When do you feel confident? When are you a good listener? When can you speak up and share your thoughts?
I love these questions.
They’re all about finding out when you can do or be something, and what helps you do it.
What brings out your on-purpose energy?
There’s a particular feeling when our energy is being used in the best kind of way.
We know that we’re playing to our natural strengths and having a positive impact on the people and the world around us. There’s an ease, a joy, a sense of being on purpose. At the end of the day we feel emptied out in a good way, full up of the knowing that we’ve shown up at our best.
What would help you feel better?
When I was away recently I hit a low point.
I hadn’t slept well for a few nights and was fed up of being in unfamiliar territory. I was under the weather, longing for some time and space on my own, and feeling very sorry for myself!
I found myself wishing I was back at home so I could take care of myself.
And then I stopped to think. What would I actually do if I was at home right now? What would help me feel better?
What are your 2025 highlights?
This photo captures one of my favourite memories from 2025.
It’s a selfie of me and my lovely husband Stu, taken in a pub garden in Grasmere.
It was the first time in a while that we’d been away just us - no teenagers, no dog - and this sums up the feeling of the experience.
When I look at it I smile - I can see our partnership, the fun, the team spirit, the ease and the love.
#ThisLittleGirlIsMe | 2025
Every October for the last few years I’ve shared a photo of my younger self, part of the Inspiring Girls International #ThisLittleGirlIsMe campaign, along with the advice I’d give that younger me.
Each year a different picture has inspired different thoughts, and this time it’s me aged 4 ish, peering out of the window of a train carriage on the Bluebell railway. I look a little apprehensive, as though I’m not quite sure what the journey will bring.
This little girl is me, and here are 5 things I wish she knew for the journey of her life that lies ahead, with love from me to her.
What have been your best decisions?
I used to think that every decision could be made logically, until I looked back and realised that all my best ones were made in a different way!
They were the decisions that felt completely right - even if they looked brave or risky to others.
They took me on gap years and solo travel adventures, led me to reapply for Marketing training schemes when I didn’t make it the first time, helped me leave a job I loved (twice) to explore a new path, and so much more.
But for a long time, I couldn’t articulate how I made them.
Is it time to rekindle a relationship?
What helps you figure things out?
Do you ever look back at a past version of you and think - did I really do that?!
My sister recently reminded me of the time I spent 2 months living in a tent in the middle of Hungary, part of a group from Edinburgh University helping to build an eco-village.
For many years it was top of mind - my immediate answer to the ‘tell us something we wouldn’t know about you’ question.
And yet I had almost forgotten.
Just because you started...
I have been a great completer finisher in my life.
Sometimes when it really would have been wiser to stop.
I’ve trained through injury, I’ve stayed too long in roles that no longer fit me, I’ve chosen to ‘push through’ when really, I needed to stop and regroup.
I’ve also started things that felt like a wonderful idea at the time - before I realised what the process would be like - and then felt I had to see it through.
So, it’s been a complete gift to realise that I don’t have to finish everything I start.
And that I often learn just as much from the things I stop as the things I complete.
It’s all useful data.
