167. Losing confidence when your health declines

You might not have noticed, but your confidence may have taken a hit because your health isn't what it used to be? Maybe your energy’s dipped, or your body just isn’t behaving the way it used to, and suddenly showing up in your business or life feels harder than it should. 

That’s what this episode is about – the ways that feeling less well can start to shake your self-belief.

I wrote this episode based on my own feelings, but also for the woman who’s always been strong, capable, and “on it”, and now finds herself wondering why she doesn’t quite feel like that version of herself anymore. It’s a gentle reminder that you don’t have to be at your best to still be confident, and worthy, and successful.

💛 Come and have a listen. Let’s talk about what confidence really looks like when your body feels different, and how you can begin to trust yourself again.

Transcript

0:00

Hello, hello, how are you? How are you? It's November. It's November. What the frickety bonk has happened to the weather? It is, it is cold. It's cold, it's windy, it's raining. It's absolutely throwing it down outside right now. What is going on? I mean, I feel like, I feel like we've skipped autumn altogether. I think it was summer and now it's winter, I know. We're not winter yet. I know this, but this is what it feels like. It feels like we've gone from summer to winter and no middle ground. I quite like autumn. I quite like the, you know, the sun when it's all a little bit warm, but it's going down earlier in the evening and it feels lovely in that nice golden light. And the trees start losing their leaves and things and it's all pretty, you know? I think I like autumn. But we haven't had it. So where the hell is it? I want it back, please. Yeah, it's really cold. Really cold right now. I have a rule where I say no heating on in the house until November. 31st of October, I broke and I put the heating on. This does not impress me much. I know it was only one day short, but God, it was cold. So yeah, the heating's well and truly on now. And yeah, summer has gone, but that's okay. What has been going on? Not a massive amount really. Couple of pool tournaments. Surprise, surprise. Nothing is going on with the cats. They're just behaving. That's odd, isn't it? They're just behaving themselves. Life is quiet. Just how I like it. And that's it really. So no news to report. Nothing to tell you about right now. Oh! tell you what I have got to tell you about. November, right? We're in November now, which means my Bright Friday bundles are live. They are live and kicking and you can go get them. So, I don't want to hear about Black Friday. Every year I'm like, oh, Black Friday. And I seem to get bombarded with stuff in my inbox for weeks and weeks and weeks and... and it annoys me, right? Let's not have Black Friday, let's have Bright Friday. So I've gone with, on my webpage for Bright Friday, I have gone with the brightest pink, the brightest pink. It's not in my usual color palette, I know, but we're going Bright Friday here. And I have given you three awesome bundles. So if you're listening to this in real time, if you're listening to this in November 2025, this is what you're getting. You've got three bundles of varying degrees of monetary value. You've got the ultimate value, which is pretty much everything in my shop that's on my website. It pretty much is. So yeah, everything you've got the gosh. testing myself now. You've got the bigger body, better bedroom course, confident conversation with your doctor course. You've got hunger and fullness, body respect. You've got the intuitive kitchen and pantry makeover checklist. you've got the new evening ritual workbook, which really has only just gone in the shop. That's lovely. That's such a lovely, lovely thing to have. There's just loads in there. The ultimate bundle should be 303 pounds if I'm selling it individually. It is in the shop for 155 pounds. You can have all of that for literally half the price. And then the second bundle is the nighttime bundle and that is bigger body, better bedroom, course, and the evening ritual course, not course, uh workbook. Come on, Terry, your brain. that, let me check my prices, hold on. That is usually a hundred and seven pound if I sell it individually, if I sell those two things individually on Bright Friday through November, you can have it for just seventy seven pound. What a blooming bargain. And then the other one is the foundations bundle. That is the body respect course and the hunger and fullness course. Now, if you buy those separately, they would cost you ninety pounds and for Bright Friday for the month of November, you can have the two for 55 pounds. What a blummin' bargain. I mean, let's face it, if you're gonna buy one of the bundles, you may as well have the ultimate bundle and get everything for next to no money. Also, if it helps, at the checkout, you can pay on split pay, which means you can basically split your payments into three, I think, using things like Klarna. So there are loads of options there and you don't have to rush through them because you get lifetime access to all of them. So go pick your bundle. The link is in the show notes. Do not miss out because these are awesome. And you know, if you don't get them now, what's going to happen is you'll think, I'll come back to that later. And then later in the month, you've completely forgotten and then it's December and you're like, God damn it, I should have bought those things. So go get them, please. Go on, go sign up. That's my treat to you this month. I'm not bombarding you with Black Friday rubbish where people have heavily inflated things to then reduce them. I haven't done that. The prices are what they are. I've just shaved a load of money off. So treat yourself, go on. um Let's now talk about what we actually came here to talk about. um So here's what I was thinking. I have a chronic illness. I've mentioned that before, right? I've told you about that. I have real problems with my energy. And sometimes I give myself a bit of a mental beating because I'm like, I feel so slow and sluggish and like my body doesn't want to do anything anymore. There was a time, as you know, over the years, I sure I've talked about this stuff, but There was a time where I was pole dancing competitively and by competitively I mean I used to do it for fun but I used to like to enter a couple of competitions and things and oh I used to really really really love it I used to be in the studio five times a week I used to be always wanting to do bigger and better and be stronger and be fitter and have more stamina And I'm a bit all or nothing when it comes to stuff like this anyway, but I was, I felt so good. I felt so fit and strong and healthy. mean, pole dancing is honestly one of the most confidence boosting things I've ever done. It's incredible. However, I don't do that anymore. And before that, I was a bit of a gym bunny. I... lived in the gym, I always wanted to lift bigger and heavier and more and I wanted to do more reps and more reps and my body felt good when I was doing all of that, you know, I can't do it anymore because my energy levels I have to be really careful with. And so when you go from being very fit and well and healthy and active to feeling sluggish and physically unfit, it can be really, really difficult to stay confident in yourself and stay confident in your body. I'm not talking about your confidence that is attached to your size, because that's a different thing. Your confidence in your appearance and how you present in the world, that's slightly different. I'm talking about how we link confidence, how we lose confidence when our health declines. We talk about confidence in work, right? And appearance. And we talk about it in leadership and communication and that sort of thing. But confidence in our bodies, in how we feel, how we move, how we function day to day, that's different. That's a much quieter story that kind of ripples along without anybody even noticing. And sometimes we don't even actually know how to verbalize that or even how to recognize it start with. For many, many women, especially those running their own businesses, it's a story that can really quietly chip away at the way that we show up in the world as the face of our brand, as the face of our business. And it feels a little bit like maybe your body doesn't match your ambition anymore, you know? And there's a particular type of frustration that comes from feeling like your body and your mind are no longer working at the same pace as you, as what you're used to, as what you've always been able to do, your goals, your drive, your ambition, your desire to make things happen, that's all still there, but your energy doesn't seem to keep up with you anymore. Does that make sense? Does it resonate a little bit? Maybe you used to go to the gym regularly like me, maybe you had more stamina for long work days and social events and family life and social commitments. Or maybe you simply woke up with a bit more spark than you do now. And when that fades, even just a little bit, it can really knock your confidence. And that's because confidence is not just about mindset. It's also about... the sense of trust that you have in yourself. And when your body starts to feel unreliable, that trust starts to fade and you can, you can not feel like you. You can not feel like you and your body are friends anymore. So there really is a hidden link there between health and confidence. When you feel well, everything flows more easily. Decisions feel sharper. You have the capacity to think more clearly, to stay calm. to generate ideas, to just get shit done. But when your health dips, whether that's due to fatigue, chronic illness, hormonal shifts, the time in your life that you're stuck in, know, perimenopause, menopause, that sort of thing, or just simply life catching up with you, that confidence can subtly shift as well. It's not that you... suddenly stop believing in yourself. That's not really what it is. More often it's those little small dips that begin to mount up and then down the line you realize that you're just not the person you used to be anymore. It's like the energy that you used to draw from feels a bit muted or just not available to you anymore. You begin to question whether you can still handle the same load that you used to handle. whether you can still perform at the same level, whether your fitness is up to scratch, whether you'll ever get it back again. As those doubts creep in, you start to shrink back a little bit. Even if nobody else can see it, you can feel it, right? So for small business owners, this can be especially tough. When your health changes, it's not just about how you feel, is it? It's about your capacity to deliver. and create and lead because you are your business. There is no sick pay. There's no one else to take over from you. Automatically then you're in this place where you feel like you just have to crack on with it, regardless of what your body is telling you. And then to add to that, the fear of completely dropping the ball, of not performing the way that you used to, of making mistakes, of missing things that can actually be really hard hitting. Your confidence is wavering not because you're not capable, but because your energy maybe has become unpredictable. And then that guilt creeps in. I should be doing more. I should be doing better. I should have a handle on this. But your energy is a resource. It's a finite resource. It will run out eventually if you don't look after it. Even if you would like it to be infinite, it is not. So protecting it is really, really important. It's not being lazy. It's good for you. It's good for your business. It's good for leadership. It's good. eh It's a good example to set for your friends and family. You don't need to just push through. You can actually take care of yourself. One of the hardest parts about losing confidence when your health declines though is how invisible it can be to fatigue, pain, brain fog. brain fog's horrible. Chronic illness, perimenopause, menopause symptoms. None of these things really show on the outside. Okay, so with some chronic illness, with some things like menopause, some of these things do show to other people, but on the whole, The grind of these things does not show to anybody. You can look perfectly fine while struggling underneath. You can be putting on this front and making out to the world like you're absolutely fine. And they wouldn't know any different because people, especially us women, we get very clever at masking these things and just pushing through because, you know, women are doers, right? We just get on with it. but that invisibility can actually be very isolating too. It can make you feel like you're the only one going through it. Right? I know how rough it feels sometimes to have a chronic illness and feel like you are the only person in the world that could possibly be as tired as you are. And you what's really frustrating is when you've got people who seemingly live a really lovely, peaceful, easy life and they're going, I'm so tired. I'm so tired. Yeah, you might be tired love, but guess what? I'm really, really tired. And it's sometimes like people just don't see it. They don't know and they don't see it. Even if they know that you've got this thing going on, even if they know that you've got a chronic illness, even if they know that you're not well, somehow it's like they don't see it. really see it and it can make you feel like a bit of a fraud especially if you are still showing up, still smiling, still delivering and people are still telling you how amazing you are because that happens all the time. you're doing amazing, you're doing such a good job. great yeah I'm broken but I'm but I'm still doing it but but confidence does not mean pretending, right? Real confidence is being able to acknowledge what is true for you and what you need in this moment. It is knowing that you being a good person is not dependent on your wellness or your productivity or how composed you feel to the outside world. It is knowing that you being a good person is not dependent on your wellness or your productivity or how composed you appear. There are no prizes for rocking up each day and burning out when you should be resting. If you once identified as fit or strong or high energy, it can be really confronting when that is no longer your reality. I really, really get that. There's a kind of grief that comes with it, I suppose. You might find yourself really missing the version of you that could handle more, that could do more, that felt more vibrant. You might even feel a bit embarrassed by it, a bit embarrassed to admit how much of that has changed for you and how much that change bothers you. And it's hard. It's really hard to accept that that person that used to be maybe isn't you anymore. That's because identity and confidence are really tightly linked. When your health changes, the sense of who you are changes. It can blur a little bit. The woman who could do it all suddenly has to start saying no. cancel plans or just slow down a bit and it takes an awful lot of self-compassion to actually accept that. Possibly a lot of that is because society has got these expectations, right? This myth of the healthy woman. We live in a culture that really glorifies output and energy and constant motion and pushing forward and battling on. Women in particular are very much praised for being busy and capable. She does it all. It's seen as a compliment, right? We're expected to... show up for work regardless of how unwell we're feeling. People are made to feel bad for taking sick days. So when your body is asking you to rest and your health is dipping, it can make you feel like a failure. You start to wonder what people will really think if you're not switched on anymore. If you cancel an appointment, if you don't go into the office that day, what will people possibly think? how weak you might come across. But I said this earlier, there are no prizes for battling through. No one really thanks you for it, do they? If you turn up to something, to the office, to work, to a network event, to a client, and you are feeling really run down and you look unwell, no one's saying, oh fab, thanks, Terry, thank you so much. Thank you so much for pushing through today. Thank you so much for turning up to the office today. Thank you for giving it your all when actually you should be at home in bed. No one thanks you, do they? Health is not some moral achievement. You don't owe the world a constantly energetic, high-functioning version of yourself. You are allowed to have seasons. You're allowed to need to take some downtime. You're allowed to redefine what strong looks like for you. You're allowed to rebuild your confidence. So when your health changes and you lose some of that confidence that you used to have, rebuilding it starts with acceptance. And I don't mean resignation, right? I don't mean this negative, well, that's just the way it is now. I mean recognition. an acknowledgement of where you are and your capabilities and your possibilities. And then moving from that place into a more confident place. The more you fight against your body, the further you move from trusting it and the more uncomfortable life feels. The more you listen to your body, the closer you move to peace and the more self-compassion you have and the more life can just flow. This is where embodiment comes in. Embodiment isn't really just about yoga poses and wellness rituals. That's what we think that embodiment is sometimes. Those things can definitely help, but that's not what embodiment is as a whole. It's about reestablishing a relationship with your body and seeing it as you being in a partnership, not you trying to control it. It's learning to ask, what do I need instead of what's wrong with me? When you treat your body with respect, instead of resentment, your confidence can come back. And you get that not because you're back to how you were, but because you're rebuilding a trust in yourself. That's where that confidence comes from. So you don't need to disappear when your health changes. You just need to find new ways to show up that works for you. So that might mean being more selective with your time. pacing your workload, communicating your boundaries with people more clearly. You know, don't have to say yes to everything. It's okay to let people actually see your humanness and say no when you need to. There's real power in that. Showing up doesn't really mean showing up at full speed either. It means showing up honestly. So confidence is not a fixed trait, right? You don't have it or lose it. That's not the way that works either. It's something that evolves as you do. Over your life, as your life changes, as your health changes, it's easy to feel like you've lost your edge. But maybe what you've actually done is simply entered a new chapter. That's all. It's just a bit different now. This chapter of your life is different. This confidence is a little bit different. So maybe it's not the loud, brash, energetic, aggressive approach to life anymore. Maybe now it's quieter. It's more grounded. It's more attuned. If you can start seeing confidence as adaptability, maybe, rather than front and performance, then you can really start to believe in yourself. You do not have to wait to feel better to do that. So, I would love to hear your thoughts on this. I would love your comments. I'd love your email. I do love your emails. I love your comments. I love your emails. I love hearing from you because these things do not just affect you, right? They do affect lots of different people and... you often feel like you're the only one and then you hear somebody say it and you're like, oh, me too. I get it. I get it. That makes perfect sense. So if that's you and you're feeling this, then I am sending love and kindness your way. It's time to start being a little kinder to yourself and acknowledging where your health is and then moving forward in just a slightly different way. That's all. So I hope that's helped. I hope that's helped you maybe realize where you are or accept where you are, you know, see things a little differently, maybe, hopefully. Right. Lovely to speak to you. I'm going to go and get some food and a hot chocolate because that's what happens in winter. Hot chocolate season. Yes, that's a good thing about winter, right? Yeah, I'm going to go do that and... then I will speak to you really, really soon, I hope. Take it easy, take care of yourself, and yeah, speak to you next week.