Noona Nafousi - Life Coach

Two of my favourite things in life…

My babies and adventure.

I made the kids a promise this year that I would show them the world!

After what these little ones have had to endure over the last few months (any myself) I cannot wait to take them away and show them that no one knows how to have fun like their mum and that the world is a place to be enjoyed and discovered.

I danced onto the plane this morning and they didn’t call me cringe…..so I’m taking that as a win!

Off to Athens for a couple of days before I meet all my siblings in Crete (god I’ve missed them) and then Hamburg for a 50th with all my boys (my 4 besties from uni) and their families for a 50th. (So grateful to be aging to see this age- getting older is a blessing denied to many)

Happy summer my loves.

I intend to make this the best one ever had.

In the words of my daughter….LET’S GO!!!!

☀️

Every time a peer pushed work onto her, she took it on. Every time a colleague scheduled a call in the middle of her night, she showed up.

Every time she had something to say in a meeting, she swallowed it.

On our first call she looked exhausted.

I knew that feeling. Nothing used to eat away at my confidence like keeping my mouth shut when my whole body wanted to say something. My throat would burn. My fake smile would hurt my face. 

The anxiety wasn’t the problem. It was the symptom.

The more we push our emotions away, the more they fester. The more they fester, the louder the anxiety gets. We were never taught to feel our feelings. 

We were taught to manage them, suppress them, perform through them.

So that’s where we started.
Four weeks later she changed her calls to fit her time zone. She stopped overworking to prove her worth. She started speaking up in meetings.
When redundancies came, she made it through.

That is what happens when you stop running from what you feel.

I have two 1:1 spots left on my Limitless Leadership Programme. DM me FEEL if you want to know more.

The other night, my nine-year-old called me from a sleepover.

“Mummy, I don’t feel myself.”

So I went to pick him up.

The moment he got into the car, he took a deep breath, smiled and said,

“Ahhh... I feel better now.”

Later that evening, he told me he’d been lying there staring at the ceiling. Nothing had happened. He just knew something didn’t feel right.

And because we’ve always encouraged our children to listen to their bodies, he trusted that feeling enough to act on it.

It made me stop and think.

Every week, I work with senior executives who ignore those same signals.

They push through exhaustion. Silence the anxiety. Dismiss the tightness in their chest. Convince themselves they’re “just busy.”

Until their body stops whispering and starts shouting.

Somewhere along the way, many of us learned to override ourselves. We became so focused on performing, producing and pushing through that we stopped listening to the one thing that’s trying to protect us.

My son reminded me that this isn’t something we’re born without. It’s something we’re taught to forget.

Your body is speaking to you every single day. The real question is...how long will you ignore it?

If you are ready to learn the art of listening to your body and how to show up in moments like these, start here. Link is in bio.

One of the biggest mistakes I see leaders make is trying to solve today’s challenges with yesterday’s identity.

A client recently told me he felt guilty after a round of layoffs at his company.

On the surface, it didn’t make much sense. He hadn’t made the decision. He’d worked hard. He’d earned his position.

But beneath that guilt was a belief he’d been carrying for years:

“”I’m not worthy.””

For a long time, that belief served him.

It made him work harder, prepare more and push himself further than everyone else.

The problem was that he was no longer in that season of his life.

The identity that helped him succeed was now making leadership harder.

Because leadership at higher levels requires something different.

More trust.

More delegation.

More self-belief.

Less proving.

Many of us are operating from identities that once protected us, motivated us or helped us succeed.

But growth isn’t always about adding something new.

Sometimes it’s about recognising what no longer belongs.

What belief or identity have you outgrown, but are still carrying with you?

I want to have more FUN!

I was out on Saturday with these beautiful woman and the conversation really revolved around wanting to have more fun!

Honeslty these last 5 month have felt heavy.
If I’m honest these last 3 years have felt a lot.

I’ve lost my best friend, my dad and had another huge loss beginning of this year.

3 huge losses in 3 years.

And I’m at the point where I really just want to have more FUN!

I want to feel alive.
I want to feel inner peace.

I want to laugh more.
I want some of that childlike innocent laughter back in my soul.

In 2020 when it was Covid and I got fired my sole purpose was to fall madly deeply in love with myself.

And I uncovered so many of my shadows, did a lot of limiting belief work. I left no stone unturned and honestly I got there, I am there. But that work isn’t light work.

I had to be willing to take radical responsibility for my own happiness, to look at traumatic experiences in my life and bring them to light.

I had this determination to really start loving who I am.
Mission completed.

And with the same intention I now just want to feel more alive and fun.

Being a mother, running a business, going through the menopause, the state of the world, grief, it can all get a bit serious.

And there is a time and place for it.

But my intention now is to bring some of the childlike happiness and fun back into my body.

So Friday I’m going to do a little post called Friday Fun, if anyone wants to join me let me know.

Let’s start a revolution of fun and aliveness because adulting can feel a lot sometimes…

Who’s with me?

“I’m feeling a bit wobbly at the moment.”

I’ve heard some version of this from nearly everyone I’ve spoken to in the last few weeks.

I recognise it. Not because I have a framework for it. Because I’ve been there.

What I’ve learnt through the hardest periods of my own life is that not everything needs solving straight away.

Sometimes what you need is not more information or another strategy. You need space. Enough space to hear yourself think again.

We have become so good at being available, responsive, switched on, that we have forgotten how to be available to ourselves.

Our own wisdom is still there. It has never left. We have just been too loud, too full of input, to hear it.
Every time I get quiet, the answer I was looking for shows up. Every time my clients do the same, something they had been carrying for months begins to move.

The pause is not a break from the work. It is the work.

Give yourself permission to take it.

I only have 2 spots left to work with me 1:1. DM me PAUSE if you’d like to know how.