Don’t Let Social Media Anxiety Hold You Back with Jennifer van Alstyne

Photo by Prateek Katyal on Unsplash

Are you a social media lurker? Most people on social media are lurkers, though it doesn’t always feel like that because the people we see in our home feeds aren’t. The people we see most often tend to be sharing not just once in a while, but often.

There are many reasons people, especially professors, stay more private on social media.

Here are some I’ve come across:

• I don’t think people care about what I have to say.

• What will my students think if they follow me?

• If I say the wrong thing, will I get reported?

• I just like to scroll, but I don’t really engage.

• I don’t know what to say.

• I’m nervous about my supervisor seeing what I post.

• Will my post go viral and get me in trouble?

• What if I don’t want to post about my work?

• I have a general anxiety/fear over social media.

Whether you’re a social media lurker or anxious about putting yourself out there, I hope my story helps you. I’m Jennifer van Alstyne, a communications strategist for academics, researchers, and organizations. I help people share their work in online spaces, like social media.

Fear kept me away from social media

While I’m active on social media now, it might surprise you to learn I was so scared of social media, I deleted all my accounts. When I returned, years later, I kept my accounts very private: just for family and personal friends.

There are a few ways people use to control their privacy

• Staying off social media altogether

• Keeping your accounts private

• Using an anonymous account

• Having a traditional account, but not posting yourself except for the occasional share/retweet

• Use customized Privacy Settings in each social media platform

I’ve used all of these at one point or another.

While I did have a fear of being judged on social media, and kind of general anxiety about friends who had huge followings and tons of likes, that isn’t why I left social media.

I deleted my social media accounts after leaving a physically abusive relationship when I was 18. The idea of being seen by the person I feared most felt paralyzing. At the time, I was scared to sleep. I jumped every time the phone rang. Eventually, I moved on campus where I felt safer.

As I began to heal, I started to recognize how small I’d let my world get. I missed the friendships and larger network I’d stopped communicating with. Staying off social media altogether was no longer right for me. So I started a new Facebook account and sent out friend requests one at a time. Baby steps.

I kept being surprised when people connected. I looked deeper into my past, reaching out to childhood friends. Having so many people connect in a short timeframe made me feel good about myself because they were real people I knew. I started connecting with my professors, visiting writers, or people I met at events. When I presented at my 1st conference in undergrad, I connected with my fellow panelists.

Photo by Georgia de Lotz on Unsplash

Social media networking

Later I would learn what that was called: I was networking on social media, one person at a time. Do you groan when you hear the word networking?

As Malisa Kurtz, PhD says on the Beyond the Professoriate blog, “I didn’t realize at the time that networking is just relationship-building—getting to know people I liked, following up with them, and also supporting them when I could.” Dr. Kurtz said networking is about

• Relationship-building

• Getting to know people

• Following-up with them

• Supporting them when possible

And while she wasn’t talking about using social media for networking specifically, these things are all possible there.

Social media is great for relationship-building because it allows you and another person to connect. You can get in touch with that person, and engage with what they share. It’s a great way to get to know them in a more passive way than sometimes ‘networking’ feels.

Following-up may look like a comment or reply. Maybe, it’s a direct message. Social media allows us to support people when it’s possible because we’re more likely to see when we can help. That might look like a Like, or “Congratulations!” It can also be

• Asking for advice

• Help to connect them with someone you know

• Sharing a resource

• Friendship

Networking on social media is really about finding an audience who cares. That’s why moving past your social media anxiety is so important.

Maybe your social media anxiety is more about work. Don’t let fear of your university or students hold you back from being present. Be aware of what you’re saying and that it can be shared. But don’t let that keep you from speaking at all.

I’ve come up with these tips to help you move forward.

• Think about how you spend your time on social media and why

• Take it one step at a time while checking your comfort level

• Join conversations

• Practice bragging the right way

1. Think about how you spend your time on social media and why

Why do you lurk on social media? Maybe it’s one of the reasons I listed at the top of this article. Maybe you have a story like mine, and there’s a specific reason you’ve wanted to stay private on social media.

Before you jump in, consider how and why you use social media the way you do now.

2. Take it one step at a time while checking your comfort level

Don’t try to do it all at once and become super active on social media right away. Take things one step at a time, and check-in with yourself to gauge your comfort level.

I went from being off social media to taking my current accounts out of Private mode. I posted some original content there (mostly personal photos or news). Then, I ventured out onto other social media platforms like Twitter. Now, I’m doing live video on YouTube, like my upcoming chat with Dr. Caitlin Faas about Social Media and Procrastination.

I’ve definitely broken out of my comfort zone on social media. It’s okay to try something new, even if you’re a bit uncertain.

3. Join conversations

The best way to start engaging on social media is to join conversations. It’s another effective way to stop scrolling on social media.

By replying to posts that you like or are interested in, you’re practicing meaningful engagement. Leave a comment on a post you like. It might spark a larger conversation. It’s up to you how much you want to engage, or not.

4. Practice bragging the right way

Practice writing a good news social media post, and sharing it with a personal audience like your family and friends. I know it seems easy, but imposter syndrome tends to strike academics hard when sharing good news no matter how accomplished you are.

When you brag, don’t apologize. And, be specific. Help people understand what your good news is, and why it’s important to you. While social comparison can leave us anxious about sharing good news, practicing it just once tends to make people feel good from the response.

Academic vs. Public Writing on Social Media

“I should be writing” is a common sentiment of academics on the #AcWri hashtag on Twitter. And that sentiment, the idea of academic vs. public writing, holds many professors back from social media. They’re not sure if it’s supposed to be academic or personal. How public does public writing have to be?

Social media is like having a microphone. You can turn it on when you want to reach people. You also have a lot of control over the settings. Some social media platforms help you reach a lot of people at once, like Twitter. Whereas others help you reach the people you’ve already connected with like Facebook and LinkedIn.

Being present on social media allows you to share your academic work and life when you want to. It allows you to connect with a larger audience to share your academic writing with all your audiences

• Academic

• Personal

• Public

Good luck on your social media journey, and remember it’s okay if things change over time.

To take the first steps to manage your online presence as an academic, join my free course The Internet for Academics.

Bio

Jennifer van Alstyne is a communications strategist for faculty and researchers. At The Academic Designer LLC, Jennifer helps people and organizations share their work with the world in online spaces. Her blog/podcast, The Social Academic shares advice articles and interviews twice a month. She is a Peruvian-American poet and independent scholar with a focus on representations of nature in poetry. Connect with Jennifer on Twitter @HigherEdPR.

How I Used Powerpoint to Squash My Fear of Public Speaking (and Tips to Help You Squash Your Fears, Too!)

Guest Post By Echo Rivera, PhD 

Echorivera.com / stellarslides.com / Twitter / YouTube / LinkedIn

I got no sleep the night before. I couldn’t eat breakfast. I had a lingering feeling of wanting to throw up. I was sweating. I was shaking. I hated everything and questioned whether a bachelor's degree was really worth all this trouble. 

No, this wasn’t me before taking a final. This was me before giving a 10 minute class presentation to 25 of my fellow undergrad students who weren’t even paying attention to me.

Can you relate? Do you have, or have you ever had, major anxiety over public speaking? 

We all have different paths that led us to this point. For some, this fear has always been there. For others, it’s because of a negative experience that we can’t quite seem to shake because we feel so much shame about it (hi, that’s me). Either way, once we end up with these overwhelming negative emotions about public speaking, it can sometimes feel like it’s impossible to overcome it. 

Now here’s the hard part: once you get to this point, if you don’t actively work on addressing those emotions, you will be stuck in a perpetual loop of anxiety and fear over public speaking. 

The biggest mistake you can make at this point is hoping that you’ll overcome your fears and anxieties over time. A lot of people believe they can overcome their fear or anxiety about public speaking simply by doing more presentations. This rarely works. More likely than not, procrastination anxiety will take over and create perpetual negative loops that will trap you in this mindset. 

Procrastination anxiety will make you procrastinate on your presentation (duh, I know). When you procrastinate on your presentation for too long (which many people who fear public speaking do), then you leave yourself with only enough time to create a #DeathByPowerpoint presentation. Because of that, while giving your presentation you’ll see an audience that is disengaged, confused, or not enjoying your talk. This will further validate your negative emotions about the entire experience, which will increase your procrastination anxiety for next time. If you also end up with negative feedback about your slides or public speaking skills, these emotions will be even further reinforced and even harder to break with each cycle you go through. 

So, without actively breaking the cycle of negative emotions I mentioned above, each presentation will only reinforce that loop. If you want to break it -- if you want to overcome your public speaking anxiety -- then you have to be proactive about it.

Here is how I recommend you begin working on this issue. It’s a combination of what I did that worked for me (and generally works for others), as well as new lessons I learned along the way. 

Warning -- these tips are things like “do a power pose” or “be yourself.” I drew a comic about the public speaking “tips” that I find bothersome, because they don’t address the root problems of this issue/

1. End your presentation procrastination (and address your procrastination anxiety)

The first bad habit to break is your procrastination and is a must. No one can create an amazing presentation from scratch in just a couple days, so you have to start here. This video about procrastination anxiety may be particularly helpful. You may also need to work through the shame you might be feeling as a result of previous negative experiences and recognize self-sabotaging thoughts you may be having. 

Once you start to deal with those emotions, it’s time to get serious about starting earlier and earlier when you have an upcoming presentation. I shocked many of my viewers by revealing my own workflow and timeline for working on presentations. But this workflow and timeline is a direct result of how I overcome my own fears of public speaking, and will be particularly helpful if you also have fears/anxieties about giving presentations. 

2. Create a script and practice it 

I also shocked a lot of academics by revealing that I recommend everyone creates a script for their presentations. Most people are convinced that the worst presenters--the ones who sound like robots--are those who use a script. Not true. A script is your most valuable resource for creating an effective and engaging presentation. 

Even people who love public speaking should create a script, because people who love public speaking often go on tangents or are disorganized (because they’re “winging it”), which often makes them hard to follow. 

But people who have public speaking anxieties? A script (and practicing it!) is the #1 most effective strategy that helped me overcome my negative emotions about speaking. I cannot emphasize this enough--if I didn’t get into the habit of scripting my talks, I don’t think I would have ever overcome my fears.

I was excessive about it at first. I literally memorized every single word (remember though: this was for short class presentations, not 60-min talks). I practiced it until I nailed my dramatic pauses, had varying intonations, and my hand gestures were on point. This took a ridiculous amount of time and was completely unsustainable. So by the time I went to grad school, I started tweaking this process and now have it finely tuned so it’s easy to fit into my schedule and is practical for 60 minute or longer presentations. 

3. Create Well-designed, Visually Engaging Slides

Okay, so you’ve started working on your presentation early and you have a great script. Now what? 

The surprising answer is that it’s time to pivot to your slide design skills. 

Beyond my excessive scripting and practicing habits, the other way I overcame my fear of public speaking is by creating engaging and memorable presentation slides. Although I recommend PowerPoint for slide presentations because it has so many great features, you can create slides with Keynote or Google Slides too. 

If you’re like most academics I’ve worked with, you’ve probably been trying to improve your slide design for a while, but it takes way too long or never seems to make the impact you want. That’s because there are tons of myths out there about what being an effective presenter even means and myths about how to design slides effective for an academic audience. Plus we all have picked up some bad presentation habits along the way. You’ll need to unlearn those myths and address those bad habits to design great slides, and I have a FREE online course about these myths and bad habits. It’s called #StellarSlidesin5 and you can start today by signing up here. 

It’s kind of funny how I figured this out. Part of the reason I was so terrified of public speaking was that the idea of people looking at me made me nervous. My solution was to create slides that were so fun, unique, and visual that no one would look at me--they would look at the slides instead. 

And, it mostly worked! Most people watched my slides instead of me. Success! Except...then something happened that I never saw coming. 

4. Remember that Change Doesn’t Happen in One Presentation; Allow Positive Feedback to Build Your Confidence Over Time! 

The combination of having a perfectly rehearsed script plus creative slides resulted in the final element that helped me fully overcome my fear: positive feedback. My fellow undergrads would come up to me and tell me things like, “WOW! You’re such a good presenter!” and “Your presentation was awesome!” 

At first, I was embarrassed because I was convinced they were messing with me. I thought I did so bad that they felt sorry for me and were just trying to make me feel better. I dismissed the high grades and positive comments from my professors as being something that “everyone probably got because it’s probably just an easy assignment anyway.” 

I went on like that--dismissing any/all positive feedback--until I made it into graduate school. That’s, like, 4 years of dismissing positive feedback. And even in grad school, I was weary of positive feedback, but started to become open to it. I didn’t fully acknowledge that I created effective and engaging presentations until after I earned my master’s degree. 

I’m sharing this for two reasons: 

1. It will take time for you to build your confidence in public speaking. If you don’t suddenly feel better about public speaking, don’t give up. Assume that you’re in it for the long haul and trust the process. 

2. Believe people when they tell you your presentation was great! Don’t be like me. Don’t dismiss it. 

After you’ve worked on #1-3 and you start getting positive feedback from your audience (because you WILL), then take it to heart. Let it feed into your confidence, but also remember that it may take some time for this to happen. Once you start getting positive feedback -- or even just notice a more engaged audience -- let it serve as a deterrent for all those negative emotions about public speaking that you’ve accumulated over the years. Let it help end your procrastination anxiety. 

And who knows: The (currently) unimaginable might happen: You may actually start to enjoy creating and delivering presentations. Yup. I know. It seems impossible, but several people who have taken my presentation design course have experienced this transformation! And I now do public speaking for a living! 

5. (BONUS) Learn improv skills 

When I mentioned my fear of public speaking to others the only recommendation they had was to sign up for Toastmasters. For me, that was literally the stuff of nightmares and I was not interested at all. I imagine that if I had followed that advice, my path towards overcoming my fear of public speaking would not have taken so long. So, although I can’t speak to a personal experience with improv skill development, I know it’s a valuable skill to have and it’s worked for others. If it doesn’t terrify you like it did me (or your braver than I am), then I highly recommend you try it!

You Can Do This! 

Hopefully this post was helpful and provided some new ideas for overcoming your fear of public speaking. For what it’s worth, you definitely aren’t alone in having these fears and I know that you can overcome it! 

With joy,Echo

P.s. If you’d like to create better presentations, get started with my free course #StellarSlidesin5. 

Bio: Dr. Echo Rivera helps academics, researchers, consultants and evaluators communicate more effectively and creatively. She has a PhD in Community Psychology, and after about 14 years of working in the social science research and program evaluation fields, Echo became a freelance communications consultant. She is on a mission to end #DeathByPowerpoint in our course lectures, conference presentations, and other educational settings. What she does goes beyond just graphic design. She works specifically with people who want to present their data in ways that increase the likelihood the audience will pay attention to, understand, remember, and use the information.

Why I Joined The Life Coach School Certification with Brooke Castillo

I’ve completed a lot of training in my lifetime. This is proven by the fact that I earned a Ph.D. in 2013! But even since earning a doctoral degree, you may be surprised to hear that The Life Coach School Certification process is the certificate I’m most proud of. It’s the first one that I earned simply because I wanted to. I didn’t do it for external validation or praise. I did it for me.

Let me take you back to the beginning of the story. In 2016, I was going through a career crisis. I was finishing up my third year as an assistant professor in my dream job, but it had been a difficult year for me. I was struggling with teaching. Our university president had just resigned. And a project I was emotionally invested in came to a screeching halt. 

I was devastated. I found myself searching for what was next. 

Getting Started with Life Coaching

So I dipped my toes into coaching that summer and into the fall. I found Brooke Castillo’s podcast in a random search and started listening. I proceeded to complete a foundational course in an ICF accredited program and then got to work coaching. My first paid coaching client started in January 2017. 

I was thrilled to be doing something that I felt connected to. I started coaching more clients, but then I started to run into a wall. While some of my clients were taking actions and getting results, some of them weren’t and I didn’t know why. I wanted to help them.

As I continued listening to Brooke’s podcast, I absorbed more of her wisdom. (Honestly, I was very suspicious of the fake nails and eyelashes. That’s not how we typically roll in academia! I wanted to see authentic evidence.) As reticent as I was, the more I read the books she recommended, the more I realized she really knew what she was talking about.

In the summer of 2018, I began wondering about my business. I questioned whether I should keep moving forward with it. If I should continue spending my free time coaching. But then it happened, as if by magic: Brooke revealed her first online certification cohort.

Something inside of me screamed YES. You have to do this! You must make this happen. I had heard the siren call when she first opened up Self-Coaching Scholars and ignored it. Now was my time and I wouldn’t let the opportunity pass me by. 

But I was PETRIFIED of spending that kind of money. I had spent less money on my car than this program cost. I had never paid for tuition in school as I was always on scholarship or fully funded in graduate school. (I took out loans for living expenses, for sure.) But this? This was a huge deal. I was on a mission to get out of debt and this felt like moving in the opposite direction.

The Life Coach School Certification

Even so, I took the leap and signed up. That’s also when I had my first experience with quality coaching for myself. I hired someone to help me work on my money beliefs (fortuitously, she’s now my accountant). A Life Coach School certified coach helped me to process through my thoughts and fears as we geared up for the program starting in October 2018. I had so many thoughts to manage but, through that coaching, I overcame my constant worrying.

And then I became unstoppable! 

Learning all of the tools and techniques from Brooke, I knew exactly how to help my clients get results. Now I have the model and I can understand what keeps a person from taking action. It’s because of the feelings that drive them. Circumstances are neutral. But it’s thoughts that create feelings. And the good news? I get to choose my thoughts.

I couldn’t have anticipated the monumental results I got simply from showing up for myself. Just from being coached, I was able to: 

• Become a time ninja as I balanced coaching and being a professor.

• Figure out with my husband how to reconnect after years of him traveling and me “being busy.”

• Become a confident mom when we adopted out of foster care.

• Reconnect with my own mother after years of not talking.

• Earn back all of the money I invested in certification (and more) within 6 months.

• Give myself permission to trust myself and make decisions for myself instead of asking everyone else around me what I should do.

• Stop outrunning myself.

• Deal with my emotions (boredom, worry, overwhelmedness, etc).

• Realize I wasn’t supposed to be happy all of the time. (100% happiness is a myth.)

And then I created an amazing result. Brooke asked me to be on the podcast.

Brooke Castillo’s Life Coach Podcast 

Her podcast is regularly in the top 250 list of all podcasts. This was huge. If you had asked me in 2016, when I started listening to her, “Do you know you’ll be on a future episode?” I would have looked at you quizzically. In 2018, I might have said, “Yeah, maybe in 2025?” 

But here I am, on one of Brooke’s episodes in 2020, sharing my enthusiasm with the world!

Related to that experience, I was also flown out to Dallas for a photo/video shoot to talk about my experience in Coach Certification. It all happened in the same week and I only had about two weeks to prepare. You know your true priorities when an event like this happens - I could have easily said my schedule was full or I was too busy. But I dropped everything!

In order from top left to bottom right - Andrea Scalici, Lauren Cash, Elizabeth Salazar, Lisa Hatlestad, Lindsay Dotzlaf, Janet Archer, myself, and Carrie Marshall

I was privileged to spend the day in Dallas surrounded by other incredible women. The conversations in between videos (and in such a fancy house!) were mind-blowing. I saw the evidence of what it’s like to put yourself in the room with smart people. These women were mirrors for myself and what I had also accomplished. 

As I soaked everything in, I heard earth-shattering statements just casually mentioned on the car ride or at dinner. We all helped each other to shine brighter. That trip gave me so much energy to move forward. 

Although Dallas was magical, I did need to come back home. But after being surrounded by these encouraging women, I am more trusting of myself now. I used this experience to anchor myself, to remember how far I’ve come and where I’m headed.

Is Life Coaching for You?

I want the same kind of energy and motivation for you to accomplish your dreams. I want you to “trust your knowing”, as Glennon Doyle puts it. When an opportunity taps you on the shoulder and you feel pulled to it - you go for it. That’s what certification was about for me. Listening to and acting on something I truly wanted to do, just for myself. 

You probably have things like this too. Are you pushing them away or leaning into them? Even if it’s scary. It’s time to take the leap! 

Why You Need to Stop Trying to Lose Weight

Photo by Siora Photography on Unsplash

Many of my clients tell me they want to lose weight. In fact, it’s fairly common language today to say that your goal is to “lose weight”. 

We’re even told by doctors we should lose weight! But most of the time it doesn’t even work. 

Why?

Today I want to talk to you about some of the problems associated with the way we think about weight. Specifically, we’ll look at the research behind Weight-Inclusive vs. Weight-Normative approaches to health.

Admittedly, I’m not a medical doctor, psychologist or nutritionist. I am a certified life coach and weight coach through The Life Coach School and I earned my Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Studies. I understand the research, have seen it applied with my clients, and I want to share it with you in an accessible way.

As the conversation about health changes, health care professionals are trying to focus more on what works--and we know that simply shedding pounds isn’t enough. Things are shifting away from “weight-loss” and moving more toward “weight-inclusivity”. Toward what is important for health and well-being.

Makes sense, right? 

Let’s go over the weight-normative approach that society has been touting for far too long. I’m summarizing the research articles (see the below for references) to give you an overview: 

1. Our body mass index (BMI) is an outdated tool. A high BMI doesn’t mean we will develop diseases or poor health. Unlike smoking, which we know causes lung cancer because it is backed by empirical research, BMI and poor health have no established causality.

2. Body weight isn’t voluntary. Many factors are at play: genetics, access to healthy food, physical activity and other resources.

3. When people try to lose weight and can’t, learned helplessness can develop. Because they don’t lose weight on the first try, they may give up completely on their health.

4. No weight-loss intervention has worked long-term for the majority of participants. People who have maintained weight loss are the exception, not the rule. I’m an outlier myself as I’ve maintained my weight loss of 20-28 lbs for over a decade. But that’s unusual and most people gain back the weight they lose (sometimes more).

5. Weight cycling is when the weight goes up and down the scale. Weight cycling IS connected to poor health. This yo-yoing is connected to inflammation, cancer, and possibly even premature death. It also negatively influences psychological well-being because we simply don’t feel good about ourselves when we weight cycle.

6. Trying to maintain weight loss puts people at risk for eating disorders. All kinds of unhealthy behaviors can emerge from rigid dieting.

7. The weight-normative approach encourages us all to be thin and constantly striving for that. It encourages stigma against people of different sizes. These stigmas tend to show up across various settings in our lives, including health care professionals. Overweight people are viewed as lazy while thinner people are judged for being able to eat what they want. It’s a vicious cycle with a massive amount of bias. In fact, it is actually this weight stigma that is connected to poor health - not the pounds themselves. 

Wow, so did you know all of that? 

I certainly didn’t realize that this is where the research had taken us in 2020. It’s so easy to fall into the pattern of counting calories and thinking that the way we grew up was correct. We’ve learned a lot, however, and it’s time to re-train our brains. 

Regularly, I see how the weight-normative approach affects my coaching clients on a daily basis. Many of them are consumed with thoughts about tracking food as they think obsessively about losing weight. 

If only this mental energy could be freed up so they would have the time and space to think about other, more important things! To create the work they want to share with the world. Instead, they are focused on the guilt they feel from last night’s dessert. And it’s heart-breaking. 

In the weight-normative approach, my clients beat themselves up for not reaching their goals. They constantly feel shame for not doing the work they “should be doing.” And they over-complicate their lives, thinking there’s one magical answer out there.

All in all, the weight-normative approach that many of us have become accustomed to is a hazardous burden that is harmful to us in the long run. 

Photo by AllGo - An App For Plus Size People on Unsplash

Now, let me introduce you to the weight-inclusive approach.

Are you ready for some good news?

This approach focuses on health--on the positive instead of the negative. Health has many components and can be measured in a variety of ways. Attention is placed on daily actions rather than a targeted end-goal. The vision is for long-term change. 

These clinically significant improvements are associated with weight-inclusive approaches:

• Lower blood pressure

• Increased physical activity

• Decreased binge eating

• Increased self-esteem

• Decreased depression

• No adverse outcomes to this approach (unlike the weight normative approach)

• Higher body appreciation

• Lower habitual appearance monitoring

The weight-inclusive approach also calls for more empirical research about what works and what doesn’t. This approach recognizes it is important to increase access to healthy options.

Models for the Weight-Inclusive Approach:

• Health at Every Size

• Physical Activity at Every Size

• The Body Project

Rather than focusing on the negative, weight-inclusive language uses positive vocabulary, such as “body awareness”, “intuitive eating”, and “health”. 

One of my coaching clients is focused on her health--and that’s the language we use. Not “losing weight”. She recognized the need to drop the “shoulds” around losing weight and to start defining health for herself. Right now, that includes sleep and taking vitamins--not tracking her food or reading more books about weight loss.

Now that you understand a bit more, focusing on the weight inclusive approach is accessible for you. Check out my free training on how to stop overeating today.

References Used to Write this Post:

Thanks to Paula Brochu for directing me to these published articles.

Bacon & Aphramor, 2011 - https://nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1475-2891-10-9

Logel, Stinson, & Brochu, 2015 - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/spc3.12223

Tylka et al., 2014 - https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jobe/2014/983495/

Hunger, Smith, & Tomiyama, 2020 - https://spssi.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/sipr.12062

How Lifestyle Transformation Is An Achievable Goal For Academics

Photo by Austin Chan on Unsplash

The use of leadership coaches has become an acknowledged and widespread practice in corporations, non-profit organizations, even governments, and the reasons vary.

When individuals work with leadership or life coaches, they start to experience higher levels of effectiveness at work and at home, with improvements in both their task and relationship orientation. At the same time, organizations discover that they are more productive when they hire life coaches because they experience a higher return on investment.  

As a parallel, employing coaches in academic life or the use of any kind of systematic organizational development is basically uncharted inside the university world.  With the higher demand for notable change that universities are now facing, in economical and technological areas, there are good reasons to believe that things are about to change.  

While universities and colleges accept the fact that changes are enveloping them, individual staff, such as professors, and administrators should consider turning to a personal coach. Why? Because doing so can boost their advance both in their careers and their lives.

Coaching - It’s Not What You Think

Those who are unfamiliar with coaching tend to believe that coaching is a form of consulting, mentoring, or just advice-giving. At its core, coaching is a form of one-on-one analysis and examination in which the client is guided by the coaches. This process consists of closely listening and asking pertinent questions in ways that help the client identify and overcome obstacles and then come up with courses of action and implement them.  

A life coach focuses on supporting only the client’s agenda, starting wherever they are at that point. The right coach enters the engagement without stereotypes or some ideal sense of the right goals for their clients. In this way, the client is able to safely explore their authentic path, style, and career in a safe manner, finding a supportive environment in life coaching.

Photo by Geraldine Lewa on Unsplash

Five Occasions Coaching Can Be Helpful In Your Academic Career

When compared to other kinds of organizational development interventions, such as training and team building, coaching is especially better suited for the highly competitive and individualistic nature of academia. The privacy of the coaching collaboration enables a safe haven for sharing hopes and concerns, successes and breakdowns, as well as possibilities and aspirations, without any judgment.

Let’s have a look at five situations in an academic career when hiring a coach might be beneficial to a scholar:

• You’re thinking about becoming an academic 

Obtaining your Ph.D. or some other terminal graduate degree is a considerable commitment, and academic life is not suitable for everyone. Hiring a life coach at the beginning of the academic journey can both save you from a probably costly and emotionally consuming decision and start with clear, precise, and realistic expectations, intentions, and aspirations.

• You’ve taken your first academic job 

Congratulations are in order if you’re a fresh assistant professor and you’re eager to begin on your teaching and research, but you may have already found out that the long road to tenure is paved with difficult decisions. And even though your dean, department head, and esteemed colleagues will provide you with much advice,  how can you maximize your possibilities of succeeding and still remain authentic to your original aspirations and intentions?  

Hiring a life coach at this stage in your career gives you a prudent method of analyzing your challenges and opportunities with a person who has only your interest at heart. 

• You’ve been promoted or received tenure (or denied promotion or tenure)  

The career path of a professor has three major phases, and each promotion can be a considerable life alteration.  The switch from assistant to associate professor is usually followed by tenure, and the point in career when you get tenure can be confusing.  

You start wondering if you should continue on the same trajectory or whether it's time to think about an administrative role. These are just a few of the questions that demand answers when receiving tenure, and a life coach plays a decisive role in finding those pertinent to your circumstances, helping to find your own answers.  

Denial of tenure is a difficult time, and many universities provide little or no support whatsoever.  But a life coach can guide you to be able to look at the event from a proper perspective and identify the path aligned with where you are now.  Denial of promotion to full professor position is another tough case, and the right coach can be especially helpful in analyzing perspective and figuring out the next steps.

• You’ve taken a new administrative post

Shifting from teaching to an administrative position can be quite demanding in your system, and even going up in the ranks from head of department to  dean position can be challenging as each new post is filled with different tasks from the one vacated.  

Administrative entries and promotions are convenient times to find a life coach to guide you through the challenges of a new posting and to prepare you for consecutive advancement by enhancing the skills and evolving in ways that are according to the new post and the next.

• You’re preparing to leave the university  

Maybe you’ve decided it’s about time to go to the next level, perhaps start a company, become a consultant, take a job in the private sector, or retire.  These progressions are excellent to ask good questions and follow a coach’s guidance to help you draw out the best in what comes next.

These five occasions are great ones to consider finding and using the expertise of a life coach.  The next part lays out a number of open-ended questions to guide you in the quest for your coach.

Finding Your Coach

So perhaps you find yourself in an academic transition when a coach might be useful to you. How do you find the right coach that would be aligned with your needs? 

The following questions will guide you through what to take into consideration when hiring a coach:

• What kind of training and qualifications does this person offer to their coaching?

• In what way does this person have academic experience and understand academic culture?

• How can this potential coach be curious about you, your obstacles, your opportunities and in what way do they appear to have a method or an answer?

• How comfortable do you feel with the potential coach, and how hard is it to share private information with him or her?

• Do you feel that this coach asks questions that engages your reflection and are both compelling and interesting to answer?

• Do you feel that the coach seems to listen to you and understand you through that listening?

While each academic has unique circumstances that lead them to hire a life coach, these are the most common occasions. 

If you find yourself in any of these situations and you are interested in boosting your academic career, don’t hesitate to contact me to discover the next step in reaching your personal and professional goals.

Or, get to know me better (and take the first steps towards achieving your goals) by learning how to stop procrastinating through self-coaching. Use the form below to get access to my tips for reclaiming your time!

9 Situations When Academics Should Or Shouldn't Hire A Life Coach

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Hugely successful public figures, from artists to business people, all have disclosed that they work extensively with life coaches. Experts say there are six aspects that bring high achieving people like academics to life coaching. 

In an interview given to Fortune magazine, Eric Schmidt, chairman of Alphabet, formerly CEO of Google, claimed: “everyone needs a coach.” Evidently some don’t agree with this statement. But while there may be several circumstances that bring academic people to coaching, there are also good motives why certain people should not hire the services of a life coach. Let’s begin with these.

When Not To Hire A Life Coach

1. When you are looking for someone to fix what's wrong with your life

The right life coach will ask bold questions, listen, and reflect upon what they hear. They can challenge you to ponder in new and more resourceful ways, but a life coach will not “fix” anything for you. 

Keeping balance in your life, both personally and professionally requires a huge commitment on your part. A life coach can uncover some great tools and resources for achieving success in the academic area, but this isn't enough. If you’re not ready to commit to doing the most difficult part yourself, even the best life coach can't support you.

2. When you need help with psychological issues

Coaches are not your therapists. A life coach will aim their attention primarily on looking toward your academic future, helping you to find new ways of acting towards achieving academic success, rather than focusing too much on your past actions. If you are struggling with issues such as depression, anxiety, or mental illness, you will need a therapist first.

3. When you would like a wise friend by your side

Family and friends have sometimes the best intentions, but they are not objective. Being too close to your situation can impair their vision to see the aspects where you may need improvements. However, a life coach is not your close friend. If you anticipate only collusion and affirmation for wrong attitudes regarding your academic efforts, life coaching may not be suitable for you.

But if you want to achieve faster your academic goals, these are the factors that bring high achieving academics to life coaching.

When To Hire A Coach

4. When dealing with successful events 

Change, even when positive,  is exciting and challenging, terrifying and disorientating. A decision in the academic area inevitably causes ripples in other areas of your life. New tenure, for instance, could affect your health, personal relationships, location and your spare time.

Academic growth often challenges us to self-awareness and to reconsider the professional capabilities we have overlooked. It can be difficult to renounce to familiar things, especially if you feel you “should” be incredibly enthusiastic and you aren’t, at the moment, feeling overwhelmed. Collaborating with the right life coach can guide you to discover how you can examine the career you already have and how you can encompass this great change into future academic success.

5. When dealing with difficult situations 

Whether you've lost your position, your grant submission was rejected, papers aren’t published, or you're simply feeling that you aren’t connected to your innovative self, don't just try to force your way through these situations. While most of us want to avoid difficulties at all costs, we shouldn't, as we'll only end up experiencing resentment and depression on a deeper level.

Taking the time to accept difficult changes in your life can shorten the amount of time you spend being unproductive. A qualified coach can provide a compassionate and safe place for you to overcome these challenges and set attainable academic goals.

If you are rethinking the structures of your career in your university, a professional coach can help you discover how to learn better from your struggle, to expand and move forward.

Photo by Jungwoo Hong on Unsplash

6. When absolutely nothing is happening 

Perhaps you keep trying to improve your current situation in academia and nothing seems to be working.

To achieve the results you want in the academic community, you will most likely need to change your attitudes towards attaining your goals or your fundamental beliefs regarding your advancement on the academic ladder. The start of the collaboration with a life coach is an ideal time to reconsider accumulated layers of identity.

Fear of failure is the biggest killer of plans and ideas. Lack of knowledge or skills, and missing a clear strategy or action plan, are great obstacles in the way of progress. However, the inertia caused by the fear of failure is the biggest one.

Be one of the few who are willing to knowingly risk failure when reaching for a higher pay grade. Even if you fail to take action, you gain a rich learning opportunity.

If you feel stuck in a loop, a life coach can help you break down self-limiting patterns and principles, renounce at self-defeating assumptions and re-construct the competing causes that keep you stuck.

7. When you want to make things happen 

There is always some goal you may have in your academic life that you desperately want to achieve but its enormity is crushing you. Also, the implications of making such a monumental change can affect your overall development. Often self-restricting behavior proves to be strongest just when you need the boost to take risks for the sake of enhancing your academic career.

Your life coach can offer you support to stay on track, meeting your daily goals and reduce actions that sabotage your plans regarding your career in the scholarly world. A coach can guide you through the doubt, resistance, and confusion that can appear when you are starting something exciting and new, especially when it comes to reinventing your role as a scholar.

8. When you are feeling stuck

Learning how to recognize and ditch wrong beliefs that are running in the background can get you out of weakness and clear up a lot of confusion regarding your next step.

An experienced life coach will help you to become much clearer regarding the achievements in your academic life. Experiencing career fulfillment is about living a scholar’s life that is valued and purposeful. And you can still find balance when you choose a life that is dynamic, aligned with a compelling vision.

9. When you need to figure out what is the next phase of your career

An expert life coach will lead you in the discovery process of your true academic value and guide you in becoming more self-aware as you prepare for a new phase of your scholarly career.

Therefore a life coach, by your side in this exploration, can ask powerful questions that will break your defense. When you learn to be curious about your capabilities, you will become more willing to look in the problematic aspects of your career and take on challenges that once seemed intimidating.

If there's something you’d like to change in your academic life, I can help you discover the motivation you need to get the results you truly want, finding the most effective process and right tools to understand how your brain works, and eventually access your inner power.

In the meantime, take the first step towards achieving your goals by putting an end to procrastination. Get access to my tips for reclaiming your time with the form below!

How To Stop Overeating Due To Semester Stress [Tips To Unwind Without Giving In]

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Stress eating or rather emotional eating can alter your weight goals – the secret is to search for new ways to relieve semester stress without overeating.

So much truth lies behind the common phrase "stress eating." Daily or occasional stress, the unwanted hormones it releases, and the harmful effects of high-fat, sugary "comfort foods" drive people toward overeating.

Why do academics stress eat during the semester?

Women in academia make no exception from stress-coping actions. Stress during the semester also seems to affect food preferences. While during summer, the usual diet consists of fruits and vegetables, from September until the spring, the preference is towards carbohydrates. Also,  according to studies, physical or emotional distress (something academics generally need to deal with at a high level), increases the intake of high-fat foods as well as foods high in sugar, and sometimes both. 

However, we are aware that overeating at the office isn't the only stress-related action that can add unwanted pounds. Stress causes academics to lose sleep, exercise less, and over drink, all of which can lead to excess weight.

Why Is It So Important To Understand Emotional Eating?

Before starting to fight against your overeating habits and learning how to unwind without giving in, you need to comprehend what lies behind your comfort food coping mechanisms.

Many women experience emotional eating at one time or another during a stressful week. It could appear as eating a harmless bag of chips when bored or indulging in a chocolate bar after a difficult day at work.

Be aware of the stress eating factors 

Some of the stress eating factors are intricate and can involve some of the following situations:👇

• Childhood development

In some cases, emotional eating is a learned behavior from the early years of life. What happens is that in many cases during childhood, parents provide their children with sweet treats to help them cope with a difficult day or situation, or as a reward for something they did well.

And then, as this type of behavior turns into a habit, it is no wonder that a child who gets a cookie (to help them better cope with the difficult situation) after getting a bad grade on a test, for instance, can turn into an adult who reaches for a whole box of cookies after a rough day at work.

What this example shows is that the origin of emotional eating goes way back sometimes, in which case breaking the habit can feel extremely challenging.

• The struggle of coping with emotions

It is pretty common for women to struggle with uncomfortable feelings and emotions. This triggers an instinctual behavior or a need to fix or even annihilate these negative feelings as fast as possible - which can, in turn, contribute to unhealthy attitudes.

And keep in mind that emotional eating is not only connected to negative feelings. One can eat a handful of candy at a fun Christmas party, or eat excessively at a fancy New Year’s Eve dinner. So, it's important to be aware of overeating due to thoughts about the location of the food - such as dinner parties, the holiday season, etc.

• The physical effect of stress

According to studies there are also physical reasons why stress and powerful emotions can influence a person to overeat. Here are some of the most important ones you need to pay close attention to:

• High cortisol levels: In the initial phase, stress causes the appetite to decrease in order for your body to deal with the difficult situation. If the stress level does not decrease, another hormone, cortisol, is released. Cortisol is also responsible for increased appetite and can lead you to overeat.

• Cravings: A second phase is initiated as high cortisol levels from stress that can increase specific cravings for foods rich in sugar or fat. Stress is linked with high levels of hunger hormones as well, which may also add up to cravings for unhealthy foods.

Photo by Fabian Møller on Unsplash

How to relieve stress without overeating

The first action you need to take to free yourself from emotional eating is to know first hand the triggers and circumstances that apply in your life.

Try keeping a food diary or weekly journal to help to identify situations when you are more inclined to eat because of emotional instead of physical hunger.

Tracking your behavior is another way you can catch some insight into your eating habits.

The behavior you could keep track of may include the following: 👇

• Patterns of hunger levels, measuring them on a 1–10 scale

• What you are going through and if it is something difficult and unpleasant

• What  you are feeling, whether bored, angry or happy

Another option could be to choose professional help in order to get the guidance you need in your journey. It can also be helpful to talk to a life coach to discuss other ways to break the cycle of emotional eating and improve your way of living your life.

A weight coach may also be able to help you with discovering additional information on creating positive eating habits and a better relationship with food.

Next, you may want to consider brainstorming ideas for means to counterbalance the triggers you will identify during your self-inquiry.

Other suggestions that can help counter stress 👇

Meditation

Many studies demonstrate that meditation diminishes stress, even though a big part of the research was focused on high blood pressure and heart disease related to stress. Meditation can influence you to become more aware of you food choices. With constant practice, you will be able to hold back the impulse to instantly grab comfort food and start to inhibit this impulse.

If you are overeating because of your daily stress, you could try mindful yoga at home, meditating in your office, or taking a walk along campus to help yourself deal with your emotions.

Exercise 

While your cortisol levels may change depending on the intensity and length of your exercise, in general, physical exercise can counteract some of the adverse effects of stress. Some activities, like yoga and tai chi, blend components of both exercise and meditation.

If you tend to eat when bored, you may want to choose a new book that seems stimulating to start reading, or pick a new hobby, maybe one that includes the outdoors, that could provide a challenge.

Social support 

Surrounding yourself with friends, family, and other sources of social support may have a buffering effect on the levels of stress that you experience on a daily basis. 

Studies suggest that people working in a stressful environment, like hospital emergency departments, seem to have better mental health if they are provided with adequate social support. But even if you do not live or work in circumstances where the stakes are as high you still need support from time to time from your friends, close family, and/or professionals.

• If you start to eat excessively when you are sad, you may want to call a good friend, take your dog for a run, or plan a quick getaway to cope with your negative feelings.

However, when stress eating occurs on a daily basis at your job or it becomes the predominant course of action to handle your emotions when you face a stressful situation, then your life, physical health, overall happiness, and weight can be negatively influenced. 
Let me help you work through stress with the right approach in order for you to feel great today and every day.