How I Overcame My Ultimate Fear And Will Empower You To Overcome Yours

Welcome to the Tender Roots Coaching blog.

Tender Roots Coaching practice is centred around these main things:

- Overcoming Fear

-Building Confidence

-Developing Strengths

-Reaching Potential

Why? This is my story....

I haven't always had the confidence to get out there, start my own practice, promote myself and begin to fulfil my potential. In fact some may even say that I have had quite a few 'false starts' throughout my life so far!

What did you want to be when you left school? It's the question that is on everyone's lips when you are reaching that magical age of 16! I had no idea what I wanted to be, I just wanted to be me. However I knew I had one passion, it was all I could think about and dream about. My passion was horses. So I enrolled in a course straight from school which meant that I was living at college, miles away from home at just 16 years old. It was such an adventure, not always a pleasant one at times, but the best at others. I made friends that I will have for life from all over the world. We all had a lot of growing up to do and fast which wasn't always easy, but it is one of those experiences which without a doubt helped to mould me into who I am today. However, I did not go onto work with horses (well I had a few small yard jobs) as a career. *'Failure #1*

At 19, after finishing my college course and dropping out of another (oops)*Failure #2*

I decided to take a gap year in Bristol, where a close friend introduced me to my soulmate and (now) husband. (We will come back to him!)

*See how sometimes failures happen for a reason?!*

Now, most of you are probably thinking ....

1. That is a pretty confident young girl to go off and live away at 16 and follow her passions!

2. She made loads of friends and completed her course so why was this such a failure?

The thing is I wasn't actually a confident young girl, I just blindly followed my passion for horses and decided that it was the best thing for me without asking anyone for guidance or thinking about my future plans. I was extremely naive and vulnerable and although I made some wonderful friends, I also got myself in some pretty scary and dangerous situations at times and it's a wonder that I survived really. This all added to my fear of people and trust issues and started a downwards spiral of unhealthy living, loneliness and low moods.

Moving to Bristol was the change of circumstances that I needed at the time and after taking a gap year, working in an office job, I enrolled at Uni and started a degree in Primary Education to become a teacher! This was a bit more thought through than the horse qualifications. I began to recognise my strengths: empathy, creativity, passion for learning and that I enjoyed working with children. I knew from my gap year that I was not happy working in an office all day, everyday.

During my gap year , I moved in with my (now) husband and we later discovered just the same week as I enrolled at uni, that I was pregnant with our first daughter!

I was TERRIFIED! I don't think I have ever been so overwhelmed about anything in my life.

I was 21, had just quit my job to become a student again and we were renting a tiny, cold and draughty flat above a smelly dog grooming parlour! *Failure #3*

Fast forward 3 years and I had finished my degree (At the time I was disappointed with my 2:2 * Failure #4* ??) However, looking back now I realise I did an amazing job to get through an intensive course with pregnancy, a young baby, a wedding to plan and two house moves! Yep that's right, by the time i'd finished my degree I had given birth, moved house, got married, moved again and fallen pregnant with my second daughter!

You might think that once I had completed my degree, that I would have taken a year off to look after the babies and then gone and got a teaching job?

Wrong! * Failure #5* The many various school placements I had been on during my 3 year course and now having my own children, one reaching school age had completely changed my perspective on education and I had become painfully aware of the pitfalls and damage of an outdated Education system in the UK (more on this another time) so I decided, as my daughter's were still little to work part-time jobs and do a little bit of childminding.

By now I felt an ultimate failure and that had become my ultimate fear! FAILURE!

Now, I have always been a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to my work and so anxiety around making mistakes and failing is high on my list. But after becoming a young, married, mummy of two, I felt like a failure in pretty much every area of my life, including the way I brought my children up, the kind of wife I was, the fact that I couldn't work much and contribute to the household income etc. I beat myself up about it all on a daily basis and became depressed, scared and my self-worth reached rock bottom. One day I decided to stop working and stay at home to look after my children because I just had nothing left to give out to the world. I was physically and emotionally exhausted, not eating properly, not exercising, had no pleasure in life (apart from my children and husband, who kept me going - my reason to get up in the morning) and I realised that this wasn't doing myself or my family any good. I was going to make myself sick. *Failure #6*

This (you will be pleased to hear) is where the story starts to get better....

Leaving work and becoming a stay at home mum was the best thing that I could have done at the time as it allowed me to re-balance my life.

Don't get me wrong, life hasn't been without it's struggles (usual money issues, school issues, health problems etc), but I've had more time to focus on the children, myself and us all as a family.

This subject kind of reminds me of this quote:

"Success is the ability to move from failure to failure with losing enthusiasm" Winston Churchill

Okay, maybe I did lose enthusiasm at the time but did I give up? No, each time I picked my sorry arse back up again and carried on moving forwards.

So, how did I get over my ultimate fear of failure?!

I embraced my failures! I changed the way that I look at them and now I don't see them as failures, I see them more as a 'change in direction'.

I think that at times we need to embrace situations that happen to us. At the time they can feel like we are failing and we become disheartened, we try to desperately control everything and our anxiety rises as we fight the change. We then become ashamed of our 'failure' and our self-worth goes down, leaving us vulnerable.

If we can learn a new way forward, a way to deal with change, have the courage to overcome our fears, to recognise our strengths and build upon them and in turn boost our confidence and self-worth. Then we can fulfil our potential.

This is why I decided to put my strengths mentioned earlier, to good use. I developed them through the study of Psychology, Psychotherapy and Life Coaching and learned new skills in order to change my life and help others to change theirs too!

Thank you for reading. Did you relate to my post? How do you accept failure and move forward? Leave me a comment or contact me: Lottie@tenderroots.co.uk