I am no stranger to overwhelm. As a sole parent who is trying her best to raise her children to live their lives to the fullest (and still take part in activities at the same level as if two parents were supporting this), plus work, and my own life, it can feel like a lot. Add in some perimenopausal hormones and it may seem like the perfect storm of overwhelm.

Lately, I have been doing a lot of reflection and reading about overwhelm. In my line of work as an Executive Coach, overwhelm is something I see often in my clients. It robs us of our quality of life and our peace of mind. When we feel overwhelmed, it can lead us to feel we are in too deep, doing too much, out of control, with a lot of pressure.

We are never going to live our best lives or do our best work from this place. But, overwhelm isn’t all bad. Let me explain

Feminine energy is when you relax into who you are more deep in your core and take the time to really connect with people. It is not about hard drive or competition. It is looking at opportunities and challenges with an open heart and asking yourself what is possible and using your gut instinct to take steps towards that, being patient with yourself and others along the way. It is caring. Kind. But, also honest.

If a project isn’t going as planned, someone leaning into their feminine energy wouldn’t ignore the issue. They would pause and ask themselves, as much with their intuition as their head, what is going on here? They would then communicate openly with the team from a place of vulnerability (and of not having all the answers) to work together to rally the troops and take steps to get to the goal. The process is just as important to the goal from a feminine perspective. People in this realm feel they are doing the right thing every step of the way and if not, they listen to themselves and others until it is resolved openly.

After my husband Jeff died in 2019, I felt such raw and agonizing grief. I grieved for my kids who were 8 and 10 years old when their Dad died after a 2-year battle with esophageal cancer. I grieved for myself. And, I grieved for Jeff because he didn’t get the chance to live out the life he so desperately wanted, to grow old with me and watch our daughters at the different stages of their lives.

Now that I have had the experience of intimately knowing grief, I don’t believe it is something we can move through. There is no end destination to get to here. Grief does not end. But, it changes.

Have you been feeling you’re not getting the traction you want in your work or life? Does it feel like the harder you try, the more things aren’t working out? Or, maybe you’re just feeling a lack of motivation.

Even for a high-achiever, these feelings can be very normal and they can be a natural part of ‘wintering.’

We all have so many things to do and so much responsibility. I reached a point earlier on in my life when I knew that something needed to shift for me. Doing it all was no longer an option. This led me to create a two-question filter system I use now whenever I am presented with a new work project or a social event. I have found this filter system works so well that I now share it with my clients and they are finding it beneficial too. The good part? It is so easy. It feels like common sense, yet pausing to ask yourself these two questions can completely change the way you work.

If you are running around the clock, it is time to look at your calendar. It doesn’t matter if you are a CEO or a student. If you are feeling flung through the day, you are not setting yourself up for success. It is no longer a badge of honour for leaders to talk about how busy they are. Busyness doesn’t equate to strong leadership. If you have got so many things to squeeze into your day and you are not sure how to do it, here are some tips for you!

This week, I gave a keynote speech for a corporation. I had a busy morning juggling a few things so got to the point where I realized I didn't have time to BOTH review my notes for this speech AND take a few minutes for me to ground myself, close my eyes and breathe deeply and visualize my connection with the audience. I had to choose one area to put my focus on for my prep for this speech.

I have always been a believer that we can have it all in our lives. And for a while, it may seem that I did. A great husband, beautiful and healthy children, a fabulous job and I was feeling healthy and vibrant myself. Although ironically if you would have gone back in time and asked me if felt 100 percent fulfilled, I would have likely said no. I was continually striving for more, feeling anxiety inside as well as suffering from insomnia. I was driving myself way too hard and nothing was really ever good enough.

Then I learned life has a way of rearranging our best-laid plans. After I suffered a brain injury and then lost my husband to esophageal cancer, I really began to question what was possible after all. Can we really have it all?

This picture was taken for my MBA graduation. I had been working for a few years after my university undergrad and then college education when I decided to go back to school on weekends to pursue an MBA. When I graduated from this program, I was 27 years old. I had just signed on for a new job with General Motors and got my first signing bonus. In many ways, I was flying high on life and felt anything was possible. I was smart, super ambitious, and ready for anything that came my way…or so I thought.

After experiencing a brain injury 10 years ago, the death of my Dad and husband, Jeff, to cancer within a few years of each other, and then came the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, I had to reach down deeper within myself than I knew even existed. What have I learned about life and my career along the way? And, what do I wish I could have told my younger self?

I recently spoke at a virtual event about the importance of having coaching-style conversations within the workplace. Before we dive into how you can have coaching conversations to inspire others around you, let’s define what coaching actually is.

What is Coaching? Coaching is the process of helping another individual or group of individuals reflect, learn and create a plan of action to help them perform to the best of their ability in his/her/their life or job.

Recently an article was shared with me entitled, “Welcome to Holland!” This piece was written by Emily Perl Kingsley from her perspective as a mother of a disabled child. But, the person who passed it my way felt it would resonate with me (and it did) and perhaps it will resonate with you, too.

Welcome to Holland!

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland." "Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy." But there's been a change in the flight plan.

In the earlier article ‘Welcome to Holland,’ Emily Perl Kingsley writes about when life doesn’t turn out like you expected it would. Does that concept resonate with you? I think many of us had ideals or hopes in our minds about how our lives/careers/relationships would be in the future, then life intervened and took us down another path.

Perl-Kingsley compares Italy to where we thought we were going in life, but instead, we ended up in Holland. For me, I was in Italy (as shown above in the Isle of Capri, Italy) with my late husband and our firstborn daughter, but also in terms of my life in many senses. I had an amazing husband, a great job, two beautiful healthy daughters, and lived in a nice community. What else could a person ask for? But life intervened…

I recently led a learning session for a company’s internal coaches on resilience. The topic of vulnerability came up. It is interesting how 15 years ago, vulnerability would have been seen as a weakness for a leader to show. Nowadays, particularly since the COVID pandemic, vulnerability is a highly desirable leadership characteristic.

But, as one of the participants in this training program asked me, “How do you become a more vulnerable leader?”