Advice I'd Give My Younger Self Now That I'm Nearly 40...

If you had a time machine, what would you tell your younger self? I have SO much I'd say! I have learned so much over the years from having 4 children and having no option but to get more organised that I'd LOVE to be able to tell my younger self. In this video Podcast episode of Real Talk With Rhi I am sharing the lessons that would have saved me so much time, energy and heartache if I'd only learned them sooner.

Welcome to Real Talk With Rhi - for Mums that want to go from surviving to thriving in motherhood in a neurospicy world. 

We'll be talking about;

- how to take back control when you feel lost & disorganised in Motherhood
- Autism, the signs, the diagnosis process & how to parent kids with ASD
- ADHD in women, how to know if you have it and how to cope if you do

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Transcript

1:06

Hi guys! Welcome to another episode of Real Talk with Rhi, thank you so much for joining me for another little chat. Today's podcast episode is something a little bit different because this year I am turning the big four -oh, yes, I'm gonna be 40. How I feel about that. And I've gotta say I am more okay with that than I thought I would be. I can remember being a teenager and when my parents turned 40, thinking that that was so flipping old and I've gotta say I'm actually, as I approach 40, feeling better and more confident in myself perhaps than I did when I was younger. Now, obviously, I'm probably not in as good shape than I was when I was younger. My skin's covered more blemishes and wrinkles and all sorts, and I'm definitely not the very toned, tiny, skinny person I was as a teenager when I used to dance every day, but. With all that being said, I would say I'm feeling happier in myself, more confident in myself than I did when I was younger, and it's made me wonder if I could now go back as I approach this, big birthday, what would I say to my younger self? And actually there's quite a lot that I would say to my younger self. So in this episode, I am gonna be sharing all of the things that if I could, I would go back in time and tell my younger self. As I approach this big birthday, it's a time of looking forward to what's coming next, but also a time of reflection. And this is where the idea for this podcast came about. So grab yourself a drink, a snack, whatever you're doing, get cozy. Or if I'm joining you on a little walk because you were listening to this on the podcast version, I'm in your earbuds then let's go walk together while we chat. The first thing I think I'd say to my younger self is to stop being a mean girl to yourself. While I've never considered myself being a mean girl to other people, I think the way I have spoken to myself over the years in my kind of inner dialogue has not always been the kindest. Looking in the mirror, when really there was nothing to pick holes in and still finding things to pick holes in, it's just not kind. It's not healthy. It's not the way I would want my children speaking to themselves. So why should I ever do it to myself? It's something I'm trying to get better at and trying as I get older, I think I am in the process of becoming kinder to myself. I think none of us are ever the finished product. We're all a little bit of a work in progress, but I definitely think I am getting there compared to how I was when I was younger. Definitely. I would tell myself that the quote, worry is the thief of joy is 100% correct. And while, yeah, I, again, I'm not perfect. I have not eliminated worry from my life. I mean, I'm a mother for goodness sake, worry kind of comes with a territory. But all consuming worry that allows me to do nothing but worry is something that's very debilitating. And I think, especially when I first became a mother. I think especially when I first became a mother, I worried about so much about whether I'm getting it right, what I'm doing, and let's face it, motherhood is challenging and every time we think we've got something right, then something new comes along and every time you think, okay, you've mastered a stage, then your children change. And then with each new level, it's a new level, new devil, isn't it? You start off worrying about things that can happen to as babies and then things that might happen to as toddlers, and then they grow and grow and then suddenly they're teenagers and the worries just become very, very different. So they don't go away. And I think just saying stop worrying to my younger self would be unrealistic. But I think I just encourage younger Rhi to just keep things more in perspective. I would definitely tell my younger self to stop worrying about what other people think quite so much. I think everyone is the star of their own private movie, and we are just supporting characters in everyone else's stories. People are not thinking about you nearly as much as you worry that they're thinking about you. It comes from being a bit of a people pleaser, I think, and wanting to make sure everyone's happy, wanting to make sure everyone likes you. But the more you get caught up in what other people think, first of all, they're just not thinking about you that much. They're genuinely not that bothered in the nicest possible way. They don't care. They don't care what you did that much. They are probably barely giving the thing that you are hashing over and over in your head a second thought because it's just not as important to them as it is to you. But secondly, building your self-esteem based on what other people think is so unhealthy. It's something I've really worked on over the years I've had to work on over the years, that other people's opinions of me are sort of none of my business. And not everyone is gonna, like you not gonna be everyone's cup of tea. And that's okay. This kind of online world that we live in and with what I do for a job and things, the comments that you get online are a very amplified version, I guess, of what you get in real life. You get such a wide spectrum of people and not every type of person is going to gel with every other type of person. It's just never gonna happen. We're all human, . By wanting to please everyone and wanting everyone to like you, you're setting yourself up for failure. There is no way that you, like every person you've ever met in your life. That is a very unrealistic expectation. And it doesn't mean they are bad people. They're just perhaps not your kind of people. If you are a very high energy kind of person and you've got someone that's very mellow and kind of, low vibration, it doesn't mean that either person is a bad person. It just means that you are not really going to like each other or get along. If you've got someone that's very keen on organization and routine, another kind of person that's really go with the flow and just wants to trust their intuition and doesn't require all of that structure is potentially gonna be very triggered by the person that needs all the organization in control in order to keep their life functioning. And this would be an example with me. My channel talks about the constant ongoing process of trying to get more organized in order to have a life that is easier. And for me, being more organized is freedom. That makes me feel calm and relaxed because I know everything is done and I'm not stressing out. But for some people that really go with the flow and hate routine and don't require that because their lives are just very different from mine, they are never going to like my videos and enjoy my videos because we're just not on the same wavelength. We're not the same kind of people. We don't have the same needs. Just as my husband, for example, who is a good number of years older than me and a man and has very few of the same interests, is never gonna be my target audience is never gonna like my videos. Therefore, Him not liking or enjoying my videos is not a reflection on how good that video is. It just means he's not my target audience. If you take this back into real life, some people you meet in life, in work, in the playground in school, when you do in the school pickup, are not gonna be your people and just because they don't seem to like you or they don't show that they like you because this is another thing that I struggle with. Some people are very good at showing how they feel and being very reassuring. And just because someone does not demonstrate and give you these signals that they like you does not mean that you have upset them. And this has been a massive hurdle for me to get over in my life. So I would definitely say younger Rhi, if you can just accept that not everyone has to like you, do not have to please everyone, you're gonna be happier a lot sooner. Ah, the next one, I would say younger Rhi, listen to Elenor Roosevelt, that wise, wise woman, when she said, no one can make you feel inferior without your consent, because that one really hits home with me. Whatever people say and do you have no control over. You can't control that. That's them. That's their business. However, you can control how you perceive and react to that, and this is something that I try to implement really well in my day-to-day life. And I'd say I do a pretty good job of it now. I must admit I'm human. I forget, and sometimes I still spin out over things. I forget that not everyone has to like me and I take things personally, but on the whole, I'm getting a lot better at it. If I could say to my younger self, do you know what? No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. How you react to things is up to you. And I could get that into my brain and I could really get that ingrained into how I think sooner, I think my life would've been so much simpler. I would tell my younger self to romanticize her life and just find joy in the little things. I think it's so easy to get stuck on the kind of hamster wheel of life, especially with motherhood and all the things we have to do. I think reminding my younger self that it's okay to be happy now and find joy in what you're doing now and not say, I'll be happy when I've done this. I will be happy when I've achieved this, but just be happy now and then the rest of it will follow. That's a lesson I definitely wish I'd learn sooner. I would say Rhi, the fact that you are worrying about whether you're a good mother means you care and that makes you a good Mum. I say that to people all the time and occasionally I need people to say it to me, and yes, I have aware that that contradicts the worry is the thief of joy thing, but hear me out. Yes, worry is the thief of joy. But I think sometimes we need to stop and analyze why we're worrying. So if we're worrying, am I being a good mom? It just means you're thinking about it and that you care. And that in itself means you are a good mother because you're trying your best. And that's all anyone can ask of anyone. None of us are perfect. I hate to break this to you no matter what we see on social media. Which is, let's face it, everyone's highlight reel. It's just a highlight reel. It's not the whole picture. It's what people choose to share with you because it's what they want to share or what they are able to share with you. If you compare yourself to everybody's social media highlights, where they're off doing this and their homes are perfect and they've done all these things over half term with their children and they're just so wonderful and everyone's smiling, then of course we're gonna feel like failures. We need to get outta the comparison trap. This is what I'd say, I'd say younger Rhi, stop comparing yourself to everyone else. Stop worrying about whether you're doing a good enough job. The fact you're worrying about that, the fact you're thinking about that means you're doing your best. Keep at it. I would definitely say to my younger self to beware of facebook groups and forums. Now, I'm sure there are some very supportive Facebook groups and forums out there, however, They can be a pretty toxic place at times. If I take this back to an example of when I was trying to conceive, I have talked about this, previously I suffered from secondary infertility and realized I had polycystic ovaries. I got into a bit of a spiral when I was trying to conceive, and this was an issue we had with conceiving both the second and third children. Baby number four was a miracle, but that's a whole different story. Anyway, I was in these groups, which at the time, see, let me see. William was born in 2012, so it was quite early on. It wasn't even a Facebook group, it was a forum on a fertility app I was using. I was in there talking quite a lot, trying to get information because if you've ever, dealt with fertility issues, they can be quite all consuming. It can be quite a difficult time and something that people that haven't dealt with it find it very difficult to understand. Trigger warning. By the way, you can skip to the next section if you want to, but this is, but this section is going to mention infertility, but this section is going to talk about fertility. So I found comfort in this forum, but the problem is the people in these forums, while meaning as most of them were, were dealing with the most difficult things, and then it just reinforced this story that this fertility journey was gonna be very difficult and very hard. And I found the more time I spent in these forums, the more I had this story in my head of, this is hard. This is awful. And the less easy it was becoming and feeling and the more obsessed I was getting. And then it's one of those things that. Everyone says, you just need to chill out and then it will happen. Which is the most impossible thing to do when you're actually in that situation. But unfortunately, it's so true. So I definitely say that beware of these groups, because sometimes they can become a very, intense place that can kind of drag you down. And if you are in a group with people talking about worst case scenarios of things, it can send off all these stories in your mind and just make you obsess more and more become, become more fixated. And it's like a butterfly. You're just kind of like squishing it too tight. It's never gonna fly. It does not help with the ease and flow of letting things happen naturally. Going back to caveman days, if you are in a time of stress like famine or there's lions and tigers and dinosaurs, goodness knows what coming. Okay. Excuse me. My history time lines might be a bit off, but you know what I mean. So there's lions and tigers and dinosaurs coming to get you. Your body says, now is not the time to conceive and have a baby. And it kind of shuts all that down. So the more stressed you get, the less likely that kind of thing that you want so badly is going to happen. So that is one example of why staying out of those forums, is something I would advise to younger me. But the other reason I would stay out of the forums and the Facebook groups is that they can become very consuming and also quite toxic. So whenever you ask for advice like mummy forums and baby things, they can be super helpful, but they can also be an absolute nightmare. And I know when you are worrying about something, when you've got a very small baby, you feel like you need an answer right now. And some of these forms and groups can feel very supportive, but they can also be full of quite preachy advice. They can be full of quite negative advice, and sometimes you can just end up feeling worse. You go to these places for help and you end up feeling, poopy, quite frankly, is the best way to put it. The other thing it can do is just drain all of your time and you can get so sucked into it that you end up not just doing the things you need to do to improve the problem anyway. Like seeking actual medical advice or sleeping, because sometimes when we've got problems and our baby's not feeding or whatever it might be that we're worried about when our baby goes to sleep, we're still on those forums and we should just be getting the sleep and then we're gonna wake up feeling fresher in the morning and better able to deal with whatever problem it might be. I would tell younger Rhi you are who you surround yourself with, both in real life and online, and that you are allowed to distance yourself from people that are causing you to be dragged down. People that suck your time, that suck your energy are falling into one category and people that lift you up and. Add to your energy, fall into another category. So you need to surround yourself both in real life and online or in on the phone in my case. One of the people that I talk to every day is my best friend. I do not see her in real life very much. We almost never FaceTime, but I talk to her every day and she absolutely builds me up. She is like my conscience and my common sense and everything that I need. If I'm struggling with something, I will talk it over with her. I will instantly feel better. And by having her in my life, albeit virtually over the phone, she is one of the people that hopefully I do the same for her as well, but really adds to my life. She makes me feel better, she makes me laugh, and she's just such a massive asset to my life and I'm really grateful for her. By contrast, there have been people in my life both online and in real life that have drained me that have sucked out my time that I get off the phone from them and I feel like I need to go and lie down, which then has an knock on impact on how I am with my family, how productive I am. I talked about this a fair amount in my podcast episode about boundaries, so if you've not checked that out yet, then please do take a listen after you've heard this. But those people that really drain your time, really drain your energy and just drain your mood, you are allowed to step back from those people. And I would definitely say this Rhi, it is okay to step back from those people, stop being a people pleaser and just step back and say, you don't need to be rude. It's not like I'm asking younger Rhi to be like, no, I don't want anything to do with you. Just stop having so much to do with them. Be polite, but step back, I would say it's absolutely a million percent okay to unfriend, unfollow, or if I don't wanna do that, just mute people who are triggering you online. People are not owed anything by you. Just because you have known someone a long time or just because you are related to them does not give them automatic rights to your time and energy. This would go for online social media things as well as real life. I would say Rhi, make sure you are following people that make you feel good. Make sure that if you are going onto social media, then it is an uplifting experience and not a drag you down kind of negative experience. Time is very precious, So the people you actually spend time with in your real life make sure they're people that light you up and it's more than okay to distance yourself from anyone that does not. Do you know what I wish someone had just told younger me? This is so basic, it's so obvious and it just, I didn't even know. And that's, do you know what, if you just walk a bit more, you're gonna be healthier. You're going to just feel better. Walking is the most basic exercise, but it's so easy. There's no barriers to exercise. You know, like if you've got to go to the gym and you've got to get all sweaty, you've gotta wear certain clothes. Just walk. You can do it. You don't need any special equipment. Walk a bit more, walk a few more extra steps, park further away. Don't take the car, walk . I know when I was younger, I danced and danced and danced, and danced. I didn't really walk anywhere. I did all these dancing lessons and then as I got a bit older, I stopped dancing and I did have a bit of a struggle with self-image and finding my groove with food and exercise and things. And you know what, if someone had just told me, Get your steps in, you're gonna feel so much better. It's gonna benefit your physical and mental health. Mind blowing, mind-blowing I tell you.. It took me far too long to figure that one out. The next thing I would tell my younger self is actually so important, and it took me such a long time to realize this one, and that's that self-care is not selfish. I genuinely used to believe that spending time or money on anything that was not directly benefiting my children was selfish. This was a limiting belief I think I had from childhood, from stories that were floating around and saying it out loud does sound ridiculous now, but it's genuinely something I used to believe. And I think that it, this was a two-fold kind of reason that I believed it. And I'm gonna explain why younger Rhi should definitely take this point on board as soon as she possibly can, like far sooner than actual Rhi managed to, and that is; Looking after yourself is not selfish because it actually benefits those around you. By taking care of your mental and physical health, you are gonna get ill less. You are gonna be more productive, and you're gonna generally be nicer to be around. I mean, what could be better than that for your children, your family. If you don't service the car and then you are not gonna be surprised when it breaks down. If you do not look after yourself, you are not going to be surprised when your health, either your mental health or your physical health fails you and then you are not able to do what you want to do for your children. You should not really need a reason to take care of yourself. You absolutely should not, but if you do need a reason to take care of yourself, it's because it's not selfish thing to do. It's actually benefiting those around you. The second part to this self-care is not selfish, is things like, I used to worry that having my nails done, for example, would be selfish because I'm paying for that. I should be paying for something for the children. And yes, I agree that the children's needs and definitely, you know, feeding them and clothing, things have to come first. If you have the time or the resources to have that done and it makes you feel good, that is not selfish. That is just doing something for yourself to make yourself feel good and wouldn't you want your children to grow up to make themselves happy? Wouldn't you want your children to grow up and know that it's okay to do things that make them happy? Or do you want your children to grow up with a mindset that when they are parents, that they have to live in a state of deprivation and only their children can have things and flourish? Because that's not what I want for my children. If I want my children to grow up and to be happy and to be okay with doing things for themselves as well as their families, then I need to model that behavior. That's something that took me far too long to figure out. I would remind younger Rhi that saying no is okay. And again, we talked about this a lot in the episode of Boundaries, but something that I would really, really remind her is that saying no to something means you are saying yes to something else and failing to say no, and agreeing to do something you don't want to do means you are inadvertently saying no to something else. If you agree to do something you do not want to do, to take on a project at work you do not want to take on or to do a favor for someone you, that you just know you can't fit in. That time has to come from somewhere. That energy has to come from somewhere. So you are gonna have to choose to give up time with your children, your free time, where you should be exercising or sleeping, for example. Something's gotta go. Something's gotta give. In order to say yes to that thing you want to say no to. So by saying yes to something you should be saying no to, you are saying no to either earning money or spending time with your family, for example, and remembering that makes it far easier to say no to those things we really need to say no to. I would say that one bad day does not make you a bad mother. We all have off days. We are all human, and I definitely need to tell my younger self to stop beating yourself up because you're not gonna be perfect all the time. Try and improve all the time. Yes. Learn from your mistakes. Absolutely. Beat yourself up about them. No, not helpful. I would tell younger me to stop apologizing for everything, all the flipping time. I mean, I'd probably tell current me to do that too. And this goes back to the example of someone bumping into you and then being very British and being like, oh sorry. And then you're like, hang on. They bumped into me. Ah, no, I shouldn't have said sorry for that. But by this time they've gone. So stop apologizing so much younger Rhi, current Rhi, everybody really. I would say it's really important to learn who you can rely on and who you cannot rely on as early as possible and establish this. There are some people in life that you just know are just so solid and always there for you. And by figuring out who these people are, you know who it's worth devoting your energy to. And then there are other people that talk such a good talk and whenever they've got a problem, they're straight on the phone and they're like, oh, you're such a good friend, and, you know, make you feel great. But then as soon as you need them, you are, they are nowhere to be found. And establishing who these unreliable people are , and then allocating your energy appropriately between these people that really add to your life and are really there for you. Those are the people you want to be supporting and investing time and energy and friendship with. And then identifying those people that really, it's a one-sided relationship. You are there for them. They are never there for you. And then you keep giving them chance after chance, after chance, and you just end up learning nothing. Figuring out who these people are, can be as simple as this very wise quote, I'm not sure who said it. Can anyone can let me know where this actually came from, but when people show you who they are, believe them. That is something I definitely wish someone had told me when I was so much younger. It would've saved me so much heartache. I would definitely tell younger me to recognize when you are in a slump and know how to get out of it. I had a whole episode of the podcast where I talked about this, but there have been so many times in my life where I felt kind of in a rut, and I think learning to recognize that as soon as possible, it's like anything really, isn't it? When you're able to see what's happening, observe that, call it out, then you are halfway there to feeling better and taking steps to improve the situation. I would definitely tell myself to check in more about how I'm feeling, how things are going and then I think I would have taken more sensible steps to improve certain situations earlier, to get outta certain situations earlier, and to just generally focus on feeling better because I would've been more aware of how I was feeling in the first place. I would definitely tell myself that there is peace on the other side of that difficult conversation. I don't know about you, but the idea of any pending conflict, any pending difficult conversations makes me feel physically sick, sick to my stomach. And this is something that, again, my best friend and I really, agree on, and I know whatever she's got like a difficult conversation in work or something she's gotta have, I feel sick for her and I'm just like, please do it as soon as possible. Get it over and done with so I can stop feeling sick for you. You know what I mean? Let me know if you have anyone in your life like that. I'm very lucky to have her anyway. I know that when I've gotta have a difficult conversation and this has happened in work situations where I've had to bring up something about a job or leave a job. Situations where I've had to have difficult conversations with friend or family members where things have been not going right. I have felt dread about what was gonna be said, what I was going to say, what the other person was going to say, and the reality of what happened in each and every one of those situations was never as bad as I managed to concoct it in my mind. And every time without fail, I felt better on the other side of that difficult conversation. If you've got to have a difficult conversation, whatever it might be about with whatever person in your life, get it done because you will feel better after it is done. Even if the conversation does not go especially well, it is done. You can stop panicking about will it go this way? Will it go that way? You'll know and you'll feel better. If younger me had figured that out, then I can't even tell you the stress that would've saved. Which brings me sort of along to the eat that frog mentality. I only discovered this principle probably within the last six years. It must have been because I started reading all of these books and by reading these books, really, I mean, listening to these books on Audible. And now I talked about all of this in my episode where I talked about life changing books. If you did enjoy that episode, by the way, do you let me know? Because I have a lot more life changing books that I have to share. But if you've not yet checked out that episode I talked about. Books that changed my life, changed how I live, how I organize things, my mindset, and I shared my biggest takeaways from those books. So please do check out that episode if you've not yet seen slash herded. I listened to this book on Audible, and if you have not got Audible yet, it's amazing. In fact, I'd probably tell my younger self to get Audible sooner as well. I have got a code, for Audible that is MummyOfFour.com/audible. I will put that down the description or the show notes of wherever you watching or listening, and that will get you one free audio book. And if you've not listened to the book, eat That Frog yet. I would recommend it. The principle of eat that frog involves the harming of zero frogs, and that's just if you have to eat a frog that day, that's probably gonna be the worst thing you have to do. Get it over and done with first thing in the morning, and then it's done. It's like being on the other side of that difficult conversation and you will feel better. And if you've got two frogs to eat, if you've got two nasty jobs to do, eat slash do the biggest, nastiest, yucky one first, and you will feel so much better. By implementing this, in my life doing the tough stuff first, doing the stuff that makes me feel a bit sick, the stuff that's looming, the stuff that really has to be done, getting that over and done with makes me feel so much better. It brings me so much peace and calm. I am nearly 40 and I've only been implementing this within the last few years. Younger me definitely could have benefited from this so, so much. And I guess the other thing I would say is Rhi 40 is not that old. Honest. Don't worry about it. It's all gonna be good. So thank you so much for tuning into this episode. I hope you have enjoyed it. Don't forget to like and subscribe, if you are on YouTube. If you are listening on your favorite podcasting app, don't forget to scroll down and leave me a review and tune in next week for another Real Talk With Rhi. Thanks guys. Bye.