How often do you show kindness to others but forget to extend it to yourself? In this episode, I’m joined by Dr. Hayley D Quinn, a compassionate business coach, speaker, and former clinical psychologist, to explore how self-compassion can transform the way we navigate challenges like stress, setbacks, and doubt.
How often do you show kindness to others but forget to extend it to yourself? In this episode, I’m joined by Dr. Hayley D Quinn, a compassionate business coach, speaker, and former clinical psychologist, to explore how self-compassion can transform the way we navigate challenges like stress, setbacks, and doubt.
Hayley shares practical strategies to help you build resilience, clarity, and balance, whether you're managing perfectionism, a high-pressure role, or a busy life. Her insights have helped countless people rethink their approach to their careers and well-being.
Start your year with a fresh perspective—tune in for Hayley’s powerful tips and discover how self-compassion can help you thrive.
Links we talked about on the podcast include:
Dr Hayley D Quinn on LinkedIn, Facebook & Instagram
The RISE Accelerate program - JOIN THE WAITLIST
Free Guide: The Ultimate Guide to Saying No
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[00:00:00] Gillian: How often do we show kindness to others, but forget to extend it to ourselves? For many of us, self-compassion, it feels unnatural or even unnecessary, but it can completely change the way we navigate life's challenges. Joining us today is Dr. Hayley D Quinn, a compassionate business coach, speaker, and former clinical psychologist.
Hayley is an expert when it comes to compassion. She's going to talk about how it can help us approach things like setbacks, stress, doubt, how you can build more resilience and clarity. I'm so thrilled to have Hayley with us today. I mean, it's January and we need this, but you need to know her insights have helped so many people rethink how they approach their careers, overcome some of these key challenges. So, whether it's perfectionism for you or a high-pressured role or simply finding balance in a busy life, Hayley has some incredible tips and strategies to share. I think you're going to love this conversation. Let's dive in.
[00:02:20] Gillian: Welcome to the Your Brilliant Career podcast. It is such a pleasure to have you, and you are our first guest for 2025.
[00:02:26] Hayley: Oh, fantastic. Thank you so much for inviting me.
[00:02:29] Gillian: I'm very excited about this conversation. I think so many of us are thinking about how to reset, refocus, prepare for the year ahead. So let's dive in. Tell us about compassion. When we have a setback, for example, at work, is it as simple as treating ourselves kindly? Like help us understand the concept.
[00:02:48] Hayley: Okay, so I always start with letting people know the definition of compassion and compassion is a sensitivity to suffering in ourselves and others, with a motivation to alleviate or prevent that suffering.
So it's not just about being kind to ourselves. It's not just about being all warm and fuzzy. It's actually about being willing to acknowledge the suffering that we are experiencing or someone else is experiencing, and wanting to actually do something about that and having the wisdom to know what to do.
So say you were walking past somewhere and somebody had fallen into a swimming pool and you couldn't swim. A compassionate act is not to jump in to save them. The compassionate act would be to get help for somebody that could actually do that.
So it really is about strength and courage and wisdom. And a lot of people can have this misconception that if I'm compassionate to myself, I won't achieve things. It's a bit weak, it's a bit pink and fluffy, and it's just not true. One of the core components of compassion is courage.
[00:03:50] Gillian: That's an interesting point you just raised because I think a lot of people, might be afraid of losing their edge if they practice self-compassion. What would you say to that, Hayley?
[00:04:00] Hayley: Firstly, I'd say you're not alone. It's really, really common that people think that. And then what we also know from the research is that self-compassion is actually a greater motivator than self-criticism. When people were actually self-compassionate, they were more likely to try again, study harder, want to do better. So it is actually better for us in our businesses and careers, if we actually do bring compassion to the party instead of self-criticism.
[00:04:27] Gillian: So do you think self-compassion helps women become better leaders too?
[00:04:31] Hayley: Oh, undoubtedly. Yeah, and also it's not just about self-compassion.
And I think this is really important because on social media at the moment, it really is all about self-compassion. But that's only one part of it. We have three flows of compassion. We have compassion to others. Which many people, especially women, are very, very good at. Then we have self-compassion and also compassion from others. And the self-compassion and the compassion from others can be the tricky ones for people. One might be harder for you than the other, but they're both really important because particularly as busy women, and if people are in leadership positions, if you have a tendency to take care of others, you're likely going to be holding more load in your team than you perhaps need to as well. So being able to receive compassion from others, being able to ask for help and receive it, is actually really important as well.
And then in the leadership piece, if we can be more compassionate all round. Like if you're really struggling with somebody on your team and you have to deal with them, if you can bring compassion to yourself, if you can say something to yourself, like I actually really struggle to deal with that person and I'm going to let myself know it's okay that I struggle with that, but what am I going to do about it?
[00:05:52] Hayley: And then if I can look through the lens of compassion to that person and think about what is it about my own history and experiences that helped me understand why I'm making the choices I'm making, why I'm in the situation I'm in, why I'm struggling with this so much.
Maybe they remind you of somebody that you've had a bad experience with. Maybe it's actually not about that team member, but it's about something that's showing up in you from your own experience.
Or maybe that team member has gone through something really challenging. And what we know is when we're in our threat system, we become hostile to ourselves and others. So if somebody is going through something really bad, likely as they might be more hostile and that's going to make them harder to deal with, but if we can actually look from this place of compassion, we can soften our approach. We can be more understanding.
[00:07:21] Gillian: What drew you to this subject, Hayley? Was it something that you discovered through your own experiences or was it that you saw a need in others? Like what, what drew you in to be so passionate about compassion?
[00:07:34] Hayley: So, I had an extremely critical relationship with myself growing up and into my adult life. And then I was studying psychology at university, and I came across Christopher Germer's book, The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion. Now, at the time I was a single parent, I was recovering from a domestic violence relationship, and I was working a few jobs to make ends meet.
I continued with my studies, graduated, started working and lo and behold, after living like that, I had the significant burnout. Who would have thought that would happen? Whilst I thought I'd done a pretty good job of taking care of myself we can't operate like that and think there's going to be no consequences.
I'd read Christopher's book in 2008 and in 2013, as part of my training as a psychologist, I started to learn about compassion focused therapy. And it's very much a therapy that as a therapist, you embody so that you can use it well in your client work.
And I went on to do extensive training in that and then also trained other people. So through that process, I just really changed the relationship that I have with myself. Being with myself was a much nicer experience, but also it allowed me to ask myself different questions, to treat myself differently, to take different action, both in my personal life and my business, and really allowed me to develop a way of doing business that allows me to be successful without compromising my wellbeing. Without compromising how I want to be living my life.
[00:09:08] Gillian: Who do you think needs this most, Hayley.
[00:09:10] Hayley: Every human being that walks the earth.
[00:09:12] Gillian: So, we can all get better at this, basically.
[00:09:15] Hayley: Oh my goodness. Absolutely. We live in a world we're not designed for, first of all. And I think as humans, we have a brain that's been designed for us, not by us. Like nobody is going to design a brain that can get caught up in rumination and worry and obsessive thinking and all this sort of stuff.
And it can be really hard being a human being. And then add into that all the different roles we have. And it's a lot. And we can be really hard on ourselves. So whilst it's not our fault that we have this tricky mind, it is our responsibility to learn about the mind that we've got and how we operate as a human and how we can do that differently. Because in CFT, we have, what we call the three circle model, and in the three circle model, we look at that. We have a threat system, which is on 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It's our default system. Nobody has to practice having a panic attack. Like if you're going to have one, it's going to happen, right?
We then have our drive system and this is the system that motivates us to pursue and achieve. And I would say a lot of the people listening and probably you and I have a quite a robust drive system.
And then we have a soothing system, which is our rest and digest, tend and befriend system. It's the part of our emotion regulation system that when we're not under threat and we're not trying to pursue or achieve something, we can feel more connected to ourselves and others. Now, unfortunately, for many human beings, for multiple reasons, that soothing system doesn't tend to be the most robust, but we can build that up.
What we know is, when we're in our threat system, we become hostile to ourselves and other people. This is where the self-criticism shows up. And then what we can do to try and down regulate the threat system, we can move into drive. So I'm going to work harder. I'm going to try harder. Lots of perfectionism might start to show up. Yeah, I'm going to prove that I'm okay.
But then we bounce between this drive and threat because it's like, well, it wasn't good enough or I can't quite, or now I'm too tired. So what we want to do, is when we're starting to feel like our threat systems activated, is actually activate our soothing system so we can ground ourselves. We can regulate the nervous system. We can access the wisdom that we have, and then we can be in our drive system from an actual place of wisdom, not a place of threat. And that's where better decision making happens.
[00:11:42] Gillian: Everything you just said resonated so much when I think about the fantastic women that come on our programs, they are incredibly driven. They hold themselves to high standards. They take their careers seriously. And while they may not aspire to all be C suite women, they care deeply about excelling in their roles.
So when there are challenges I often see them turning inward with very harsh self-talk. What's wrong with me? Or as you alluded to earlier, going on the defence and blaming others. So what you're advocating with this idea of self-compassion and soothing feels like a very different and healthier way forward. How do you encourage more women to embrace it?
[00:12:27] Hayley: So firstly I would say slow down, and I know that there'll be people listening going what? I've haven’t got time to slow down
But the thing is I did a lot of training with an amazing psychologist called Dr. Kelly Wilson who was one of the founders of acceptance and commitment therapy and he would always say we have a lot to get through so we need to go slowly.
Because when we're rushing, we tend to be in that heightened state. The nervous system is activated, so we're literally in our threat system. We just don't do as well. It seems paradoxical, but we've got to get through lots, but we need to go slowly. But when we do. We're calmer. We think better. When we're in threat, we have very narrow vision.
When we're calmer, we can be more creative. We can brainstorm. We can just see wider perspectives of things. And a lot of the time, I think people can get caught up in being busy, being busy rather than actually doing work that is leading to a specific outcome.
So the first thing I'd say is slow down. Learning some breathing techniques, and there are so many out there. I use a technique called soothing rhythm breathing mainly. And what we would do there is we want to make sure that we're sitting in a nice upright position so that you've got a nice open diaphragm. You're not hunched over because again, if we're hunched over the body thinks it's in threat.
You may start with your hand on your belly and your chest, and then breathing in and out of equal in and out breaths.
So taking a nice deep in breath into your belly, maybe for the count of 3 or 4 or 5 depending on what you're comfortable with to start with. Ideally 5, but you can work up to get there. And then breathing out for 5 as well.
So what we do want to be sure of when we're doing breathing, is that our out breath is always equal or longer to our in breath.
Because our in breath activates the sympathetic nervous system. It's kind of like the accelerator on the car. The out breath activates the parasympathetic, which is like putting the brakes on. So we were kind of taught through school, take a deep breath. And it's like, actually take a long out breath because that's going to help be a nervous system.
I think I would say, if this isn't something you've done before, go gently with yourself. This can be hard. You might even feel a little bit dizzy when you first do it because you're actually regulating your breath in a way you haven't done before. There's no perfect way to do this. Perfect is an illusion.
[00:15:01] Gillian: Yeah, it's so true. when the mean girl arrives, that voice that says how could you have done this? What's wrong with you? I knew you wouldn't rise to the occasion. What else should we be doing in that moment? You don't just intellectually hear all of this stuff, Hayley. I imagine you have to practice it and give it a go. And like that's when it really comes into play, doesn't it?
[00:15:49] Hayley: Absolutely. I did not change my relationship with myself overnight. But I have gone from being brutal to myself to my default now being, oh darling, it's going to be okay. You did your best. So I can with hand on heart say you can change this. Absolutely. But it will take practice. And I think one of the important things is when that comes up, what is that part of you trying to do?
Where is that coming from? Is this somebody else's voice that you've actually internalised throughout your life? What is the fear that's sitting with that? Well, if I don't get it right, I won't get the promotion, or people will think I'm rubbish or it'll prove I'm a loser just like that person once told me or whatever stories you've got going on, and just perhaps say to yourself, I did the best I could.
We are going to make mistakes. We're going to stumble on words. We're going to do typos. We're going to put something in the wrong place. We are going to make mistakes. So if you can even say to yourself today, I'm going to make mistakes and that's okay.
I'm doing the best I can in the circumstances I'm in, with the skills, knowledge and resources I currently have. That's all I can do. And if I want to do better than that, I can go and find ways or seek help or get other resources to help me, because life happens, right? You're in your career, you're doing your work and life happens. And some weeks might be really easy going. You might be feeling great. You might have slept really well. If you've got family at home, maybe everyone's harmonious and it's wonderful. And then you might get a virus and then you come back to work, but you're still recovering or somebody at home gets sick or, you know, we, we recently lost a beautiful friend.
So for me, I knew my resilience wasn't being as good. I went far more gently. I rested far more because I was grieving. So we've got to take into account as well what are the stresses? That are currently happening in your life and then take that into account when you're thinking about your capacity for work.
[00:18:00] Gillian: Yeah, I mean, you must have had so many experiences where you've had people sitting in front of you and they've wanted to keep their foot to the floor, even though there are some serious things happening in their world, what what do you say to them to help them get the perspective they need to create change in that moment?
[00:18:21] Hayley: Depending on the individual I might do something like actually list out all the things that they're managing. And you'll see people's faces like, oh, oh, wow. Yeah, I've got a lot on, haven't I? Or, oh, wow, I have had a lot of stresses. So, I think sometimes, write out everything. Every role that you've got or every event that's happening or, you know, we're moving.
Oh, but, oh, when we're just moving house. It's like, you know that's in one of the top three most stressful events. Oh really! Yes, you need to take that into account. Asking people, if your colleague or your best friend came to you and told you everything you've just told me about what you're managing and how you think you should be doing better than you are, what would you say to them?
And I bet you it wouldn't be, well, you could do better. You're being a bit lazy. Maybe if you just worked harder. I mean, nobody's going to be saying that to someone else, right? So I think a bit of perspective shifting be really good.
[00:19:22] Gillian: Oh, 100%. I think you've given us a lot of perspective shifting today, Hayley. And so timely being um, in January, cause I, I think it's nice to be a little bit more thoughtful around who we want to be in the year ahead. And for our listeners, they will always be navigating a huge amount of change.
There will be stress. There will be challenges. And I think your insights today have been so tremendously helpful. But a very important question, Hayley, where can people find you? Tell them about your fabulous podcast and programs.
[00:19:54] Hayley: So I have a podcast called Welcome To Self with Dr. Hayley D Quinn. It did used to be called caring for the human in the therapist chair. So early episodes, it says that. Those episodes are still really helpful for other people as well. I have a website that will be launching probably in about a month, www.drhayleydquinn.com. And I'm on socials LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook as Dr. Hayley D Quinn.
[00:20:26] Gillian: Brilliant. Well, Hayley, it has just been so gorgeous. I was so looking forward to our conversation today and I feel it's been incredibly enlightening. Sometimes I feel like I'm a little selfish on the podcast because I really enjoy the conversations, not only for the listeners, but for my own perspective as well and I've just loved it. So thank you so much.
[00:20:45] Hayley: Thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure. And I'm the same with my guests on my podcast.
[00:20:51] Gillian: Win win, hey? Win, win.
[00:20:52] Hayley: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much.