Sally Eddmenson understands what it feels like to be out of your depth and helps people see how to be “a home” to themselves in the chaos of a major life transition. It might be a promotion, a divorce, a new marriage, or an expatriate relocation, feelings of overwhelm and Imposter Syndrome can surface as we adjust to a new role or situation.
Tune into an inspiring conversation I had with my incredible guest Sally Eddmenson. She is a life coach for executives and helps high achievers lost in major life or career transitions to own and ignite their new life.
We laser-focus on:
💡What Sally’s life experience taught her about navigating uncertainty
💡What we can all do to reduce feelings of stress and overwhelm when navigating a major transition in our life or career. Sally also guides us through a 20-second breathing technique, which we can practice in moments of overwhelm.
💡What common habits negatively impact our resilience
💡How can we bounce back quicker from setbacks
💡Sally’s approach to helping people build their resilience
💡What mental fitness is and how it helps us navigate uncertainty
💡Why self-trust is so critical and how we can grow our self-trust
💡Her take on “self-branding” in the context of the digital age where we all live with the “brand of the self”.
Sally’s own journey has been defined by 15 years of living and working as an ex-pat in the UAE. She started in the TV and media business, then spent 10 years in ultra-luxury real estate in Abu Dhabi and Dubai before becoming a coach.
She’s visited over 60 countries, climbed Kilimanjaro, and reached Everest base camp. Sally uses her own life experience of being a stranger in a strange land to help her clients find the resilience, confidence, and self-trust they need to flourish in a new stage of life.
Watch us live: 📹 https://youtu.be/QB94Z59hTmA
Get in touch with Sally Eddmenson:
Get in touch with Brigitte Bojkowszky:
Get in touch with Brigitte Bojkowszky:
👉 Download Your Entrepreneurial Branding Starter Checklist: https://courses.bridgetbrands.com/f/entrepreneurial-branding-starter-checklist
Sally Eddmenson understands what it feels like to be out of your depth and helps people see how to be “a home” to themselves in the chaos of a major life transition. It might be a promotion, a divorce, a new marriage, or an expatriate relocation, feelings of overwhelm and Imposter Syndrome can surface as we adjust to a new role or situation.
Tune into an inspiring conversation I had with my incredible guest Sally Eddmenson. She is a life coach for executives and helps high achievers lost in major life or career transitions to own and ignite their new life.
We laser-focus on:
💡What Sally’s life experience taught her about navigating uncertainty
💡What we can all do to reduce feelings of stress and overwhelm when navigating a major transition in our life or career. Sally also guides us through a 20-second breathing technique, which we can practice in moments of overwhelm.
💡What common habits negatively impact our resilience
💡How can we bounce back quicker from setbacks
💡Sally’s approach to helping people build their resilience
💡What mental fitness is and how it helps us navigate uncertainty
💡Why self-trust is so critical and how we can grow our self-trust
💡Her take on “self-branding” in the context of the digital age where we all live with the “brand of the self”.
Sally’s own journey has been defined by 15 years of living and working as an ex-pat in the UAE. She started in the TV and media business, then spent 10 years in ultra-luxury real estate in Abu Dhabi and Dubai before becoming a coach.
She’s visited over 60 countries, climbed Kilimanjaro, and reached Everest base camp. Sally uses her own life experience of being a stranger in a strange land to help her clients find the resilience, confidence, and self-trust they need to flourish in a new stage of life.
Watch us live: 📹 https://youtu.be/QB94Z59hTmA
Get in touch with Sally Eddmenson:
Get in touch with Brigitte Bojkowszky:
Get in touch with Brigitte Bojkowszky:
👉 Download Your Entrepreneurial Branding Starter Checklist: https://courses.bridgetbrands.com/f/entrepreneurial-branding-starter-checklist
My guest today is Sally Eddmenson. Sally is a life coach for executives and helps high achievers lost in major life or career, transitions to own and ignite their new life. She understands what it feels like to be out of depth and helps people to see how to be a home to themselves in the chaos of a major life transition. It might be a promotion, a divorce, a new marriage, or an expatriate relocation. Feelings of overwhelm and imposture syndrome can surface as we adjust to a new role or situation. Sally's own journey has been defined by 15 years of living and working as an expat in the United Arabic Emirates, she started in the TV and media business, then spent 10 years in ultra luxury real estate in Abu Dhabi and Dubai before becoming a coach. She's visited over sixty countries, climb to Kilimanjaro and reached Everest base camp. Sally uses her own life experience of being a stranger in a strange land to help her clients find the resilience, confidence, and self-trust they need to flourish in a new stage of life. I warmly welcome Sally Eddmenson. Welcome to Brand Talk. Thank you, Bridget. Thank you. And it's lovely to be here today. I'm so grateful for the invitation. And I'm really walking the talk at the moment because I'm six days into my new life in Nashville, Tennessee. I just arrived here less than a week ago. Beautiful. Nashville is such a trendy and flourishing place. That's a plan . That's great. All right. And I, it's, it's, All right, so I think you also spent many birthdays, around 15 birthdays as an expat in the United Arabic Emirate. So you have traveled wildly and lived overseas. So how was life there? How did you experience this culture and what did this experience teach you about navigating uncertainty? I'm sure there was a lot of uncertainty out there. Certainly, I think moving to a new culture, one of the first things that I recognized, it sounds so silly to say now but as I got to know the local people and people from countries, because there are so many different nationalities who live and work in the uae was that fundamentally we are all the same, but we have the same hopes and dreams and desires and we care about our family and we're concerned we're the same kind of things. So although there are cultural differences, At our heart, we're all having a human experience. And I think that was the first thing that I, I recognized. So very quickly moving into trying to create community with people and feel get your people landscape sorted out so that you feel connected. That's such important thing to, to be confident in the new location. Connect with the people first. Yeah, absolutely. I totally get that. I also have traveled widely and have lived in many different places around the world. And as a flight attendant many years ago, it's almost 30 years ago, I went back and forth I think five different continents in a month. And really also for the time being, it was sometimes a week, sometimes it was even longer than that. Bangkok of it was 10 days. We really had to somehow adjust. And it's really about understanding the people and connecting with the people. That's, Yeah, that's, that's so true. And that brings me to, to think about one of the strongest things that I try to encouraging people who are adjusting to a new life stage, and especially when it comes to moving home or moving sitters or moving to another continent, is. The one thing that you can rely on is your sense of yourself. And so how do you ground yourself when you're somewhere new? This is the experience that I've been having recently. It's three legs are off the chair. It's just one stable point of. Anchoring. And that's me. That's the, the feeling of who you are and yourself. Like what makes me flourish, what makes me thrive? When am I most comfortable and when am I not comfortable? And just understanding what your values are, what you need, having little rituals to just ground yourself as a very first step that you can take to be like, Okay, it's okay. I've got this. Everything else I can't control, but I can control. Exactly because you are your home. It doesn't matter where you are. If you can ground yourself here and there, and on the other end of the world, it's your home and you always feel safe, even you are out of your comfort zone in another country, in another culture, in another context of being and living. So if you understand who you are you are able to truly live by your values or ground yourself in what you consider as your home, then I think it's. It's, it's easier to go through such a transition. Yeah, well it's like that quote every, everywhere you go, there you are. Yeah, you're the common denominator in, in your own life, and so that's something that can be, that can be a positive thing because when you feel confident in yourself, it's I always think of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, like the thing that we need first is security, shelter, food. When you can provide that for yourself, it doesn't actually matter what situation you find yourself in. If you are feeling that you're grounded in yourself, you know who you are, you, you have a sense of how, how am I choosing to go out and meet the world? I don't have much control over everything else. Even, even right now, like nothing makes sense. I'm walking around the neighborhood. I don't understand how the supermarkets work. Just everything, everything is new and something that's really interesting. I realized the other day is, There's actually an opportunity in that when we have a child's mind, when we have a beginner's mind, it's like you are transported out of your normality. You're not an autopilot like everybody else is, and you're just seeing everything with wonder and curiosity and what new am I recognizing about myself now? What stories can I let go of? I had this experience when I was traveling. I did many trips in group environments. And when you let go of the story and say, Oh, I'm this person and this is my situation and this is what I do for work. No. When you are very present on a new trip or you're experiencing the wonder and you just have this natural curiosity, you don't need to. Help people your story. You don't need to talk about who you think you are. You can just be, so it's being rather than doing. And I think a new transition gives all of us an opportunity to actually rediscover ourselves from fresh, from, from right now. So having a child's mind, having a beginner's mind can be very helpful when we're navigating something new. It's just you don't need to have it all. Just enjoy the freshness of life, the freshness of everything. The wonder of all, Yeah, I can vividly imagine how you feel like. So let's go and discover and see where these things are. Where is the supermarket, what is here, what is there? And just, be open and just do it. Just go out there, take action to make yourself familiar. I always loved it when I was traveling. I just threw in everything and then let's go outside and check out this place. You make a good point about taking action as well, because sometimes we can ruminate and think all of the things that we have to figure out. It all feels a little bit overwhelming, and really we learn as we do. So you can just begin. Just start. Start somewhere. Yeah. Don't worry about it. Don't hold yourself to a standard perfection, but just get out there and start. And as. Start to discover the environment around. The new job or, or whatever. You can iterate as you go, but just throw yourself into it. You'll figure it out. Exactly. Exactly. Wonderful. So, in 2020, you started your own business, right? Yes. And this another journey, you took another transition and to becoming your own boss, an entrepreneur. So how was that? How did you manage maneuver through this uncertainty? Well, it's interesting because I was in real estate for 10 years before people have said to me Oh, it seems quite different to them, become a coach from doing real estate. But I actually think that set me up so beautifully for working with people in life transitions because when they were buying houses, They were, of course in a life transition and the thing that I used to enjoy was not so much investment properties, but people that were looking for a home. Cuz your home speaks so much about your aspirations, it's where you're gonna raise your family, where your friendships manifest. It's, it's really an expression of yourself in some ways. So taking experience from that and also taking my, my own experience. Of I probably, maybe 10, 12 years ago started really trying to get a handle on who am I now. I felt a little lost. I left a marriage. 11 years ago, and I really had to rediscover myself. And I, I'd met life coaches and coaches before who started talking about values, and I thought, I don't even know if I know what my values are. What are my deal breakers? What are things that just, Oh, this is a hard line for me. And there were a couple things that I realized I knew about myself, like having a sense of agency and self possession was really important to me or in wonder and putting myself in, in new situations so I could really experience curiosity that was important. Privacy and dignity and allowing people to just have their own space. That was important to me. But beyond that, I didn't really. Know what values meant to me. So I let that percolate for a while and I thought, I'm really gonna use this time, I need to figure out who, who I am and what's gonna make the rest of my life feel worthwhile, that I'm being really intentional about it. And I thought, Well, what? What can I do that is. Just for me, I'm not doing it for show. I'm not doing it to, for the achievement. I'm just experiencing myself. And I knew that that would be travel. So I joined this group. So you turn up as an individual, but you are on these big group trips. And it was a wonderful way, I thought, this is how I can find my people, how I can find people with similar interests to me, and just threw myself into traveling. And as, as I said before, when you're fresh in an experience, you're just having this experience. It's like you can just. Be present. You don't need to explain who you are. You're just there living life very much in the, the energy of the present moment. And that changed, that really changed everything for me. I found a, a whole group of incredible friends. I found my husband. We've been married three years now, and I think from having such a transformative experience myself and people have said they found it inspirational, which I, I humbly accept. I , I thought, I think I, I can help other people to navigate these big life transitions and come out glowing and come out feeling like they've really taken ownership of their life. That is my passion. That's what I want to do. Mm-hmm.. So here we're. We are, Yeah. Do you have any tidbits or some advice that you can give for all who are starting this journey to become their own boss who transformed from an employee to an entrepreneur. Yeah. So I think I mean I talk a lot about personal resilience and I think that's something that's really important when you are an entrepreneur and you are embarking on this journey because a lot of imposter syndrome can come up. Can I really do this? Who am I to be selling my services this way? Or, who do I think I am? And that self-talk piece I think is the most I. This is something I work with the mental fit fitness mental fitness methodology, which is really about understanding that we have an inner DAR data and an inner Jedi in, in our mind. We're very much biased towards the dark side. There's an evolutionary real reason why we notice the negative, like you are wired to notice a tiger rustling in the trees. Not so much the pretty butterflies. And when we start to notice our self talk is negative, we're judging ourself. We're judging other people, We're judging our circumstances, or sometimes we take our strengths too far. Being a stickler for having everything perfect, wanting to control things, feeling victimized, all of these saboteurs are, are things which get in your head and it's great to re. Something, but hand on the hot stove, I've immediately realized, and then I need to catch myself in that moment and not go down that path of ruminating. Oh. So the way we do that is by just getting present in our body and feeling our our senses again, so that we don't allow ourselves to go down a negative mindset. It helps you to bounce back quicker when you've had a setback to just breathe, take it in, it's okay. Be kind to yourself and then carry on. Yeah, so how can we actually manage that to bounce back quicker from a setback other than breathing? And I think breathing is a great exercise that helps us already. But what are other tools that we can use? Well, I'd actually love to demo one for 20 seconds. If you don't mind. I'd just, So a PQ rep. So we, we catch ourselves. Oh, I'm in a negative mindset thank you. It's okay. You got this. So instead we just close our eyes, get into your body, and if you can just take your fingertips while two fingertips together, were such exquisite attention that you can fill all of the ridges of your fingerprint. As you move a sensation of touch on both of your fingers, and then now take two hands together. Put your palms together and just rub your fingertips so that you can feel all of the richest. Okay, now moving down to your feet. If you can feel your feet on the floor, what are all the contact points with the floor? And now find all of your toes. Wiggle your toes if you have to. Just find all of your. Just get very present to what's happening in your feet or the muscles that move as you're wiggling your toes, and just finding your toes. And then lastly, back to your breath. And just notice the temperature of the air as you breathe in, and the temperature of the air as you breathe out. And so when you're ready, you can open your eyes. So that was helps seconds of peak and you, you get back into your body, you get out of the hijacked mind that spins you out. And we move into another part of our brain where we have access to creativity, innovation, to dreams, to Like big pattern thinking. This is where your insights come from, where your wisdom lives. When we are not panicked and we're not hijacked, and we're not hard thinking in a very linear fashion, which is when you're doing a math problem or when you are like trying to work something out. When we get back into that creative sense, oh, you can just, you can just calm yourself down. And then we move into a new way of thinking, which is we, we use the five sage powers, which are exploration, curiosity empathy. Empathy for self and for other people. Then navigate, which is really imagine at the end of your life, your elder wiser self. What would you say to yourself right now? What's important in this situation? What's not important? What do I not need to pay attention to? You get a little connected with our purpose when we do that, then innovation. It's, it's very connected to the we, we play this game. Yes. And game. It's, it's something that comes from improvisation, improve workshops. You just say Yes, and that makes me think about this. And when we can find the 10% good in our idea or somebody else's idea. There's no judgment and people feel free to just brainstorm and, and bring ideas to you. There's no sense that you are gonna be shot down. So that can really help free our creative thinking. And then the last thing is stepping into bold, fearless action and just. Sit up straight, get connected to your courage and your power, and then off you go to do the next thing. But one, the, the one that I mentioned that I think everyone is lacking and, and struggled in, and it's especially true when you are launching into running your own business, that empathy for ourself, just having compassion, self compassion. Yeah. It's so difficult to do. We may find it in that we can do it for other people. Almost everyone I coach has a real problem finding compassion for themselves and a really helpful way to try and experience what that real compassion for yourself feels like. When you're not judging yourself for how you're performing you're just content and accepting to just be is, think of the feeling that you have for an animal. Or a pet, which you love, they don't have to perform for you. They're just, Just being themselves is sufficient for you to love them, and that's the compassion that we should have for ourselves then you can just, Get on with what you need to do without having that negative self talk that just beats you up. It's absolutely merciless. Everyone does it. When we have group coaching sessions, it's probably the most cathartic experience that the universality of. The fact that, oh, when we all sit in a safe space and we talk about the kind of things that we say to ourself is absolutely brutal, and it doesn't need to be like that. It doesn't need to be like that. You can be kinder and compassionate. You don't need the carrot and stick. You can come from a much more sage place of ease and flow and just not, not holding a hand on the hot stove of all the judgment and the self-recrimination that is univers. That was really important that you have mentioned that now, because I think a lot of people, me included, we are beating ourselves up. We wanna be competitive, we wanna be the change makers, right? It's all good about being a change maker, but we should start with ourselves and be compassionate with ourselves. We forget about, We have to be fast, we have to do this, we have to do that. We are very judgmental to ourselves. And then it's, it's, I think it's good with your analogy to how would you treat an animal or your loved one right in, In that way, you should also treat yourself, so we should not forget about that. Yeah. What would you say to a friend? Yeah. Yeah. You you also have mentioned in one of our conversations that self-trust is so critical. Can you talk a little bit about how can we Achieve self trust. How can we trust in ourselves that we are on the right path? Is it connecting with our future self, with our inner wisdom that knows already? Can you talk a little bit about how we can grow our self trust? Yeah. Yeah. Self-trust I think is absolutely, is absolutely critical. And it's you gotta do the work. It's hard to know who we are. Sometimes we don't wanna look at who we are. And sometimes when I start working with people, the first recognition and realization of, Oh, I have this patent, or this thing that I do, or I'm recognizing the negative. The negative self talk is, it can be quite destabilizing what, But once we are through that and you can really start to recognize what are values that you have, what are things that have made you feel alive? It's often, there's a thread through your whole life that you can recognize. I've always been attracted to this. I've always flourished in this kind of an environment. And you start making sense to yourself because you recognize that there is this common thread, Oh, this is who I am. It's like discover. Yourself rather than, than, you creating something new. It's like peeling back the layers and saying, Oh, this is me. I, And when you recognize that that is there, I think it can be quite a relief to understand that. Oh no, I've always. Been like this. I'm just starting to discover it, and now I know it. I can be intentional about the way that I leverage the things that are very unique to me. We, we often don't recognize what our strengths are because we find something easy and we just assume that that's. Just because it's an easy thing, but no, it might be that it's something that you've got particular aptitude for. So recognizing what our strengths are and what what really makes us thrive can be very helpful in developing your self trust. And then I'd say the other piece is the. Is evidence is going back over your life and looking at scenarios where you have actually navigated something, navigated the uncertainty with success. And you will often find that the hardest, most challenging times in your life have also been those that offered you that opportunity to pull out of your life. And. Really create something and grow through it. We talk about posttraumatic growth when something has been very challenging. That's the space that we can grow into new qualities that we have, and you will often look back at your life and difficult periods and recognize they were the things that made me really. And then you have evidence, real evidence that you truly believe. Yeah, I can, I got through that. I can definitely get through, through this. And it's about looking for the gift and the opportunity in everything, which is, which is, is challenging. You'll see evidence of that in your life until now. So when you find yourself in a challenging situation, now you may have to do some work to create, well, how could I manifest this into a gift? How is this actually really, really an opportunity if. Take what's new in this situation and I make it something that wouldn't have happened if I hadn't had this, this circumstance. So looking for the gift is a big one too. Yeah, that's beautiful. And it's so funny because we started this conversation with traveling, going out to the world and actually this is traveling inside your inner a wisdom you are diving into your own being. You are discovering yourself. I think that is also a beautiful metaphor. Or when it comes to traveling, explaining that there is so much richness already in us. And then what you, just mentioned we are going back in time, so what have we accomplished so far already? And then really getting an understanding what makes us, us, and strong and what brings us into our sweet spot. So also in your life the traveling totally made sense because first you traveled out to the world and now you travel inside each and every customer that you help with in order to discover who they are and make them stronger. Yeah. And build their personal resistance., because we are encountering uncertain situation, but understanding what makes us stronger going forward. So yeah, that's a beautiful, beautiful way of, of framing it really that to, to have a map for the outside world when we just dunno what we are navigating and it's, That's tough on you when everything is unmapped territory. You have to be ready and prepared for anything, so you just, it's, it's, it's heavy on your system. It's costly, psychologically, physiologically, when you have a map for yourself, you're halfway there because, oh, I know myself. I know how I'm gonna react. I know how to best present myself in this situation. I'm gonna choose how to show up, how I'm gonna encounter this, because I can truly, truly believe that I can turn this into a gift and I can find the thread. It's gonna make me stronger from this scenario. Yeah. Yeah. The threat, I always call it the sweet spot. Or then also when you take action, what is your singular thing that sticks out when you are offering your services compared to all the other coaches out there that are in a similar field as you are offering the services, so what is your singular thing that differentiates you from the rest of those that offer coaching in personal resilience? Yeah, so I have a big community of, of coaches and, and people that I speak to, and I think one thing that we've all recognize is that you, you tend to be interested to coach people who are going through life scenarios that you've encountered yourself. So for me, the thing which. Makes me unique is I've, I've been divorced and remarried. I have now on my third continent of living. So I've been an expatriate like three times. And so it really is about that transitioning into complete whole new world, being a stranger in a strange land. That's like my kind of hero archetype story is. Like manifesting, like transmuting, and this is why, Alchemy is the name of my, my company. I, I love the, the, the metaphor of transmutation, the unknown territory into something which is mapped, which is familiar, which has become comfortable to you pushing your comfort zones bravely until more of the world makes sense to you. I, I guess that's my USP. Okay. And one more question. What does a strong personal brain mean to you? What does it have to have? Oh, so this is easy. I think I'm congruence being congruent. Okay. This was my biggest lesson in life myself. When you know who you are and you show up to the. In that way, you feel in ease and flow. You feel at peace with yourself. You are showing up in the world exactly the way that you are. So just congruence. And, Oh, it was not my last question. There's one more question. So do you have like a three step action taking suggestion when we wanna build our personal resilience in this specific times of uncertainty when we are going through it. So what do we have to do first, second, and third? Yes. Okay. I think for personal resilience that there are three prongs to it. It's first manage yourself in the moment. Second, bounce back quicker. And third, fortify your foundation. So managing yourself in the moment is about, postal feedback is something that can be very helpful for that. When we actually get strong, we of have this, so Amy Cutter's research about the power pose and, victory arms. You do that when you naturally do that, when you run over the finish line, having victory arms. You can influence your mind by the way that you move your body rather than it just being the other way. So managing yourself in the moment when you're preparing to go into a difficult situation. The resilience about bouncing back quicker is really how do I recover to center quickly like a tennis player I, I. Send ball over the net. I've just gotta, I, I'm not thinking about, Oh, that was a bad shot. I could have done that better. No, you just gotta recover to center quickly. That makes such a big difference in sales teams. Someone who is constantly facing a lot of rejection. That definitely applies if you are an entrepreneur, 10 knows for every yes. Being able to recover quickly. From that is really important. And then the last bit, fortifying your foundations is about your people landscape. Go out and meet people, network, get connected. Feel that you are situated somewhere with, We need human connections so much, it's a way that we can Understand the problems we face at Universal. It's very comforting to know that we are not unique in our problems. So yeah, fortifying your foundations is really about having strands all those little pieces of your life so that you're not over strong in one domain and not in the rest, that you have a balanced life. Okay. Beautiful. Thank you so much for that tips. Yeah. We are almost at the end and with every guest, I wanna do a fire terms question, answer session. Okay. Ready? Alright, . Passion. Travel, Wonder and awe. The world is a huge place.. Okay. Traveling. Unique, unseen, places. New discovery, curiosity, mindset. Take responsibility for managing your mindset. Women empowerment, recognizing that being a woman is your superpower. All of those soft skills, all of those, the empathy, the, the, the things which make us uniquely feminine. That's your superpower. It's not a disadvantage. I love it. and brands. Back to congruence. Yeah. Vulnerability, authenticity, congruence. Okay, good. Sally, where can listeners find you if they wanna reach out to you? I'm on LinkedIn, but the best thing is my website, alchemy lc.com. And you can actually find out about the mental fitness course. Do your saboteur test on the front page of my website. Okay, cool. Yeah. Sally, thank you so much for being my guest on Brandstalk today. It was such a pleasure. It was such a delightful conversation. Thank you so much for helping us, how to build our personal resilience when navigating uncertainty. Thank you so much. Thank you,