Tag: stress
How Important is Money to Happiness?
“Try not to become a man of success, but a man of value”
Albert Einstein 💡
I wonder what my sassy lil niece, Flora, aged 4 going on 24, would have to say about that..
💵 What does success mean to you?
💵 How important is money to you?
💵 To what extent does it feed your happiness?
💵 Are wealthy folk you know happier in their lives or careers?
💵 Or are the happier people you know content with less?
Or like some of my smart successful clients, do you feel trapped in the corporate cage – on a big salary with a big house and mortgage, maybe private school fees to pay but not loving your job and feeling unable to shift paths cos of those liabilities?
If you relate to that, you may associate money more with entrapment than freedom.
Or like the protagonist in Robin Sharma’s superb bestseller: ‘The Monk Who Sold his Ferarri’, maybe you identify with the lawyer whose work nearly killed him and woke him up to a different way of living entirely?
This all begs the question, what does success and income really mean to you and what’s the relationship between the two?
Is baby Flora on to something above?
Afterall, studies on the relationship between income and happiness show that while money generally increases wellbeing, the ‘minimum’ amount required to reach peak emotional happiness is generally identified around $60k – $95k annually and thereafter happiness can go either way.
Of course (came out as ‘of curse’ 🤔), few things in life are black and white – for instance, let’s say you sell a business for £4million, you may think you’re rich for life or it’s a nice nest egg to have – but if you then have a large mortgage to pay, four children at a fee paying school, pricey holidays, lots of meals out and say a child with special needs or health requirements, that pot can be both valuable and also quite disposable fast.
And what if the folk earning that nearly keel over scaling a business with investors to answer to and strained mental health that make them a less present parent and partner?
What does success look like then?
Is it more about net income – what’s left when we minus the costs and expenses, whether actual or emotional, than our gross salary in the first instance?
For example, when I was in law I noticed I was playing to leading strengths and interests but I felt much less connected to my emotions and had v little time to feed wider values like fun, wellbeing, love and family. The latter concerned me greatly deep down and ended up being key to my decision to leave.
In other words, the net income seemed disproportionately low to me once I’d minused the expenses.
I also noticed, though not true for everyone, long hours meant higher divorce rates around me and greater internal imbalance.
Now working as a coach with many high flyers, I often see the trappings of outer success – the six figure salaries and LinkedIn profiles that wow and may leave others feeling ‘less than’ – but im privy to the sometimes shadow side of that ‘success’ and the cost it sometimes comes at – such as high level stress, lack of work life balance and disconnection from values and higher purpose.
This often shows up in clients wanting to shift paths in a way that maintains income but with greater work life balance and making more of a difference in some way – relatively unsurprising given these are two commonly held regrets of the dying when not sufficiently met in life according to Bronnie Ware, palliative nurse and bestselling author of “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying”.
But it’s not black and white.
My dad was a successful entrepreneur who was always home by 6pm, had few wrinkles, nice cars and plenty of family time.
Again, it’s a question of intentional life design and moving in accordance with deeper values you must meet for true fulfilment.
Most people I work with have never truly considered what those deeper drivers may be – why would we if we’re never asked.. and they only get hints of misalign from helpful emotional signals like frustration, burnout or boredom before we talk.
However, they initially often don’t know how to get deeper clarity on those feelings, how to make changes or how to do so in a strategic way that meets other values like the need for a good income and the wider realities of adult life.
So I ask again, what does success really mean to you?
Whose lives or careers do you envy and why?
And do you truly long for more of that or is it more ego than truth?
We’re all different in this respect – and, for some, it’s only on the deathbed that they get true perspective on what really mattered, as Steve Jobs did:
“In the end, wealth is only a fact of life I am accustomed to. Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter. Treasure love for your family, love for your friends. Treat yourself well. Cherish others”.
The Top 5 Regrets of The Dying + Why Death Shows Us How to Really Live
“Cancer need not be the epilogue. In many ways, it’s the introduction to a richer life of wisdom”
Matthew Pritchard ☁️
To mark the 25th anniversary of my brother’s death at 23, and to make sure that you also make the most of life, check out the top five regrets of the dying observed by the best-selling author, Bronnie Ware. These bore true of her time in palliative nursing irrespective of people’s rank, profession or otherwise:
1. I wish I had had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
“This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it.”
2. I wish I had not worked so hard.
“This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children’s youth and their partner’s companionship. Women also spoke of this regret, but as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.”
3. I wish I had had the courage to express my feelings.
“Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.”
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
“Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.”
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
“This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content, when deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.”
If you think you’re too busy to consider the above, all the more reason to ⛵️
For as Steve Jobs, the man who ‘had it all’, warned:
“At this moment, lying on the sick bed + recalling my whole life, I realize that all the recognition + wealth that I took so much pride in, have paled + become meaningless”.
Confused about where to start with life or career change? Drop me a line: www.melanie-pritchard.com
Why Negative Emotions are Essential to Career Clarity + Change
Confusion and clarity are much closer together than you might think! 👯♀️
Indeed, as Alan Cohen says: “Confusion is the last stop on the way to clarity” ⛱️
We often feel panicked when we feel confused, overwhelmed or apathetic about our careers (or lives!)
And while not wholly fun ways to feel, negative emotions are often helpful emotional signals, revealing unmet needs and things we crave more of, whether:
🍓 Feeling flat in our life or career and not knowing why
🍎 Feeling repeatedly stressed and being unsure if it’s due to your boss, the company or the role or field itself
🍈 Not knowing if you’re the problem or you really do need a change.
I say again, negative emotions are merely signals for unmet needs and once you get clear on what those are and where they’re not being met, the rest is easy.
As Marie Curie said: “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood” 🏹
To see how coaching can help you move from confusion to clarity fast, book a free discovery call here: www.melanie-pritchard.com / email melanie@melanie-pritchard.com 🍒
Don’t believe it works? I didn’t either before I tried it so don’t take my word for it, see what my clients say here: https://lnkd.in/eMR3TjD4
A Powerful 3 Step Communication Hack to Optimise Relationships
“Good communication is the bridge between confusion and clarity”
Nat Turner 💡
I’ve never been one for sharing personal relationship stories on here – but this one is too good not to share.
I’m still friends with an ex-boyfriend below, probably cos he was a good friend to me and a very genuine guy.
And though our love story wasn’t meant to go beyond what it did, like all relationships, I learnt some valuable pearls o wisdom.
The main one being the value of calm communication. Note – the calm gentle tone was more vital than the words as per studies which show tone and body language account for 65% of communication’s impact, with words being only 35%.
Food for thought, hey?
That was definitely one of his superpowers – a bit like my dad, it was as if in that moment when others might have been angry or agressive (like when I snapped some skis he leant me 🫢), he did what Mr P advises:
“If someone is upset or doesn’t listen, repeat yourself slowly and calmly until they do”.
I’ve never, btw, heard my dad raise his voice once. Ever. No wonder I don’t do well with moody people 🫢
The What Why How handy communication tool below gives structure to the complex business o communication, boosting clarity, closeness and relationship success when you’re struggling to express something. It can also be applied at work 💼
Here’s how the 3 step formula goes:
🔦 What’s important to you
🔦 Why it’s important
🔦 How much of it you need (if relevant)
Continued below ⬇️
You can also ask it in questions if you’re getting to know someone professionally or personally:
For example:
🏈 What are two things that make you feel loved?
🏈 Why is that important to you?
🏈 How often need that?
How would you feel if someone asked you that?
How would it benefit you both?
Another example might be:
🍊 Being open about your worries is important to me
🍊Cos it builds my sense of trust n closeness
🍊 So I’d love it you could try to be open about stuff that’s worrying you when it’s weighing on your mind
What do you think?
What comes up for you if you apply it to pain-points in your life or work?
Simple tools like these can give a how to things that might otherwise block us and transform the complex into the simple.
In fact, often it’s not that we’re not good at communication – it’s a totally learnable skill – we just need the tools and willingness to be slightly vulnerable.
And what do we know about vulnerability?
It’s strength in disguise and it’ll always draw you closer to the right people and organisations 🏹
Try it n see 🪀
☘️ To upgrade your life or career, book a free discovery call: www.melanie-pritchard.com
7 Success Hacks to Expedite Entrepreneurial Success
“The harder you work, the luckier you get” – Mike Pritchard 🏒
💎 Unhappy, unfulfilled or apathetic about your current career?
💎 Unsure if you have the energy or clarity to change direction?
💎 Certain you need to shift paths but don’t know where to start?
Here are 7 things I’ve learnt about starting a business and changing career that helped me get to where I am today:
🛼 Many people see starting a business in black and white terms – as either reckless financial uncertainty and lack of experience or wonderful freedom working your own hours and having complete control over your life. The truth is somewhere in between. Many people work ‘normal’ jobs while growing a business and if you aren’t willing to put the time into getting good at what you do or learn how to market effectively, you may find y’self managing the most wonderful chateau with no road signs for punters to find or an awful place that looks great from the outside only 😶🌫️
🛼 Growth mindset is the winning factor in success or failure. Yes, you should play to your strengths, interests and values to optimise success but embracing confusion, mistakes and fear as the essence of development and growth versus success or failure is key to resilience and success 🥇 There are no mistakes, only positive learnings. As Churchill says: ‘Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts’.
🛼 You can learn a lot about the field you want to set a business up in from working for others in the area you’re headed. I learnt a lot from working for a coaching leader in London and wouldn’t have learnt how to create structured coaching packages that optimise client success and stability otherwise. Don’t reinvent the wheel, research the market, build commercial awareness and then hone your own.
🛼 ‘You don’t have to get it perfect, you just have to get in going’ – Marie Forleo.
Let go of having the perfect website or product at the start. Minimum viable product is the baseline for businesses like mine – especially if you’re playing to natural strengths – and you can improve from there whether niching your service area, perfecting your copy or becoming skilled at your craft.
🛼 Action builds belief. If you wait to be ready you’ll never be ready. It’s tuning into your passions and taking small steps forward that boosts confidence, motivation and success. You’re bound to feel fear pushing outside your comfort zone but if you’re not feeling fear, you’re not growing. Embrace fear as a barometer for growth rather than a reason to stop ✋
🛼 It’s much easier to bridge gaps in skills and experience than you might think, especially when you’re clear on what you want to do and what your strengths and USPs are. High-results producing wins like volunteering, internships and taking short courses or investing in certifications can leapfrog you in new directions and rebrand your CV fast 💨
The Simple Success Hack That May Surprise You
“Attention energises, intention transforms”
Deepak Chopra
Ever wondered why you’re unable to make change despite feeling frustration, boredom, anxiety or depression about your current life?
Here’s why 🤫
To make any big change in your life, you need to do more than recognise discomfort – you need to create the time, space and resources to get real clarity. From there, change becomes easy.
Ever wondered why people telling you what you should do rarely works? Because sometimes it comes more from a place of projection, protectiveness and bias than objectivity and real listening – truly sitting in the moment with you and really hearing what lies beneath is usually quite different, leaving you feeling heard, understood and pumped to uplevel your life.
This is exactly what I thought coaching wasn’t when I first started out. Honestly, I was hoping it was a quick fix involving talking to a wise owl who could help me cut corners and expedite change fast.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
When I heard it was being guided by the coach asking a series of questions to help me work out who I was and what I wanted, I thought it sounded like hot air.
Then we started practising coaching – and I ate my words fast 🤭
I quickly realised helping someone connect to who they truly are and what they truly want versus telling them what they should do, is where the magic happens.
I see this kind of magic happen daily with clients – whether midwives moving into project management, financiers moving into consulting, lawyers moving into coaching or graduates moving into advertising and beyond.
It’s not rocket science, but boy does it work.
As a wise friend on Mindline once said, really active listening is like developing a sixth sense.
So I say again – attention energises, intention transforms. Finding space to be truly heard and to deconstruct what’s really going on for you is an essential component to creating the intention required for change.
So if you’re feeling misaligned with your life or career, what’s stopping you?
And if you’re still feeling stuck, remember, nothing changes if nothing changes 💫
Why Pain Can be Your Greatest Teacher
‘There is purpose in pain’ – Anonymous
Things aren’t always as they seem.
Pain doesn’t always turn out to be how it feels, bad.
It can be our highest teacher, with the wisdom it unleashes guiding us more skilfully down high-results producing paths that better align us with who we really are and what we really need.
It may feel like pain pushes you into deficit in the immediate, but the net effect is often increased self-awareness, spiritual growth and higher potential for happiness.
So feel the pain, don’t ice over it – there are vital learnings revealed beneath difficult emotions – and those learnings will provide a soft cushion of intell you will bounce off upwards from, in the right direction – northwards, towards the sweet-spot of self-actualisation and a far greater sense gratitude on arrival there 🎯
So if you’re in the heat of struggle right now, keep going. Don’t fight it. Feel it, let it out and when you’re ready, get curious about what it’s teaching you and where it’s leading you.
If you’d like to springboard deeper into how that works, here’s a superb podcast episode I send new career and life coaching clients. Dr. Susan David, Ph.D. is one of the world’s leading management thinkers and an award-winning Harvard Medical School psychologist with a deep focus on the function of emotions. In this episode with the equally gifted Mark Groves, she discusses some of the narratives around emotions that we’ve been conditioned to pursue and the ways in which this is making us less healthy and contributing to a culture of toxic positivity.
Susan explains how we can show up for ourselves by ending the constant struggle between how we think we should feel, and how we actually feel and how we can harness our emotions as signals to use to our advantage to optimise happiness and success. Listen here.
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Want to learn more?
Book in a free discovery call to learn more about Life / Career Coaching or Corporate Success Masterclasses 🥂 www.melanie-pritchard.com
Why Difficult Emotions can be the Most Helpful of All
‘Tough emotions are part of our contract for life. You don’t get a meaningful career or raise a family or leave the world a better place without stress and discomfort. Discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life’ – Susan David, PhD
It’s one of life’s great ironies that true happiness and success often comes from having experienced the opposite – sadness, confusion, frustration, fear, heartbreak or loss.
Whether feeling victimised and advocating for change that benefits others, cue the suffragettes, dating people from different paths who may unlock something major unrealised within you despite judgment from others or having the courage to trust instincts within to shift path whether career, geographic, love, friendship or beyond – listening to and channelling uncomfortable emotions will often be your making.
Ironic, then, isn’t it, that we rail against the things in life that bring us discomfort whether changing careers, breaking up with someone we feel deep down isn’t quite right for us, having difficult conversations and sitting with discomfort. For it’s the uncomfortable emotions that come with these that are usually the great revealers, connecting us to our most authentic selves and our greatest unmet needs. Precisely the route to greater happiness and a big part of the coaching process!
What uncomfortable feelings do you avoid?
What would that discomfort say if it could speak?
What would you be willing to face if you knew it would be the making of you and feed great joy? Even if it took faith to sit in the space in between and – just – trust?
Suddenly it doesn’t seem quite so scary, does it?
What uncomfortable truths are you willing to sit with this week?
And what, in your wildest dreams, might be the best outcome of this?
🪁
If you’d like to upgrade your life or career and learn simple tools to optimise clarity, confidence, strategy and change, book in a free discovery call here:
Top Tips to Avoid Burnout
‘Burnout is what happens when you try to avoid being human for too long’ – Michael Gungor
The above may be a handy reminder in the intense run-up to Christmas..
There’s a very thin line between peak performance and burnout so it can hit you from behind and catch you quite off guard.
Subtle signs of burn-out that may mean you need to priorise rest include:
🫣 Even small requests make you feel overwhelmed
🫣 You have a ‘glass-half empty’ view about most things
🫣 You are snappy and impatient with others
🫣 You have fallen into old unhealthy patterns
🫣 You feel extra sensitive and take everything personally
🫣 You feel insecure about things you used to feel confident about
🫣 You find it hard to get excited about anything
🫣 Even something as small as what to have for lunch feels overwhelming
Here are a coupla questions to check-in with how you’re doing on the thriving to burnout scale and to minimise the risk of wipe-out:
🎅 What two things need to be prioritised today?
🎅 Can this work wait till tomorrow?
🎅 How will I feel about this in 6 months?
🎅 If my body could speak, what would it say it needs?
🎅 Who can help me with this?
🎅 What would I say to a best friend in my position?
I’m not advocating you sack off work that needs to be done, but working super hard at the cost of meaningful things in our lives isn’t something we generally regret on our death beds.. it’s usually missing out on the stuff working too hard brings.
And sadly being an employee makes you ultimately disposable.
So careful killing yourself in the process unless you love your work, feel valued and have goals that will truly fulfil you and that working super hard may expedite.
My brother once gave me good advice on a similar theme pre Uni. He said if getting a First means killing yourself, get a 2:1 and have fun.
And as someone staring a terminal diagnosis in the face, he was privy to intell most of us generally aren’t.
Life’s too short, health is wealth and ultimately nothing works if you don’t 🎄
“Everything worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the associated negative experience. Any attempt to escape the negative, to avoid it or quash it or silence it, only backfires. Pain is an inextricable thread in the fabric of life, and attempting to tear it out unravels everything else with it”
Mark Manson 🎯
There is great purpose to be found in pain 🔥
It’s one of life’s greatest paradoxes – how can something that hurts us be the seat of all power and growth?
It’s easy to miss the magic hidden in suffering when you consider the definition o paradox:
“A seemingly absurd or contradictory statement or proposition which when investigated may prove to be well founded or true” 🎯
So don’t be too quick to buy into pain being ‘bad’ or the end.
Instead, start with the counter-intuitive beginning..
Instead of running from emotion, get curious about it.
Understand it.
Learn how to leverage it.
Master it.
And you’ll thrive in relationships, life and career 🎯
And if you think pain makes you unattractive or weak?
Au contraire..
Vulnerability is strength – whether having the courage to explore your feelings or express ‘em out loud.
Unappealing?
Not really, cos you can only meet others as deeply as you’ve met yourself, which is why guys like the above n many o life’s greatest leaders, teachers and healers are able to inspire and transform other lives.
Cos they’ve faced themselves, they’ve often hit the deck in some way and turned their greatest challenges into their greatest strengths.
And those strengths become killer transferable skills and life hacks that bolster them against the great enemy – limiting beliefs, that might otherwise keep them small – and that energy is magnetic – it’s superpower bottled because from there, anything is possible.
So I say again, there is purpose in pain.
Feel to heal, let it out – and then get curious – if this was sent to teach me something, what might that be?
If there was a gift hidden in this horror, what could that be?
It may take some time and that’s ok..
If it came rushing in you’d miss the magic to be found in the journey and the strength to be found in the struggle.
Master that and you’re rich for life 🎁
☘️ To upgrade your life or career, book a free one hour discovery call here