Okay, so this is a voice note. I'm leaving myself just to capture a thought I've been having. Whether this makes it onto an episode or not, I just wanna get into the habit of. Just kind of sharing out loud some of what I'm thinking about and some of what's coming up for me. And then if it ends up being something that I find helpful or relevant for you, I'm gonna share it as a solo episode.

So let's see how this goes. I've had a realization this morning in the last 24 hours, I recorded two podcast episodes with two amazing guests. I've been looking forward to recording with. For weeks, they were guests that were aspirational for me. I really wanted them on the show. I've, reached out to them.

I was really hoping for them to say yes to coming on the show and having a conversation with me. And so that always makes me really excited to, yeah, to, to do what I'm doing here. At the same time, leading up to these interviews, I also get nervous. I realized that this is something that is out of my comfort zone still almost two years in the making and into this podcasting experience.

I always still feel quite nervous before podcast interviews or even when recording all by myself in my little room. And I see this because, Partly because of my aura ring, and I know I talk about this all the time, but leading up to interview weeks like this, I feel like I'm getting a little bit, I.

You know, worse sleep. I don't, I don't sleep as well. I am getting a little anxious. I'm getting a little nervous. and whenever I do end up recording, I feel like there's like this stress spike in my body. I feel it just is something that doesn't. Come natural and that doesn't feel natural in the moment.

So I'm trying to prepare a lot. I'm trying to put my thoughts to paper. I'm trying to send across some of the questions I'm going to be asking so that my interview partners are also aware of what's coming and I feel like that has made a big difference both in the way they feel. I've put some thought into it and they feel connected to me prior to even.

Hitting record. It also helps me kind of feel prepared, feel like I've put effort into making this a meaningful conversation and something that I really wanna share. And I always wanna make sure that my guests feel comfortable too. And one thing I realized, I. With these two guests in particular, and as I said, they are, you know, excellent, either excellent speakers, somebody I perceived, you know, doing a really good job on Instagram or having podcasts of their own.

And whenever you. Press record with somebody like that, there is this feeling of like imposter syndrome of like, oh my God, they're absolute brilliant at what they're doing. They're absolute prose when it comes to podcasting and articulating themselves, and that often makes me feel less than, and that often makes me feel more nervous than before. And so I came onto these recordings, and then what I realized halfway through or even sometimes after the interview, they would share with me, you know what? I was actually pretty nervous going into this. I, it's not what I'm naturally good at, or I'm still on this journey of like speaking or speaking freely is still something that I'm trying to figure out.

And time and time again. In these situations where you log onto a call with somebody who you, you, you just know them from there. Obviously their highlight reels on Instagram or obviously their podcast recordings and the content that they put out into the world, and it's different from the person who then shows up not in a way that it's not genuine what they put out in terms of content, but just, it's just a different experience because.

When you connect with them one-to-one, you get the behind the scenes of what it takes for them to put that out of what it takes for them to publish that. And I reckon it's quite similar for what I publish. And so that just made me realize that it is so, so important to show some of the behind the scenes and to talk through some of this discomfort and putting yourself out there and doing things that are out of the ordinary for you.

Now, I often reflect. Unlike my corporate job and some of the meetings that would have caused me to feel overwhelmed a couple of years ago and that I'm now just completely fine doing, some of the things that I know early into my current role or earlier into my career experience overall in corporate, I would sometimes feel nervous when I would go onto certain calls where I need to present or show some of my work or even facilitate.

And this is not to say that. I'm not at all nervous anymore in the corporate world, but I feel a lot more comfortable in what I'm doing. I don't have these stress spikes most of the time. I wanna say, and this is. Just because I've done this years and years and years, I'm almost 10 years into my corporate life, and there are just some things that come with practice and with doing them over and over again and accepting them to be uncomfortable, but going for them regardless.

And so I think what I've managed to do in my career is time and time again, make sure that I. Put myself out there and that I add little chunks of discomfort into my work week, to, to always keep stretching and to always keep growing. And in a work week like this, for example, like this week where I have these, podcast interviews, I feel that stretch and I feel that discomfort, and I feel like I'm slowly dreading.

Sometimes I'm like. Ah, today could be such a good day if I didn't have this recording tonight or, yeah, yesterday evening when I, when I had, when I just finished that recording, I was like, oh, one more to go tomorrow morning. And this is absolutely not reflective of the experience I, I then had, because I had a brilliant conversation this morning.

I had an, I had such a thoughtful conversation yesterday night. I do end up enjoying myself. Once I'm in the room and once we're up and recording, and once I have that, that one-to-one connection with the person I'm recording with, but the moment just before or the, the evening before or the day leading up to hitting record, it's just I'm nervous, I'm anxious, I'm slightly.

I'm, I'm uncomfortable and I think that this is something that is really important for us to embrace as introverts, as quiet people, because it's not about avoiding the discomfort at all costs. Obviously a lot of this journey is about embracing who we are and that we are slightly different, that our social batteries work differently.

but at the same time. It's about stretching out of our comfort zones, just enough to grow. And, something that I realized this week, for example, was that I would probably be better off with one podcast recording a week.that's not always possible because the way you schedule them is like with people who have schedules of their own.

And, and so you wanna make sure that you.yeah, that you cater to that to a certain extent, but, it's a learning for me. It's like this, this big, big learning of like, I am not one to batch record. I am not one to batch create. And I've had that conversation yesterday evening with, the guest I had on the show, which you'll hear about.

And it's just something I learn about myself and, and where I can adjust. And that level of discomfort I feel where I can say, look, this is the amount of podcasts I can do in a week or in a day, in a span of 24 hours. In order for me to not go into overdrive and to not feel discomfort to a level of over exertion or overextension, and this is what I wanna lend here with you, is like you need to find that sweet spot between moving out of your comfort zone.

But not to a point where you feel overwhelmed, drained, burned out. Because if you stretch too far too often, that's what's going to put you over the edge and that's what's going to make you abandon something or make you, you know, lean away from it. And, I've had this point. I've nudged at this point quite a few times in this podcasting journey because obviously this is something, it's a, it's a game that benefits from consistency and I'm now, as I said, almost two years into this experience.

This is now, 80 plus episodes in the making, and so it's been 80 plus years where I've been years, it's been 84 years, so it's been 80 plus weeks that I have been doing this. Each and every week and and consistently recording episodes either with excellent guests or by myself, and every once in a while I just thought to myself, oh, why am I doing this?

This is hard, and it's always been when I've tried to push myself to record too many episodes in one go or when I went too far out of my comfort zone. So part of this exercise is also trying this out for yourself. Where does, where is your growth sown and where is the point of. Where it overwhelms you, where it burns you out, and you can do this with everything.

So I've used this example of podcasting, but you can also apply this to meetings at work that require an extreme amount of energy for you. Making sure that you stretch them out across, you know, a couple of days that they're, they're not all on the same day. Like I literally, this week I said no to a couple of one-to-one.

Connection calls, like regular one-to-one meetings that happen on a Monday because I know I don't set myself up for success when I have too many stand-in meetings on a Monday because they burn me out before the week has even started. I'm not able to get into my own space and to my own energy and drive my own agenda before I cater to everyone else.

So I just said no to them. I said, look, this is the kind of meeting I can do on a Tuesday, on a Wednesday, on a Thursday. But I won't be doing this on a Monday. I won't be doing Fridays either, but, this is the kind of example. Or if you need to go and present to people, present to, or go into client meetings, go into sales meetings, whatever it is that requires a lot of energy from you.

For me, it's recording. For you, it might be facilitating big meetings, going into big meetings, presenting. It might be, conversations with senior leadership. That happen, happens every once in a while. Whatever it is you wanna be. Really careful about where you schedule them in and how you go about them.

What do you do beforehand? What do you do afterwards? I'm telling you, after recording a podcast episode, if it's at the end of the day, I will literally go on the couch. I'll watch some Netflix, I'll put in some pasta. I'll make like a really simple but comforting dinner and I'll just be sitting there with the dog and watching some, some Netflix, and it's not a way to succumb to my low energy or to.

Yeah, to like succumb into this, this, this burned out feeling. But it's a way for me to recover and I know that this is something that works for me. It is not something that I do to just kind of zone out after a day of work. It is a way for me to recover if it's a podcast that I've done throughout the day.

Or in the morning, I'll go for a little walk. I'll take the dog outside. I'll go for a long walk. Maybe I'll take a longer lunch break when I've had an intensive working session or I've been in a workshop with a lot of people. I'll go out for a walk, I'll go out into nature. I'll listen to a podcast or just do my own thoughts and make sure that I have some time and to recover, and that is how I find that sweet spot between.

Of my comfort zone, but not to a point where it overwhelms me and where I hate my life and where I hate my job. I think this is also how you could frame it, potentially say that. How do you keep it interesting for yourself? How do you challenge yourself on a weekly basis? Because I think that is really important for you to grow and, and build that confidence.

A lot of what I'm doing here with this podcast and some of the things I'm doing in the workplace to keep it interesting for me is also to build my confidence and to prove to myself, you know what? I can do this. I might not be where I want to be. I might not be the brilliant, articulate speaker that I wanna be, but by sitting down in front of this microphone every single week or consistently enough to be putting out an episode every single week, this is how I show myself that I mean it, that I'm dedicated and that I can become better over time.

It's just me doing what I said I would do. At the end of the day, this is how confidence works. This is how confidence builds over time. And it's not fancy, it's not, flashy. It's not this big moment where, you know, everything clicks into place, but it's the, it's the accumulation of a lot of these moments that you've showed up.

I don't wanna say pushed through because it is not always about pushing when you don't feel like it or when you feel like you genuinely can't.but it's about showing up and finding the right time to show up I feel like is especially important for us introverts, for us, quieter people, and really honoring.

The energy that you have, the capacity that you have to give, and finding ways to refuel, to enable that. I feel like it's a constant journey. Some of the conversations I've had, I. Over the past day are really going to help you because some of the guests are bringing that to life beautifully. You will have either already listened to this or it's coming up when you tune into this.

'cause I actually think that I might be publishing this. You know, it's part of the journey to just sit down and record some of your thoughts. Maybe this is something that you wanna try to, you don't have to publish it, you don't have to share it with anyone. But, I think it's a skill that. That we can learn over time is to articulate ourselves out loud and share some of what has been inside of us.

I always feel like I'm good doing that on paper. I can put my thoughts down and then rewrite them and get to something that is very articulate and beautiful. I think that's a skill that I've honed and that's something that I bring to life in my content. But the next level of that is certainly sitting down, sharing what I'm thinking, making sure that I can, you know, say it in a way that it lands.

I mean, you'll be the judge of that.and you can always let me know, you know what, this is the type of episode that I don't appreciate. Hannah, I don't want to hear you ramble. I don't want to hear your voice note, style thinking and thoughts. Obviously you're not gonna say it like that, but you can package it in a way that feels like, decent feedback for me to, to be taking on because I love that and this is what this show also, lives from and what my capability of, of doing that in the future.

I. Obviously depends on, so I always want to hear how you like this, whether this is giving you something, whether you feel like it's helpful for you to get some of these thoughts that are slightly raw, not polished, that they're not a five step thing that you can do. But it's this sentiment of like, you know what, here's what I've been thinking.

Here's what helps me. Here's how I find that sweet spot. And it's almost like live on the go. Yeah. Voice note to myself style. Thank you for tuning in today. I wish you a fantastic week ahead. Go stretch out of your comfort zone step by step. Every little bit counts and do let me know how you're feeling doing it.

See you next week.