How I Plan My Quarterly Career Strategy

An insight into how I plan out and set goals for my career and most importantly, re-evaluate it every quarter to know whether I am on track or not.

Hey lovelies,

Happy Valentine’s Day! Today is my favourite day of the year. If you’ve not read my first book, you might not know that in 2019, I came out of the hospital and returned to university on 11th February and the next day they all threw me a surprise party so two days later, when Valentine’s Day rolled around, it felt so stupid that we spent an entire day being sad if we don’t have romantic love, when there was so much love clearly present in my life. Valentine’s Day has since become a day I celebrate being alive and all the people who I love and love me back. Spending six weeks in a hospital bed meant I couldn’t imagine a better way to spend V day with those who so loudly and proudly show me that they love me all the time. But back to the love letter, I have a few updates, including a trip to Warsaw and a near plane crash (I’m not joking!). For the last (nearly) 3 years, I have been begging my boyfriend to let me come on his work trips and he finally relented. As soon as I arrived back, it was straight into work - whatever quietness remained from the December and January months has definitely disappeared! Whenever it gets busy, I think it’s so important to have a strategy in place otherwise you lose sight of your aims and goals so I wanted to share that with you.

Last week I cut my hair short and I love it. The best part is I didn’t need to leave the house to do it. Don’t worry I didn’t do it myself, a professional came over!

This week I am sharing with you:

• Why We All Need To Give Each Other More Benefit Of The Doubt

• How My Trip To Warsaw Went

• The Podcast I Chose When I Thought I Was Going To Die

• A Quote That I Had To Share

• My Evolution To A TV Life Coach

• My New Favourite Board Game

• I Went To A Psychic… And She Said I Was Pregnant!

• My Rubbish Experience with Melatonin and Another Life Lesson

• 2024 Q1 Strategy

Benefit of the doubt is underrated

Maybe it’s social media but we don’t start with enough trust. There are two mentalities around trust:

• Trust them until they give you a reason not to

• Don’t trust them until they have proved they can be trusted

I know this because in my first relationship, this was such a big disparity that affected nearly every aspect of our relationship. The best lies somewhere in the middle and is more like Brene Brown’s analogy of the marble jar where marbles can be added and taken away with small actions. Here’s where I stand. If you have known someone for a while and chosen to be in a relationship with them, they deserve a little grace and when you enter conversations, if you are able to assume the best, then it can start the conversation off in a more productive way. What does that mean practically? That means that when they aren’t replying to text, you don’t make the assumption they are intentionally ignoring you but instead that they might not have seen it. It might be seeing them in a club talking to someone else and assuming it’s a friendly chat not a flirty one. Walking into every assumption prepared for the worst, I have found, often creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. At the same time, I am not as naive as I once was and when the writing is on the wall, you have to see it too! If they are repeatedly ignoring your texts, then you need to address it. If they are constantly choosing to spend time with everyone else in the room except for you, you need to talk. Building trust is hard work and ruining it can take next to no time. All I know is that when someone starts off a conversation with mistrust and assuming the worst, it feels like pants so try not to do it to others… unless past evidence says otherwise!

Everything about Warsaw

I won’t lie, I’ve never had Poland on my list to travel to but when my boyfriend said he had a work trip there, I jumped at the chance to join him because travel, any travel, is in my blood. Maybe because my mum used to be a flight attendant? Although all in all, not sure it actually works out as cheaper to tack it onto his business trip.

My top must-see is the Museum of Polish Jews. Such an immersive museum but also such an intense experience that I had a little sob after. The Jewish side of my family originally come from Poland. I’ve never felt a connection to Poland, maybe because it’s quite a few generations away, but my connection to my Jewish roots has always been strong and it felt even more present in Warsaw. 90% of Polish Jews did not survive the world war and it hit me that my family were 10% who did.

One thing did puzzle me though, why do the Polish leave their Christmas decorations up til February? Everywhere we went was still covered in Christmas trees and lights.

My nightmare flight from hell… and the podcast that saved me

Trying to land last night was terrifying. The flight itself was turbulent and bumpy but since my brother has a pilot’s license, I know that a plane can withstand a lot of turbulence. Unfortunately I also know the most dangerous time to be on a plane is take-off and landing and it was the landing that did it. They tried landing us and couldn't because of the winds so just as we were about to hit the tarmac, they yanked us back towards the sky, accelerating like we were on a rollercoaster. No one told us what was happening except 'stay calm, we will update you soon'. Note: no update was ever given other than for them to apologise for the delay on our second attempt. Thankfully, a successful landing.

I've never been so scared, the woman next to me was gripping the chair in front of her, I was either gonna throw up or have a panic attack so then me being me was like 'you are a life coach, use what you know' and my life coach part of me said 'you can't control what's happening but you can control what you are thinking. What you think controls how you feel'.

Since I was feeling fear, I decided the opposite emotion was to laugh and so remembered I had dowloaded Sofie Hagen’s Help Hole podcast and listened to this to distract myself and calm myself down. It’s a podcast where she reads self-help books and then basically tells you the best bits with a lot of humour alongside it. From her trailer, I know she will be covering my book but I’ll likely give that episode a miss in case it ends up an hour of roasting me, the author (how self-involved!).

I am genuinely not sure if I want to go on a plane anytime soon and it took me a good five hours to stop shaking. Turns out I had sweat through my entire shirt but somehow today seem to have a euphoria that I guess comes with a near-death experience!

A quote I needed to hear

I was watching Jamie Lee Curtis on The View (one of my favourite shows!) and she shared this quote from Marisha Pessl. I actually stopped and replayed the video because it was a moment where I felt so seen and heard. Here’s the quote:

“It's kind of funny...the moments on which life hinges. I think growing up you always imagine your life--your success--depends on your family and how much money they have, where you go to college, what sort of job you can pin down, starting salary...But it doesn't, you know. You wouldn't believe this, but life hinges on a couple of seconds you never see coming. And what you decide in those few seconds determines everything from then on... And you have no idea what you'll do until you're there...”

Looking back at my life, I can definitely see this. A few moments where everything changed because I made the right decision, showed up and did my best!

Imposter Syndrome Around Your Bio
It should be no surprise that I have been interested in getting to TV and whilst I have only made this public recently, I have been doing appearances since 2015 because that has actually been my intention from the very beginning. Everytime I do live radio or TV, I feel more ‘on purpose’ than I ever have and it just feels right but of course, it’s an impossible industry to break into. Last year, I made the furthest leap I have ever made, appearing on This Morning nine times in the last seven months of last year and when I was redoing my bio (more on this later!), it reminded me of a moment in my past. When I first got my book deal, I never called myself an author. I told myself I would start calling myself an author once the book was actually out in the world and published. And yet, I still didn’t. I called myself a writer but I only started using the word ‘author’ once I had two books out. I didn’t want to repeat this. I am older and wiser and there was a part of me that wanted to focus on the fact I hadn’t appeared on This Morning this year yet. But it’s not just about This Morning. I have actually life coached on 12 shows. Before the pandemic, I had already life coached on a BBC3 Documentary called “Being East Asian” where I life coached a woman called Elaine on her body image. I have also life coached Emily Atack on W channel for her show and that was in 2019. I was on Loose Women as a life coach in 2018 and my first ever appearance on TV was in 2015 so when is enough, enough? It reminded me of the statistic that men apply to jobs when they meet 60% of the criteria whereas women only apply when they meet 100% of the criteria. I don’t want to be part of that statistic and the fact of the matter is if I call myself a TV life coach, it’s because it’s true. It’s not a subjective statement, it’s a fact. I have life coached on TV and now I just need to get comfortable saying it and more importantly, owning it!

A new board game for two

Anyone who knows me knows I am a board game addict and whilst I hate learning new games, the payoff is usually worthwhile and yet, I will do the same cycle of refusing to learn a new one. I got Wingspan for Christmas and when we first went to learn it, I quit so this weekend, my boyfriend forced me to persevere and I think I’ve got a new favourite two player game. You can play it with more but we have loads of board games for groups and next to no games for just us two! It did take us a while to learn but once we figured out there was a quick set of rules for your first time, we quickly picked up the rest. If you are really competitive, this one might not be for you as there is little interaction with other players and for the most part, it’s just you building your own bird sanctuary and there was something really calming about that!