The Traveling Introvert

I want to talk about volunteering, something I've done for the majority of my working life in one way or another. And yes, there are upsides to volunteering and giving back to the community, your local community, the international community and people in general. And there are also downsides. But let's talk about the benefits, first of all. Volunteering can be seen as a vital service to your community. There are many organisations that rely on volunteers to help them get done what they need, doing charities and nonprofits.   Basically, it often takes the care and empathy from volunteers to provide help the community's needs. Now, there might be a lot of different organisations that thrives on volunteers, and it can provide benefits to your life as well as the people that you are helping. It can help you build more relationships when you're part of a team connexions form learning. This affects three out of five Americans. According to Signees 2020 Loneliness Index. Loneliness needs depression and anxiety and

I'm going to talk about creating a reference system and this is something I've realised that I've been doing unintentionally for a little while now. So when I say creating a reference system, the reasoning to do this is so that you you free up space in your brain for other things. And what I mean by a reference system is, for example, when you go shopping, do you go ahead and just make a list of all the things that you need and then go shop for them?   Or do you make a list of all the things you want, go around your cupboards and those sort of things, and then go shopping? Or when you run out of something or when you're down to the last jar or 10 or kind of something, do you then go to the place where you normally go shopping online or place where you make a list and write that item down straight away, which those three things do you do? And which of those three things do you think helps free up more space in your brain for other things?   So what I've been doing for a long while is any time I think of so

I want to talk about procrastination, kind of, but in a different way, how to bounce back from feeling like you've been procrastinating or lazy or that you've wasted any time in your day. Because here's the thing. We have a habit of, as humans say, it's midday, like, oh, well, I haven't studied X, Y and Z, so I'll put it off to tomorrow because I won't have time to finish it today or then before you know it, it's two o'clock.   You're like, oh, well, I could have done this other thing, but now I'm going to put it off to the next day and then it's five o'clock. You're like, oh, well, like, I'm not going to do all the other things right. Don't wait till some future moment to start something or do better. You have an opportunity to do better or to start something right now. And I think what we get trapped in with our thinking is that we have to start fresh tomorrow.   We can start fresh next week. We can start fresh next month. We're always waiting for that. But delineator, which we've made up arbitrarily in

I'm going to talk about saying no, but not just saying no, generally when you're feeling overwhelmed or think about productivity or one of the things we get told, and I definitely agree with it to a certain extent, and I've said it myself, is to say no to sad thing and constructively saying no or, you know, I'll check my calendar or I'll do whatever it is to put a little buffer between that person asking a question.   You having to get back with an answer straight away, because a lot of the time might say yes, reflexively and then look at me like, oh, I don't know how I'm going to fit this in. So, yes, when you feeling overwhelmed and you're not sure if you can do something or maybe you just don't want to say yes to something, saying no in a way that is constructive is helpful. However, when you're at work, you might feel more pressure.   If you say now, you might feel that you can't really. So here's what kind of works, yes, you should say no more often, because it will free up your time and really work

day I want to talk about I can't believe I'm saying this, things that happen on some things that you really shouldn't do when you are on Zoom. So in my time, I have been running online coworking sessions and sometimes most people have their video off, which is fine and makes perfect sense. But occasionally I've been running the sessions and there's a couple things that I've noticed that even if I'm deep in work, catch my eye and therefore make it hard for me to concentrate.   If you are on video and depending on where your camera is compared to you, especially if your camera is lower down on, you are looking down into your camera. If you are eating or chewing gum while being on easy video and you were looking down into the camera, it's not a great look. And also it is very distracting if I get it, if you are working and the camera's on for accountability. But that movement of constant chewing can be distracting for people because it is a very consistent kind of movement that can back.   And also people th

, I want to talk about processing time, there's been a lot of changes in the world in the past year or so, and I'm sure everyone has been dealing individually with changes in general. And to be fair, changes happen all the time. And sometimes when you don't realise that you feel like you're being lazy or unproductive, you might feel like just staying in bed for the day or reading a book or whatever it is that you like to do to help yourself feel better.   And for the longest while I was talking to a friend of mine, as always, these episodes, so many of them are inspired by a really good friend of mine. And we're talking and I was like, I don't want to do this. I don't feel like doing that. I have a couple of things that are up in the air in the moment. And so I don't want to move forward with these other things because things are up in the air.   And I said, this is just me using these things up in the air as an excuse to procrastinate. And she was like, you're not procrastinating, you need processing tim

introvert today I'm talking about what to do when you have an introvert hangover. This is what I currently have I I had a busy couple of weeks that involved seeing humans in the flesh because there is a difference between an intimate hangover and a Zoom hangover. I know a lot of people during the pandemic got very zoomed out and, you know, fed up of them. And I get that and how I dealt and it's kind of easy to deal with that.   You just have less same interaction or change the way you have your same interaction. And obviously in the past year or so, I spent less and less time amongst other humans, are having to do with other humans in person. And I thought I was being smart and doing a soft re-entry into having to deal with humans in person. I had a weekend where I saw some people in small doses and I had an evening where I had a break. I was all by myself and then saw some other people in small doses and then had another break.   And then I was on our way home. We had brunch with a friend, which was wond

Introvert today I'm going to talk about staying with your employer for sentimental reasons, and this has come up due to a couple of clients that I've been working with and. It's a case of I've got a client, she has been working with a Start-Up for eight years, she was an employee in about four or five. She's been with them through thick and thin. She's helped build processes, build the company that she's not a co-founder and worked 60, 70 hour weeks well, obviously at 40 an hour pay.   And basically her life was consumed by this organisation. And she did rise up the ranks along the way due to experience within that organisation. It was like her first job and also due to just knowledge, she went and pulled together and created processes and documentation and programmes and figured out how to basically run this type of logistics company. And now it's got to a stage where the company is heading in a direction that she doesn't agree with. There are people have values, and this company, when she started with the

today I want to talk about some popular sort of self care and self love advice that is actually quite toxic. So this came about because a coach that I follow was very vulnerable and open about something that had happened. And one of the things she mentioned that had held her back from realising that this thing was happening is because she her mindset was very much about stay positive and no toxicity. And it's just a mindset thing.   While all the time her body was giving her signals that something was wrong. And so this led me to dig a bit deeper about some things that we hear a lot. And one of those things is positive vibes only stay positive. People use it because they think it's uplifting, but it's actually quite dismissive. Often people say when people voiced sadness, frustration, emotional fatigue and anger, basically any other emotion but happiness, a positive attitude, yes, of course, can get you a long way, but took it, acknowledging it and letting yourself and others just feel those emotions is rea

or to do lists, apps. More to the point, we all have this running list of things that we need to do in our lives. Some of it may be work related. Some of it might be personal, some of it might be family related. But in general, I don't know anyone who doesn't have a running lists of tasks and or things to do, places to be.   Stuff to do, things to remember. And what helps us not keep it all in our heads is to get it down somewhere so people have a journal, a book, a calendar. Some people have lists, they have project management tools. They have all sorts of different ways to remember all the little things that they need to do and a lot of the times. Get told that we should really dump everything in one place, so have that one tool to rule them all, for example, like they want to be everything to everybody and think it was a great tool.   But sometimes your mind doesn't work that way because there's a difference between being reminded to take out the trash, for example, to be reminded that you have to reco

Today, we are going to talk about reasons people leave jobs and also more to the point, why people look at new roles. And this came about because I was I'm working with a client and they were talking about the two things they look for when they're looking for a new role. And I thought it was really interesting because what happened is she said that she either looks to learn or to earn. And I thought that was a really great thing.   And I asked her to sort of expand on that. And she mentioned that, I mean, to earn it's kind of self-explanatory to earn more than she currently earns in benefits and stocks and actual salary. She would move to earn more so she can do more and and pay off a house quicker or have more time with her other family or her dogs or whatever it might be. And the learning point, she mentioned that she would stay in a role even if she got offered something of more money, if she felt she could learn from her manager or someone else within the organisation.   And so at that point, money di

, I want to talk about out of office. This has come up a couple of times this week.   There was a tweet that I saw that said, European  out of offices. "I'm away camping for the summer email again in September". American out of offices. I have left the office for two hours to undergo kidney surgery, but you can reach me on my cell any time. And I sent this round quite a few friends and it's heartbreakingly true. And then something else happened. I sent out an email to my mailing list about an offer that I was doing and how things were going.   And I said, you know, if you need anything, just just send an email, respond if you have any questions. And that goes to my personal email address. And I happen to have an office on my email address at the time because I was taking a couple of days off. And so I always have an out of office when I am not going to be responding in a timely fashion. And I got an email back saying, of course, you are taking time off.   Can you possibly how can you not think about oth

, I'd like to talk about repetitive strain injuries, this has come up because a lot of people have been working from home now for over a year. If due to world events and even though you might have been used to working in an office and you go into the office and work, say, 9:00 to 5:00 with a lunch break and occasional other breaks, watercooler breaks, and you come home and you might do some other things.   But because of the tendency now for everyone to work from home, there is an increased tendency of their being blurred lines between work life and home life. And when do you start working and when do you stop working? I've been working with a lot of companies and organisations that just don't respect boundaries and people working 10, 12, 13, 14 hour days. And so this has led to increased increased incidences of repetitive strain injury. So repetitive strain injury is when you've been doing the same thing over and over and over again, that same movement, miniscule movement over again to the point that it en

, I want to talk about many hats as a business owner and most solopreneurs and entrepreneurs, especially at the start of their journey, you will find that you wear many hats.   And this can be great to start with as you get to know what different parts of your business do and how to how it gets done and getting systems in place in that sort of a thing. But generally speaking, this is what happens. We had a day job. You were basically sort of the the person that did all the things at that day job. And then you took whatever you did at that day job and transposed it into a business. But what happened was you were like the technician.   You were the person people went to for X, Y and Z, and you were good at that. And that's what you did. You had the tasks and you did the tasks. You had a manager and now you moved to this business where you're still kind of doing the tasks. But what you're forgetting about is managing and being the CEO. So when you are an entrepreneur, yes, you have to wear many hats. But the

, I would like to talk about roles for you applying for roles as a freelancer or a small business owner. I saw a post sometime this week in a group and this particular person was looking for a service provider that could provide graphics and social media support, and they had a Web page with all the information on it. And at the end it said, if you are interested in this role, carefully read through this overview and then email me at and gave the email address.   And then the first question was, tell me about yourself, family background, where you live and what you do. And this was for a. Social media manager, virtual for an organisation, and they're in the health and wellness space, so what I found interesting is the way I'm going to use about this was the tell me about yourself exclamation mark. OK, fine family. Why I should have to tell you anything about my family to be considered for a role in your organisation is beyond me.   You might not be an employer and have to deal with the rules and regulatio

. I want to talk about powerful women. What image is conjured up in your head when I say the words powerful women? This came around because I'm working with a client and she has this great little programme that she's running just over, I think two and a half weeks and it's cool. It's got a name, it's got the word Alpha in it. And she's running this group and she is looking for images or we are looking for images to use and social to kind of reiterate what we're talking about.   And what we've discovered is if you go on and on Splash or even in Encounter and you put in powerful women, you generally get images of women with their arms crossed, looking vaguely happy or or looking down on somebody. I tend to be a woman alone or a woman in front of a group of people. And even when you do get those images of women with their arms crossed because a Pountney, that is a powerful stance. It tends to be women around the 20s, maybe no older than 30 or sort of 60s, 70s, kind of a vibe.   Then there's another group whe

today I want to talk about a quote I saw that was don't let the Internet rush you. No one is posting that failures. And I found that really interesting for many reasons, but mainly the fact that with social media, with Instagram and Facebook and we see we think we see so much of people's lives or how people run their business. And yet behind the scenes, even the behind the scenes shots are never behind the scenes shots of I failed at this or I tried this thing and it didn't work.   It's always shots of I try this thing and look, I go, you know, 20000 people or 10000 people out, a six figure weekend or whatever it is, even when they're doing the behind the scenes, they're never doing the behind the scenes of failure. And here's the thing. As humans, we learn better from trying something and failing and making mistakes than we do from trying something and succeeding at it or seeing someone succeed at it. We just don't learn as well.   So it's really interesting how people on Instagram, on Facebook or wherev

I want to talk about recharge time and weekends. So I was recently working with a group during one of our online coworking sessions and the statement came up that weekends our social construct. And so why do weekends matter? Unlike sort of, you know, the 24 hour daily rotation of the Earth was a yearlong journey around the sun. The seven day week specifically is purely a social construct. The two day weekend was, in part, born from another economic crisis.   So during the Great Depression in the 1930s, many industries that had not yet adopted the 40 hour work week cut in place schedules back from seven days to five days a week so that fewer working hours could be distributed among more people. And so this led to the weekend, these two days off that where people did not go to their regular jobs. However, speaking to a lot of people recently, I asked them what days do they take off? Because we happened to be working on a Saturday.   And the overwhelming response was they did not take time off.   They did

A brief summary of this episode

Introvert today I want to talk about the differences between strategists, consultants and coaches. So I'm going to start with strategists. Strategists are for when you have an unclear vision strategy plan or next steps for the big picture. Right. The whole idea is they kind of help you with breakthrough aha moments and then come up with actionable and customized strategies and plans to move your business forward generally with some sort of clarity, purpose and direction.   The idea is to pivot you and set you on the right path. And when is the best time to kind of hire a strategist is normally at the beginning or early on when you're just trying to sort of figure things out or doing really big changes, pivots or growth like last year or when problems, challenges or dissatisfaction arises. And it can also be a regular touch points. Just to clarify and make sure you're still identifying the good opportunities and going in the right direction.   And you know what's a really good time to get a strategist when