Introduction - We are all Navigating Change

Hi, welcome. Those who've just joined—whilst we may be women who have much in common, which I'll touch on in a minute, and many shared experiences and many challenges that we're facing that are similar—we are all uniquely ourselves. And so where we’re at today may vary from where we were yesterday or tomorrow, and it may vary from other people in the room as well. But just to assure you that wherever you are at today, there will be things that I will share that you can personalize and take away to move you further up what I call the wellbeing scale. And I'll be showing you a bit on that in a minute. I do have some slides because I'm a visual person and I know that other people are visual learners too. If you're not, don’t look at them. You will get the recording afterwards. You may also be on public transport listening to this. That's all good as well. But they will also be available in the Aura app afterwards. So if you want to sign up to Aura, not only will you get the recording, but you can get these slides as well. Okay, great. Let's get going. Okay—this is the driest one, but I think it's important to tell you what I'm going to tell you. The really important bit is why prioritizing your wellbeing is so important anyway, but particularly as you navigate change. I'm going to touch a little bit on what may have brought you here today, and maybe as you share a word or a sentence about that, I'm going to touch on the two barriers that may be preventing you from supporting your wellbeing as much as you’d like, so that we can help overcome them. I'm then going to be pulling back the curtain on some key findings from positive psychology. We know we could spend days talking about the evidence, but I'm just going to show you what I call the 12 pillars of wellbeing, just so that you can go, “Ah, okay, there's more to it than I thought,” which should feel like an opportunity. There are more things that I can work with. I'll share within that an exercise that you can do. As I mentioned, you don't have to be talking on here, but an opportunity to use the 12 pillars to reflect and go deep and get some insights for yourself. I’ll be talking about how to channel your inner coach—and it’s not just in the ways you think. Then we'll finish on changing how we see change and use findings from positive psychology to actually help us navigate it with more ease. And then there will be time at the end for questions. I know somebody has to leave before that point, so don't worry if you need to drop off—you could send a question in the chat and I can come to it afterwards. Okay. So I'm going to guess that if you are here today, you are any one of the following or a combination of them: You are a woman juggling roles and responsibilities. You may feel overwhelmed by that, or you may just happen to have it in balance right now. You may be experiencing career change—you may want it, you may have it forced on you. You may be navigating personal transitions that relate to life stage—whether that's where your kids are at or whether it's internal change, which many of us are going through. You may have gone through change and now you are keen to create a life that fits with who you are now. So you’re still kind of in that change. You know, where things don’t feel concordant with where you are. You may be burnt out and in need of support. So whilst all of these are different, can you sense they’re all related to change and the flux that we go through? You may want to rebuild and support yourself after big changes or loss. You may be seeking clarity and purpose for a new chapter you want to embark on. Perhaps you're moving overseas, it's a new relationship. Or you want to shake things up. Or you may be at a point where you’re like, “I've tried lots of things, but I'm in search of more.” “I want an evidence-based holistic approach to supporting my wellbeing because I really need it now.” So that may be where you're at. So give me a drop in the chat—a thumbs up—if any of these speak to where you are right now. And if there's anything else, feel free to drop it in there. You know, the more insight you have about what you face, the more we can support you. And I can resonate with a lot of this myself as well. One minute on this—because whilst I'm here as a positive psychology coach, as an expert, as an Aura practitioner, I also want you to know that I get this too. On a personal level, it's why working with Aura is so meaningful to me. In the last five or six years I have also gone through change—who hasn’t in five or six years? There’s been big change that I’ve chosen and loved. This image sort of sums it up. I moved to New York, having previously lived in London and then in Thailand. I finished my master’s while having my second child and started a new business. So whilst many of those changes I chose, they come with consequences we don't anticipate—new friendships to form, new places to get used to, things that come with starting businesses we didn't anticipate. And then there's the change we don’t choose, the stuff we forget can be a factor. Five years ago, my dad was diagnosed with dementia—not even a year after we left the UK. And that’s been a big part of the last five years. We lost him in February. That’s been really hard. So whilst I would never claim that in the face of really hard stuff, you can be thriving, what I will say is: hand on heart, through all the change—the stuff I asked for and the stuff I didn’t—I have definitely fared better than I would have done if I hadn't known the things I know about positive psychology and how positive psychology coaching works. Okay? So I’m not saying we’re aiming for perfection or always thriving—but to always be closing the gap between how we could be doing and how we are doing, how we could be doing if we just had access to more tools, more techniques, to support ourselves.