start clients.
So in my kind of, you know, what's supposed to be my working hours, if you like, that's that first hour of the day, no one could book any calls with me. That's purely for me to work on myself in whatever way feels cathartic and good. Now the results that I've been getting in my life have improved directly proportionally to this.
And when I fall off the wagon and I stopped doing it, then my monkeys creep back in, my self-belief tanks a bit, I start getting caught up in more drama triangles and therefore get blown off course much more easily. So we have to do the work. But it, when I say work, it shouldn't feel like an arduous, additional admin or another to do list item, or something else that, oh God, now we're supposed to do this perfectly, you know, eat perfectly, look perfectly, work perfectly.
I do flipping not and mindset work perfectly. No, no, no, no, no. It's, it, this should be an actor's self-love and permission to feel good.
And, and to know that you matter enough to prioritise this, because when you take the time to work on yourself and become the most aligned and happiest and fulfilled and balanced and purposeful version of you, everybody benefits from that. It changes how you show up in your relationships, how you show up at work, how you show up for your kids if you have them. You know, it's so, it's not selfish at all.
Like everyone around you benefits. But it, it takes a real mindset jump. Like I say, I just, I would never prioritise it before until I started to see more and more of the people that aren't moving the spheres that, that I'm kind of looking up to and being inspired by, and everyone does their mindset work without, without fail.
And I was like, OK, what's the secret that they know about that I'm not doing? . So, you know, yes, sometimes doing the work can bring up difficult emotions, or you might need a few therapy sessions to get through a blockage, you know, we all hold stored trauma, whether you've had.
You know, when I say trauma, I don't, you know, I used to think of trauma as only being things like sexual abuse or being in a terrible car accident. And yes, that is the top end of the scale of trauma, but actually, an unhelpful comment by a teacher when you were 10 can elicit a trauma response in our brain and get lodged as an unhelpful subconscious programme. And collectively we all store quite a lot of trauma in our our our brains, bodies, memories from growing up, from, you know, culturally, historically and all that kind of stuff.
So yeah, sometimes with this work can bring up things that you then identify, actually, I need a bit of help to sort that out. You go, you get it sorted out, that bit's released, on you go. And again, that can be really cathartic, provided you don't get your knickers in a twist about needing a bit of, of support.
And it might be that you need to work with a coach for extra support, but generally, doing this work feels really good, and you can do a lot of it yourself. So, you know, I love reading inspiring books or listening to a guided meditation and then writing down what came up for me. I'm quite down with the woo.
I've got some really cool Oracle cards I used to do myself a, like an inspirational card reading, and it always lifts me up. I don't, you know, buy into all of it, but I use it as a framework to get me to do some deeper thinking. And help to remind me of what's possible.
So I would love for you to take 5 minutes after this session tonight. And work out how often, if you, if you also buy into the fact that this is a good thing to do, you know, how often are you gonna give yourself this sort of time? Who do you have to tell or set a boundary with to create that space for yourself, and what sort of things are you gonna try that, that feel good?
Like I said, this should not feel like arduous hard work. So I'd love for you to have a think about that. It really does make a massive difference.
So let's finish up this session, and we're keeping an eye on the time. We're looking at the final self belief saboteur, and that's not realising that self belief is a choice that we make. So if you imagine a person, and I've definitely been this person, who's lost their identity a bit under the roles they play in their lives, such as being a vet or a parent, they don't really know what they want for themselves 100%, and they feel they will be happy with themselves, but only when they've achieved X, Y, Z.
They're incredibly hard on themselves. They judge. Themselves fiercely, especially if they make a mistake.
So there's not much self-compassion going on, and they can't imagine how they could ever possibly fit in extra time during the day or the week to work on themselves, because that would be self-indulgent. Or they're choosing to put work and other family members' needs first. That'd be very, very easy for this person to shoot straight onto the victim position on the drama triangle when it comes to thinking about their own self-belief of like, well, I can't help it.
It's just, you know, it's the way I am, it's the way I've always been, it's the way it is. What stepping off that triangle and into accountability looks like when it comes to self belief is firstly understanding that. We have to stop just unconsciously accepting things, wake up and and start to choose and cultivate our own level of self-belief.
That means, as I say, finding and undoing old crappy beliefs that have been handed to us. And that's not just a one exercise and it's done. They keep coming up, so we keep finding them and, and dissolving them, you know, that, and those beliefs might have been handed to us but from our parents, or we might have created them when we were 5 years old.
And it also means renouncing the kind of general myth of unworthiness. So what I mean by that is, you know, for any of you that are parents, this is me holding my daughter when she was newborn, think about the day your child was born. If you don't have kids, think back to the last C-section you did and what it's like observing a newborn of any kind.
They just have, you know, they just have inherent worth just because they've been born. You know, it would be crazy to hold your child, or, well, I think that's my lambing days. I don't think I ever managed to lamb a you without crying.
I maybe I'm just soft, but, you know, you, you wouldn't hold your child and go, Oh, you're really lovely, but I love you more when you can walk, and they're probably a little bit more when you can talk as well, or once you've, you know, learned whatever it is. You wouldn't say that. You just, they, they're just born, we're just born worthy of love and belonging.
And we have all been and still are, that baby. And there's, there's just, there's nothing that you can do, no mistake that you can make. No matter how bad it is, that can diminish your inherent worth or value as a human being.
Just as, no matter how highly you achieve in qualifications or wealth or success, you do not automatically then become a better person somehow. It just doesn't work like that. You just, you just are worthy because you are there, and we are all imperfectly.
Perfect, you know, we're perfectly imperfect human beings, and it's only our upbringing in society that tell us that you need to be more, you need to do more to be worthy. That's just messaging, it's not a truth. But we buy into that myth.
So, and we believe we're not worthy because of how beliefs work in the brain, you know, we were given these beliefs, we then observe the world through them, and then what comes back into our brain because of the powerful filtering process in our brain is only evidence people, situations and perceptions that line up with that belief. We don't see or we buff it away or we refuse to notice, our brain refuses to notice for us anything that's not in alignment. So if you believe, if you have a lower self belief, or you're having a low self-belief period of time, then guess what?
You're gonna philtre everything that you do through that lens, so you'll start to see more evidence that yes indeed, you are not worthy, or you're not good enough. But the beauty of this is that it also works in reverse. So if you can start to choose as often as you can, to believe that you are in fact amazing and worthy right now, without needing to correct anything, get better at anything, or be anything other than all of who you are right now, then guess what?
You start to see the evidence of that showing up instead, cos it's there. We just don't notice it, or we choose not to see it. Yeah, we get what we focus on and what I'm asking you to do is to really start to choose what you want to focus on.
We get to choose and that self belief is, it's a, it's a courageous and sometimes scary choice, because it can bring us up against boundaries, you know, if you think back to getting off the drama triangle. Believing that you're, it's OK to want what you want can bring us up against boundaries, other people's perceptions, cultural norms, and it takes guts and courage to say, well, I'm gonna be me in this situation. It's much easier for us to stay safe in the box of not feeling good enough, because it actually makes other people feel validated and comfortable.
You're easier for other people to control. And you don't have to be that vulnerable or risk that much, you know, if you have your expectations of yourself really low, then you don't have to put yourself out there and that's easier, but. We lose out on so much when we do that, and it's so comforting.
Like, when you decide that you're gonna choose how you feel about yourself, instead of letting everyone else's opinion decide it for you, you feel more stable, less anxious, braver, and much closer to the people who love you, because they get to see the real you in all your imperfect beauty as well. But it's a choice. You have to keep reminding yourself to make.
I have to remember to choose it every day. I have a ring, I currently can't find it and I'm gutted. It says I am enough.
It's quite uncomfortable and I wear it because it, it reminds me to look at it and go, oh yeah, I choose to know that today. And I have to keep choosing it again and again, every day. .
And so doing things like taking time to get to know yourself, practising self compassion, letting go and staying away from drama, incorporating mindset work into your life. These are all very practical things that you can take to action to help you keep making that choice. So, I hope that's inspired you to believe in yourself a little bit more.
And for those of you that are up at 8 out of 10 already, that's inspired you to reach for that 10 out of 10. and I'm happy to take any questions if, if you're not all too tired and don't want to shoot off straight away. So I will stop sharing and then hopefully I will appear back on camera.
. Right, was so good, Jenny. I, I've kind of been a vision of light to me tonight and I I can't even put into it. I don't get too, too personal, but yeah, there's some really struck a chord with me.
So I'm just going to give everyone a little bit of time, just if they have got any questions, please pop them in the, the Q&A box and you know, we can cover anything off, but I think. If everybody else is like me, they're probably in this this mind fog at the moment just thinking, right, what do I need to do now? I need to go and reflect on myself and I need to go and buy that radical responsibility book and get myself out of that drama triangle, because I know I'm definitely in that drama triangle.
It's so easy to get sucked into them, isn't it? I mean, I like I. Do it with my, with my daughter, I'll go from rescuing her something.
And then, and then getting really cross with her about something. And then you just like, you, you can whiz around on them so easily. And, yeah, that book is, he's, he actually spent 14 years in a high security prison in the States.
His, his story is so interesting. And so he came from, like, being in prison. To where he is now and and he's had to go from being being a persecutor and then feeling very victimised to coming off that and it's, it's well worth a read, it's got loads of exercises in it as well.
It sounds really good. I think that that's what I love about these kind of webinars that we're doing at the moment is it's so applicable to every scenario, you know, whether, whether it's in your work life, you know, as a vet or practise manager or a nurse or any kind of area or any, any career really. It's not even veterinary specific, but it's also it's personal life, isn't it?
It's everybody's story. I think you can apply different tools from these kind of things and actually help yourself just getting through the day to day in a more wholesome mental state, which is just such a gift that you're giving to everybody, just the ability to kind of work on that and. And self-improve and be in a more comfortable place with themselves.
So, you know, I think, thank you so much, certainly for me and I'm sure everybody else that's watching it now and you know, we'll watch the recording as well going forward. I think there's there's there's no questions coming through. I think everybody's literally just sitting there going, right, OK, I can get this book.
Oh, that's all right. If any questions pop up for anyone, then, oh, hi, Jennifer. Then, do feel free to email me, you can find me at that harmony.
I don't mind, yeah, I'm more than happy to, if, because people watch it on the replay and think, oh, I want to know a bit more about that, then I'm more than happy for people to, send me an email, for sure. Brilliant, brilliant. Thank you so much.
And I do think, you know, that this topic is so. It's so right on the, on the mark at the moment, the time, I think you know, you mentioned it earlier, everyone's feeling overstretched and overworked and you know that one poll where we show that most of us, you know, we're not giving ourselves that time to, to show self-compassion and self-care and, and we really need to, you know, as an industry as a whole, you know, we, we all know, we don't have to keep talking about it, we all know how. How fragile everybody's mental state is within this industry, and we need to look out for each other and, and, and for ourselves principally, and I think it's such a strong message that's come through tonight, so thank you so much.
To, to everyone that has joined, thank you so much for your time. It's been a late evening one, but it has been so valuable. So I hope you've enjoyed the session as, as much as I have and found it as thought provoking as I have.
Thank you again. And obviously to our sponsors MWI Animal Health. Thank you to Kyle, our controller behind the scenes here for making sure everything ran perfectly smoothly and all the polls came up on time, which is great.
And most importantly, obviously, thank you, huge, huge thank you to Doctor Jenny Guyer for a fantastic, fantastic webinar. I hope you all have a very pleasant reflective evening and we'll see you again soon on another webinar. Thank you.
Thank you. Bye.
