Imagine if you could follow your ambition without drowning in it – how much more fulfilling life would be? That’s what Pause Purpose Play is all about – finding balance over burnout by setting you free from needing to be perfect, so that you can take action and get started with what matters to you, instead of getting stuck in procrastination and holding yourself back with self-limiting beliefs your inner critic tells you. In this podcast, Michaela Thomas, Clinical Psychologist, Couples Therapist and founder of The Thomas Connection, shares bite-sized learning around psychology of performance, habits, self-confidence, stress, anxiety, perfectionism, parenthood and couples relationships. The podcast will mix solo episodes with guest interviews; diving deep into their professional zone of genius and learning about how they have found pause, purpose and play in their life and in their work. My new book, The Lasting Connection, is available now from all good bookshops.
Episodes
Thursday Feb 02, 2023
Thursday Feb 02, 2023
In this episode, you’ll learn more about why striving for perfect in your business burns you out – and what to do about it.
We’ll cover three big problems female entrepreneurs face when juggling their business with their home life – and also think about three common patterns of perfectionism which make make business owners struggle.
Sign up to my free webinar How to Burn Bright without Burning Out on 10th February https://thethomasconnection.lpages.co/burnbright/
Find me at www.thethomasconnection.co.uk
Instagram: www.instagram.com/the_thomas_connection
Facebook: www.facebook.com/thethomasconnection
Pause Purpose Play Facebook group: www.facebook.com/groups/pausepurposeplay
This episode was edited by Emily Crosby Media.
Thursday Jan 26, 2023
Thursday Jan 26, 2023
All work and no play, does that bring you joy? In a culture where toxic productivity is praised and rewards you with achievement, it’s hard to stop and appreciate beauty, to find everyday joy.
In this episode, I speak with Tamu Thomas about how difficult it is to let go of toxic productivity, and move towards everyday joy and moments that matter instead. By letting the joy in, we also let the pain in.
Tamu Thomas is a Qualified Social Worker & Somatic Coach. She helps high-achieving women feel emotionally safe so they can recover from toxic productivity & under-living.
We cover:
- Overfunctioning impacts your body
- Somatic coaching, whole body approach
- Conditioned to over-productivity
- Appreciate the joy in every day
- Negativity bias blocking present joy
- Taking care of pain, fear, sorrow
- Toxic productivity and unrealistic expectations
- ‘Hack’s for overfunctioning dismiss humanity
- Showing up for ourselves with trust
- Western culture treating people as machines
- Fight/flight - got to be productive
- Freeze - overwhelmed
- ‘Not enough’ness, proving your worth
- Resistance to slow down, preparing for sleep with bedtime routine
- False sense of control from over working
- Working with yourself, not on yourself - you’re not a project
- Harmony improves productivity in a nourishing way
- Polyvagal theory and feeling safe
Tamu can be found at www.livethreesixty.com and @livethreesixty on Instagram
Order my book, The Lasting Connection, here
Find me at www.thethomasconnection.co.uk
Instagram: @the_thomas_connection
Facebook: www.facebook.com/thethomasconnection
Pause Purpose Play Facebook group: www.facebook.com/groups/pausepurposeplay
This episode was edited by Emily Crosby Media
Thursday Jan 19, 2023
Thursday Jan 19, 2023
How do we heal difficult experiences from our childhood?
And how to they impact us as adults, in our relationships?
How do painful childhood experiences shape our attachment styles?
In this, my most popular episode, I talk to Thais Gibson about attachment styles, trauma and the unconscious mind keeping a score of what we've been through, giving rise to protective behaviours, which can ultimately still be changed.
Thais Gibson is an author, speaker and co-creator of the Personal Development School, best known for her contributing work and research on Attachment Theory and the impact of attachment trauma on our adult romantic relationships.
She overlaps attachment trauma challenges with personal core wounds, limiting beliefs and emotional patterns at the subconscious level to give us deeper insight into ourselves and our relationships.
We talk about
4:58 Thais' story
9:15 Bringing a high achieving attitude to recovery
11:30 Noticing a critical inner voice
13:30 Thais' recovery from addiction
16:42 Healing attachment pain from childhood
18:10 Internalising our upbringing
21:00 Patterns in attachment styles
- 22:44 Securely attached
- 24:54 Insecure dismissive
- 27:42 Anxious preoccupied
- 30:22 Fearful avoidant
35:43 Steps to combat protest behaviours
44:54 The benefits of inner work
54:31 Why we self-sabotage
Find out more about Thais at www.personaldevelopmentschool.com
Order my book, The Lasting Connection, here
Find me at www.thethomasconnection.co.uk
Instagram: @the_thomas_connection
Facebook: www.facebook.com/thethomasconnection
Pause Purpose Play Facebook group: www.facebook.com/groups/pausepurposeplay
This episode was edited by Emily Crosby Media
Thursday Dec 15, 2022
Thursday Dec 15, 2022
When is enough enough? If you find yourself burnt out from the corporate environment, trying to be all things to all people, should you stay or should you leave? Is it worth holding on and hope for thing to improve, or are the gestures that organizations make towards mental health awareness not enough? These are the issues I’ll be tackling today with my guest, Fiona Kearns.
Fiona Kearns is a business psychologist who helps people get rid of self doubt, to feel confident about playing huge in life and work. She loves the thrill of helping clients manage their impostor syndrome to become confident, visible and more impactful.
In this episode we talk about:
- Coming back after burnout
- Boundaries and strategies for being sustainable in work
- Women needing to be ‘less nice’ and push back
- Finding who can support you at work
- Documenting your experiences, collecting evidence to protect yourself
- Victim blaming and gaslighting
- Compassion and validation of your emotions
- The ‘golden handcuffs’ forcing you to stay
- Job sharing to focus on results and working optimally in less time
- Strategies for being sustainable at work
- Add fun back in outside work to reclaim your life
- Are organizations changing for the better?
You'll find Fiona under Kearns Consultancy.
https://kearnsconsultancy.com/
Find out more and join the waitlist for Burn Bright at https://thethomasconnection.co.uk/burn-bright/
Find me at www.thethomasconnection.co.uk
Instagram: @the_thomas_connection
Thursday Dec 08, 2022
Thursday Dec 08, 2022
Do you feel overstretched by constantly reaching for your stretchy goals? Are you scared to retreat to your comfort zone for fear of playing it small?
In this episode, I explain the zones of comfort, confidence, challenge and compassion, and how moving between them when you need to, can help you reach your goals without burnout.
This is going to be a short episode, but if you're able to get a pen and paper out, try to jot down a few things as you're listening., because this could be potentially life changing. If you can find the way to address these different zones differently in your life, in your work, in your business, in your job, in your parenting, with your friends, whatever it might be, this could potentially change your life.
Find out more and join the waitlist for Burn Bright at https://thethomasconnection.co.uk/burn-bright/
Find me at www.thethomasconnection.co.uk
Instagram: @the_thomas_connection
Thursday Dec 01, 2022
Thursday Dec 01, 2022
Are you hooked on the idea of the perfect diet? If only you could eat right, everything else would fall into place? This week’s guest, nutritional therapist Thalia Pellegrini, believes that you can give up striving for the perfect diet, and learn to nourish yourself instead.
In this episode we talk about:
- The pressure from the nutrition industry to have a perfect diet - what even IS a perfect diet?
- Thalia’s experience of becoming a mother and how she navigates children and sugar
- What happens when we eat too much sugar, plus managing blood sugar and breakfast
- Making peace with whatever food you are eating, with self-compassion, and why what we eat has nothing to do with will power
- Adding nutritious foods in, rather than cutting things out and making them taboo
We also talked about eating intuitively, vegetarianism and the perimenopause.
Find Thalia’s free five minute breakfast recipes at www.thaliapellegrini.com
Instagram @thaliapellegrini_nutrition or email thalia@thaliapellegrini.com
Find out more and join the waitlist for Burn Bright at https://thethomasconnection.co.uk/burn-bright/
Find me at www.thethomasconnection.co.uk
Instagram: @the_thomas_connection
Thursday Nov 24, 2022
Thursday Nov 24, 2022
In this episode of Pause Purpose Play, Michaela explores why overworking doesn't make you more productive. Why more doesn’t always mean more. Why overworking and powering through so often leads to burn out.
If you have been doing really long hours, maybe working on the weekends pushing through into the evenings, this episode is for you.
Find out more and join the waitlist for Burn Bright at https://thethomasconnection.co.uk/burn-bright/
Find me at www.thethomasconnection.co.uk
Instagram: @the_thomas_connection
Facebook: www.facebook.com/thethomasconnection
Pause Purpose Play Facebook group: www.facebook.com/groups/pausepurposeplay
This episode was edited by Emily Crosby Media.
Thursday Nov 17, 2022
Thursday Nov 17, 2022
If you’re overwhelmed by busy-ness and the need to do all the things, then this episode is for you.
In this episode of Pause Purpose Play, Michaela chats with Chris Lovett about the benefits of minimalism in life and work - and how breaking up with 'busy' helps you create more impact through renewed focus.
We cover:
- Minimalism is about having only valuable items and experiences
- Value and use rather than joy
- Improved productivity and focus
- Passing things on/doing good gives you a dopamine kick
- Ripple effects of the act of letting go
- Link between letting go physically and mentally
- Reframing success to move away from more stuff
- Attachment to urgency and rushing
- 52% of people have felt burnout post pandemic
- Lying to yourself about the need to plate-spin
- Mental benefits of getting rid of the internal clutter
- Being a disruptor and rebel
- Having the skill of saying no
- The leader of the future won’t be busy
- Patience with change
- Pushback allows you to have the conversation
- Stop helping people at your own detriment
- Tips on how to get started
- Use your out of office
- Try an experiment
- Don’t go to every meeting you’re invited to
- Have a lunch break
- Ask more questions
- Leave your emails for longer
- Permission to stop
Discovery of LESS: How I Found Everything I Wanted Underneath Everything I Owned, by Chris Lovett
Find out more about my group coaching for women who struggle with perfectionism and not feeling enough by messaging me - www.thethomasconnection.co.uk/contact-us/
Instagram: @the_thomas_connection
Facebook: www.facebook.com/thethomasconnection
Pause Purpose Play Facebook group: www.facebook.com/groups/pausepurposeplay
Chris Lovett is an author, executive & simplicity coach, speaker, career mentor and minimalist.
Discovery of LESS: How I Found Everything I Wanted Underneath Everything I Owned, by Chris Lovett
This episode was edited by Emily Crosby Media
Thursday Oct 06, 2022
Thursday Oct 06, 2022
Do you say no? Can you set boundaries?
This re-released episode is one of my most listened to, because setting boundaries to protect your energy is so difficult.
I talked to Naketa Ren Thigpen, about how setting boundaries helps us create balance in our lives.
Naketa R. Thigpen, LCSW, is the go-to relationship advisor for fast-scaling married women entrepreneurs and power couples seeking to balance love and success without dimming or apologizing for their spirited ambition.
We talk about
3:55 Being a recovering perfectionist
6:30 Naketa's life experience
8:39 Giving high striving people permission to slow down
10:30 The effects of the pandemic on high striving people
13:42 The connection between our relationships and our businesses
15:42 Community not competition
16:38 Creating balance
17:40 Shedding old expectations
21:41 The boundaries Naketa sets for herself
23:18 Friendship expectations
26:45 Sharing from personal experience
27:18 Writing the book 'Selfish'
29:08 Reclaiming the word selfish
34:45 Feminism
36:18 Talking from a scar, not an open wound
41:23 A message to Naketa's younger self
44:22 Being a woman of colour in business
Naketa's website - https://thigpro.com/
Book a call with me about my group coaching programme Burn Bright here:
Find me at www.thethomasconnection.co.uk
Instagram: @the_thomas_connection
Facebook: www.facebook.com/thethomasconnection
Thursday Sep 29, 2022
Thursday Sep 29, 2022
Taking a break is hard.
I have had a podcast break. I’ve been working on something behind the scenes: Burn Bright, my high touch group coaching programme for ambitious women who want to make an impact, with less impact on themselves.
I am all about finding balance over burnout – no more late nights working to clear your to do list, no more ‘doing all the things, all at once’ and feeling so wired that you struggle to switch off even when you’re NOT working.
As I needed to create this programme fully embodying what I teach others, I had to cut myself a bunch of slack and give myself a break with the podcast.
Therefore I will be re-releasing some of my most loved episodes, to celebrate having reached the milestone of 100 episodes!
To celebrate my successes without the second guesses.
Let me know in the comments if you ever give yourself this permission to temporarily pause something, to protect your energy and focus!
Find out more about Burn Bright here - https://thethomasconnection.lpages.co/burnbright/
Order my book, The Lasting Connection, here
Find me at www.thethomasconnection.co.uk
Instagram: @the_thomas_connection
Facebook: www.facebook.com/thethomasconnection
Pause Purpose Play Facebook group: www.facebook.com/groups/pausepurposeplay
This episode was edited by Emily Crosby Media