In a single day at work, how many stories run through your head? Stories about what life is like, what everyone expects of you, what you are capable of or not capable of. Some of the stories will help you move forward, but others can suck your energy dry and keep you small.
We all tell ourselves stories about how life is meant to be. It's part of being human. The stories we learned as kids and then through our life experiences; stories that became the foundations we live by, even to the detriment and harm of our health, our happiness, and our relationships.
But if we are doing ourselves so much harm, can it really be the truth about life? What if there is a different truth just waiting for us to choose that would allow us to live a different life, one where we can thrive in all areas of our lives and succeed in the career we have chosen.
In this refreshingly honest, lets-sit-down-and-chat guide, Joanna serves up personal stories, easy exercises, and a way to identify and work through some of the most common stories we tell ourselves in corporate life, stories that start to dictate how we feel we have to live and how we make our everyday choices.
Because this was the author's life, too. In 2014, sixteen years into her tax career, Joanna Denton went through her second burnout in five years and decided it was finally time to change her life.
Since then, in her journey back from burnout, Joanna has learned to identify the stories she was telling herself, stories that kept her small and ran her into the ground. She has learned to challenge and change them, finally moving through them to a life with more joy and fulfilment (but a whole lot less tax). A life where she has control over her every day choices again.
She wrote this book to share with you some techniques to do that for yourself because you are going through exactly the same thing, aren't you? You're staying small, running yourself into the ground, and letting those stories run your life. Deep down you know it, even if you aren't going to let anyone see. You're the one who is meant to be strong, not the one losing it completely. Because that would be weak, right?
Oh, yeah--spoiler alert--that's a story too.
So, listen up. Don't wait until your life is falling apart completely to start changing your stories. Don't wait until you have no other choice but to jump ship completely.
And remember, it's not enough to see the story and try to change it. You need some actual tools to live that different story, and that's where Joanna calls on twenty years as a speaker and trainer to give you the bulk of this book: tangible soft skills training, exercises, and techniques that you can dip into and take back to work and apply straight away.
In particular, in this book, you will learn to:
- Give yourself permission to take five minutes to breathe and a whole bunch of examples of things to do in those five minutes
- Rewire out of the fears and into the possibilities standing in front of you
- Stop trying to fit into a box all the time and find the people who really get you
- Step up and take credit once in a while for the awesome job you are doing
- Captivate and inspire your audience when you talk about your subject
It's time to do something about the stories. By the end of the book, you will see the stories you tell yourself and understand why they are hijacking your life and career by keeping you small and running you into the ground. You will have started to challenge and change them, and best of all, you will have a plan to move past them into something better--better choices that work for you and how you and how you really want to live your life.
Buy this book.
