1) It is actually in everyone's best interests if you say "no" and put in boundaries

This type of people-pleasing usually results in you feeling increasing resentment and frustration in your relationships and can create a cycle where you attract more people who take more than they give, leaving you depleted, burnt out and resentful - and so the cycle deepens.

There are so many angles to this one. Here are a few examples:

You answer the phone to your dad who always calls you late at night when he is drunk even though it makes you uncomfortable and often overly tired the next day as you then struggle to end the call. By saying yes to this your feelings of anxiety, stress and resentment are intensifying in your relationship. Putting in a boundary is likely to result in a happier, easier relationship between you both.

I once had a colleague tell me that because I was always overworking on a regular basis, I was enabling an unhealthy work culture that needs to hire more staff and making it worse for them. Needless to say I was also taking a personal hit on my work life balance at the time, which was negatively affecting loved ones at home, but I had not considered the wider and more significant impact of it for my colleagues and it was a big lesson for me about how my people-pleasing behaviours were actually negatively impacting almost every one (just not the bosses).

2) No amount of validation will satisfy you, because what you really desire is to feel self-acceptance, and that of course, comes from you.

3) Healing is what happens when you accept yourself exactly as you are now, not a perfect version of yourself in the future, but the messy, self-sabotaging, not-your-best-day self. Even if you are resorting to old patterns in order to survive the moment. Healing is not about a perfect version of yourself, but rather a self-compassionate one. Self-compassion is also key to making and sustaining change, which will in turn help you to become a future version.

4) Waiting for things to get better before you enjoy life means you will never enjoy life. Do not put life off. Do not put enjoyment off. Live your joy now.

When they come to me, most of my clients have been working so hard on themselves and in so many directions that they have forgotten to embrace joy and fun into their daily life. There are usually very deeply embedded reasons for this that we unpick, but the first action to take from it is to do something fun today, and tomorrow, and the next day.

5) What feels like comfort and intuition can sometimes be our toxic familiar pulls.

Everyone talks about trusting your gut, but how do you tell the difference between your intuition and reactive choices influenced by your unexpressed trauma pulling you towards what is familiar? If you are finding yourself in the same relationships over and over, or you are facing the same issues (not feeling heard/not feeling prioritised/fear of rejection/feeling taken advantage of) then you may be making reactionary choices that feel like intuition because you feel it in your body, but actually it is your trauma responding to being triggered.

6) And yet, you can learn to trust your gut

Building self-trust is a process. One in which you have to slow down (which in itself is often useful as toxic is usually fast-paced). When we slow down we get in touch with our body and our subconscious fears - we start to see our fears and release them with self-compassion and we start to get to in touch with ourselves that we recognise what that fear feels like and where it lives in our body so the next time it is triggered we are less likely to fall for it. Through this process you can cultivate intuition and can learn to trust your guts.

7) "We see the world not as it is, but as we are". Same for other people. We are all projecting our shit onto each other all the time. The key is to allow space to be wrong, and to be loved.

God I love this quote from ANAÏS NIN. It really helped me to see not only my own limitations, but also other people's - so the next time you feel judged, remember - it probably isn't even about you. They are judging themselves - you are their mirror. And of course, when we judge others, we are really judging ourselves and seeing either our fears or where our subconscious wants us to improve.

8) Our world is not set up for you to feel good.

This is such a big one. Struggling with work life balance? Struggling to find time for self-improvement? Struggling to find energy, or purpose, or love? You are not alone. Social norms and structures often promote unhealthy and unhappy ways of living. These are not individual failures, but symptoms of a much larger issue. The problem is not you. However you may have got caught up in the systems and need to make some conscious choices to change how you are living your life so that you can cultivate and embrace that joy I was talking about earlier, and make space to breathe. This popped up on my instagram feed and I loved it: The most radical act in a sick society is to heal yourself then gently help others to heal too.

9) Your perfectionism is killing everything you really want.

Eurgh. I am still in process of uncovering this for myself and the many layers of it. As an example, I had a physio appointment today. When talking with him I realised that my perfectionist mindset had stopped me from exercising when I was with my baby because I can never finish a full set or the full 30 days because some days my baby does not want me to do anything other be with her and that is my priority - but my all or nothing mindset then bailed on completing exercise programs when the reality is that five minutes of functional exercise or yoga would have done me a world of good. Is it as good or as perfect as completing the 30 days, no, but it is better than not doing anything at all because perfectionism is stopping you from doing it "right". And don't even get me started on how it has held me back in my business. Really, truly, believe me - your perfectionism is a killer of everything you really want.

10) Your imposter syndrome is really your inner child. You cannot fix it with hate. It takes vulnerability to see them for what they truly are and it takes love, or at least neutrality, to find your way through it. This one was really fun to discover. I found this out from a drawing exercise I made up with my clients and I always advise to keep the drawing with them after the session as a reminder of what they felt. Let me know if you want the exercise by commenting below, or sending me a message.