"Ask What Makes You Come Alive" — Selina Barker
Show notes
Are you burnt out, exhausted by work, or wondering whether the life you’ve worked so hard to build is actually making you happy?
This week on A Thought I Kept, I’m talking to career and life design coach Selina Barker about burnout, energy management, career change and what it really means to create a life that makes you feel alive.
Selina and I talk about why burnout and exhaustion have become so normalised, why women in particular can become caught in patterns of over-giving and self-sacrifice, and how easily we can find ourselves pursuing someone else’s definition of success.
We also explore:
• Why managing your energy can be more useful than managing your time
• The five types of energy: physical, mental, emotional, motivational and spiritual
• How to recognise when work, a career or a business is no longer working for you
• Why burnout can be a sign that something needs to change
• Career change, uncertainty and finding the courage to do things differently
• Letting go of external validation and redefining what success means to you
• Why rest, creativity, pleasure and presence matter
• What it really means to thrive — rather than simply cope
Selina also shares what’s happening in her own life right now as she questions the business she has spent years building, lets go of an old version of success and makes more space for reading, drawing, playing the piano and simply being.
If you’re feeling burnt out, overwhelmed, stuck in your career, depleted by work or unsure what you want from the next chapter of your life, this episode offers another possibility: perhaps the goal isn’t to become better at keeping up. Perhaps it’s to pay attention to what makes you come alive.
Selina Barker is a coach, author and founder of the Project You journals. She has spent the past two decades making it her business to help people break free from the daily grind and create lives and careers they love. She has coached a long list of clients from Google, Apple and UN Women, to recording artists, best-selling authors, and leaders in the tech, finance, creative and music industries.
Her book Burnt Out: the exhausted person’s six-step guide to thriving in a fast-paced world was published in April 2021 and has been translated into multiple languages. She is creator of the Audible Series The Career Change Coach and founder of the Project You journals.
Selina and her work have been featured in the Telegraph, Independent, Sunday Times Style magazine, Red, Psychologies, Stylist, Grazia, Metro, BBC and many more. She lives in London with her husband and their 10 year old son.
Another Way with Selina Barker on Substack
Also mentioned on the show:
The Success Myth by Emma Gannon
The Power of Full Engagement by Tony Schwartz and Jim Loehr
This is A Thought I Kept — Weekly conversations about the ideas that stay. Listen every Monday morning for a new thought to hold onto this week.
About Claire Fitzsimmons
Claire is the host of A Thought I Kept, a wellbeing writer, author and the co-founder of If Lost Start Here. As a Certified Coach and Emotions Coach Practitioner, Claire helps people navigate the everyday lost moments and all the feelings, from anxiety to grief, overwhelm to disconnection.
Buy Claire's first book, If Lost Start Here: Wellbeing for the Anxious, Disconnected or Uncertain here.
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The music for all episodes from August 10th was made by Leon in the Wilderness.