Nicky Bartley: Reasons to be Hopeful

13/07/2025

What an absolutely beautiful day at Little Gotman’s Baby Shower. A HUGE thank you to and for organising and co/ordinating every last detail ❤️ Now all we need to do is to wait for her to arrive 👶 🥰

04/07/2025

We don’t deal with grief - grief deals with us 💔❤️ I don’t know how many times you had me sing this with you, but I still know every move ❤️🤣 Thank you, for a lifetime of love, care and attention

23/09/2023

20/09/2023

Late night love stories 📖 ❤️

I’m preparing to re-create in Q4, realigning with my being and cleaning away the remnants of what I had begun to leave behind at the beginning of the year.

Although there have been plenty of challenges, I’ve found a love story in every single one of them 😘❤️

Some beautiful souls have found their way back into my life and I’m in awe of the alchemy within that 🙏🏻

What about you? Are you finishing strong?

20/09/2023

Workplace stress is a myth

It isn’t that stress isn’t prevalent in the workplace, but that the workplace does not cause stress.

The cause of stress is clear. It’s either trauma, or conditioning.

These 2 states are so common, that most workplaces will employ humans who suffer from them.

The problem for employers isn’t how do we prevent workplace stress, it’s how do we create environments that feel safe enough that those who are experiencing trauma or stress and anxiety conditioning, can thrive?

Our current model of workplace stress does not allow for this, instead, putting the blame firmly at every leader’s door. Even the phrase, ‘workplace stress’ does this.

HSE psychologists have for years, perpetuated this misunderstanding, written books about it, given talks about it and so on. They’ve become mini celebrities. Show me what’s changed?

If workplace stress exists, why haven’t we cured it?

The answer is clear; because it doesn’t.

Stressed humans exists, as do traumatised humans.

I believe that our algorithm is the only assessment available that is properly measuring these risks. In fact, we created it especially for that purpose, our sneaking suspicion that we’ve been measuring the wrong thing.

When we measure and quantify the risks properly, we can begin to mitigate them more thoroughly, allowing us to really help those who are struggling, whilst also helping the business.

If you are ready to bust a few myths, email info@thrive-and-shine.co.uk

In the meantime, we are giving away, completely free of charge, miniBESSI, to the first 10 people who email us an enquiry. Simply quite miniBESSI and we will send you a link. Here’s the link if you want to learn more about how it can help you overcome stress and distress https://lnkd.in/edwXwscF

25/08/2023

You’re a projector, not a camera!

You don’t absorb the world around you via your senses. You absorb data and the ‘principle of thought’ reorganises the data and projects it outwards heavy —-> compressed ——> depressed.

The mind becomes lighter when we either stop giving weight to a thought, or we forget to do so ❤️

Enjoy your movie today, by remembering that’s it’s always a movie 🎥

20/08/2023

When you look up from your book to discover your dog taking a break from his obviously hard life 🙄

16/08/2023

Judgement is an indication of how YOU feel in the moment and not about what or who you believe you’re having feelings about...........

Not understanding that will compound the illusion of separation and elevate the feelings of judgement. It’s recognisable by a feeling of irritation; heaviness and neediness about others not doing, being or believing what you think they should. It’s a fear of a lack of control and authority. As is sarcasm, anxiety, and other emotions that arise when feeling insecure.

Feelings of insecurity are natural and necessary and rather than being satisfied and ossified by our attitude, they are likely to keep arising until the inner reflection has been noticed.

Our insecurities are posing an inner question:

Am I seeing clearly?

31/07/2023

Labels

They’re convenient for shopping lists, but, they’re not strictly accurate and therefore not convenient for humans.

Here’s an example:

Heinz Beans - there is enough information in this label, to help you accurately identify the item in the supermarket. There is little or no nuance that will have any impact, aside from a sell by date and perhaps the number of tins required. Maybe even the price 🤷‍♀️. Heinz Beans though, need little other explanation.

When it comes to our personality however, describing a trait isn’t describing something that is accurate, given that there are so many different dynamics that can impact reality.

Here’s an example:

I’m a cake person - if you keep offering me cake, you’re going to find out that this is only true sometimes, dependant on the cake, time of day and even whether I like you.

In other words, I’m not a cake person at all. That’s a label that’s been assigned and is not an accurate description of me, even though I love cake.

Whilst we keep identifying with the labels that we assign ourself, or have been assigned to us by others, the nuance of our essence gets lost. There are trillions of bits of data that get overlooked and ignored. This is how habits are formed. It’s also how habits are broken.

Your personality is dynamic, changeable and built for purpose, if only you stop identifying with the labels.

Putting our personality under the microscope in order to understand behaviour is what 20th century psychology resorted to, because it largely refused to deal with the psyche (the soul).

It’s easier to deal with a label. It’s not so easy to deal with a moving target, which is exactly what our personality is. It doesn’t need dealing with in fact. The personality is doing the dealing ❤️

If we employ people based on their personality, we are likely to overlook their innate capacity to change, evolve, grow, re-create. We are likely to be missing some amazing talent. We are also likely to be disappointed when the label doesn’t fit.

Yes, this is a case for ditching the psychometric tests 🙂.

29/07/2023

Healing responses

Tears
Yawns
Scabs
Stretching limbs
Blisters
Panic attacks
Nightmares
Suicidal thoughts
Sprains and strains
Stomach aches
Headaches
Cold sores
Colds

The above symptoms are not ‘calls to action’. They’re ‘calls to inaction’

These symptoms are the body and mind returning to homeostasis, rinsing itself of harmful thoughts and/or microbes that are making them ache, causing pain and suffering and getting in the way of growth.

Very rarely do they require medical intervention, or therapy, or anything else for that matter.

They require rest, nourishment, movement, a clean environment and so on.

Most of all, they require us to listen to our needs and respond accordingly, rather than react irrationally.

There aren’t a set of instructions that we can Google our way through. There are a set of intuitive directions that will come naturally when we listen. Mostly, we have to have patience and that state, will eventually bring about ease ❤️

28/07/2023

I’ve never been into Barbie, even as a little girl, but one thing I’m loving is that there is a movement emerging, of women waking up to the fact that they’ve forgotten how to play.

Women you see, have been actively discouraged from keeping their Barbies out on display, because, of course, they had to have babies to play with instead.

Whereas, it’s been perfectly accepted, encouraged and even expected, that little boys grow up and continue to play with their toys; their train sets, Star Wars figures, Lego…..ya know, in their man cave.

Admittedly, I’ve continued my play throughout adulthood. I know though, that I’ve been in the minority. And perhaps it’s only happened that way because my preferred activities tend to be those that were traditionally reserved for boys; tinkering with cars etc, or else they were also perceived as useful (sewing etc).

It doesn’t surprise me that most innovations have been led by men, because their playful nature has been harnessed, preserved and given the stamp of approval.

Play though, belongs to ALL humans, regardless of age and gender. I have a feeling that Barbie is about to break some more records, moulds and limiting beliefs, as more and more women demand a seat at the table along with their playful nature ❤️

20/07/2023

We don’t heal from trauma by digging into the trauma, just like we don’t heal a scab by picking at the scab.

Our body and mind are built for healing and often with very little outside help, aside from the requirement to not contaminate the wound.

21st century life has walked so far away from the natural laws that govern the human mind, body and soul (psyche), that much of what we do is actually re-opening yet unhealed wounds, numbing ourselves from pain that it’s necessary to feel and/or overriding our capacity to grow new and fresh skin/thought.

A sign that we are walking away from healing rather than embracing it, is a feeling of impatience. This can be difficult to bare when we are in pain, either emotional or physical, but bare it we must if we want it to end.

Relationships are destroyed every day as a result of impatience because when impatience rules, we cannot hear the relevant information above the sense of urgency, above the noise.

When we find ourselves losing relationships, we can easily put it down to the other person. But at some point, it’s wise to consider the implications of our own capacity to be in relationship and get curious about our unhealed wounds.

This is especially true in the workplace.

Finding ourselves continually leaving jobs, workplaces that we believe are toxic, bad managers, discriminatory colleagues, is a cycle that we have to break and we can only do that when we question our own part in it.