The Power Of Presence | Digital Calm Meets Human Impact

✨ Hello, I’m Fran, Your NLP & Business Coach. I’m exploring a wide range of business ideas and money-making paths, with practical takeaways you can apply.

In this episode, I’m interviewing Deborah Flanagan, who helps busy minds slow down and breathe, literally. She champions mindfulness that feels human, not a passing trend.

Deborah blends digital calm experiences with self-acceptance through her T-shirt line, combining breathwork, entrepreneurship, and a big-hearted message to remind us that peace is possible without quitting the day job.

You can connect to Deborah in the following ways ⬇️
https://www.instagram.com/mindfuldebs/
https://www.tiktok.com/@mindfuldebs

* As a coach, I listen without judgment, understanding that others views may differ from my own.

#nlpcoach #nlpcoaching #creativity #inspiration #transformation #mindfulness

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Guest Introduction
• 2:39 Tools For Overwhelm: Breath And Presence
• 6:30 Personal Barriers: Counting, Health, And Guidance
• 9:34 Mindfulness Misconceptions Clarified
• 13:40 Self-Compassion And Inner Dialogue
• 16:23 Mindful Merch: Messages That Travel
• 20:08 Real-Life Mindfulness: Joy, Work, And Community
• 23:02 Deeper Layers: Stress, Panic, And MBSR

Transcript

Fran: 0:00

Hello everyone, welcome to the Melancholy Coaching Podcast. I'm Fran, your host and NLP coach. Join me as I interview inspiring business owners and self-improvement seekers about their experiences whilst delving into personal development, motivation and strategies for overcoming challenges. Let's ignite our creative potential together. Hello and welcome to Melancholy Coaching Podcast. I'm Fran, your NLP and Business Coach, and I'm delighted to introduce a motivational guest. Deborah helps keep busy minds. You don't help keep them busy, do you? You help them slow down, breathe a game, literally. She champions mindfulness that feels human, not a passing trend. By blending innovative digital calm experiences with a message of self-acceptance through her t-shirt line. She combines breath work, entrepreneurship, and a generous heart to remind people that peace is possible without quitting their day jobs. Deborah, welcome to the show. Hi, thank you, Fran. Lovely introduction. This is much needed today, and I tell you why there's part there's a little thread running in my mind of all the things I want to do this week, and I felt really busy, hence like me framing it as the fact that you help people's minds be busy. Um because that's how I'm feeling. So this is very welcome today. Thank you. So one of the many ways a business can be started is by validating an idea. And quite often that's through real everyday use. And you've done exactly that because you really embody mindfulness, don't you?

Deborah: 1:54

I do, I do. It did take a while. I probably started the journey about seven years ago, and even for the first sort of year, a year and a half, it felt like it was a practice, something I was doing, and then it kind of dropped in and yet became part of my life, and yeah, and I like to share it with others as well. Yeah, I like mindfulness too.

Fran: 2:16

So I've got a couple of pre-planned questions for you. Yeah, and we'll have a little explore around that if that's okay with you. And I'm I know that I'm gonna just start to feel you know, that I'm more calm and I'm more mindful during this. Yeah, I've had a I've had a busy little mind today. Um Right, are you ready for this one? Yeah, and this lends itself very nicely to how I've been feeling. So the pace of modern life is relentless. What practical breath work or mindfulness techniques do you reach for first when you're feeling overwhelmed? And how do you then explain that to somebody new to these practices?

Deborah: 2:59

Great question. I so I have my pocket of tools that I now have and uh use. So as much as I teach, I use the same tools and techniques that I share with everybody, especially when uh life is a little bit chaotic and the what you know the mind gets a little bit overwhelmed. So the first thing I sort of draw to, which I have mixed in with mindfulness, which is very much sort of bringing ourselves into the present moment, is using my breath. So I use a lot of breath work techniques to ground myself and centre myself. They all have different names, they all have different counts and holds. I work with in particular, they're called nervous system reset, which is to regulate the system into calm us and bring us into the present moment. I mean, for example, there's one which is called a box breath where we breathe in for four, hold for four, breathe out for four, and hold for four. But not everybody does sometimes breath work sit well, we're all individual. So everything will land differently. People will have preference over different techniques. So I always encourage people to learn different techniques. I particularly like it's called pinhole breathing. We can do this one together if you like. It's where we just breathe in through the nose gently, and then we're going to make a little purse with our lips and breathe out. That's a funny thing.

Fran: 4:23

For anyone watching on video, there's a whole other thing going on here.

Deborah: 4:27

So that's pinhole breathing, and that's really just to decompress the body, to regulate the body. So we'll all learn sort of different techniques. There's also another sort of technique which we can use senses to see something, touch something, hear something. Um I like that one. You like that one, yeah. See, everybody has a particular sort of favorite that they will go to. So they're my kind of I think would say they're my sort of go-tos, and then um then that will take me on to the next, what do I do next? So that those straightaway bring you into the present moment.

Fran: 4:59

Yeah. See, I I like mindfulness very much. And I'm still at the stage where I don't know about still at the stage, you know, where the stage that I'm at is that I have to consciously remind myself to be mindful. So it's a conscious decision. And this came out of many years of depression. I've got a history of depression, and it was mindfulness I feel that actually saved me and saved my my mind and my sanity, and you know, just brought me back from disassociating to the point that I it wasn't a choice. Yeah. So mindfulness does really work for me, and I have to remind myself of it because I do get very I have like a you know, like a busy little mind. Like many people, just a busy little mind, and it just really grounds and centers me. The whole breathwork thing is very interesting. I like it that it can be personalized and that you can choose versions of it that suit better. Personally, I have to have um some additional help with with counting. I can quite often get distracted or I don't do numbers very well. I've got dyscalculia, so I can do it. However, I'm very conscious of doing it and I don't necessarily sit into the whole breathwork. So somebody else would I like it if somebody else counts for me. Yeah, to be guided. You know, yeah, exactly. That's the word, yeah. I like to be guided. Yes. And the other thing is I've personally I've got a uh medical condition, so I had pulmonary emblisms on both lungs many years ago, multiples, and that left me with a lot of scar tissue on my lungs, so I'm very susceptible to chest infections and you know pain in in my chest as such because of the scar tissue. So I've got an I've got a habit, and I'm gonna say it's a habit, I've got a habit of breathing very shallow because it actually hurts me to you know breathe deeper. However, it's good, it's good for us, I think. I'm gonna make a generalized sweeping statement here that it's good for us to take a deep breath and actually fill our lungs, isn't it?

Deborah: 7:06

Absolutely, and that's sometimes why they're also called breathing exercises because you are using your lung capacity, you're working with the CO in the body, it's helping with the um what's it called, your blood pressure. So there's that that those elements that come into it as well, as a apart from sort of bringing us into the moment and sort of bringing our focus back. But of course, you have to be aware of everybody's individuality, and um that's why breath work will suit some. And even like when you mentioned about the counting, so that's why there is a different practice, but also with the the mindfulness, I think the main part of it is exactly what you just touched on is when you made a conscious decision to be mindful, and I think that's basically the practice within a nutshell, because you're bringing yourself, you're conscious that your mind's busy, you're conscious you're being sort of distracted, or you've attached onto thought, so you're bringing yourself back into the moment. I mean, that's really it in a nutshell.

Fran: 8:08

Yeah, that's exactly it. I'm attaching on to to thought, and then yeah, becoming I don't know whether it's so much overwhelmed, but my mouth and my words don't move as fast as what my thoughts are going. So yeah.

Deborah: 8:23

I mean, we have so I think it's 60, 60 to 65,000 thoughts a day, anyway. So you can imagine when we're really busy, if we've got something going on in in in our personal life, especially say like this time of year when we've got extra things to think about, it you know, the brain just has so much to deal with anyway.

Fran: 8:43

There's actually only so many things that we can actually process.

Deborah: 8:46

Yeah.

Fran: 8:46

So though the brain's taking in all of that information, I think maybe it's like seven things or something that we can actually um, and then there's the whole I love talking about the curve of forgetfulness because then within that, there's a curve of forgetfulness in which if we don't revisit something, I think it's within seven days. There's like some kind of power of seven going on. But yeah, I suppose it's because my mind is aware that there's a lot of thoughts and things like that going on. I might not necessarily be consciously aware of exactly all of the thoughts because there's way too many, but it'll pick one, attach itself to it, and then I get a little um caffuddled. Yeah, I'm just demonstrated as I as I demonstrated in the beginning of this podcast. So I've got another specific question for you. Now this one's interesting, I think, anyway. So, what's a common misconception about mindfulness that you particularly encounter most often? And what's the truth that you wish to convey to any listeners?

Deborah: 9:45

It's it normally is that we have to sort of sit in a lotus position and clear your mind completely, which and nobody could ever do. Through meditation, we learn to be aware and bring our mind and notice our thoughts. That's really what you're doing. So a lot of people will think that mindfulness is sort of sitting in a blank state, but we can be mindful making coffee, we can be mindful walking, talking, listening to people. Maybe people sometimes attach it to a religion or spirituality. So it to me, mindfulness is really just about being present, having awareness, and being non-judgmental, one to yourself and to others. And that's basically it, really. It's not overcomplicated.

Fran: 10:39

I don't have to be sitting on a mountaintop.

Deborah: 10:42

Absolutely not, not at all. And even, you know, uh people will choose how they sit in a meditation, where they you can have a walking meditation, uh listening to music meditation. They're really just it's they're just really formal practices of mindfulness of yeah.

Fran: 10:58

I was just gonna say it all blends, doesn't it?

Deborah: 11:00

Yeah, you have informal practices as well, which is when you're you're not doing the breath work or the meditation, but you're just very mindful of everything, you know, the colour of the leaves as you walk down the street or exact or just even how you're feeling, you know, it's um and being able to tune into yourself, regulating sort of your I wouldn't say regulating your emotions, but allowing emotions to pass through without fear or without judgment. And then being just very kind to yourself with self-compassion. I always say treat yourself like you would treat your best friend. A lot of the time we're very hard on ourselves, so um, mindfulness does bring that element into the into the practice as well.

Fran: 11:41

It helped me very much with depression that I've been challenged with. One of the ways that that would rear itself was with a critical voice. Yeah. Um, predominantly I had a very critical voice and didn't realise that there could be anything else because that's all I seem to remember. Um mindfulness really uh enabled me to to kind of just sit with that and look at it and actually reframe things so that I could have the critical voice, but then just challenge it gently or you know, and then focus on something. And then it just really helps me stay in the present moment, which lends itself beautifully to coaching because coaching is predominantly about tidying up the past, you know, we can go and tidy that up. Yeah, we sit at the now and then move forward, you know, and and I feel that mindfulness is a is a lovely thing to help to facilitate that.

Deborah: 12:38

Absolutely, yeah. I think it's to me, it's just a kind of another little layer in our life that kind of helps us to facilitate, helps us to communicate, it helps us in relationships, professional and personal. So it's kind of like a bit of a an umbrella, really, but that just sort of gently just is guiding you in the in the on the sort of I wouldn't say that like the right path, but just in a way a path, yeah. And it's like you sort of have a bit more clarity, you have focus, you start to respond rather than react. And exactly what you said about that the inner dialogue, we can then sort of notice. Oh, I'm telling I'm talking to myself like this because we become very habitual creatures and we believe what we tell ourselves. So if you kind of flip the conversation to start saying kind things to yourself, then the inner dialogue changes.

Fran: 13:31

Yeah, that's that's that's our beautiful brains, isn't it? Your brain will believe, you know. Well you tell it your inner voice and what you're telling it, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Um, right. So I want to get curious about the fact that you've got a t-shirt line. So you've built a brand around mindfulness, um, and you've actually got a tangible product line. So can you tell us more about that? And I don't think it's just t-shirts, but tell us more.

Deborah: 14:00

Yeah, so uh have been on a little mission great, so yeah, a mindful merch. So yeah, I love it. Yeah, is sort of my project has been since the summer this year, actually, and it was just that every sort of design has a purpose. I've started with um some t-shirts, which were self-love t-shirts. The the logo actually says, I love every part of me. And again, it was to embrace kindness and self-compassion for oneself. I just it's and that's a really nice part of mindfulness, is when we and some people, I must admit, and even myself, found that very difficult in the beginning, and that's because of the way, like just what we've spoken about our inner dialogue and how we talk to ourselves. So it can feel quite unnatural and a bit odd at first, but once you embrace it and it sits better with you, it it's just a really nice, I thought it was just a really nice way to spread kind of mindfulness through sort of merchandise that and even I noticed when I wear the t-shirt out, I would be like in Tesco's, and the lady at the till was like, Oh, I like your saying, and she'll go, I love every part of me. And suddenly she's saying she loves every part of her. It was just a way to sort of, you know, sort of reach uh my community that I have through social media and spread mindfulness, yeah, through uh wearing it.

Fran: 15:20

Yeah, no, I I love that a lot. As no doubt you're aware, because we've actually just for um transparency, we've met in person. So we met in person ages and ages ago at an event and we follow each other online. So you may remember that a little while ago, it was while I was doing like retraining, retraining as a coach. I dug heavily into mindfulness and heavily into self-love. So I actually kind of explored self-love coaching, and a lot of my early messages were about self-love because I was exploring that myself because that's something that I didn't realize was possible. I just didn't know anything about it. Yeah, and I was so deep within uh my depression that it would never have occurred to me that I actually needed to think about you know self-love or speaking to myself compassionately. So that was very much part of like my journey coming through. And it's it's why I love your content as well, because you've just mentioned social media. I'm gonna get on to share where people can find you in a moment. And I love it that you're gonna mention your outfit of the day. I love it that you do outfit of the day. I feel like it's a really nice thing, like to look forward to as well.

Deborah: 16:33

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, and it was just to bring a bit of fun energy, really, to the because my social media, which is the Instagram and the TikTok, you know, is very much sort of building a community and just getting them to relate that, you know, I'm not a sitting on top of the mountain with my legs crossed every day. You know, I'm a mum and um I have a job and I work and and I teach classes and I juggle like everybody else. And it was just trying to sort of bring a bit of a relatability, but also have a bit of fun and bring some energy into mindfulness. It's not always just about quiet and sitting still, you know, it's also what brings you joy, what lights you up. And I actually found through doing the outfit of the day, it was it was I was actually growing with my confidence. So I always advise anybody if you want to do something, do it, you know, have fun and live and allow this mindfulness and this sort of self-love and expression just to grow, and it will help you evolve and grow, you know.

Fran: 17:36

That's reminded me actually of another possible misconception in that that mindfulness is fluffy, that it's just surface level, that it doesn't go any deeper.

Deborah: 17:45

And that's not actually true, is it? No, no. I mean, there really is when you I think what I started mindfulness, like I said, I think about seven years ago, and it was being recommended to take on, it was called a mindfulness-based stress reduction course. It was all to do with uh, I was very stressed at the time. I started having panic attacks, I had to have some time off work. I just want to kind of hit a wall. Um, so I tried some CBT, I tried the mindfulness. At first, I was really resistant to the practices because I could not think of anything worse than sitting down and meditating. But I was starting to understand how my brain was working, how the thoughts were taking me off into other places, why I was repeating the same patterns. I was in a habitual kind of cycle. So, yeah, that's when it starts, the layers of mindfulness start to sort of unravel. But I feel like you get connected to who you are, and then you can, you know, live. I'm living as Deborah Flanagan, you know, to my best, the best, and also there's ups and downs. Not every day is singing and dancing, but I can navigate and I can manage. I've got my tools, I've got my technique. So, yeah.

Fran: 18:56

That reminds me as well to just mention that quite often with what we do, what we learn, and businesses that we create, it's just that we're just a couple of steps in front of somebody else. We can hold our hand out and help them along too. And that's exactly what you're doing by showing your outfit of the day so that people can see that you're a real person and not a bot. Um and you know, and that you're truly embodying the mindfulness lifestyle.

Deborah: 19:24

Yeah, absolutely.

Fran: 19:25

Yeah, I love that. So thank you for sharing your insights, warmth, and practical wisdom with us, and also for just I feel more regulated actually. I was very excited to talk to you, but I was also like blah blah blah, you know, like because a thousand things at once. Yeah, just I feel I feel more grounded, which is lovely. So for those of you who are interested in learning more about Deborah and her work, you can visit her on TikTok. So you're on TikTok as Mindful Steps. Yep. So it's at mindful debs. Um and I follow you on there and I like seeing your TikToks. And you're also on Instagram. I'm not sure. Are you quite you quite active on Instagram?

Deborah: 20:09

Yeah, I kind of I yeah, I did, you know, it's it's hard to juggle. Uh different platforms and different, so yeah, I am on I am coming a little bit more awake on Instagram. Uh I do go a little bit quiet there, but yeah, it's I'm I'm back on it over there. It's the same I've to create a seamless um and so I don't forget it's the same handle at at Mindful Debs.

Fran: 20:33

Mindful Debs. Yeah, I like that. And I I feel like sometimes we can just ebb and flow with these things. Yeah. You know, because I I enjoy social media. So there's a couple of platforms that I prefer, and I really like social media and I ebb and flow with it. Sometimes I don't post at all. And you know, it depends. If you're building up a personal brand or a business or or a message that you want to get out because you're building up a community, it's always best to build in some kind of continuity. So whether that's that you post daily or weekly, or you know, to build the continuity there. So I tend to find that I'm more active on places like YouTube and you know, you can find me on Instagram and TikTok, I'm just not quite as active. Um, but I do notice what you get up to, so because I like yeah, yeah. I need to need to actually remember to like things as well on my way through, you know, because I sort of watch it. I think it was just so lovely. Oh, that was such a nice, and then I never like anything. So I know you're there. I know you're there. Click that button, go and click that button, people. Go and find Deborah and click that button and follow and like. Um so if you're interested in more content like this, visit or you can be sure to visit www.melancolymentor.com, which is me, and follow for the latest updates. The latest podcast goes on there as well, so that you can find that. So until next time, stay curious, keep igniting your creative potential, and go and find mindful devs and enjoy her outfit of the day. And you know, you can you can follow me along as well. See if I continue to truly embody mindfulness and remember that I've got it in my resource kit and you know, my toolkit that is part of something that I can actually use because sometimes I completely forget and I'm like, oh, you know, my head might spin off, and then I remember that it's there for me to use. So lovely reminder as well for us to just just love ourselves. Yeah tell me again, what was on your what was the message that you had on your laptop? I love every part of me. I love every part of me. There you go. And then if somebody reads that, they read it as though they were saying it to themselves. Yeah. Yeah, lovely. Thank you very much. Bye. Thank you. Bye, friend, thank you. Thank you for joining me on the Melancholy Coaching Podcast. I'd love you to subscribe for queries or to connect, email info at melancholymentor.com. Until next time, keep igniting your creative potential.