Shona Hirons is an award-winning global Resilience and Burnout Coach. A breakdown from work-related stress, which led to a life-changing accident, requiring major facial reconstructive surgery and brain damage, gave her a big wake-up call.
During her recovery, she went on a journey of self-discovery to rebuild her resilience, consider her values and achieve all the things she was told she couldn’t do. Shona has developed strategies to boost her resilience, and now helps others to do the same. She is the CEO of Mindset in Motion, and a leader in corporate wellbeing, working with corporate clients in over 195 countries. Her mission: To improve the well-being of people and businesses throughout the world.
Tell us a bit about yourself, background and your current role
My name is Shona Hirons and I am the CEO of Mindset in Motion Ltd.
I am the ‘escaped Lawyer’, and I have transformed into ‘The Burnout Angel’.
I spent the first 20 years of my career working my way up the ladder as a corporate Lawyer. I did enjoy my job for the most part, but after my daughter was born in 2008 my priorities around work changed and I wanted to have a career, but be a mum too.
Unfortunately, my Line Manager at the time had different ideas and felt that I could only be one or the other. Despite being given flexible working hours, my Line Manager refused to reduce my targets and I soon found myself working 80-hour weeks just to keep on top of my work. Over several months, this completely broke me. I felt a compulsion to prove myself. I thought I was working harder, but in fact I was less productive, because I’d sit at my desk reading the same line on a document 50 times, without taking anything in. I neglected my own needs. I Stopped working out, which I had always loved and became very anxious and probably depressed. I felt like a total failure.
I started to withdraw from everything, crying when I came home every night and being sick before I left the house every morning.
My relationship with my husband, my daughter and my friends all suffered and I felt so lost and lonely.
When I made a mistake at work, which resulted in me being suspended and reported to my professional body for misconduct, I started having severe panic attacks, along with burning pains in my feet and paralysis in my hands. I also felt extremely fatigued.
One day I collapsed and was rushed to hospital. All my test results came back as normal, but I felt far from normal.
I had no idea what was wrong with me, so cracked on. In 2017, working at this pace, always rushing, led to me having a life changing cycling accident, whilst cycling to work. This left me in an induced coma for 2 weeks, followed by major facial reconstructive surgery and spending the next year in and out of hospital having more surgery.
This was my wake up call to change my life and go on a journey of self-discovery.
I grew up made to believe that I was only successful if I earnt a 6 figure sum and had status after my name. I realised that these were not my values. If that fateful day really was my last day on earth, would I be happy with what I’d achieved? Absolutely not.
As a Lawyer I had always been great at helping people, being a good listener and solving their problems, but I was often criticised for being too caring.
I knew that I wanted to raise awareness of burnout, which included the warning signs, the different phases and ways to avoid and recover from it. The Burnout Angel was born.
Did you ever sit down and plan your career?
My career as a Lawyer was mapped out for me by my parents. My dad was a Lawyer, most of his friends were Lawyer’s and my brother is also a Lawyer.
I spent my teens swimming for Wales, but an injury forced me to quit when I was 17 years old. My parents were pleased about this and told me to focus on my studies. I was told I had to either be a Lawyer or a Doctor. Being squeamish, there was no way I was going to be a Doctor, so I went on to study Law and the next 20 years was spent working as an in-house Lawyer.
Have you faced any challenges along the way?
In addition to the answer in question 1, two years after my accident, I discovered I had uterine cancer and had to have a total abdominal hysterectomy, which plunged me straight into early menopause. I was just starting to get my new career going when this happened. However, having been close to death before, I knew this wasn’t going to kill me and I thankfully made a full recovery.
What has been your biggest achievement to date?
Followig my cycling accident, I was told there were things I’d never be able to do again, such as compete in sporting events, which was a big hobby of mine, particularly triathlons.
For 18 months after my accident, I was unable to get back on a bike, partly because of my injuries and partly because I had developed a fear. I decided to face my fear head on and take part in a half iron man event, which I completed. This won me an Inspirational Achievement award in 2019, which was presented to me by Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson.
What one thing do you believe has been a major factor in you achieving success?
It has definitely been to focus on my ‘WHY’ and my passion in life. I had to start believing in myself. Once I did, amazing things started to happen.
How do you feel about mentoring? Have you mentored anyone or are you someone’s mentee?
My whole job involves mentoring people. I have mentored over 500 clients since I started my business and I have been told by many that I have improved their lives dramatically. I absolutely love mentoring people.
If you could change one thing to accelerate the pace of change for Gender Equality, what would it be?
Women have it tough. They tend to be the ones who take time out of their careers to have a family and then struggle when they go through menopause. For example, only around 6% of women make it to CEO in the UK. The average age for a female CEO is 55. Whereas the average age for menopause is 51. For many women, just as they are about to step up the ladder in their careers, they feel like their body is giving up on them. However, in truth, a little awareness on the subject could prevent this. Menopause should be joyful, not stressful.
If you could give one piece of advice to your younger self what would it be?
That I should wake up and chase my dreams, instead of just sleeping with them.
What is your next challenge and what are you hoping to achieve in the future?
Next year is my 50th year, so my goal is to achieve 50 things that I’ve never done before. I’m open to ideas, but have quite a few, including learning to sail and flying in a helicopter.
In work, my goal is to get all of my programmes put onto videos, so that they can be easily downloaded.
