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good morning everyone i'm amy friesen and this is artful aging with amy currently there are seven million
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seniors in canada and over the next 20 years there's an expected population
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growth of 68 percent and caring for these seniors often are family caregivers usually adult children
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it's estimated that there are 2.2 million caregivers who are also employed
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full-time this creates a high stress and often complicated lifestyle for many and many
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people have to reduce or change workloads or even change their entire life completely to integrate the extra
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care and attention that they now need to give to their senior loved ones francesca detello teaches her clients
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how to take control of their minds get into the driver's seat of their emotions and master the stress and get and keep
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healthy relationships as a coach francesco works with women bosses who are business owners or ceos
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or executives who have all often lost their way in a particular area of their
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lives and she helps them find their way by showing them how to reconnect to themselves so that they can create a
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genuine success and truly live their boss life welcome francesca thanks so
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much for joining me today well thank you so much amy for having me and i'm really excited to share what i
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can that be abused to your audience and your viewers today well i i
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i've personally worked with you as you know and i really loved our experience and i think that you add so much value
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to so many specifically women business owners who were talking about today and so i think it's going to be super
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valuable so i hope everybody's got their pens and paper and they're ready for our ride so maybe we could start off by
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asking you know could you tell me a little bit more about yourself and although you work with a lot of
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different individuals what is it that draws you to help female bosses or
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business owners and who are also in the sandwich generation yeah i'm i'm happy to do that so i just
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want to talk a bit personally speaking um i'm in my 50s now and i'm 54 and as
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many women and and people in this age range we have elderly parents and i do
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have a father who is going to be turning 80 um in september and but thankfully mind
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and body are good so there's not really a lot of caregiving there at this point um i have
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a wonderful husband um james and uh i have a step son and son sean has been
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launched he's uh functioning well he's independent which is what you know what parents want
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um so i really do feel like personally speaking i have a very blessed life and i also feel like i'm very blessed
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professionally um and so uh i i've been in the field of
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mental health for about 26 years now and even then i knew i wanted to work
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with women and at that time i was drawn to working with women who had trauma
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histories in part because i had a trauma history and my mother had a trauma history uh in 2008 i started my own
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business in private practice and then in 2014 i brought coaching into my business
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and i was drawn to working with female business owners largely because i
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was a female business owner and i was living the demands of having a
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business and other areas of my life i i was sacrificing those areas of my life
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and when i work with female business owners and they do have
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their business to take care of as well as children and parents and partners etc
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i see how much they're having to sacrifice of them themselves and since i
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turned 50 i've made it a a point to live life more on my own terms
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and and that's what i want to help other female business owners do as well and
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that's part of the reason why i created my boss life coaching program well thank you for sharing it's
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definitely you know i'm in a similar scenario and it's definitely hard to balance everything
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and i know that you just mentioned boss life tell me what does it mean to have a boss life
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so for me um coming out of a very personal experience it was about
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and it's it's about defining oneself connecting to oneself
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redefining oneself getting very clear on what your path is
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and being able to follow your heart being able to follow your internal guidance
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system letting go of other people's opinions other people's
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approval and just working your own path following your own
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truth leading by example and ultimately having a boss life is it to me is an act of
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self-love lovely wonderful it's it's i feel like it's a valuable thing to
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strive for i feel like you know obviously you help people achieve that and so it's it can be a lot for people
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to think about it's like how do i put everything into perspective how do i you know make sure that i get what i need i know i'm
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going through that in my own life and trying to line up things on my own and you know i often find that i become
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overwhelmed and when i get overwhelmed i just need to get out of my own way more than anything and allow others to either
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take the steering wheel or go for some assistance with someone such as yourself to get because there's so
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much stuff happening in a business owner's mind plus like you said plus the family stuff
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plus your own stuff and all that and it's just sometimes you just have to get out of your own mind and let someone else get in there for a while or talk
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about it and get it out in the opening open right for those who are unfamiliar with
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coaching and therapy what are some of the reasons why someone might get assistance in this way
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um well i i just wanted to to mention what you were referring to
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in the overwhelm and um i mean how could you not get overwhelmed with you know if
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a business owner and you're in the sandwich generation and you're you know trying to do it all first of all you
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can't um you can't do it all equally you can't give everything
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the same equal amount of attention like that's things are going to get out of balance and sometimes that's okay but
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it's also about how long you stay out of balance but i i also think that um
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when we think about healthy lifestyles when we think about mental well-being emotional well-being a
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healthy lifestyle and emotional and mental well-being consists of balancing what we ought to be doing the
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shoulds and the demands in our lives with what we want to be doing and a part of that wants is to take care of self
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um it is something that's not just going to happen obviously it's you can't take that for granted it it does require
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um uh putting a conscious effort and a consistent effort
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into doing that um and so um there is a difference between coaching
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and therapy i do both right um and it's hard to actually put in the box
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like who is a candidate for coaching who's a candidate for therapy but if i were to generalize that
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um if you are going to seek therapy you're probably
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experiencing a significant level of distress um perhaps you have been given a mental
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health diagnosis um and um you might be
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having to deal with past trauma emotional healing so there's more
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significant impairment in your your functioning typically when you come
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to therapy and you're seeking therapy whereas coaching with coaching overall
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you're functioning well and the term is often called you're working with the the worried well
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it's very goal attainment focused it's more uh present and future
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oriented you're not working on past trauma healing or emotional healing in fact you're usually able to
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identify handle and express your emotions uh quite effectively so there is a difference between the two
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and there's also overlap between the two and that they both will help you to increase your confidence they'll both
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help you with uh well-being they'll they can both help you with
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your interpersonal relationships your career your your personal growth so um
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it's really hard to tease out the benefits of one versus the other but
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that's sort of how you determine whether somebody's more eligible or a better candidate for therapy
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or coaching that's a great way to think about it and break it down as well just you know i find that there's a lot of
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people that have done none of it and so there's a lot of people not really understanding which avenue if they were
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gonna look to start with doesn't mean you have to stay in that lane but you know no you don't yeah in fact i have
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some some people who start out with coaching with me and because um things happen in our
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lives and their mental health and emotional health waivers and that that i ended up doing doing therapy with them
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and in fact whether i'm working with a client and esteemed therapy versus coaching i always bring a blend of the
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two and the degree of that blend really depends on the client's needs and it can
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happen the other way around where somebody might do therapy with me and they get to a certain label level of
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stability and they really want to get hunkered down on some goals in their lives so we'll do
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do more work and the coaching uh with a coaching approach in that area
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what do you find that some of the benefits people receive from let's talk about coaching maybe
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specifically you know when someone is trying to find this balance and and balance is kind of its objective right
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it's hard it it's hard to stay in balance and you know you're always going up and down trying to put your own needs
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and your business needs and your family needs and every you know the dog's needs and everybody else's needs right so
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you're always trying to figure it out but you know if someone wanted to invest their time into coaching what
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kind of benefits may they see like what have you what have some of your clients seen um well the coaching
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uh benefits it's like a ripple effect right you work on one area of your life and then it just just it opens up and
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impacts other areas of your lives but you know as i mentioned uh
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when i talked about the boss life they would definitely um experience those benefits that i that i talked about um
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and then part of part of the benefit is also to get into action and to get into
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what i called inspired action mode um it is also going to help you
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set those boundaries and limits whether it's at work whether it's in your personal life
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to create more more time for more freedom for for yourself and taking care
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of yourself and and balancing i mean most of the clients that come to me especially coaching and this is
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definitely for my therapy clients but most of my coaching clients i say about 90 percent of have gone through my uh
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interpersonal effectiveness module which is basically an assertive training module
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because this is such a skill that people are lacking so much and i think women in
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particular have a real challenge with asserting themselves they have all sorts of myths or limiting beliefs around what
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it means to assert themselves so setting those boundaries and limits
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being able to ask for help say no to things you don't want to say no to um
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saying no to things you don't want to do being able to improve your health
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improve sleep i mean that's happened with a number of my my clients uh reduce
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uh mulling over all those work problems the rumination the preoccupation because
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when you're off you're never really off if your mind is still there um so it can have a
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far-ranging impact on relationships i've had a number of women come to me uh to
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coach them on attracting their ideal partner because they put their their business first for so long and they've
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put their personal life on the back burner and they're like no i'm i'm not doing this anymore i want to
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have love in my life so there could be a number of benefits
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from doing coaching wonderful yeah it's um such an array right the assertiveness uh
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as soon as you said that it reminded me of the facebook kind of a meme that goes around about how you know if a
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young girl is assertive she's called bossy right and if a young boy is called like assertive it's like he's a leader
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kind of thing right and i think that so much stems from those traditional roles and what people
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are accepting and i am i i've learned to but i'm quite assertive my personality
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is very bold right generally speaking and so i have you know other issues like boundary setting and thing that that a
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lot of people don't realize that you really do have to you know concentrate and even get help
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too set boundaries and and identify what those might look like for somebody and i
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think it's so important and as you know we both are business owners and have families and stuff like the boundaries
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can look different from everybody um but you know the other thing is what i find
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that's really important and i'd like love for you to weigh in is i i find that not only is boundary setting really
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important but um letting people know that there's a boundary there why
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there's a boundary there like you know sometimes somebody will come i've had somebody in the past one of my friends i
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was dealing with something and then they messaged me and they were dealing with something and all i could do is say you
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know i'm hearing you you know i'm sorry that you're dealing with this i at the moment can't take
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this on because i'm dealing with something but i will come back to you let me know if there's something like super pertinent that you know if you're
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in danger or something like that for sure but just not taking on other people's emotional stuff because i think
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that that is huge yeah it is huge and i love what you just said about and how you handled that
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situation because i think that was very effectively done um and i and i run through case
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scenarios with with my clients like that uh because you know the thinking is oh
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if if if i don't if i don't help this person or help my friend immediately they're
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they think i don't care or that means i'm i'm selfish or i'm not a nice nice person
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and you know being able to say to somebody you know what i just right now my capacity is it's it's nil and i i
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just would not be a benefit to you at this moment i could not be present for you i cannot you know but can i get back
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to you you know on such a such a day when when i'm in a better state of mind or a better frame of mind or when this
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has stabilized i think that's a beautiful way to demonstrate to somebody that you still care but also respect
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your own boundaries you know and and there are different types of boundaries we have physical
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boundaries we have sexual boundaries we have emotional boundaries we have mental boundaries so um we have to be able to
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identify all of those types of boundaries and the other thing is is that you know talking going back to the
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boss life program something else that uh women business owners can get out of it
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is the uh the skill of self-validation and i think in order to set boundaries
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we need to be able to validate ourselves many of us have been taught that our
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internal experiences and our thoughts and our feelings aren't accurate they're not correct uh they're invalid and
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they're they're punished or criticized or minimized in some way when you um are
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in in living your boss life you take your opinion more seriously than anybody
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else's you trust yourself and your internal experience more than anyone else does and in order to be able to
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assert your limits and your boundaries you have to be able to validate and honor your own experience and that's
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something that i find uh women in particular have a very hard time doing
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for sure a huge hard time you know listening to your own inter into intuition and and really honing that um
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we may have discussed this in the past but you know when i left my abusive marriage many years ago
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now you know i wasn't paying attention at all i could hear my intuition i could hear you know thoughts and i knew would
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would be coming from them but i wasn't paying attention ignoring it more that more as what i was doing and uh as i got further away from
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that and i further developed my own personality because you know specifically in this case it was an
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abuse of marriage so everything was kind of muted and as i'd maybe that's why i'm so bold francesca honestly
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maybe i was always this bold and i got muted for a while right but then you start to hone into what you really need
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and what you want and you know i make a lot of decisions on my my gut reaction because i've learned to trust
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it because you know event you have to you have to get that experience right you have to do one decision after
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another until you can actually trust it right exactly definitely and that's what i say to my
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clients is that the only way you're going to be able to develop more trust for yourself is by acting on your your
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your internal thoughts feelings got intuition because when you act on it
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you're demonstrating trust and then and then that helps you to build more trust and to take the next
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action step based on your own guidance right so it definitely requires action
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as well to to build up that self-validation and that self-trust for sure for sure
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if uh some folks in our audience are watching and they're still not quite sure you know if they would benefit from
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you know therapy counseling coaching direction of some sort what kind of warning signs could we
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maybe give them to look out for that you know if they see something happening in their own life maybe they should look
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into you know some of these modalities just to see if they would help is there anything we can ask them to look for
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well um you know i'll speak to therapy first so um if you're having a hard time
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with focus and concentration uh if you're if you're noticing that your thoughts
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are are very um all or nothing so you know a lot of self-judgment
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that's an indication that therapy might be good for you sometimes that's with coaching as well if emotionally you're
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finding that you're uh more reactive emotionally that um it doesn't take much
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to get you going your emotional reactions are really intense and it takes you a really long time to get back
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to your baseline um that might be an indication of therapy if you're coping strategies you
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know if you're at the end of your long day you're reaching for that bottle of wine every day or you're shoveling the
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bag of chips in your mouth maybe you need some help with developing
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healthier coping mechanisms that are not going to cause you more problems in the long term and also if you are having trouble
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asserting yourself if you if you find that you are always subverting your own needs and wants for the sake of the
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relationship um then that can be an indication you you could benefit from therapy and also your relationship with
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yourself if your relationship with yourself is is not balanced you don't trust your gut you don't feel a solid
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sense of self um you just don't feel connected to yourself then that could be an
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indication of therapy being a good modality for you
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now with coaching those things can also be addressed but more specifically
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if you're working with me in coaching um i really want to talk about the reality of burnout
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if you're if you're a business owner and you've got taking care of family pets
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etc this isn't just a risk it's a reality so paying attention to those warning signs
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of burnout if you are tired all the time feeling exhausted
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frequently if you aren't eating well if you're not getting exercise if you're not doing
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restful activities anything that calms you down reading or meditation for example
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if you're not getting pleasure from the things that normally give you pleasure if you're isolating and these actually
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are all signs of depression and depression is one of the indicators on the stages of burnout right um and it
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could be feeling resentful about all your your to-do's it could be feeling resentful at work feeling resentful for
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other people who who uh have a have a life um
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you know a host of things like that that can demonstrate that oh maybe maybe i need to get some help maybe i need to
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reach out those are all great yeah it's definitely there's just so much right
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there's so much that can be looked in and i think that with burnout you know generally speaking we've talked about
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this in multiple other shows but i don't think it's if it's when as a business owner specifically
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i feel like we all get there and you know how we deal with what comes before and what happens at the time and how how
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we deal with it afterwards makes all the difference right and it doesn't have to be in my opinion i'm not the professional
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so you have to weigh in but you know in my opinion it's not burnout doesn't always have to be you
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know complete burnout you can still have like a little bit of burnout right it's just like i need like i need a vacation
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or i need a weekend that's like i'm not doing something else like i just want to sit on the couch and do nothing yes yeah
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so doesn't have to be super extreme i've i feel like i've been in both kind of you know super extreme and just like
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fatigued and like just being burnt right so yeah i think
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go ahead sorry i was just because i think it's important to say that too like some people push through it right they feel like oh
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you know i i have a little bit more i have a little bit more but if you can address it sooner you won't maybe get to
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that really extreme part let me know exactly no what you're saying is entirely accurate
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because it's not like you wake up uh you're fine one day and the next day you're in complete burnout
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right it doesn't happen that way some theorists say there's 12 stages to burn out right so it's a progression
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and the earlier you intervene the better right right so um so it is important to ensure that
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you you are implementing strategies into your everyday life to help you prevent that
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and if and if that means taking a weekend where you're just flat out on the couch
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because that's what you need then then take that weekend you know and i i mean
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you have to admire the passion that uh business owners have the work ethic the
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drive but i think one of the other things that's really important and this is what you know since i turned 50 i
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really looked at my values what's really important to me yes success ambition
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uh money those are those are really nice accomplishments however
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is that enough to get you to happiness is that enough to create a well-balanced life and for most of us
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it's not and so if we want to live value-driven lives and have value-driven
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goals we're going to need to be to prioritize other areas of our our lives
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as well i also find that you know i i post things on facebook from here to
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there and i have family members who like you know will comment on it and friends and things like that i also find that you know even just
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discussing this with you you're that you've got a lot of things that you can you can help with
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but even as another business owner discussing the hurdles with another business owner because
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what i find is that you know i might post something that's about you know running a business or that there's
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burnout involved i just post something recently and it was like this is kind of me in a paragraph and people comment
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well you should always put yourself in your family and then your business and it's like i think for a lot of business owners that's not how we think
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everything's first right it's not a matter of you know i want to take care of this and this and this
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because the thing is as a business owner that's also our job that's also how we make money
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and if i don't put it as a priority then i got to find somewhere else to find this
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money right or i've got to find someone else to find the passion and things like that so i think it's super advantageous
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not only to speak to someone who's a coach which you know all coaches pretty much are business owners right um
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but also just the fact that you are a business owner so you do have that mentality and understanding and it's i
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almost find that people that don't run businesses kind of brush over the stuff that concerns folks
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like you and i and and just kind of throws it away and it's like but i just can't do that right i can't just throw
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that away that's part of my personality right right yeah and it is it's a very
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different ballgame when you own your own business and i think and until you do it you can truly you can't truly understand
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the um the weight of that and the ownership you have of that
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um and um so it it definitely becomes uh much more challenging and prioritizing
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obviously becomes more much more challenging uh and even as a business owner we do
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have to allow for those times where we say okay enough i i i can't keep doing this this
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is not sustainable and if i um if i keep going at this rate i won't have a
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business at all like there will be nothing in the future because once you you know when you hit that stage of
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complete burnout it's really hard to come back from that you can but it's you're never quite the same no and the
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thing is too is i've seen other business owners burn out and then they're it for the
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business right and so like they could have a thriving business they burn out the business goes into flames right
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yes i don't think any of us as business owners want that right so it's hard to balance um yeah do we do you have any tips for
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people to wrap up our show today you know for prevention purposes you know i you know i keep that broad because i
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think that you could probably touch on a lot of things but maybe just like a tip or two that people could implement in
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their life to hopefully kind of avoid you know or or lessen the damage of burnout and
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things like that for sure i mean you know we talked about rest um and there's different types of
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rest like physical rest which can include uh sleep uh sleep is so very
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important for emotional and mental well-being the research has demonstrated over and over again that you do need
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between seven and nine hours of sleep i hear people saying oh i can live on five or six hours you can live on it but
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guess what it's it's certainly not going going to help you in the long term your cognitive
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functioning emotionally there's so much restorative benefits uh to sleeping and
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even just physical activities that you can do that that um like are physically restorative like whether that's the
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gentle stretching or yoga uh or even getting a massage right and
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uh you know um i i tell my business owners like and and some of my therapy clients take mindful
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pauses throughout the day like if you know i oh i'd have too much to do at home okay well said set an alarm take
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three to five minutes do some mindfulness practices to just check in and get into
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uh the present moment exercise obviously i mean it's a natural mood regulator
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it's a mood elevator it guards against anxiety and depression and i think the other thing too is a lot
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of people you know if if you are caregiving a lot of being is taken from you and that that can exhaust you so
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even social rest and what i mean by that um is to be able to
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um spend time with those people that fill you up spend time with people who are supportive who are validating who who
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are uh loving and the last thing i want to talk about is is sensory overload
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um because we have a lot coming at us throughout the day and a lot of our work is now online
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and you know we're on social media and posting etc so i think it's really important that we also avoid sensory
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overload um and unplug from technology and unplug from the social media uh i advise
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my clients to turn off their phones and shut things down at least two hours before bedtime
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preferably three hours which also actually helps with with sleep so those those are just some ideas of how people
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can prevent burnout quick tips thanks for sharing thank you
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so much for joining me today can you let our audience know how they would get a hold of you should they like to look
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into some of the services that you provide um or in your website uh if you could
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sure yes so uh my website is www.francescattillo.ca
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and so i'll just spell out my name e f-r-a-n-c-e-s c a
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d a t t i l o it's kind of a mouthful uh so my website my email is
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francesca at francesca dattillo.com i'm on facebook and i'm on linkedin as
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well so people can also message me there if they'd like to reach out wonderful well thank you again for
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joining me i really appreciate all of the stuff that we've talked about today i think that is super valuable so thanks
31:15
for coming on i appreciate it nice one thank you it was great please like and share us
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with your networks with your family members get some information out remember support's only one conversation
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away and the and people love to have extra resources available to them
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because not everybody knows that things are available so make sure that if you did find value share it around your
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networks and and help other people find everything thanks again for joining us on our flaging with amy from me to all
31:44
of you i hope that you have a wonderful wednesday [Music]
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