About This Episode
In this final episode of this season, we’re joined by Tazmin Suleman. Tazmin is a coach, corporate trainer, and podcaster with over a decade of experience in personal development. She has helped individuals transform their lives professionally and personally through the power of mindset and self-care.
In a world that has normalized stress as an unavoidable professional hazard, Tazmin believes well-being and controlling one’s emotions are the keys to success. They can build confidence, resilience, and the ability to handle any challenge. Through her coaching program Revitalise, her corporate offerings, and The SEO Mindset Podcast, which she co-hosts with Sarah Mcdowell, Tazmin strives to help others develop self- and life mastery.
Today, we dive deep into practical strategies for emotional management in both personal and professional settings. Tazmin shares her invaluable stories and techniques for handling stress, maintaining a positive mindset, and how to create a personal development plan. Learn how she utilizes soft skills such as patience, resilience, and self-awareness to navigate emotional situations and turn them into opportunities for growth. From emotional intelligence to creating a career plan, Tazmin provides tools that can significantly impact your career trajectory.
“Think of how many times we failed at learning how to walk, talk, feed ourselves, read, write. And how much progress we made by trying again. Each fall was 1 step closer to success. Imagine how much progress we would make with this same attitude to failure.” ~ Tazmin Suleman
This episode is for you if you’re curious about the following:
- How managing your emotions is a key soft skill you need to develop
- How can mindfulness and other techniques be used to manage stress, develop patience, keep cool, and handle conflict more effectively?
- We’ll also discuss how you should think about your career for the long term—visualizing success, setting your own personal development goals and plan, tips for interpreting feedback, and reorienting your emotional response to failures.
Connect With Tazmin
- Visit her website
- Connect on LinkedIn
- Follow on Facebook
- Follow on Twitter @SulemanTazmin
- Follow on Instagram
- Her coaching program – Revitalise
Resources
- (Book) Free Self-reflection ebook
- (Webinar) Success Without Burnout Webinar
- (Podcast) The SEO Mindset Podcast – Optimise Your SEO Career
- (Video) Video explaining the BRAVE technique and other resources
- (Book) The Courage to be Disliked
Check out all of the resources mentioned in our other episodes.
Other episodes you’ll enjoy:
- S1E20: Emotional Intelligence and Its Role in Digital Marketing Success: An Interview with Jo Juliana Turnbull
- S2E6: Overcoming Imposter Syndrome and Building Confidence
- S2E7: Exploring Resilience and Community Building with Lloyed Lobo
- S2E8: How To Deal With Anxiety At Work With Kayley Dempsey
- S2E9: Leveraging Uncertainty for Marketing Success with Maggie Jackson
Loved this episode?
Leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. Tweet and tag us @dmvictories and @kwatier!
Episode Transcript
➡️ [Download episode transcript]
[00:00:00] Katherine Ong: Welcome to the Digital Marketing Victories podcast, a monthly show where we celebrate and learn from the change makers in digital marketing. Great digital marketers understand that people are the most challenging part of doing their jobs. This show focuses on the people part of digital marketing wins and what tactics or skills the guests use to align people with their marketing strategy.
I’m your host, Katherine Watier Ong, the owner of WO Strategies, LLC. We focus on increasing organic discovery for enterprise-sized, science-focused clients. Thank you for joining me. Let’s get into it and celebrate our victories. Hi there, this is Katherine. This is just a quick note to let you know that this is going to be the last episode of the season this year.
As you possibly can hear, I’m losing my voice for some reason, and we’re not quite sure why. So I’m going to sort that out before I spend too much time on the show using it and not being able to have my voice for other things. But I’m looking forward to next year. I’ve got some great guests lined up, and I hope you enjoyed this season.
Today, we’re welcomed by Tazmin Suleman. Tazmin’s a coach, corporate trainer, and podcaster with over a decade of experience and personal development. She’s helped individuals transform their lives, both professionally and personally, through the power of mindset and self-care in a world that is normalized.
Stress is an unavailable professional hazard. She believes that well-being is the power that can drive success by building a person’s confidence, resilience, and ability to handle any challenge through her coaching program, revitalizing her corporate offerings, and the SEO mindset podcast, which she co-hosts with Sarah McDonald Tazmin strives to help others.
Develop their self and life mastery. So this episode is going to be perfect for you if you’re curious about how to manage your emotions and whether or not it’s this key soft skill that you need to develop, how you can use mindfulness and other techniques to manage your stress, develop patience, keep your cool, and handle conflict more effectively.
We’ll also discuss how to think about your career for the long term, visualize success, set personal development goals, seek feedback, and rethink your emotional response to failures. So, Tazmin, welcome to the show.
[00:02:13] Tazmin Suleman: It’s wonderful to be here.
Thank you.
[00:02:16] Katherine Ong: I’m sure most people listening know a bit about you because of your mindset podcast, but why don’t you give us a little intro about your background and what led you to coaching? Cause I know you used to be doing tactical SEO, and now you’re not. So let everybody know how you got there.
[00:02:31] Tazmin Suleman: So I fell into IT by accident, and then I stayed in it. Back in the day, it was called that’s sick. Yeah. And it was a job. I went to work. I did a thing and I came back and I didn’t really think much more of it than a job. And it was only when I was working as a data analyst and my manager pulled me aside and said, Tazmin, when all of the directors have trained to be coaches, and they are looking to.
Get their practice hours. Would you like to nominate yourself? I didn’t know anything about coaching that time. I just had such deep respect for her. I said, yes, but I remember going to my first coaching session, telling the coach don’t tell me to be a manager because that’s not who I am. And he smiled and said, okay, let’s explore.
Through that exploration, within six weeks, I found I was actually managing the team and enjoying it. That was my first glimpse at the power of coaching. And that was it. I got the bug then. So around about the same time, my marriage had ended, and I had a lot of time, and it was when the universe gives you things when you need them the most.
I was being introduced to the world of personal development through family, through lots of different avenues. And I started taking myself seriously. I started taking ownership and understanding myself more, reflecting more, journaling more, and was drawn to doing personal development things. I remember in the same company saying to the managing director, I’d really like to do a goal setting workshop.
And they were up for it, said, “Fine, go ahead.” So coaching and personal development were something I wanted to do, but it wasn’t until 10 years later that I was actually working in SEO at Argos. And we were, we’d gone through lockdown, and that’s a story in itself because I was on a week off at the time they were saying, “Take time off.”
And there was nowhere to go, right? Couldn’t book a flight, couldn’t do anything. I thought to myself if I could go anywhere, where would I go? I would go to Kerala for yoga, retreat, reflection, and meditation. So I created that environment in my home in Milton Keynes. I had a schedule, I had books I was going to read, I had walks I was going to go on.
And that was on the Monday. On Wednesday, through a team meeting, which my manager rang me and said, I have to be on that. I found that my role was being made redundant and I was going to lose my job. And I suppose that first day when I found out, I was in shock and I cried a lot. And then the next day I thought, you can either carry on crying or you can enjoy the next two days of your holiday back at the retreat.
That’s when I took the opportunity to actually think, is this an opportunity? I took the steps to get accredited, build a business, and launch the podcast, and here I am now. So it was a difficult situation, which I was fortunate enough to be able to turn around.
[00:05:59] Katherine Ong: Yeah. Sometimes you need a little nudge to do your own thing, but it works out to be the best thing.
Definitely. So since this entire podcast is about soft skills, as is yours, actually can you share a story about where focusing on soft skills impacted your career trajectory? I know you talked about your retreat, but particularly, what kind of soft skills did you lean on maybe, as you’re starting your new business?
[00:06:23] Tazmin Suleman: So soft skills in my own business, it was. A lot like the coaching side of it, a lot of listening, but I think my awareness of the power of soft skills started even before that. So when I was being promoted into that role, I never, I’d never been a manager before. I didn’t know what that was. I didn’t understand it was the beginning of my leadership career, but one of the things.
I was lucky that I had some great managers myself, was really understanding the team, taking a step back and using those skills, soft skills to understand them. So I booked one to ones with all of them to understand them, their motivation. And I remember them being very confused at the time because it wasn’t something that had ever happened.
And then from that, we developed what they wanted to develop and how they wanted their career to move forward. And where possible, I would then align project work with opportunities for them to develop in that way. And around the same time, we also said, developing yourself in learning new skills is also important.
So Friday afternoons were their time to do whatever learning they wanted to do. And despite giving a chunk of the week back to them, we actually improved our productivity by 20%. And that was all through the power of listening, aligning, working on these skills, and their development. And for me, that was mind-blowing.
[00:08:02] Katherine Ong: And this is an in-house position, right? Where you’re managing people. Yeah. Yeah. I was just wondering because I ran a team, at an agency and it’s almost impossible to carve out that personal development time and it’s so necessary for our industry, but it was, he got the bill ability. You need to meet every month or every week.
Curious whether or not you have an example of where managing your emotions or understanding the emotions really led to a breakthrough. You talked about aligning people and having productivity because of the professional development time was there an example in your life where managing your emotions really helped.
Or where you needed to, obviously, when you were like, Oh, you can’t say things inappropriate at that moment. Ideally, you want to leave with good graces, but is there another example?
[00:08:49] Tazmin Suleman: The redundancy one was one when you had to really manage my emotions and think, okay, what do I want now?
Running your own business. You will fail more of the times than you succeed, and it is again, managing those emotions, taking a step back, saying, okay, what happened here? What can I learn from it? Where could I have been better? What am I still doing right that I have to continue doing right? Because when you get frustrated, angry, resentful, all of those negative emotions, they actually drain your energy and you don’t need that.
And sometimes things aren’t going as well as you want them to do, but you have to start every morning. With the attitude that today’s going to be a good day. So even if you wake up thinking, Oh, I didn’t get that client or, that’s not working out so well, you have to start thinking higher than you feel.
In order to be able to think positively enough to move on to that next step. And it’s an everyday thing. And it is. Gratitude helps a lot. People think of gratitude as some woo thing that it’s just a nice thing to do. It’s actually an essential thing to do.
If you want to be able to work with longevity in anything, in order to succeed, you have to, you will have so many failures along the path. It is being able to pick yourself up every single morning and get yourself to that headspace where I am going to be able to figure it out today. I am getting better every day.
It is going to be a good day, and just keep going in a more personal scenario. I remember. Again, this was more at the beginning of me and me learning about me. So, at the time, two teenage children, one of whom had gone to university, would come home for the holidays. And he was an adult then, so he didn’t need to do things like washing the dishes.
And I would come home from work, tired, about to cook a meal and the kitchen was a state. I’d go upstairs, I’d yell, he’d come down, grumpy, do the dishes, and the result was not a very nice evening at all. So then it was taking a step back and saying, okay, what is the outcome I want here? Is it a clean sink?
Is it a nice evening? Or is it actually a good relationship with my son? And if it’s the last, which I mean, it was all three, but predominantly it was a good relationship. Then is the way I’m acting going to get me that? No, absolutely it wasn’t. So then it was a a very intentional change shift on my part.
I’d come home; we’d still have dishes in the sink. And I’d go upstairs, I’d say to him, How are you? How’s your day been? He would answer, respond, ask me. And then I’d say something along the lines of, I’m going to go and cook in a little while. You go downstairs and tidy up the kitchen. And because the energy was different, he would go down, he’d do the dishes, I’d come down to start cooking, he would then stay, chop veg, chit chat, the result was the dishes got done, the evening was nice, but we were on the path of having a better relationship.
Once you can learn that skill, to be able to keep your emotions in check, think with your head. Think long term, what do I want here? Adjust your behavior that works in your personal life and your professional life, and it can only make both of those better.
[00:12:36] Katherine Ong: It’s amazing how having kids gives you so much practice on relationship management and how you yeah, the energy thing is really big.
You never noticed that. Okay, I noticed that when I had a dog, they always said you have to keep your calm energy. Otherwise, the dog reacts. But yeah, the kids absorb it, too. And then being very clear about how you’re interacting. I have a very smart 10-year-old. So now she’s actually she’ll sometimes she’ll stop me.
And she’s mom, when you say it this way, it does this to me. But if you say it this way, I can handle it better. So she’s like coaching me too. It’s just fascinating how much practice you get in that relationship. I was also thinking about in relation to managing emotions, I was just on a women in tech SEO social chat just this week.
And there was somebody else who had been running their business. I’m in year nine. She was in year five. And we were talking about how you don’t realize this when you’re going to start your own business. But there’s a lot of emotional management that you need to do around slow moments in your business.
so that you don’t flip out about revenue coming in and start spiraling in a negative way. And it’s hard. And it took a lot of work over the years for me to not be worried and all those negative emotions. And I have to admit at year nine, I think I’m good. I’m actually really good. I’m not flipped out, but we were talking about that and she’s yeah, I’m working on it.
It’s just something they don’t tell you when you start your own business, but it’s one of those things you have to, it’s the hardest thing I think maybe about starting your entire business is managing that. That feeling as we work ebbs and flows instead, I get excited that I get to do professional development when it’s a little slow, which is a different way of thinking.
So do you have any specific tips around how people pulling this back to the work world, like how they can manage their emotions at work, any tips or tactics that they could use when things get escalated.
[00:14:25] Tazmin Suleman: One thing that I have a very deep belief in, and it’s not like it’s a controversial topic, but some people believe it and some people dismiss it.
And the belief is that constant stress is absolutely no good for me physically or mentally. Therefore, my job is to remain as calm as possible for me. Not for them, not for you, not for anyone else for me. So even in my home, I don’t want people coming in and bickering. If they’ve come over for a, an evening at my house, I don’t need any petty arguments.
Go off and do that somewhere else because the energy of my house is really important to me, and my stress is really important. Lack of stress is really important. So that’s one thing, like my outcome, my desired outcome is that. Then there’s an awareness. So, Mental Health England has this concept called a stress container.
And they’re saying in that concept that everyone has got a certain amount of stress that they are able to take. When things are tickety-boo in life, that container is bigger. So, the capacity to deal with a lot of stress is greater. And when things are a bit more fraught, if there’s a relative that’s not well, or if you’re going through a divorce or a house change or whatever, then your capacity is less.
So having that awareness that there’s only so much I’m going to be able to take is really good. Now, in that container, as the day progresses, you get that stress going into that container drip. And if it gets too much, it’s going to overflow. And that’s where you then would probably do something like reach for a cigarette, reach for a drink, shout at somebody, or go into a reclusive mode.
Everyone’s different. But there’s also a tap that you can then release that stress by. So by again, hopefully people use more healthy ways like meditating, breathing exercises, going for a walk, speaking to a loved one, giving your kids a hug, whatever it is. But there’ll be things that make us feel better naturally.
Some people then may also resort to having a cigarette. But it’s having that concept in your head and then tapping into yourself during the day. How am I feeling? How stressed am I feeling right now? In life in general, what’s on my plate? So little things, if I’ve got a lot on and we’ve got a big family function, I may then choose to order in or reduce the size of the menu or ask other people for help.
And it’s. It’s being, again, taking the emotion out of it and being really logical and rational about how do I deal with this. If I’m feeling particularly stressed during the day, I will have on my self care menu. I encourage everyone to have the self care menu and some of it are quick bites, your little five minute things.
And for me, it literally is walking out into my back garden and breathing because we were fortunate. We don’t have you can hear a lot of birdsong. You can hear a lot of children playing in the park, not far away. And it’s nice. And that automatically will reduce my stress. So it’s doing things like that longer-term meditation has helped me a lot.
Meditation to me used to be sitting down and thinking of a lake with no ripples. And if there was a ripple, then I’d failed. I know, for me, and I’m sure for many, it’s practicing the ability to control your thinking. And that again, will help with emotional intelligence things like pausing. So if something’s happening a bit like the washing-up story what do I want the outcome to be?
Because very often we feel like we’ve got to say yes to something or no to something, but sometimes we don’t have to do anything. There’s usually a third option. I can stay silent here. I can say to the person, I’ve heard what you’ve said. And I need to think about this. Or you can say, I’ve heard what you said, I’m just going to take a little bit of a walk.
Whatever, you can buy yourself time. It’s rare that a question has to be answered immediately.
Perspective, so when things are going wrong, ask yourself, what’s the worst that can happen? Alright, this has happened, by me shouting and screaming, is it going to change? Probably not. So that awareness, that perspective. I think also an acceptance that just because somebody else is doing something different from the way I do it doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
People are different. We always, we tend to think we’re always right. And if they’re doing it differently, it’s wrong.
[00:19:44] Katherine Ong: Also, they have their own stress bucket. You should be thinking about what’s in their stress bucket. And particularly when I was managing a team, it was helpful during the one on ones to figure out perhaps what’s in their stress bucket, right?
So you can adjust your expectations and maybe adjust the work assignments and that kind of thing, depending on what they’ve got going on outside of work.
[00:20:05] Tazmin Suleman: And having that time, like you said, on their one-to-ones, and you don’t even have to do a lot of talking, you just ask them a question, you can tell from their body language, from their nonverbal communication.
And if you know them, and they’re acting out a character, and give them the benefit of the doubt, something’s probably underneath this, underneath the bonnet.
[00:20:27] Katherine Ong: Yeah, that’s one skill. I definitely learned from my husband. He, coming into the relationship with him, had a lot more, I don’t know, practice native ability to have empathy about the other person.
It was miraculous to see. So I’ve been bleaching that off of him over the last decade, learning from him. But yeah he’s always yeah. We’d have a weird reaction in a store and we’d walk away and he’s it seems like they’re having a tough day. It was his native response versus like immediately getting angry and why, like they must have something really hard going on.
Anyway. It’s a really delightful way to think about other people when they have a negative reaction to you, honestly. I also think the list of self-care is not native to everybody. Now, early on, I want to say undergrad, I probably wrote that list and now it’s, I’ve got it mentally, my, my self-care checklist, some that take longer, some that are shorter, but I don’t think everybody.
Maybe you have that list, and if you’ve never written one down, you should write it down once until you memorize it and make it part of your DNA. Because if life is really tough, it’s hard to remember. What can I do with the amount of time I have? And so, put that list up on your wall.
If you don’t already have it in your DNA, I think that’s really helpful. I also mentioned thinking about the worst things that could happen. That was something I did early in my career, too. It was really helpful. And now I’m okay, but at that moment, I really needed that kind of tip, like, okay, but spiral this, how bad could it be?
And really, how could you handle that? Are you still functioning and alive and do you still have family and friends who love you? Yeah. Especially in the ebb and flow of a marketing career. , where you get laid off frequently and jump jobs a lot. So I think that’s what I needed the most during those rocky years, like thinking about, okay, but if I lose this job.
I’m still probably going to have food, right? My brother’s nearby. He can help me out, whatever. You just walk through the scenario, and then it helps you de-escalate your emotions around it and handle it better when it actually happens. Not that banning laid off is easy. I’m sorry. It’s really hard, but if you walk through the scenario once in your head, it’s more helpful when it happens, and then you can handle it better.
[00:22:46] Tazmin Suleman: And I think also not needing to be liked by everyone because sometimes we react emotionally because we think someone’s not, doesn’t agree with us. It’s okay. Not everyone has to like me. Because I know that I don’t like everybody, and it’s just a character difference. But sometimes that need to be wanted light approved off that validation can again, cause us not to act in the best emotional way.
[00:23:20] Katherine Ong: You’re reminding me, I have a book that’s on my reading list. Yeah. And it’s currently in the house. I haven’t picked it up yet to read it, but related to the book called The Courage to be Disliked – How to Free Yourself, Change Your Life, and Achieve Real Happiness. So it has four stars and good reads.
I’ll give you all an update once I get a chance to finish it, but yes, along the same lines, perhaps it’s okay. Not everybody likes you. I think it’s easier as a woman to live that in your skin. Once you’ve gone a bit beyond the age of 40, I’m just saying it was hard for me to embody that in my twenties.
I forget what year it was, but definitively, in your forties, I could really not care about whether people, the people who appreciate me, will like me. And then the people who don’t, I just move on with my life. It’s not worth the energy. Yeah, you’re nodding your head, like you agree.
[00:24:19] Tazmin Suleman: Sorry for all of those under 40, but I think there are different facets to it.
Yes, absolutely. Age can help you. But also the more you appreciate yourself and are okay with yourself, even to the point of, Oh, I messed up there. It’s okay. Next time, I will do better than just tearing yourself to shreds. And I think what helps me the most in managing my emotions is reminding myself, who do I want to be?
So, right now. In this scenario, do I want to be remembered as the angry manager or the manager who didn’t have empathy or whatever? No, I don’t. I want to be remembered as somebody who lived with humility, dignity, empathy, understanding, and grace. For me, I feel like every goal in my life is important.
The ones that I do personally and the ones that just happen to me, like life happens, right? Everything is chipping away at your character. And at every moment you have an opportunity to either come close to the character that you want to be or further away from it. That’s your bottom line on goal setting.
[00:25:40] Katherine Ong: I know it’s always, it’s fascinating to think about how your personality is not set. It changes over the years, and you can proactively. And they small baby steps move you closer to where you want to be for sure. Yeah. Hence, my journey with soft skills. They’re my entire career. A huge focus of mine.
So, I’m curious: Since you coach clients, do you have examples of where you’ve been able to help them shift their mindsets to become more resilient?
[00:26:11] Tazmin Suleman: Yeah, lots of them. And that’s one of the questions I’ll ask them. Who do you want to be? Or which version would you be prouder of?
So whether it is being able to set boundaries with your manager, there was one client who had a new manager that had come back from a period of time away and was supercharged and wanted to do this, and this particular client had a certain way of working and In order to impress was then going to the nth degree of every single piece of work was then exhausted and then super energized manager came in and wanted, off now a meeting that ran into three hours and this particular client was then drained.
Okay, let’s unpick it and through unpicking it. They discovered that, actually, that nth degree of detail was completely unnecessary. and was being done in order to overcompensate. So, a weird sort of people-pleasing type thing, but it came from a lack of confidence, and it was understanding, okay, what’s required of me here.
And asking the question, I’ve got this piece of work, what is it that you want from it? Do you just want a top-level analysis? Do you want me to go deeper? So, being able to communicate that and to be able to say you’ve put a meeting in at my lunchtime, unfortunately, could we move that to one o’clock?
And having the confidence to say those things. And actually, a lot of The issues were in their head saying, Oh, they won’t like it. This isn’t going to be good for my career. And in the end, I remember one of the questions I’ll ask is what was life like before revitalize and after revitalize? They said that before revitalizing, I felt stuck, but now I feel worthy.
And for me, that was. That is that core element that you need, that sense of self-worth, because otherwise you’ll end up people pleasing, or you’ll want to be liked, and that then, takes you into all sorts of spirals. And what was really heartwarming was, after working together, they were offered a mentorship position.
And then we’re teaching their mentee similar mindset shifts about understanding that particular person’s value. So that mentee had come from abroad, didn’t really want to do the Friday night drinks. They had a family of their own. And my coat my client was able to then help them through that.
[00:28:57] Katherine Ong: So how many of your clients come to you with what you would maybe categorize as confidence issues?
Is there, what is the range of yeah, soft skill issues that you’re working on and what do you see the most?
[00:29:09] Tazmin Suleman: So broadly three buckets there are people who are coming for confidence issues. Now that doesn’t mean that they’re always at the beginning of their career and taking that first step up.
I’ve had this. Entrepreneurs came because they wanted to take their business to the next level. My coach stuck this saying in my head: At every level, there’s a different devil. So you may have it all sorted for that first step in your career or your freelancing journey.
And you’ll feel like you’ve got it sorted, but then you go to the next level. And again, all of that hits you again, right? That lack of confidence. Am I doing this right? So that’s one broad bucket. Another broad bucket is, I know that this isn’t the life I want, but I don’t know what I do want, and it’s helping them navigate that journey.
And then that sometimes also folds into the confidence. Okay. Now I know what I want. They don’t have the confidence to get it. But I’m seeing more and more that I’ve got my career and my family, and everything’s fine, but I’m not. I am exhausted trying to be everything for everyone to the point where even though work is finished, it’s Friday evening, laptop closed, unable to switch off.
So they may have the time to spend painting their daughter’s nails, but they’re not there.
[00:30:44] Katherine Ong: Yeah, that’s hard. That’s really hard. Yeah. I actually struggle without myself. I think everybody struggles with work-life balance. But I put family priorities into my weekly to-do list.
So it sits right there next to work. I think that helps a lot. So when I check in, I do a check-in and check-out, which everybody starts on the show. But during my check-in, I actually check, have I put on the calendar time with my kids? Because that’s also a priority. And then my check-in also has, what are you doing for yourself this week?
I think that it’s really important to keep a balance, and without the check-in I literally have to check it, go to my calendar, put it on the calendar, and without it before, at work has taken over, and you haven’t done the stuff for yourself that you want to do.
[00:31:27] Tazmin Suleman: So I think increasing, I’m on my own journey and there were definitely times I would say, My children are in their late twenties and early thirties now, but when they were like, 20 years ago, I would struggle with that being able to switch off feeling like I needed to do everything.
I think gradually I’m getting to the place where it’s more like an energy flywheel. So, it’s not about two different sides of the same coin. It is all about me. If I know myself and what energizes me, I know which relationships are important to me and how they energize me, and the work that I do energizes me.
Therefore, life is energized. Therefore, I am energized and it’s this perpetual flywheel. It’s just going round and running and round. So instead of seeing self-care as something I have to do and fit in, or date night as something I have to do and fit in, it’s. an awareness that I need all of those cogs for life to flow.
[00:32:41] Katherine Ong: Yeah.
[00:32:41] Tazmin Suleman: And more increasingly, I’m not a hundred percent. But increasingly, I would say for me, life is in flow now.
[00:32:50] Katherine Ong: That’s great. Yeah, that’s great. I’m still definitely, I have a checkmark and I’m putting it on the calendar, though I appreciate how much it does give me energy for sure. Like I have a priority to put workouts on the calendar and I know those energize me but they fall off the calendar if I don’t check it every week and put it on there.
Yeah, interesting. Interesting. I think the past episode was about uncertainty and how uncertainty really causes stress. And I think our industry is very uncertain life in general with climate change and pandemic, whatever is very uncertain. So how do you approach your clients managing that constantly changing environment from a stress perspective?
Do you have any recommendations for how to manage that?
[00:33:34] Tazmin Suleman: I just wanted to end the previous note, I’m fortunate now fortunate, unfortunate I don’t have young children in the house, so you’re at a different phase. I think I’m able to be like this now because life at home is a lot calmer, apart from when all the grandkids come around and then it’s.
[00:33:51] Katherine Ong: Caregiving makes it very chaotic.
[00:33:54] Tazmin Suleman: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, really hats off to everyone who is doing a good job of working and looking after children and it’s a different ballgame. So fully, big respect there with the uncertainty, again, I guess age gives you that perspective that. How much of life really is certain and how much of life has stayed constant.
And if I’m honest, nothing stays constant. The only like the cliche, the only thing that stays constant is that it will always be changing, but it’s those grounding questions you ask yourself. Who do I want to be here? What’s the worst that can happen? What skills do I already have in my toolbox to be able to deal with that?
So habits like pausing in my course, alongside the course, there’s what I call a habit roadmap, and it is filled with things like speaking to yourself, nicely gratitude, and learning how to pause, all of that can be pulled out of any time to help you. So breathing is, I teach this framework called bravery.
Okay. And it can help with in-the-moment things, or it can help if you’re about to, in a week’s time, two weeks time, you’ve got to stand up on stage and divert, deliver a talk. So, the BRAVE stands for breath, the B is for breath, and the use of breathing to calm those emotions down. Then the next one is reframing.
How can I turn this situation so that I win? In this situation, how can I win? Then, the A stands for affirm. Usually, when we’re in those stressful situations, we’re thinking things like, Oh no, it’s gone wrong again. It always happens to me. Why does, why do things always go wrong to turn it around by saying, no, I’m in control?
I may not know the answer, but I know how to find the answer and speak to yourself in a way that is going to help you deal with that situation. Because most people, if not all people will work better. Brains will work better if they’re in a calm state. So you are using breathing and reframing and affirming.
You’re really helping to lower that anxiety and that emotional level. And then I use visualization a lot. I go for a walk around this lake that’s at the back of the house. It’s not my lake. I hasten to add a lot of people. When I talk about it, I think, Oh, you’ve got a lake in your garden. I said, no, I do not have a lake.
But if I am practicing a talk, I will walk around that lake and I will visualize myself walking on the stage. Delivering the message, getting questions from people in the audience, being able to handle those questions, really enjoying the experience, and then being energetic. Supposing you’re doing it at that moment, something’s gone wrong.
And you follow those steps, you’ve breathed, you’ve lowered that emotions, you’ve reframed it, you’ve spoken to yourself you’ve visualized it going well, now you energize, you get your energy level in such a way that you can then go and handle that situation.
[00:37:26] Katherine Ong: Yeah, I also think it’s easier to manage.
Constant change depends on your workplace and I think you vibe off of the other energy around you. I’m just thinking about my personal experience. I worked at a nonprofit that helped move volunteers during natural disasters. Hurricane strikes, and we move volunteers obviously that’s a moment of stress, right?
We want to make sure we help people quickly. And just the disaster coming, the hurricane coming in is stressful, but the way they dealt with it was very calm. And so the entire organization just, they just. Got together to organize things, but it was calm and converse that with working in a PR firm where no matter what it’s like hair on fire.
Everybody freak out. Everybody instantly call and the energy is like bonkers. So I, I do think that You can handle your stress or think about where you would be best to handle your stress. I guess some people probably will be fine in the PR firm. I personally was like, this was a bad choice because I’m like the polar opposite of these people.
What are you flipping out about? Nobody’s dying cause usually it wasn’t a natural disaster. So I guess I could hold my calm, you have to really barricade yourself against everybody else’s flip-out, freak-out energy. So anyway, just as a tip, if you’re Finding it challenging.
Perhaps think about the environment you’re in and whether it’s best for your DNA and your ability to handle that.
[00:38:50] Tazmin Suleman: I fully agree. I do not work well with people who are getting completely worked out about a graphic. For goodness sake.
[00:39:02] Katherine Ong: Yeah, it was not for me. I was there for five years, but still just long term, not for me.
So I was also wondering about how you help people with potential conflict because there are some moments in a workplace. Obviously, you have a conflict with your coworkers or even your boss. Are there any tips that you help your clients and how to handle that in the workplace?
[00:39:26] Tazmin Suleman: We have a whole two modules on communication, listening, and how to have a conversation. Tips like going in and knowing what the results of that conversation are for you to feel that it was a good conversation. And to almost remove any prejudices that you have, go in and have that talk, hear what they are saying.
Because maybe, just maybe there is something that you’ve missed, and really listen to it without that bias. Inevitably, everyone’s going to have some degree of bias, but if you go in angry, then it’s not going to go well. So really sit down, reflect, even journal about it. Yeah, this is what happened. This is what I want to discuss.
This is a good outcome for me. And know that. If at any point in that talk, things are not going okay, you are, it’s okay for you to say thank you for your time. I’m going to go away and process this and perhaps we could reconvene later.
Again, ask yourself, who do I want to be? Do I want to be the person that loses my call and gets angry? Not saying that there is never a space for that. Sometimes, yeah, but just go in. Again, grace, dignity, and to know what you want out of it, and also being prepared to then negotiate. It could be that they also want something from you.
And rather than just knee jerking saying, no, not going to do that. Ask yourself, actually, is that a fair request? Is that something I want to do and process it.
[00:41:17] Katherine Ong: I think it’s a huge skill to be able to have that language about acknowledging what somebody else has said, and then telling them you need time and you’re going to take a break and come back, even if it’s in a personal environment, even with your kids.
Explain that I’ve heard you, I, I constantly, because stress is challenging for my health issues, so I, with the kids, cause they know, but I’ll be like, I hear you. But this environment is raising my stress, which is not good for me. So I’m going to go take a break and do some breathing and I will come back.
Cause I also want them to learn it. So it’s important for me to know how to do it and practice it. So that they can also learn how to do it and practice it. But hard, it’s not a natural thing to do. I don’t think.
[00:42:04] Tazmin Suleman: I have a funny story, but you want me to share? Yeah. My husband cycles a lot.
His bike was the tire was punctured, and we were wheeling it to his sister’s house. And, because at the time he didn’t have any other kids. And on the way there, he said something quite ordinary, but it triggered me. And I couldn’t understand why it triggered me. So I’m now walking down the street with him, he’s holding the bicycle, and I’m crying.
And I remember saying to him, sobbing, saying, I don’t know why I’m upset, but I’ll figure it out, and I’ll get back to you. And he’s mortified because suddenly he’s got this crying woman walking with him in the middle of the street. So we get to, sisters, she doesn’t live very far from us, clean up my face.
We go in, have a cup of tea, and everyone chats. I’m thinking, what triggered me? Going back to it, he said this, Oh, actually, you know what? It made me feel this, and this. On the way back, I said to him, figure it out now. When you said this is what I thought, and when I thought that, this is how I felt.
And he said, no, but I didn’t mean that at all. I meant this and this. I thought, oh, okay, that’s okay then. Really owning your emotions. Your, it’s your emotion. They didn’t make you feel what you felt. And the more you can get a clear understanding of why you’re feeling what you’re feeling and have the ability to figure it out, even if you don’t know in that instant, the more power you will have.
[00:43:44] Katherine Ong: Yeah. That’s really strong. Yeah. So let’s see, what else have we not chatted about? Let’s talk about careers. So how do you counsel your clients to think about their careers, visualize success, setting up a plan to get there, that kind of stuff.
[00:44:02] Tazmin Suleman: In our vision module, I will give them different methods.
To get to that and suggest that, try different ones and different methods, and work for different people. So we go through vision boarding, then we go through vision listing. We go through what I call a dreams dump saying, don’t dismiss anything that you’ve dreamt about. Just put it down on a piece of paper.
We go through the wheel of life. And we also—I’m just—everything is holistic. So I never just talked to somebody about their career. We always incorporate life in that because you can’t. I’m dealing with a whole person. I’m not just dealing with a manager. I don’t do corporate-type coaching.
It’s more like, when you get success, what does that look like? The first vision board I created for myself, I put things on there that I thought I should, and it just didn’t work for me. And then the second one, I knew I wanted to write, so I just put a picture of me writing. I didn’t know what I was going to write, when I was going to write, or how I was going to write anything.
I like public speaking, so there’s a picture of me speaking. Again, I didn’t know what that looked like, but it was really having clarity on the things I got energy from doing. And. working with the rest, just figuring it out as I went along. But by the time I finished doing that vision board, I created a business card in the middle and it said, Tazmin, Suleman, coach, writer, speaker.
I didn’t know about casting that and everything on that vision board very quickly. So we go through those exercises. But when I asked about what a look like, I asked questions like what do you want to be doing? Where do you want to be working? How much do you want to be earning? How do you want to be feeling?
What are you when you’re just being? What is your character? And all of that together shapes their goals. So one particular person said, actually, you know what? I thought I wanted this high-flying career, but I don’t. I’m really happy with where I am. What I want to do is build on my relationship with my family.
Yeah. Exercise more, be more creative. And for her, coming from a high-flying family, to be able to say that was huge. She then molded her life in that way. There was another person who was completely burnt out when they started working with me. The job wasn’t right for them, but they didn’t want to change their career in SEO, but it was a type of organization.
So then, when we explored, what did they look like? She said, I actually would prefer to work in a nonprofit with an organization whose values align with mine. And then that’s what she went
[00:47:09] Katherine Ong: Yeah. That’s super powerful. It’s interesting. Cause my husband was always like, he’s a musician. He’s always wanted to be a composer and, or not a composer or a conductor.
But then, as he dug into it more, he realized that it involved a lot of travel and performances at night, which directly conflicted with his desire to have a family. It’s so similar that you think you want to do it, but then you dig into it a little bit more, and you realize that it actually doesn’t align with your values.
Yeah.
[00:47:34] Tazmin Suleman: Yeah.
[00:47:35] Katherine Ong: So, do you have? This has been great. I just wanted to see if you had any other wins or resources that you wanted to share with our audience.
[00:47:44] Tazmin Suleman: So I can definitely send you some links for resources that people, so there’s a video on the brave technique that we talked about. There’s a self-reflection booklet.
For me, self-reflection is the starting point. Get to know yourself first, and then everything else will go from there. Great. So how can people learn more about you? There’s the website Tazminsuleman.com. There’s also the podcast website – The SEO Mindset.
I’ve forgotten. I will write it down and send you the link. You can put it in the show notes or something.
[00:48:26] Katherine Ong: This has been super helpful. Great tips. I love the conversation. I think this is going to be valuable for all the listeners. Thanks so much for listening. To find out more about the podcast and what we’re up to, go to DigitalMarketingVictories.com. And if you like what you heard, subscribe to us on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.
Rate us, comment, and share the podcast, please. I’m always looking for new ideas, topics, and guests. Email us at admin at wostrategies.com or DM us on Twitter @dmvictories. Thanks for listening.
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