Category: Women empowerment

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Minority Mental Health Self Care Stress Women empowerment black affinity groups • black women and work • safe spaces February 23, 2023 By AMANDA FLUDD 0 Comments

From Talk to Action: Making Safe Spaces a Reality for Black Women in the Workplace

Black women face a unique set of challenges that are often overlooked in mainstream conversations. From colorism and racism to health disparities and wage gaps to issues closer to their heart like identity and belonging, finding a blueprint for love, black women must navigate various issues that require space to discuss and address them.

Safe spaces allow a supportive and inclusive environment where women of color can share their experiences, gain insights and heal through the stories and solutions shared on issues that affect them. This blog will explore the importance of safe spaces for Black women and how to create them.

Why Safe Spaces Matter

First, safe spaces foster connection and access to information. For Black History Month, I hosted a fireside chat series called Confidence in Color for women of color because of my experiences as an Afro Caribbean Woman evolving at “work.” I didn’t have an abundance of mentorship and guidance to help navigate areas like entrepreneurship, financial planning, and leadership. Still, I always knew the value of the knowledge of my elders or those ahead of me and longed for it.

Our elders have historically provided wisdom, guidance, and sound judgments that provided direction and created a sense of emotional safety. As we progress in our professional or personal lives, it can become difficult to locate experienced individuals who can relate to our unique struggles, mainly due to systemic problems such as racism and glass ceilings, and a lack of understanding for the need for likeminded and cultural base mentorship, particularly for women of color.

“A mentor is someone who allows you to see the hope inside yourself.” – Oprah Winfrey

While it’s beneficial to have supportive colleagues and allies, connecting with other Black women who have faced comparable challenges provides an additional level of psychological safety that should be appreciated in all settings. One of the women who attended the virtual chat series expressed how empowering it was for her to hear from other women in similar situations, which was why she decided to log on. There were over 50 women who felt the same.

I established the series precisely because of this desire for a shared experience and a need for mentorship by other women of color.

Secondly, safe spaces allow you to see that you are not alone. As a psychotherapist, one of the core issues I come across when high achievers come to therapy is the sense that they’re alone in their experiences, even in supposedly inclusive work environments where there’s a lack of diversity among executives and managers. This often results in black women’s accomplishments being undervalued or overlooked due to unrecognized biases. As a result, women may internalize these experiences, leading to anxiety, self-worth issues, acts of overcompensation that contribute to stress, and burnout.

On the flip side, safe spaces can also serve as an avenue for organizations to evaluate whether their initiatives are genuinely effecting change and meeting the needs of marginalized groups while establishing avenues for advancement and diversity – both essential factors in retaining a diverse and competent workforce and fostering balanced work cultures.

How to Create Safe Spaces

According to the Oxford Dictionary, a safe space is “a place or environment in which a person or category of people can feel confident that they will not be exposed to discrimination, criticism, harassment, or any other emotional or physical harm.” Creating a safe space for Black women requires intentional efforts. Here are some steps you can take to create a safe space:

Encourage open and honest communication: Encourage Black women to freely share their experiences and perspectives. Create a supportive environment that allows for vulnerability and validation.
Create formal or informal check-ins: It’s difficult, to be honest, when you don’t feel safe. Consider if there are ways to create systems to attain information without fear of retaliation so the lines of communication can remain open and effective. Can check-ins be built into regular practices like weekly meetings or monthly forums, not just black history or women’s history month?
Provide resources and information: Provide information and resources that address the unique challenges and stressors women of color face. This can include workshops, seminars, educational materials, retreats, or opportunities for affinity groups and access to mentors or coaches.
Invite allies: Invite allies willing to learn and support all women of color and commit to their own personal growth. This can include creative learning through book clubs, lunch and learns, and conversations that challenge personal bias and foster true diversity and inclusivity.

Safe spaces are essential for Black women to discuss unique issues and find support.

Retreat for black leaders and entrepreneurs

By creating a safe space, we can foster people-first environments where Black women feel included and can see the value of their achievements, find validation and support, as well as connection, balance, and psychological safety.

Establishing safe spaces requires deliberate efforts. The onus is on organizations that endorse and facilitate these spaces to regularly evaluate their efficacy in assisting underrepresented groups to feel listened to, appreciated, and empowered.

I would love to hear what resonated with you from this piece and what you think would be helpful in fostering safe spaces for black women or how you create safe spaces for black women.

Amanda Fludd, LCSW-R, is a Licensed Psychotherapist and Mental Health consultant. She works in partnership with organizations and institutions like schools and corporations to assess an organization’s emotional health, designing customized mental health and wellness workshops to help teams navigate stress, burnout, and trauma so they can thrive well.

Business Self Care Women empowerment Business Retreat • Womens Retreat August 2, 2022 By AMANDA FLUDD 1 Comment

The Powerful Lessons I Learned at the Business Retreat

A blog around the key learnings after attending the Retreat

I recently returned from my first curated Retreat for minority women in business in Mexico: Renew, Connect, Restore, Retreat. It was more than I could’ve expected. I wanted to pause and share five things I learned from sharing space with 12 exceptional women.

What Was The Business Retreat About?

The Renew, Connect, Restore Retreat was birthed out of the Mindset and Motivation Community for Women Entrepreneurs of Color. It has been such an uplifting virtual space that it naturally made sense to transition it to a live experience. As women, we often struggle to set aside time for ourselves because we are busy supporting everyone else’s life, with little energy left to create, ask for help, or continue to stretch ourselves. When we attempt to work on ourselves, we are so wrapped up in our heads that things like procrastination, worry, and overthinking rob us of our potential.

The community is an intentional space to refuel, encourage, teach, and share. Along the way, we foster skills to grow your business and voice. What’s unique about the group is you don’t even need to have a business! Just good intentions and a true understanding of sisterhood. Those values are what I took and curated in Mexico.

black women retreat, women in business retreat. Mental health, business development and wellness. Mindset and Motivation for Women Entrepreneurs of Color

The Retreat was four days of connection, workshops on purpose, profits, and self-care, all facilitated by women from the community. One of the facilitators was my good friend from UCONN Tasha Smith, MSW, MBA from Peach Valley Co (an inclusive Real Estate and Tech Company) who happened to be in Mexico and volunteered to do a workshop.

Here are five of the most powerful business lessons I learned from attending the Renew, Connect, Restore Retreat for minority women in business:

1. The importance of building a solid and supportive tribe. I was reminded that I don’t need to rely on others outside my circle to help deliver an experience. Instead, I can ask within my tribe for support.

2. It’s very encouraging to share space with like-minded women. These women did not know each other, but you would swear we were best of friends. Being around other black and brown women striving for similar goals and willing to serve as mirrors to listen, be honest, and help identify issues that maybe you didn’t want to see on your own created such a safe and healing environment.

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3. The Retreat was an opportunity for personal growth and development. The speakers learned as much about themselves as the participants did. I had the chance to coach some of them on expressing their gifts in creative and tangible ways, which led to dynamic and effective handouts for the group.

4. Leveraging your skills and experience to create new business opportunities is possible. There is a huge need for us to learn how to think outside our well-constructed professional box. I challenged the idea of “an expert,” had them identify tangible skills, and walked them through how to use that to create a product. The women were challenged to think outside the box and use their professional skills to create new opportunities.

5. I am capable of so much more than I realize. Challenging yourself with new and complex tasks or concepts that seem outside your reach will only push you to develop those tangible skill sets that can open doors. Pouring out in this capacity also has a counter effect of filling you with things like joy, confidence, and contentment. This experience showed me that I haven’t even reached my potential as an entrepreneur.

The experience solidified my purpose and strengthened the value of community and how far we can go together. If you are a minority woman in need of a tribe, we extend an invitation to you and hope you will join us.

And yes, by request, we’ll be hosting the Retreat again. We are thinking of a tropical place like Antigua. What’s your favorite island?

Let me know in the comments. If you don’t want to miss an invite follow me at Ig@amanda.fludd if you aren’t in the community already.

If you need help defining and implementing a digital strategy as you start to build your business, let us know if we can assist you.

Amanda Fludd, LCSW-R is a Licensed Psychotherapist, Speaker, and Mindset Coach for high-achieving women and professionals venturing into business. Her joy is tackling mental health on multiple platforms and she is available for speaking engagements and training.

Disclaimer: There are affiliate links on this page, which means we get a small commission for anything you decide to buy. We only recommend quality products, but you should do your research before making a purchase.

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Anxiety Business Confidence Mindset Self-improvement Women empowerment Anxiety • How to overcome fear • overthinking April 21, 2022 By AMANDA FLUDD 2 Comments

5 Actionable Steps to Overcome Fear and Anxiety

Fear is a powerful emotion that we all experience in our lives, and it is something that can be very challenging to deal with, but you can learn how to overcome fear and anxiety with a few easy to follow actionable steps.

When we are pursuing a new experience, like a new job opportunity, relationship, or starting a business, fear can hold us back. It can make us see challenges as insurmountable or make us over-prepare to the point that it slows our growth.

This post contains affiliate links. Read our full disclosure here.

Fear and Anxiety

Quote: Every time your fear is invited up, every time you recognize it and smile at it, your fear will lose some of its strength

“Every time your fear is invited up, every time you recognize it and smile at it, your fear will lose some of its strength.”
Thich Nhat Hanh

The best way to deal with fear is to face it. In facing it, you get to see if the story you made up around the issue is true or what you may be lacking to help you move forward. The more we avoid the problem, the more anxiety we consequently cause around it. For example, if you are constantly thinking about whether you will do well on an upcoming exam, you can’t sleep. The consequent exhaustion then triggers even more anxiety because you can’t concentrate and study, further impacting your sleep– and just like that, the worry has just become a debilitating cycle, confirming your worst fear- you won’t be ready for the exam and will fail.

Instead, the goal has to become to lean into the fear so you can disarm it. What if you acknowledged what your worry and fear was in the first place instead of reacting to it. Could we possibly find a better response so it loses some of its strength?

How do fears get in the way of being successful?

Culturally, I’ve been raised to not speak over others, and I think I have this natural resistance to being seen, and it’s my kryptonite that shows up at the wrong time. I can still recall moments sitting “at the table” with people in my profession and listening to them give their opinions on things and wanting to give my two cents but struggling within myself to speak up.

Fear and anxiety work like that to cripple you within yourself.

Those experiences can be triggered by various fears like the fear of judgment, failure, or the fear of being alone, and sometimes even the fear of being successful.

When challenged in that space, it can have this counter-response that looks like overthinking, avoiding opportunities, missed deadlines, low energy, feeling disconnected from your work, procrastination, perfectionism, irritability, or indecisiveness.

How can we overcome fear and anxiety?

Fear is a built-in instinct to protect us, so we don’t want to get rid of it, but we do want to help our brains understand the moments we are safe and don’t need that fear reaction. The best way to overcome fear in that case is to repeatedly do the thing that causes it but in a safe and controlled way. During this process of exposure, coupled with positive coping skills, you can learn to ride out the fear or wave of anxiety until it naturally subsides.

Need a place to track and challenge those thoughts, and work on your wellness? Grab a Wellness Planner here.

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When the emotion of fear or anxiety seems overwhelming, try to shift your focus to a healthier thought or a skill that will reduce the feelings, so it is more manageable. A stress-reduction approach like mindfulness or simply taking a break and disconnecting from the issue and going for a walk may help you better take the actions you need to be successful. I would also add to be patient and add some compassion into the process. Your mind is working to keep you safe when these responses are triggered. It can’t always tell the action you want to take isn’t a dangerous risk but one you can handle and necessary to improve your current situation.

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How to overcome the fears of growth as a professional

Start by identifying the fears holding you back from reaching your next level. Our thoughts are powerful, but they can be damaging and limiting when building out your dreams. The fear of failure is like the dark cloud that follows most professionals as they work on advancing their careers, especially through entrepreneurship. Rather than simply stopping people from being entrepreneurial, fear of failure can also serve as a motivator for success with a better understanding of your response dynamics. To help you better recognize and challenge your internal reactions to growth we put together some exercises to help you find those fears with the Believe Bigger Workbook available here for entrepreneurs.

Here are a few prompts from the workbook to challenge your mindset:

Once you’ve identified a few of your fears, can you think of specific experiences from your life that might have formed these fears?
What do you feel is holding you back from more significant success?
Recall a time you were afraid. How did you move past the fear?
Pause for a moment and identify and write about five of your strengths.

5 Actionable steps to overcome fear and anxiety. Prompts and steps to reduce fears and challenge your mindset.

To deepen this practice and find the root of self-sabotaging behaviors, try keeping a journal over a period of two or three weeks. Look for any patterns you notice, the source of those fears (family, culture, financial, criticism, etc), and their validity. Fear is often fed by false stories making your experience seem much worse than it really is.

In Summary:

Lean into your fears. Figure out what it’s about, and if it is valid for the direction you are going.
Practice stress reduction techniques like mindfulness or disconnecting from the source of distress at the moment.
Shift your focus to more positive thoughts or emotions. Use your imagination or visualization to picture that same fearful experience with a positive outcome, and embrace the positive emotions you anticipate feeling with your successful outcome. The control and calm you experience during your visualization can actually help you get through the actual ordeal with more ease.
Challenge your mindset around the fear with journal prompts like the one above and other exploratory resources like the Believing Bigger Workbook for Women in Business.
Practice Compassion. Your mind is only trying to keep you safe.

If you are a Minority Woman in Business and would like consistent support and accountability on your goals, the Mastermind Group may be a fit for you.

Disclaimer: There are affiliate links on this page, which means we get a small commission of anything you decide to buy to support our tea-drinking habits at no cost to you.

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Anxiety Confidence Mental Health Mindset Personal Growth Stress Women empowerment Calm Anxiety • Coping with anxiety • Entrepreneur Stress • How to Manage Stress? • Quotes to deal with anxiety December 7, 2021 By AMANDA FLUDD 7 Comments

15 Quotes to Calm Your Anxiety When Stressed Out

Cheerful stylish African American lady. Able to manage stress and anxiety. Happy.

These 15 anxiety quotes are meant to encourage you and help calm that feeling of overwhelm when anxious or feeling like life is out of control. Understanding how your mind works and how you talk to yourself when stressed out is key to reducing Anxiety in your life.

We all have that humble inner voice that tells us what we should be doing with our lives and who we ultimately want to be. Unfortunately, many women push this inner voice aside and instead listen to the one that says things like, “You can’t do this”, “How am I going to make money from this?”, “What will people think of me?” “I feel like a fraud,” “This is too difficult”, and “What if I fail?”.

That critical voice is like a neon yellow highlighter finding all the negatives. Its presence can be painful, limiting, and paralyzing. What you may not know is it is often connected to anxiety or depression and fuels destructive habits shortchanging your progress, and the progress of the other 40 million adults in the United States alone that are diagnosed with Anxiety or Depression (and that’s just those who know).

The Thought, Attitude & Action Connection

Anxiety is pretty common, and a hallmark trait is the fear-based worry thoughts that hold women hostage creating doubt, imposter syndrome, and not much action. See your thoughts, attitude and actions are strongly related, and you can take a look at an example of that here. Negative self-talk triggers emotions like worry, anger, or sadness, kicking up a negative or defeated attitude, which then causes you to engage in self sabotaging behaviors with things like procrastination or avoidance. Sounds familiar?

Learning to correct negative thinking patterns and your response starts with understanding the source of these unhelpful stories running around in your mind and beginning to seize control of your inner mean girl. If you want to take a closer look at what this means for you, download the free inner critic workbook to help you calm your inner critic.

I’m curious, what would you be doing if you didn’t second guess yourself? Or talk yourself out of amazing opportunities? Share those thoughts in the comments below.

Retraining Your Brain

As you ponder the impact of your inner mean girl, please note the good news- changes made to your brain by negative thought processes are reversible. While we use strategies based on cognitive behavior therapy to do this with clients, you can start to do some of this work yourself simply by introducing more positive comments to your life. The research has found the more you engage in positive thought work, the more it stimulates the front of your brain or the pre-frontal cortex- positive self-talk is like a workout for your mind.

And real talk, reading something positive is just uplifting and is a powerful way to help you feel calm and in control when stress or Anxiety threatens to overwhelm you.

Managing Stress

Navigating anxiety, stress and overwhelm in the moment is critical. Here are a few ways some of our clients do that:

Embrace mindfulness or regular meditation practice (try apps like stop, breathe, think or calm.com)
Schedule breaks within the day
Brain dump to-do lists and work on the top 3 items at a time instead of being overwhelmed by EVERYTHING on the list
Eat junk free snacks throughout the day to support a consistent mood
Learn to say “no” and assert boundaries with significant others

Embracing the positive

Using affirmations, mantras, the above approaches, and working with a therapist or a business mindset coach may be the missing element to fighting against your mind and consistently showing up for your self and your business. As you continue to work on yourself, here are a few positve quotes to get some perspective on your Anxiety and soothe your soul!

Quotes to Navigate Anxiety and Lift Your Spirits

This one is one of my favorites from the Inner Critic Workbook for Ambitious Women:

1. “Thoughts are not facts or realities. They do not define you” ~Amanda Fludd

2. “I give myself permission to suck…I find this hugely liberating” -John Green

3. “Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strength.”

—Charles Spurgeon

4. Trust yourself. You’ve survived a lot, and you’ll survive whatever is coming. – Robert Tew

5. Smile, breathe, and go slowly. — Thich Nhat Hanh

6.”You can have it all. Just not all at once.” ~Oprah

And another from the Queen herself:

7. “The thing you fear most has no power. Your fear of it is what has the power. Facing the truth really will set you free.” – Oprah Winfrey

8. “You dream. You plan. You reach. There will be obstacles. There will be doubters. There will be mistakes. But with hard work, with belief, with confidence and trust in yourself and those around you, there are no limits.” – Michael Phelps

“Just believe in yourself. Even if you don’t pretend that you do and, and some point, you will.” —Venus Williams

10. “The only person who can stop you from reaching your goals is you.”

— Jackie Joyner-Kersee

11. “You don’t have to control your thoughts. You just have to stop letting them control you.”

– Dan Millman

12. “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand”. Isiah 41:10

13. “Instead of worrying about what you cannot control, shift your energy to what you can create.” – Roy Bennett

14. “It’s OKAY to be scared. Being scared means you’re about to do something really, really brave.” – Mandy Hale

15. “The way you tell your story to yourself matters.” – Amy Cuddy

That said, continue to challenge that inner critic and the mean girl stories it tries to tell you. It’s most likely not true, and you are more powerful than your mind will have you to believe.

If any of these quotes or parts of this blog resonated with you, we’d love to hear about it in the comments below.

Also, if you like any of the images featured in this post, sharing it through your favorite social media platform like Pinterest or tagging @amanda.fludd on Instagram is appreciated.

Calming the Anxious Mind

Getting Clear on Goals to Reduce Overwhelm

Ending Self Criticism and Liking Yourself More

Amanda Fludd, LCSW-R is a Licensed therapist and coach for high-achieving women. It’s important to note when resolving complex thoughts, it can be challenging, and it is helpful to enlist the support of a therapist or a coach. If you are unsure what you need, reach out, and we can help you figure that out.

Note: There might be affiliate links on this page, which means we get a small commission of anything you decide to buy to support our tea drinking habits at no cost to you.

Confidence Personal Growth Stress Women empowerment Business Psychology • How To Be Happy • Positive Self Talk September 9, 2021 By AMANDA FLUDD 0 Comments

Do You Have an Unhealthy Relationship With Your Business?

The Relationship Between Your Business and Your Mindset Can Be Toxic

Entrepreneurs are one of my favorite people because they’ve consciously decided to carve their own paths and take full responsibility for their success. Yet, as creative, driven, and ambitious these phenomenal humans are, they still encounter challenges in their growth that, just like you, they may not realize is an unconscious habit holding them back.

When you eat, sleep, and breathe your business, it’s sometimes hard to see the emotional patterns at play that often contribute to those moments you feel anxious, frustrated, stagnant, or stuck.

Allow me to help you out.

Here are three bad habits that may be compromising your entrepreneurial success:

IGNORING THE INNER BULLY

Everyone struggles with fear and self-doubt from time to time, and entrepreneurs and young leaders experience these emotions more frequently than others. When our performance and decisions do not meet expectations, our instinct isn’t always compassion and praise but self-criticism. When you say “I can’t” do this or embrace other negative internal dialogue, it flames the fire of imaginary catastrophic situations and leaves you susceptible to limiting beliefs. Negative and self-deprecating thoughts tend to keep getting bigger and ultimately put a wrench in progress if you aren’t intentional with addressing it.

“Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you’ll start having positive results.” – Willie Nelson

NOT USING THE RIGHT PEOPLE

You can’t start [or grow] your business with friends alone. A challenge for most entrepreneurs is recognizing their current circle may not have the knowledge, expertise, or even care to support their growth. No hard feelings towards them, but they can’t help you go to higher levels if they have never experienced that themselves. You may need friends in leadership, marketing friends, investor friends, social media friends… it’s time to diversify your friendships.

The reality is that there’s an entire community of other entrepreneurs behind almost every successful entrepreneur who understands the grind and can expedite your learning curve. The best of us recognize that we genuinely can’t do it by ourselves or with our walking friends.

BURNING THE MIDNIGHT OIL AND DOING IT ALL

Let’s face it, work is never-ending, especially when success is dependent on you, and more often, that pressure can trigger our over-achieving perfectionism and push us onto the path of exhaustion. Burnout is real in this arena, and so is frustration with the hustle, stress, and losing the connection to why you started in the first place. That’s usually when coaching clients come to me when they don’t even know why they are working so hard anymore, and the stress and anxiety are overwhelming. What’s usually very evident is poor boundaries.

A good strategy I recommend is to commit to taking a few minutes each day to reboot your brain and reenergize your body. Most people ignore the importance of taking time away from their desks or implementing a hard stop time when doing work (or working from home).

When was the last time you took a weekend off?

The barriers between work and personal life can blur for many ambitious professionals and entrepreneurs, but the word is balance. I am the most creative and inspired when I take intentional breaks and travel, read, ambush my kids with nerf guns, engage in focused breathing exercises, or just nap.

A quick workaround here is to schedule time for fun just as you would professional tasks –whether it’s a call with friends, hanging at a new café, or that mindful moment, put it on your calendar. I think it’s also essential to build it into the workday- incorporate music into meetings, or end with a quick mindful minute. The pauses should be built into the work experience. Socializing, laughing, and relaxing is an excellent prescription for the entrepreneur’s soul.

Final pop quiz:

What sabotaging patterns do you recognize in yourself?
Are you in an unhealthy relationship with your business? What is something different you can do today to better navigate habits that self-sabotage your success? Take a moment to create a reminder for that one thing and schedule it on your phone. You may not be able to make a huge shift right away, but a shift is a start. And it’s a start in the right direction.
How can you recognize these patterns in the future?

I hope that you enjoyed this week’s blog post on the importance of emotional awareness in business. I’ve written in the past about how important it is for entrepreneurs to remember that it’s okay to be vulnerable, to trust your gut, to take risks, and to go outside of your comfort zone. Hopefully this post has helped you rethink your inner-entrepreneur so that you can start focusing on the things that need to be done rather than the things that are holding you back.

If you’re looking for more information about business psychology or need support, you can connect with me here.

Let me know if these tips and the review questions were helpful in the comments below!

Cheers to your success, Amanda Fludd

Thoughtful Black woman sitting in a bright, naturally lit room with a light gray couch and greenery. Text reads, “You’re Hitting Those Vision Board Goals. But Is Your Healing Keeping Up?” highlighting the importance of emotional healing, mental wellness, and self-care alongside personal and professional success.