by Karen Skidmore | 11,24 | Ebb & Flow, Embodied Business
I’m feet up, watching Netflix, and when I hear the sound of my husband’s car on the driveway, I jump up and switch the TV off.
I was exhausted, feeling like an extra on The Walking Dead. I hadn’t slept through the night for months, waking up at 3 a.m. and finding myself downstairs reading until I finally nodded off at 6 a.m., just before I heard my husband get up and the morning ritual of kids’ breakfasts and school runs started. So resting on the sofa before starting dinner is a perfectly acceptable activity.
But why did I react this way?
I wasn’t doing anything wrong, but hearing a family member come home while resting triggered me to jump up and pretend I wasn’t. It wasn’t a conscious decision; even though I was struggling with sleep, nerves on edge and brain fogged, I was hard-wired not to be caught resting.
During my burnout recovery in my 40s, I struggled with the advice, ‘You have to rest.’
I defined rest as sitting on the sofa, eating wotsits … the epitome of unproductive. And being unproductive was sinful.
I can now look back and see how strongly these word-hard stories of mine kept me from recovering from my burnout … I was hardwired to be productive at all times, so being caught with my feet up on the sofa was a bad thing.
Resisting rest is not normal
Today, I speak to hundreds of women (and men, too!) who tell me similar stories of resisting rest. It’s all too common now, to the point that we joke about it with our friends, which helps us normalise this behaviour, knowing that this Pavlov Dog’s reaction inflicts others.
But resisting rest is not normal.
It should never be normal to jump up when someone is having an afternoon nap, a quiet moment decompressing from back-to-back meetings, or resting on the sofa before the next job needs doing.
If our bodies need rest, we need to rest. If we don’t, we will get ill. Fact, yes?!
Rest is not a reward for hard work
Rest also needs to happen before we need it.
Another hard work story I see play out with many, myself included, back in my 40s, is that we can rest when we have performed. We can rest once the jobs are done, and our productivity levels mean that we are ahead of the tasks and now have time to rest.
I always return to Mother Nature and look at how seasons work. Our modern calendar puts Spring at the start of the seasons, with Winter at the end of the year. And yet, Mother Nature begins her incredible work in Winter, preparing the earth and drawing on its resources so she is ready to burst forward in Spring. Winter may feel like a dead month on the coldest, darkest days in December, but it’s far from dead because without these precious months of rest, recharge, and reallocation of resources, Spring could never happen.
I’m sure you know how you feel after a good night’s sleep and how much more productive and in flow your day is, so why not rest before the busy periods in your day?
Unravel your hard work stories
Resting during periods of illness ought to be essential, and you probably know this on a logical level. Yet our hard work stories prevent us from resting, even when we know we need to.
Some journalling questions to help you ponder on yours …
- How do you define productive?
- When do you feel most productive?
- Who taught you about resting (or not resting), and what did they say?
Many of our stories are given to us by our parents and peers growing up, so I invite you to go back to your teens and 20s, as well as your more recent decades, and reflect on how those around you perceive rest. You may find that your hard work story isn’t yours … find a thread and pull it. Unravel those stories that hardwire your ability to rest.
by Karen Skidmore | 11,24 | Ebb & Flow, Embodied Business
Being “busy” has been a badge of honour for many years. We’re surrounded by messages that equate busyness with productivity and worth, especially as women.
We often try to balance life, business, and family responsibilities: from work deadlines to family obligations, our days are filled to the brim, leaving little space to breathe, let alone feel genuinely fulfilled.
We now seek approval from others as we respond to questions such as ‘How are you?’ by telling each other, ‘I’m great—so busy.’
Busy has also become the barometer of our health – not by sharing how we feel or how our health is … but by our degree of busyness.
The illusion of “Doing More”
There’s a common belief that success lies in doing more, handling every task, and pushing through each day without missing a beat. But when we’re constantly trying to keep up, we lose connection with what truly matters: our wellbeing, our relationships, and our own sense of purpose.
Many of us experience the toll of this “always on” lifestyle in our bodies and minds. We become stressed, tired, and even physically unwell, accepting these as the costs of achieving our goals.
But should success require us to sacrifice our health and happiness?
For me, the answer eventually became a resounding no.
Why busyness fails us
There’s a reason so many women feel burnt out. When we prioritise busyness over intentional living, say yes too many times, and overcommit ourselves, we’re forced to ignore our bodies’ natural rhythms, pressing on even when exhausted.
We ignore niggles in our body, such as back twinges, bloating or skin conditions, and squish down emotions because we feel we don’t have to ‘deal with them’. And for anyone who has done this over a period of time, you know these niggles and squished down emotions have a habit of blowing up volcanically at a time when you least expect them to.
And as women, who often manage the bigger percentage blend of business, family, and home responsibilities, the toll can be even greater.
But the constant juggling isn’t just exhausting; it’s counterproductive.
Over time, our energy wanes, our focus blurs, and we become less effective in every area of our lives.
Embodiment as a path to aligned living
If busyness leads to burnout, what’s the alternative?
For me, the answer came through an unexpected yet life-changing practice: embodiment.
Embodiment is about reconnecting with our body’s natural wisdom, honouring our energy, and shifting from a mode of constant doing to one of intentional being.
Rather than viewing busyness as a measure of success, embodiment invites us to listen to our bodies, noticing when we need rest and feel energised. This approach brings a sense of alignment and allows us to be fully present in life and work.
When I began practising embodiment, I felt deeply uncomfortable, yet something inside me was crying out for it. I’ve always loved to dance, but it would always be in the kitchen with no one watching or after several glasses of wine if I were out with friends.
My first few sessions made me realise how unconnected I was in my body; my hips were stiff, I found finding a rhythm awkward, and I spent too much time worrying about what I looked like and whether I was ‘doing it right’.
But over time, I experienced an incredible shift.
I learnt to get out of my head and be more in tune with my body. My days became more energised, my priorities clearer, and my sense of fulfilment deeper. This wasn’t about doing less but creating a rhythm that allowed me to flow through life’s ups and downs and live in alignment with what mattered most.
How embodiment transforms our relationship with busyness
Embodiment isn’t about avoiding responsibility or stepping away from meaningful work; it’s about being more intentional with our energy.
Here are some of the shifts I’ve experienced—and now see in the women I work with—when we embrace embodiment to manage life and work with greater ease:
1. Listening to Your Energy Cycles
Each of us has natural ebb and flows in our energy, particularly women, because of our monthly hormone cycle and menstruation. Embodiment helps us recognise these cycles, allowing us to align our tasks with moments of high energy and honour our need for rest when it arises. This approach not only enhances productivity but also brings a sense of balance to our days.
2. Presence Over Multitasking
Busyness often leads to multitasking, splitting our focus and leaving us feeling scattered. I am not the only one who grew up believing that being a multi-tasker was a good skill to have. But as we get into our 40s and 50s, our brains simply can’t keep up with multiple tabs open, the same way that our phones and browsers slow down when too many apps or tabs are open.
Embodiment teaches us the value of presence. It allows us to bring our full attention to each moment, whether it’s a business task, time with loved ones, or simply a moment to breathe. This sense of presence makes our days feel fuller, not busier.
3. Honouring Rest as Essential
Rest is often seen as “wasted time” and something we do after we’ve put in the effort, but it’s essential to our wellbeing. You only need to look to professional athletes and see the importance they place on active rest as part of their training programmes to realise it’s critical to high performance.
Embodiment invites us to redefine rest and see it as a vital part of success, allowing us to recharge and return to our lives with greater clarity and resilience.
4. Embracing Intuition as our Guide
Busyness often pulls us into a reactive state, causing us to respond to demands rather than make choices aligned with our values. It keeps us in crisis management mode, which is great for crises … but not so great for everyday life.
Through embodiment, we learn to tune into our intuition and let it guide us. This helps us prioritise what truly matters and feel confident in saying no to what doesn’t serve us.
A New Way to Approach Success
Since embracing embodiment, I’ve found that success feels less like a never-ending to-do list and more like a fulfilling, intentional journey.
I no longer feel pressured to measure my worth by how busy I am. Yes, it’s been a hard habit for me to break because of the deep ‘hard work’ beliefs my body held, but it gets easier and takes me less time to course correct when I find myself getting deep into the busy trenches.
I spend more of my time now focused on creating a working week and month where I can allow my energy to flow naturally, where I’m present in both my work and personal life, and where I feel a deep sense of alignment.
This shift isn’t just for avoiding burnout; it’s a pathway to creating a life that feels whole, balanced, and aligned with who we are and gives us the resilience to dance with whatever life throws at us.
And it’s something every woman deserves to experience.
Your invitation to explore embodiment
If you’re tired of feeling overwhelmed by busyness and ready to try a new approach, I invite you to join me in exploring embodiment. I’m offering a series of beginner classes designed to help you reconnect with your body, manage your energy, and approach life with a balanced and intentional rhythm.
If you’re ready to let go of the endless cycle of busyness and step into a more aligned way of living, click here to learn more and reserve your place.
Success doesn’t have to mean constant busyness.
It’s time to release the idea that being busy equates to being successful and instead embrace a life that’s both fulfilling and sustainable. Embodiment offers a way forward, and I’d be honoured to share this journey with you as we create a new rhythm that honours our full selves—life, work, and all.
by Karen Skidmore | 10,24 | Business Planning, Leadership
Being able to make good decisions is one of the keys to growing a successful business.
But decision fatigue is real; the more decisions you have to make each day, your ability to make decisions becomes worse.
We’re faced with thousands of them every day, from the mundane (What to cook for dinner?) to the business-changing (Can I trust this person?). And, for many of us, we are still reeling from the lockdown years of making decisions about stuff we never had to think about before (Which way do I walk through this supermarket? Do I have to wear a mask? Is it OK to hug this person?).
I always prided myself on being able to make quick decisions. Even at the start of my career, I realised I could process information fast and see where the real problem was.
But as I got older, my brain got faster, and my expectations of myself climbed as I took on more. My decisions became more knee-jerk and reactive as I jumped from one task to the next.
I couldn’t keep up with what life and business were throwing at me, so when I hit my 40s, exasperated by peri-menopausal symptoms of brain fog and exhaustion, I found that I didn’t trust myself to make good decisions any more. And this had a direct impact on my business.
Procrastination not only slows down growth … it’s exhausting!
To get better at making good decisions, we need to learn how to trust ourselves, our judgement and our instincts.
The first step in trusting yourself is knowing that you don’t have to be good at everything all the time.
We have incredibly high expectations of ourselves, largely because of our society’s expectations (think of the messages you get bombarded with – ‘you can have it all; be a perfect mother AND run a successful business’), but also because of experiences we had growing up both at home and school.
But let’s be real: nobody is perfect. Nobody ever will be.
No matter how much we try to make ourselves into some sort of superhuman machine, everyone drops a ball or makes a mistake from time to time. And that’s okay! It doesn’t mean we’re horrible people or should feel ashamed about ourselves; it just means that being human means not always being perfect.
So giving yourself a break and being kinder to yourself, particularly on the days you feel more tired than usual or you’re juggling family needs, is critical to allowing yourself the time to step back and give yourself some breathing space.
Trusting your gut is something you have to work at.
The older we get and the more responsibilities we take on, the busier our heads get and the longer our to-do lists grow. When your head starts controlling your life, it’s easy to override any intuition or instincts you may have. And when you get so busy that you forget to give yourself the space to hear the advice from inside of you, that connection can get cut off.
It’s the same as working out and keeping fit; if you stop, your body loses the muscle definition you gained, and your fitness levels decrease.
The next time you are faced with a decision, instead of panicking or saying, “I don’t know”, – take a moment, close your eyes and listen closely inside yourself first. If you don’t know how to do this (and yes, ten years ago, I was so ‘in my head’ that I didn’t know how to hear what my instinct told me!), take note of my next point.
Spend more time in your body.
Many of us will exercise for fitness and health, measuring success by steps or sweat. But because so much business is often solved in our heads, these exercises can feed the brain, giving you more things to take action on and complete.
Spending time moving your body consciously can help you connect with the neural pathways around your body. Movement such as dance – jigging around the kitchen rather than following a structured class – and slower walking focused on your posture – noticing how your feet connect with the ground with each step – can be simple ways of sensing your body and spending time ‘out of your head’.
Recognise that fear is different from intuition
… and sometimes, it can be good to take the moment to ask the fear what it may be trying to tell you. Is there anything that you can put in place to make your next steps less risky for you? Perhaps you need more time to put your decision into action … maybe you need to hire some help?
If you choose to ignore your fears, you may find that you procrastinate and pull yourself back from taking action. So, use your fear to shine a light on anything that you may avoid simply because it feels uncomfortable, as this can help make sure you don’t avoid taking action on your decisions.
Be prepared for change, even if it means sacrificing some things you really care about.
Trusting yourself means putting your faith in your ability to make good choices and decisions. It means taking risks without being afraid of the consequences.
If you want to take your business up a level, then there is every chance you are going to have to stop doing some of the things you are doing right now – and yes, that includes certain clients, programmes and team members you may care about – and do something different.
This may mean that you stop offering a particular service, programme or product; it may mean you have to change your pricing structure; it may mean you have to fire one of your team members.
You can not grow a business without change.
Get comfortable with that concept because trusting yourself means knowing when to let go and when to hold on.
You must trust yourself even when the outcome seems uncertain, and you may not know all the answers.
One podcast I listened to a lot was The Diary of a CEO. I was particularly taken by one – Moment 54: How you should make every big decision with guest Rochelle Humes.
They reference his conversation with Barack Obama and his 51% decision-making rule. Steven says, “If we are always looking for 100% of the facts, data, and certainty to get our decisions over the line, it leads to huge procrastination and time-wasting. Getting to that 51% is a much more efficient system, reassuring us that it will be the right decision to make.”
Knowing that we can make another decision or even reverse it if needed can open us up to bigger thinking and bolder decision-making… and that the cost of procrastinating and trying to be more than 51% in favour of or against that decision is potentially huge.
I like this idea of having your logic brain be only 51% convinced … it opens up to trusting our intuition more.
by Karen Skidmore | 07,24 | Business Planning, Business Process
How do you feel about business planning?
As we work our way through the year, there are times when life can feel more manic; less controllable and too many balls in the air.
Life can spin fast at times, and then there are periods of time where you feel you are treading water and lack the clarity needed to move forward with certain business projects.
I have been teaching business planning and mentoring business founders for the past two decades, and I see most people take a short term and tactical approach to their business.
The two biggest reasons I see why most opt for short term tactics is they feel they aren’t in control, juggling too much, and a lack of clarity.
The truth is that, when it comes to business planning, there is very little in our control. We experienced this first hand during the lockdown years where we were forced to withdraw to our homes and change the way we lived and worked, and there are many of us still recovering from this, even though it seems that on the face of it we are ‘back to normal’.
Nor we do ever have absolute clarity about our business for any length of time. Yes, there may be lightbulb moments from time to time where things just click, but I find that most business founders are incredibly creative which means new ideas keep coming and coming.
And here’s a little secret … even though I may look like I’ve got my shit together from the outside, I rarely feel absolute clarity about my business and where I am headed!
So here’s the thing about business planning; we may not have control over how our life and business shows up each day, but if we simply surrender to what it throws at us, don’t we end up reacting and fire-fighting?
And if we spend our time trying to get clarity, don’t we simply spin our wheels as we question ourselves and then come up with another new idea?
There’s a great quote from Eisenhower that I use in my training sessions.
“I have always found plans to be useless, but planning to be indispensable.”
Because you have so little control over what really goes on inside and outside of your business, the plan you create has to evolve as you implement. And yes, there are times that a business plan has to change completely to take into account of external factors such as bad health, a piece of tech that breaks or losing a key member of your team, through to the extremes of global crises, war and changes of government. All of which happens out of our control.
We may think we can be in control.
But there is very little that we have absolute control over.
Life fluidly moves in and around us, sometimes slow, sometimes fast. It’s rare that anything stays the same for any length of time.
So does this mean we simply leave our business to chance and never plan?
Absolutely not.
And this is why I love to use Eisenhower’s quote because it is the planning process that is indispensable, rather than the plan itself.
The act of planning forces you to do the thinking needed to move your business forward, respond to external changes and make decisions on where to channel your time and energy.
Planning forces you to make decisions.
Just think how much mental energy you use when you are feeling indecisive, even about little things such as what to wear and what to have for lunch each day.
Decision fatigue is a real thing and it’s exhausting!
Planning forces you to be considered.
To step up and dig deep into what you stand for and what it is you truly want to accomplish.
Planning forces you to connect outside of yourself.
Stay connected with your current customers, your marketplace and your numbers, which in turn keeps your emotions grounded, particularly in times of uncertainty.
So although many of you may love to create, to be open to opportunities and don’t like being hemmed into targets or strict project management deadlines, don’t let the feeling of uncertainty in your lives or frustrations about lack of clarity let you drift from month to month.
Planning can happen, and needs to happen, no matter how much uncertainty or lack of clarity we feel.
And I know what kind of planning works, especially for our Momentum members who create their Grow Strong Plans at the start of every cycle.
Making decisions.
Being considered.
Being connected.
If you’d like to know about my Grow Strong Planning Process, check out our Momentum programme.
by Karen Skidmore | 06,24 | Marketing Articles, Pillar Articles
The number of choices you have to make each and every day can add up to the thousands, from what clothes you put on in the morning and what you eat for lunch to which email to respond to next or what meeting to prepare for.
And if you also have a family household to manage, well … the number of decisions you have to make for others can rack up even quicker.
Some sources claim that we make up to 35,000 decisions every day (Sahakian & Labuzetta, 2013) and 226.7 decisions each day on just food alone (Wansink and Sobal, 2007).
It’s no surprise, then, that when it comes to making decisions about your business and marketing strategy, decision fatigue can become a real problem.
If you’re already facing a thousand or more decisions about day-to-day stuff, when you try to make decisions on the bigger business and marketing stuff, your brain can be running tired-and-wired.
Mental overload
I liken it to having too many tabs open on your browser or too many apps running in the background of your phone … because your brain is full of mundane thinking, it just doesn’t have the capacity to move up a gear to deal with the seemingly bigger or more important decisions about your business.
So if you feel you are struggling with motivation or you don’t think you are a good decision maker, it may be that you just don’t know what to do next because you are relying on your logic brain too much.
Decision making is one of the “secrets” to business success; you probably know that it’s action, rather than ideas, that grow your business and action can only happen once you’ve made a decision. So if you find it difficult to make decisions, which in turn means you aren’t taking action, it can really hold you back in your business growth journey.
The P Cycle
Many years ago, I came up with The P Cycle, the constant and exhausting swirl of perpetual learning, which leads to perfectionism, which leads to procrastination, which leads straight back to perpetual learning.
Because when you don’t know something (which is ALWAYS the case with most of your business and marketing decisions, yes?!), it feels that you ought to go out and learn more about whatever it is you are making a decision about first, before actually making a decision to take action on it.
However, this can mean you keep learning because you are striving to be perfect, which then leads to procrastination and back to perpetual learning again so you are forever seeking ideas and learning more about how to do something.
You never quite get out of The P Cycle to take actual action and move forward with your business idea or marketing initiative.
So is decision making a skill you can learn?
Yes, sure it is.
You can use tools such as the classic SWOT or cost-benefit analysis to help you weigh up the pros and cons. But for most of your decisions you have to make in your business, these decisions making tools have the danger of keeping you in the P Cycle.
These tools can keep you in your head, forcing you to seek information externally and you use logic to come to the ‘right’ decision which can delay the decision making process even further.
Is there another way of making a decision?
Yes, I’m glad you asked!
Because there is an important space within us that very few of us know how to access on a day-to-day basis.
You probably feel it from time to time and perhaps, like me, you know it’s there because so many people around you refer to it.
Some people call it a gut feeling.
Others may call it intuition.
It doesn’t really matter whether you may feel it or hear it in your gut, soul, heart or solar plexus, it’s the thoughts and feelings that come to you when you are in the shower, or out walking in nature, or when you are doing anything but trying to solve a problem and make a logical decision.
Having spent the first 25+ years of my adult life as a strong, independent woman (yup, I really was on track to burn out by the time I got to 42 – I was so in my head that I didn’t see the signs!), I really didn’t know how to access this intuitive way to help me make decisions.
Just like that browser with too many tabs open; at some point that spinning circle of doom comes on the screen and you realise the only thing you can do is shut down and re-boot your laptop.
In my 40s, when recovering from my burnout, I decided I needed to re-boot, slow down and explore different ways of growing and building my business, and this is why I’ve come to see that there is a simpler process to decision making when you learn how to get out of your head, and connect with your intuitive self.
What is intuition?
Everyone experiences intuition differently. For some, it comes as words or phrases. Others feel it as a gut feeling or a sixth sense. Some even experience it as a physical sensation.
The trick is to figure out how your intuition communicates with you. The more you get out of your head and pay attention to what’s going in your body, the more you’ll notice it. And when you start to honour your intuition and act on it, it becomes more noticeable, and your connection with it grows stronger.
Many people think they aren’t intuitive. I certainly didn’t think I was growing up in my 20s and 30s. But when I speak to my clients and ask them to recall a time they ‘just knew’ something wasn’t right—be it in business, finance, relationships, health, or anything else—everyone can remember an instance.
So if you’d like to find a way of accessing your intuition more to help you make decisions more easily – and thus take action on the stuff that’s going to grow your business – here’s what I love to invite you to do.
Learn to be a tracker of how your intuition shows up.
I’ve been on a huge journey over the last few years, re-connecting with myself and discovering how our energies work and flow.
I have had to learn how to slow down so that I may hear what my body, heart and soul is trying to tell me.
A couple of the regular practices I used to begin this journey was:
- Journalling – the simple practice of writing a few pages of my thoughts before I start my working day
- Using Angel Cards – picking a card before or during my journaling to help me bring awareness to what I could be paying attention to.
Both these practices allowed me to get out of my head and feel into different parts of my body and awareness. And, although it may sound a little woo-woo airy-fairy to be using things like Angel Cards, I have found them to be a practical way to give me another frame from which to see myself from. It’s like finding a four-leaved clover or shiny penny on the floor; these may be old wives’ tales to some but I dare you not to see either of these and NOT smile with the same child-like glee that you may have done when you were younger.
When we can pay attention to our own internal source of information, rather than the logical brain, it’s less exhausting and you will make better business decisions.
A final word about the stories we make up …
It is easy to confuse intuition with stories that we make up in our heads. If you find that you begin to explain why something feels a certain way and you tell yourself stories about it, it’s likely to be projection; you’ve interpreted something to mean something and this is when we start to second guess ourselves or make decisions that serve others, rather than ourselves.
Intuition just is; it doesn’t need to explain, rationalise, or justify.
If your sense or feeling comes with a lot of explanations or rationalisations, it probably isn’t intuition so when this happens, take some time to journal, walk out in nature or meditate to get past the stories. It can also be helpful to turn to a skilled coach or healer, such as myself, who can help you move out of the story in your head and into the wisdom of your body.
Thank you for reading. Until next time, do less, be more, play bigger.
