Nicky Lowe [00:00:06]:
Hi. It’s Nicky Lowe, and welcome to the Wisdom For Working Moms podcast show. I’m your host. And for nearly 2 decades now, I’ve been an executive coach and leadership development consultant. And on this show, I share evidence based insights from my coaching, leadership, and psychological expertise and inspiring interviews that help women like you to combine your work, life, and motherhood in a more successful and sustainable way. Join me and my special guest as we delve into leadership and lifestyle topics for women, empowering you to thrive one conversation at a time. I’m so happy that you’re here, and let’s go on with today’s episode. Welcome.

Nicky Lowe [00:00:47]:
And I’m your host, Nikki. And today I wanted to share a topic that many of us are grappling with, how to find our center in a world that feels increasingly chaotic, unpredictable and stressful. If you’ve ever felt like you’ve been pulled in all directions by your work, by your family or just life’s relentless pace, then this episode is for you. And I know I’m gonna be exploring how do we say strong and grounded and resilient when we’re feeling that way and when we’re in an environment that feels relentless and demanding. Well, I wanted to share with you today a concept of finding your mind’s psychological core. And you might be thinking, what does she mean by that? And I’m wondering, have you ever done or heard of Pilates, the exercise? If you haven’t, Pilates is a low impact exercise and it’s designed to improve your flexibility, your strength, your posture, like, your overall body awareness. And it was developed by Joseph Pilates in, I think it was the early 20th century. And the method is all about emphasizing what’s called your core strength.

Nicky Lowe [00:02:11]:
And your core strength really is about your powerhouse of core muscles, which include, like, your abdomen muscles, your lower back, your pelvic floor muscles, your glutes, your hips. And that core strength enables you to have balance and alignment. And it’s all about these controlled movements that engage both the body and mind. But the important part about building a strong core is that it helps improve your posture. So you kind of sit and walk with this beautiful posture. It enhances your balance. It can protect you from injury. And it’s kind of the, all of the movements are designed on your central and central core.

Nicky Lowe [00:02:53]:
As I said, those muscles that give you this overall strength and flexibility. And the reason that Pilates is so important and so popular is that core strength kind of supports everything that you do. It allows you to have this fluid movement and that strong core prevents injury and enhances kind of your overall strength. It gives you flexibility and mobility. It, as I said, gives you better posture and really helps with this overall body awareness, so that mind body connection. And you might be thinking, well, why is she sharing this with me? Because I’m not a Pilates instructor or an exercise expert by any means. But I think that one of the most important things that we can do to kind of navigate the world is develop a strong core in our psychology. And that means building core strength in ourselves emotionally, mentally and spiritually so we can stay centered in such a fast paced and demanding world.

Nicky Lowe [00:04:00]:
And I often use the acronym of living in a VUCA world with my leadership clients. And VUCA is VUCA. And it’s a term that comes from the military. And the V stands for volatile, the U stands for uncertain, the C stands for complex and the A stands for ambiguous. And I think the world in which we kind of navigate is becoming more and more VUCA. And it requires of us you know, the most amazing strength and versatility to be able to navigate that and not lose our sanity or our well-being. And as I say, I personally believe that having this strong core psychologically is vital because it helps us create this inner resilience, this inner resourcefulness and stability, just like those Pilates core exercises do for your body. And I’m really passionate about this.

Nicky Lowe [00:04:56]:
This is the work that I do with my clients, even if I don’t use this kind of analogy. And the reason that I’m so passionate about it is about 15 years ago, I was lucky enough to meet my now good friend, Beth Gardner. And Beth is a body alignment expert. And at the time when I met her, Beth was a was, a core stability performance coach. She was basically using her expertise in Pilates to help elite athletes reduce their injuries, aid their recovery, boost their performance. So she was working with, premiership footballers, and she happened to run a Pilates class at my local gym. So I got to know her that way. And over the years, I’ve learned so much from Beth about how our vital core stability is so important for, kind of, our strength, integrity, and balance.

Nicky Lowe [00:05:52]:
And I think prior to meeting and working with Beth, I wasn’t particularly connected to my body. And what she taught me is that if you wanna have real strength, like you wanna lift a heavy weight properly. You need to have your core stability because otherwise you end up injuring yourself or you try to adapt to lift the weight and you’re not doing it in integrity in your body. And so it causes knock on impact. And I think the same is true for the mind. Unless we’ve got that core psychological strength, we will maladapt to face life’s challenges and it can end up psychologically injuring us. And so I’ve come to realize that my work as an executive coach is a lot like Pilates for the mind. I kinda help people build their mental and an emotional core strength so that they can handle the weight of life’s challenges with resilience, integrity so they can stay true to themselves, and alignment so they’re aligning kind of their inner resources in a way that feels good and, powerful but authentic.

Nicky Lowe [00:07:06]:
So I’ve talked about that as an analogy, but I bet you’re thinking, well, how do you strengthen your mind’s core? So I’d like you to think of it just like Pilates. So in Pilates, there’s some key principles. There are actually 6 fundamental principles that help build that core strength and stability. It’s about concentration. So you’re engaging the mind to fully focus on each movement. You’re actually using control to ensure each movement is deliberate and precise. You’re centering. So all movements come from that core or your kind of powerhouse.

Nicky Lowe [00:07:41]:
It’s about flow. So, hopefully, you’re moving smoothly and grace, gracefully with each exercise. It’s about precision. So you’re really paying attention to the detail in every movement. And then you’re using breathing. So you’re kind of coordinating your breath with movement. So you’re using breath to support each exercise. So those are the 6 core kind of fundamental principles of the kind of movement of Pilates.

Nicky Lowe [00:08:08]:
And I actually think there are 6 fundamental principles for strengthening your mind’s Lowe, so developing that psychological strength. And I use the word ‘stride’ to help highlight those. So the S of STRIDE is about self awareness. And for me, that is the foundation of anything we do. Self awareness is at the heart of emotional intelligence. And I always say, actually, what we’re not aware of controls us, but what we’re aware of, we can control. So staying tuned into your emotions and your reactions and really understanding how they influence your actions, being aware of what your strengths are, but also where your development areas are, being aware of things that might hijack you or derail you. So all of that stuff about self awareness is so important, but how difficult that is, you know, when we’ve got 101 things running through our minds, where we’ve got emails coming in, the school WhatsApp, whatever it might be, it’s really easy to get kind of tuned out of yourself and of your body.

Nicky Lowe [00:09:12]:
So the more that we can practice just checking in with ourselves, you know, it’s a micro takes a micro moment, the more important that is. And that’s why I think coaching’s so powerful. It gives you the time and space to do that real reflection and have, like, a kind of partner alongside you that helps you to tune into that and reflect back to you. So that’s the S of STRIDE is around self awareness. The T of STRIDE is about trusting your inner strength. It’s giving you the belief in your own ability to handle challenges, just like you trust your core in Pilates to support your movement. It’s about building trust that you have the inner strength and resources to navigate whatever life presents you with and trusting that you will find the resources if you haven’t got them internally. And a lot of the work that I’m doing with my my clients is helping them trust themselves again.

Nicky Lowe [00:10:04]:
You know, we we are conditioned over our life as little girls through to women to not really trust ourselves, you know, not trust our feelings, not tune into kind of what our body is telling us. And there are a number of reasons that I won’t go into on on this podcast about why we lose connection to that trust, but the more we can tune back into it and build trust in our inner strength, our inner capability, that I think is one of the best gifts that we can give ourselves because we know that life’s not easy. We know that there’s bumps in the road. But if you have that innate trust in yourself, it just frees you to be able to navigate it with more ease and less injury, if we go back to the Pilates kind of analogy. The R of STRIDE is about reframing challenges. It’s ability to really shift our perspective on setbacks because the meaning that we associate to anything, how we explain things to ourselves, the meaning making of it is so important. It really defines our whole experience. I’m trained in a cognitive behavioral approach.

Nicky Lowe [00:11:13]:
And one of the things that we say in that is really nothing has meaning until we give it meaning. We are purely meaning makers as humans. Like, if something happens, it’s just data until we process it. And actually giving ourselves the opportunity and the choice to decide how we reframe and frame things is so important. So if you have perfectionist tendencies, if something goes wrong, often we will describe and make meaning of that, that we’re not good enough or we’ve done something wrong. And that can really send us into a spiral of not trusting ourselves, not staying connected to our resources. So being able to reframe challenges in a way that supports us to access our resources is really important. So we’ve got the S of self awareness, the T of trust in your inner strength, the R of reframe challenges, and the I of STRIDE is about intentional action.

Nicky Lowe [00:12:13]:
It’s about being able to align your action with your core values and purpose, really making sure that your decisions support your long term goals and your values. And that sounds really simple, but how difficult that is in life to actually stay aligned with our core values when the world will tell us what we need to be doing and everybody else has got an agenda and everybody wants a bit of us and our time? Being able to center ourselves in our intentional action is so powerful, but not easy. The D of STRIDE is about developing boundaries. And you’ll know how important this is. We’ve all heard this before. You’ve heard me talk about this on the podcast before as well, about setting and maintaining healthy boundaries. And few women that I meet that are naturally good at developing and maintaining boundaries. It’s something we have to learn and it’s something that we continually have to build that muscle around.

Nicky Lowe [00:13:18]:
And again, coaching can be great to really reflect on that and highlight to somebody, you know, what’s the boundary that needs putting in place here? And finding that inner strength to be able to have the difficult conversations sometimes around our boundaries, to be able to communicate them assertively. But when we do, it helps us to navigate life with less injury. And finally, the E of STRIDE is about embracing emotional flexibility. That’s really about being able to adapt to change with that emotional agility about staying grounded and centered, no matter what the circumstances. And that’s, again, it’s a very simple thing to say, but incredibly difficult. And emotional flexibility involves being able to change your perspective when needed. So that reframe, please. And it means that we don’t get stuck in a narrow viewpoint or kinda get rigid in our thinking or our emotions that can really cloud our judgment.

Nicky Lowe [00:14:19]:
It enables you to step back and see that kind of broader context and adjust your approach. And that helps with problem solving and it reduces the risk of emotional overreaction. And part of that involves accepting life is filled with those highs and lows. It’s not that life goes perfectly and it’s not about embracing kind of toxic emotional positivity, But it involves acceptance and acceptance doesn’t mean resignation, but rather acknowledging the reality without resisting it. And it allows you to focus on what you can control and let go of what you can’t. And I find that the more pressure we’re under, our tendencies to become more rigid in our thinking and our emotions. So having that flexibility gives you the choice, just like in Pilates, that actually having that core strength allows you to pick up that heavier weight with more physical integrity and reduces injury. That’s really what we’re looking at here with this kind of psychological core.

Nicky Lowe [00:15:26]:
So how do you take the concept of stride and use it to build a strong psychological core? Well, just like Pilates, it requires consistent practice and awareness. It’s not about perfection, it’s about kind of progress. So knowing that life will continue to throw challenges our way, if we’re navigating a demanding career with family life, that isn’t going to be easy. But with that strong psychological core, you feel better equipped to kind of navigate it with more resilience and ease. It’s not that it’s easy, but it feels more easeful in doing it. Here’s my challenge for you. I’d like you to take one of the STRIDE principles. So just to remind you, the S was about self awareness, the T was about trusting your inner strength, the R was around reframe, the I was around intentional action, the D was around develop boundaries, and the E was about embracing emotional flexibility.

Nicky Lowe [00:16:29]:
I’d like you to take one of those principles and start incorporating it into your daily routine, whether it’s practicing self awareness or setting a healthy boundary. Just start with something small, like a micro initiative. But the more we can stay consistent, over time, just like Pilates, you’ll notice your emotional and mental strength improving, allowing you to kind of navigate and move through life with more ease and alignment. So hopefully that’s been useful. Thank you for joining me today and listening. If you found this episode helpful, please share it with someone who might need it. And remember, building a strong core, whether it’s physical or psychological, takes time. Lowe, we’re work in progress, but the results are worth it.

Nicky Lowe [00:17:17]:
So until next time, keep striding forward in your life and work, And take care, and I’ll see you in the next episode. If you’ve enjoyed this episode of Wisdom For Working Mums, please share it on social media and with your friends and family. I’d love to connect with you too. So if you head over to wisdom for working mums dot co.uk, you’ll find a link on how to do this. And if you love the show and really want to support it, please go to Itunes, write a review, and subscribe. You’ll be helping another working mum find this resource too. Thanks so much for listening.