I'm Hormonal | PCOS, periods, gut + hormone health insights

Use Your Hormones to Your Advantage at Work | Ep. 104

• Bridget Walton, Women's Hormone Coach • Episode 104

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Your menstrual cycle can be your secret weapon for peak professional performance when you understand how to align your workflow with your changing hormones throughout the month. By recognizing the unique strengths of each cycle phase, you can strategically schedule tasks, meetings, and presentations to match your natural energy levels and cognitive abilities.

Grab the free guide so you can successfully implement these tips and find out how to experience better energy at work, so you can finally work with your hormones instead of against them. Unlock Peak Performance: A Hormone Health Guide for Women in Sales

• Menstrual phase (period days) is ideal for reflection, reviewing performance, and setting new goals
• Follicular phase (post-period to pre-ovulation) brings creative energy perfect for brainstorming and starting new projects
• Ovulatory phase provides peak confidence and communication skills—schedule important presentations and negotiations here
• Luteal phase enhances attention to detail, making it perfect for administrative tasks and completing projects
• Tracking your cycle with calendar reminders helps you anticipate energy levels and plan your work schedule accordingly
• Negotiating your salary or raise during your ovulatory phase takes advantage of your natural confidence and communication skills
• Strategic planning around your cycle works best when you have relatively regular periods

FREE RESOURCE DESIGNED FOR WOMEN IN SALES
Unlocking Peak Performance: A Hormonal Guide for Women in Sales << click here
If you're crushing it in corporate and want to work smarter not harder, elevate your performance by syncing your work to your hormones. You'll feel better. You'll work in flow. You're going to love it.

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Speaker 1:

If you are crushing it at work one week and then crashing the next, it's not a mindset issue, it's your hormones. In this episode, I'll show you how aligning your workflow with your menstrual cycle could be the game changer that you didn't know you needed. Welcome to I'm Hormonal, your source of information about women's hormone health and how to support your body. Naturally, I'm your host, bridget Walton, and I'm a certified functional hormone specialist and menstrual cycle coach. I am on a mission to hold these hormone conversations with as many menstruators as possible, because you deserve easier access to accurate information about what's up with your unruly menstrual cycle and with your fertility mysteries. Don't you think it's time that we figure this out once and for all? Hello and welcome to this 104th episode of I'm Hormonal. I'm really excited that you are here listening today. Of course, I'm your host, bridget Walton, and, as you heard in the intro, today I'm going to be talking through cycle syncing, but really specific to how this can show up in the workplace for you. If you've been listening for a while, you may be familiar with the fact that before I started working as a hormone coach, I worked in corporate sales and that's where really I learned how to do this, I learned like, okay, I don't feel the same every week and that's okay, that's not a bad thing, that's actually a good thing. And how can I fall into this natural cycle, this natural rhythm to make my work work for me, work in alignment with my hormones? So I'm excited to share that with you in just a couple of minutes here. If you are listening for the first time today, then I want to say a special welcome to you. On Tuesdays Today is Tuesday. If you're listening when this comes out I do my longer form episodes and then on Thursdays, I have a little mini snacketizer size episode that is either a recap of what the Tuesday's episode is or it's a branch off from it. A lot of you listening, I know work in a corporate environment are on the go, are trying to understand how you can support your hormones and your digestion while you're also supporting your career I should say prioritizing. Anyway, you're following me. So that's why I was like, okay, yeah, it's time that we talk about how to really cycle sync so that you can perform your best, so that you can feel like you are really in flow with your work. Also, so that you can feel in flow with the fun projects and things that you have outside of work, but work takes up a lot of our lives, so that's why this is so important. All of that being said, by the end of this episode, you're going to understand why cycle syncing works. I have a bunch of other episodes that go a little deeper into cycle syncing outside of just work if you want to dive into those, but anyway, we'll cover.

Speaker 1:

What is cycle syncing. Why does it work? I will share with you the guide that I have Unlocking Peak Performance, a guide to hormone health for women in sales. If you want to grab that, you can check out the link in the show notes now, because part of this guide is going to go through exactly what I'm talking about. It'll help provide you a template for a planner that you can use in order to plan your schedule if you're a woman in sales. I also want to note that, while, yes, this information is really specifically detailed for women in sales, if you're not in sales, this information is really specifically detailed for women in sales. If you're not in sales, this will still be helpful for you, too. You still are going to be scheduling meetings, or maybe meeting with customers, or maybe having administrative work to catch up on. So if you're not in sales, this is still a good resource for you. All right, let's dive in.

Speaker 1:

I want to talk first about why cycle syncing your work with your menstrual cycle actually works. What's happening here and the long story short is that as you progress through your menstrual cycle, your estrogen levels are going to change. Your progesterone levels are going to change too. You probably already are familiar with that. Women don't have the same up and down, up and down, up and down every single day. That's why we can break up the menstrual cycle into four different phases. So I'll be walking through those four different phases in just a hot second here. But suffice it to say that estrogen. Actually, let me take a step back, because if you're really new here, then you'll want to be reminded that the first day of your cycle cycle day one that is, the first day of your period, the first day of your full bleed.

Speaker 1:

Progressing on from cycle day one, your estrogen levels are going to grow because while you're menstruating, that's when most of your menstrual cycle related hormones are at their lowest that they will be all month long. So then estrogen starts to grow. It hits a peak in the middle of your cycle, which is the time when you ovulate. After ovulation, estrogen levels go down and progesterone comes up and is the predominant hormone in the second half of your cycle, comes up and is the predominant hormone in the second half of your cycle. So you can already see, maybe, that for the first half of your cycle we're going to be growing estrogen.

Speaker 1:

Let's find out what qualities, what personality traits associate with estrogen and then in the second half, with progesterone. How does that change? What's going on, what you want to focus on, what you might naturally feel inclined to do? Hopefully that makes sense and sets the scene for where we're going. I also want to mention and you have surely experienced this before that your energy levels are bound to fluctuate throughout your cycle. So you already know that probably in the middle of your cycle, around the time of ovulation, is when you have the most energy, whereas when you are on your period or just before your period, that's probably when your energy levels are the lowest. That's also going to be the time when you are more sensitive to, or rather less sensitive to, insulin, which can further impact your energy and how you're feeling. So that is kind of what's going on in the background for the why of why does this work? What does this mean? Like, what is influencing what we do in each of these phases?

Speaker 1:

Now that we got that out of the way, let's dive into probably the juicy part that you're waiting for. So let's start from the start of your cycle, naturally, and then we'll go on to the luteal phase. So we'll start with the menstrual phase and, as I mentioned a moment ago, this is when your hormone levels are really at their lowest of the whole cycle, specifically thinking about estrogen and progesterone. So this time of your cycle is the best for reflecting, for reviewing performance, also for setting new goals. Right, this is like your fresh start and you're saying, okay, where have I been? Maybe how did things go last month?

Speaker 1:

If you are a woman who works in sales and you want to take a look back at your calendar from last month and you say, okay, who did I meet with? How did it go? What projects do I have coming up? How can I align my calendar for this upcoming month, align my meetings for this upcoming month with my priorities for the year, and just do a big bird's eye view assessment of where am I at as it relates to my quota and plan. So those are a couple of prompts to ask yourself this could also be a good time of your cycle to make those plans for the week or two weeks ahead, when you are around your ovulatory phase. Spoiler alert that's going to be the time when you are probably feeling the best and most confident. You're wanting to be out and about with customers. You're feeling more social.

Speaker 1:

We'll get back to the ovulatory phase in just a minute here, but, coming back to the menstrual phase, something that I found to be really helpful was I would put a reminder on my calendar for when my expected first day of my period would be. Of course, this maybe isn't what you want to do. If you have a shared calendar, you don't need me to tell you that but for me that was a helpful recurring reminder when I could plan ahead for my future self and say yo, bridge, you probably do not want to be on the road for four days straight during that week. Or for you, listener, if that's your jam, you do you, but it's all really about planning ahead for your future self, being able to anticipate what will your energy be like, how will you feel, what will you want to do and, again, what will align with those energy levels and what you are well naturally inclined to do. Sorry, gang, I don't mean to say the same thing over and over, but I just really want to. I was reiterating that to say this is, of course, one of those things where you should take what works for you and leave the rest. There's not a strict, specific formula to follow with it. Okay, a couple of last notes here for menstrual phase. If you are maybe like wrapping up expense reports, if you have internal systems or sales force or other forecast sheets to update, then that's going to be a good time to do it. When you're getting things caught up, you're not having to be particularly creative, particularly communicative, that's when you will probably be most, you know, happy to do those things, if that's something that, well, you don't really find yourself loving to do.

Speaker 1:

Next, let's move on to the follicular phase. The follicular phase is the time between the last day of your period and probably up to two days before the ovulatory phase. So this could be seven to 10 day window, depending on how long your period is and when you ovulate. You know that reminds me. I meant to mention this at the top of the episode. But all of everything that relates to cycle syncing is the most helpful and most applicable when you have a cycle that is pretty regular. If you know when you go into each phase, that's when you're able to psychosync, because, remember, psychosyncing does not actually help to balance your hormones, to bring anything really back where it should be if it is out of whack. Psychosyncing is a tool to really live in alignment with what your hormones are doing. So, that's to say, if you are somebody who's listening, if you have unpredictable periods, or from one month to the next your cycles are completely different lengths keep on listening, keep this in mind for when you get your cycle back on track, back in balance but just right now you might not find that this exactly aligns with your experience. So disclaimer over Coming back to the follicular phase.

Speaker 1:

This is probably that second week of your cycle, the time between the end of your period and just before ovulation, and this is the time. This is the phase when estrogen levels are climbing up and this is going to be the best for creative problem solving, for brainstorming. If you are in sales again, prospecting new clients, that's what's going to be your jam at this time. You're like, ready to get out and about, try new things, start new projects, meet new people. So maybe a couple of questions that you can ask yourself would be you know, what are your best opportunities for growth in that next cycle, in that menstrual cycle, or maybe you're looking at the next quarter, however it falls for you, but what are your best opportunities for growth? What can you be ambitious about to go get it, go retire that part of your plan? Another question you might want to keep in mind is there a new part of your portfolio that you're ready to dive into and bring to customers? This may or may not be applicable to you, based on what your company is up to, but if there is some part of the portfolio that you sell that you're like okay, this is a new one. I haven't gotten my, you know, I haven't dipped my toes in yet really. Then again, the follicular phase. That's going to be a perfect time to really dip your toes in and start some new projects.

Speaker 1:

A couple of other honorable mentions here. New projects A couple of other honorable mentions here. If you are doing the planning for and conducting of, kickoff calls, if you're mentoring any teammates, this could be a good opportunity for you to connect with customers with whom you have not touched base in a while, or again, I can't say it enough. Just looking ahead at the rest of the year and making that long-term plan to get to your quota, that's going to be feeling in most alignment during the follicular phase, moving on next to the ovulatory phase, and you got that spoiler alert earlier that this is the best phase for high energy, high stakes sales calls too.

Speaker 1:

If you are able to somehow, you know, navigate your schedule so that you can do your pitches during this time of your cycle, that, if you are doing some sort of in-person negotiations or other dealings, right, this would be a really great time to do that. Let me speak on that for a second as a whole right of again how to apply this in real life to your work. Because if you're somebody who, for example, your job or your company you have a shorter sales cycle, then this might not be as helpful, but it can help give you insight into why you feel a certain way about certain activities. Looking at that from another perspective, if you do work in a sales environment where your sales cycle is a little bit longer, right, maybe most of your business happens in the third quarter, maybe it just you know you have multimillion dollar projects that aren't turning over every month. Then that's where you can really say, okay, next month, or hey, we need to do some site walks. Well, okay, I can make my best guess of when I will be in my ovulatory phase and suggest a date for that time. It won't always work out, it won't always be that way, but you're just doing what you can to align these meetings, these pitches, this opportunity that you want to close when it will come naturally to you, when you will feel just naturally, maybe be the most skilled at it.

Speaker 1:

And another note to estrogen when we're thinking of the ovulatory phase, estrogen is what is helping us to like get out and about and just feel really confident and be with people and be glowing and be good communicators. Also, around the time of ovulation, that's when testosterone levels are the highest too, and so testosterone has you feeling also kind of confident and just like you are on it. So that's why the ovulatory phase is when you want to. I mean, don't burn yourself out, don't overdo it, but get out there, and that's when you'll feel the most connected.

Speaker 1:

A couple of questions you might want to ask yourself if you are in this phase, who can I get in front of right now to move the opportunity? Wow, well, to move the opportunity forward, but what I meant to say was to really move the needle on an opportunity. Also, how can I connect with more customers during this phase? Can you be more efficient about your travel and more efficient about your meetings, whatever that looks like for you? So I think that I have said everything I want to. Actually, no, I have one more thing. So, if you are somebody like you're a sales leader, you are a manager and you are doing interviews, if you have the luxury of being able to schedule an interview during this time, that might best suit you. Also, if you are doing an interview yourself and you're able to schedule it during your ovulatory phase, you might find that, again, you're more confident, you're speaking more clearly and you're feeling better about it.

Speaker 1:

Last thought here Next time you are negotiating your raise, you're talking to your manager about what your expectations are for your compensation. Girl, schedule that for your ovulatory phase. That, hopefully, is one that you do have a little bit more, you know, ability to put that meeting on your manager's calendar. And so, yes, one, negotiate your raise. Two, negotiate your raise. Three, negotiate your raise. And four, make sure that you're doing that during your ovulatory phase when it makes sense. Make sure that you're doing that during your ovulatory phase when it makes sense. Fourth and finally, we're going to move into the luteal phase. So this is the last 10 to 14 days of your period. So, after you ovulate, before your next period begins, this is when progesterone levels are coming up real high and then tapering off and that's when your period begins. Once those levels go all the way back down, this is going to be the period that is the best for follow-ups, best for completing those back-end tasks.

Speaker 1:

Again, kind of thinking of like strategic planning what is there for the long-term that you want to be considering? Ideally, you can avoid high pressure negotiations during this time, because sometimes perhaps you've noticed in yourself or others that you're likely to say things that you didn't really want to say. So little asterisk, maybe. Try to avoid that if you can. But ultimately, questions you can ask yourself hey, what admin tasks can I prioritize? What proposals or what write-ups, what budgetaries need to be revised or edited? Because during this phase, during the luteal phase, that revision and editing, that's when that's a little bit of your superpower and then, yeah, just kind of like wrapping things up. Right, it feels good to wrap things up before your period begins. Put a little bow on it and just you can start over, start anew and fresh with your new cycle.

Speaker 1:

I'll close out this conversation by running through a couple of things that you can start doing right now to apply this and make it make sense for you to really help support your performance at work. Because, again, sometimes we're like how do I improve my performance, how can I do better, how can I just enjoy my work more? And sometimes there are those tasks of okay, let me have fewer meetings or more meetings, or go to the office in person, whatever that looks like for you. But also there is this huge topic of what are your hormones doing? Right, or huge for me? Right, hopefully huge for you if you're listening to this podcast, because your hormones are changing all the time and we, a lot of the time we think of that as being a bad thing, right, but that's in part why I've named this podcast. I'm hormonal, because we're all hormonal. That's not a bad thing, that's a good thing.

Speaker 1:

You can use it to your advantage. You can use it to better support your goals in whatever area of life they might be, whether that is your career or otherwise. So first, what I want you to do is go ahead and put a reminder on your calendar, a recurring calendar invite that shows when you expect the first day of your period to arrive. When you expect the first day of your period to arrive, put another one on there for when you expect to ovulate. That way you can you guessed it, you know what I'm about to say. That way, as you are putting travel on the calendar, as you're scheduling trips and customer meetings, you can do your best to predict what your mood is going to be, what you're going to want to do and not want to do. So, putting those recurring events on your calendar, do it.

Speaker 1:

The next thing I want you to do is go to the link in the show notes and grab the guide that I've made just for you, just for women in sales, called the Unlock Peak Performance a guide to hormone Health for Women in Sales. These are my best tidbits for really what I wish that I knew when I first started out in sales, so that not only can you have a better understanding of what we've talked about today, but you will also get my energy stabilization formula to help you understand what to pack, how to support your energy levels throughout the day, how you can use caffeine wisely. You will get a three-minute gut health check-in and hormone check-in. That will just pose a couple of questions for reflection on how you can support your health and make sure that you are you guessed it feeling your best. So if that sounds like that is in alignment with you, go to the link in the show notes to grab that guide. I would love to hear your feedback on it. You guys can always connect with me on Instagram. I'm at Bridget Walton, or the link is in the show notes. I mean, this was really helpful for me working in sales, being on the go all the time. I hope that this is also really helpful for you.

Speaker 1:

Let me know what you think and come back on Thursday for just a little mini recap episode because, hey, we're all adults, we need to hear things twice so we can actually remember them. So thank you so much for listening and I will see you back here on Thursday. If you loved today's episode and got something good out of it, make sure you subscribe so that these episodes show up automatically in your feed, no work needed on your side. Let's put it on autopilot. As always, I need to give you my reminder that the information I share with you here is for educational purposes only, and it should not be used as a replacement for medical advice or diagnosis. Now, if you are, on the other hand, in the market for some one-on-one support, then I would love for you to take me up on my offer for a free strategy call. You can find these links and more in the show notes.