Balance & Beyond
Balance and Beyond is the podcast for ambitious women refusing to accept burnout as the price of success. Here, we’re committed to empowering you with the tools and strategies you need to achieve true balance, where your career, relationships and health all thrive and where you have the power to define success on your own terms.
Balance & Beyond
Jo Unfiltered: The Truth About Balancing Life, Plus Answers to Your Top Questions
Ever wondered how to juggle a bustling household, demanding career, and personal hobbies without losing your balance? In today’s episode, Jo answers the top three questions she gets asked: how does she juggle all the parts of her life, what rituals keep her sane and who supports her on this journey of life.
Discover the secrets to achieving harmony as Jo shares her journey of balancing two energetic children, a husband, a household, and her own passions. This episode of Balance and Beyond tackles the myth that managing these components seamlessly is impossible and offers insights into how you, too, can redefine success and balance on your own terms.
To view the Transcript from this week's episode, visit our Balance & Beyond Podcast webpage: https://www.balanceinstitute.com/podcast/2025/89
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Thanks again for tuning in, and we'll see you next time on the Balance & Beyond Podcast!
Welcome to Balance and Beyond, the podcast for ambitious women who refuse to accept burnout as the price of success. Here we're committed to empowering you with the tools and strategies you need to achieve true balance, where your career, relationships and health all thrive and where you have the power to define success on your terms. I honor the space you've created for yourself today, so let's take a breath and dive right in. On today's episode of the podcast, I'm going to be answering three of the biggest questions that I'm asked on a regular basis, so this is going to be a personal share. If you're not really interested in how I fit everything in or what are my habits and rituals or who supports me, then feel free to move on to the next episode. But if you're curious how I fit everything in, what my habits and rituals are and the various modalities that I've got to support me, then come on in, let's talk. Support me then come on in, let's talk. And before we begin, I would need to express a few caveats. This is my definition of all and how I fit it in. This is what has worked for me, and I encourage you to be very let's use the word conscious of where you may be judging any of my decisions, where there may be any jealousy for you of where you may be judging any of my decisions where there may be any jealousy for you where you may be going. Oh, you know, that's not fair, or that's this or that's that, because all I am is just a mirror. So what I'm about to share works for me and for my life. Thankfully, I've learned to let go of a lot of other people's expectations as to what you know being liked and those things which used to be really tricky for me, by the way. So think of this as an opportunity to dive in and almost get a bench seat into somebody else's life, how they do it, and watch what comes up for you.
Jo:My aim in sharing this is not to profess that there is a way to do anything, but a way for you to understand primarily a lot of the principles that I use that guide me in structuring my life or deciding who to work with. So again, don't take away that Joe said you have to do this or Joe does this. Therefore I have to do it. That is not the intention. The intention that is, I'm shedding light on what works for me and, who knows, there might be a little nugget or a little principle that you can take that it can apply to your life. So, caveats aside, let's talk about how I fit it all in. This is a question I often get from people, either at conferences. I get it from my clients, because they hear about what I do and how much I pack into my life, and there's often this belief that well, I can't do that because perhaps their circumstances don't exactly match mine or their life doesn't exactly match mine. But I'm here to say that you can fit in whatever you want if you know how. So first up, let's talk about what it is that I'm fitting into my life, and when I say fit, I mean what are the components that I am juggling, really, because we're all doing the same thing.
Jo:So I have two kids who are 14 and 11 and incredibly active. They are dancers, they play sport. And when I say dancers, if anyone here's got dancing kids, they don't just dance once a week, they dance five days a week and they're in a competition team, which means lots and lots of weekends, lots and lots of extra rehearsals. So they're busy kids. Obviously, we've got school, we've got drop-offs, we've got pickups, so that sort of comes with all the territory of lots and lots of Ubering and everything else that comes with children.
Jo:I have a husband who's shifting jobs and will be going to work, ideally, or hopefully, full time out of the office sorry, out of the house. So that's going to be Monday to Friday. So you know we are juggling. We will be juggling you know a whole new dynamic because he's been doing other sort of pieces of work consulting and those types of thing and often working from home. I am juggling. Also, we have a dog who needs to be walked every day. So my husband and I tend to divide that up. Obviously, I have a business I'm running and, yes, I have more control over my schedule than I used to when I was in corporate. But I used to have this limiting belief that only if I ran my own business could I have as much control. So if you have this well, you know I couldn't do that because I work for someone else there's definitely going to be something here for you.
Jo:One thing that is in my life that I never believed would be possible was I play sport. So I used to love playing sport as a kid and it wasn't until after COVID. I've gone. Hang a second, I'm running around after everybody else. My husband started playing soccer and going away for boys weekend and they started riffing why am I missing out? Why am I running around and never actually doing anything for myself? So about four years ago I started playing nipple and this year sorry, in 2024, I actually, for the first time, played soccer, which is something that terrified me.
Jo:So this is winter sport, so I'm playing on either Friday nights or Saturday afternoons. And once again I my hesitation. When I started playing netball, we can't fit it in. There's no way, with everything going on. And Mick said to me we'll make it work. And we did. And then last year, when I said I wanted to play soccer, it's on Friday nights. The girls had dancing on Friday nights. He wanted to be somewhere else Friday nights. It's not going to fit in. So we'll make it work and fit in. So, uh, and on top of that, so I play.
Jo:Uh, I've been playing summer soccer this year and I will be playing winter soccer and winter netball and I also run two to three times a week. So I'm currently training for a 10K. So that's a lot of exercise. It's also my husband and I tend to do a sauna a week. That's our date thing that we do to make sure we have that connection going. And I have two aging parents. My dad's actually just been diagnosed with cancer, so I'm going to a lot of doctor's appointments.
Jo:So from this you can see I've got a lot right. I'm not sitting here pretending that I have a housemaid. I'm still dropping kids off at dancing, I'm still changing sheets, I'm still doing washing. So I have just as many components as probably 90% of women listening. And yet I have so much more in my life for me than I ever used to. So what I have now I got there gradually.
Jo:So I don't want you to think, if you've got nothing in here for you and you're running around on fumes after everybody else, that there's no possible way that you could do the amount of stuff for yourself or whatever that I'm doing. But the principle that I have used to put all of this in is magic and this is called Parkinson's law, and what this means is that an activity will always expand to the amount of time or space that you give it. So if you give yourself 10 minutes to put the washing away, it'll take 10 minutes. If you give yourself 30 minutes to put the washing away, it'll take 10 minutes. If you give yourself 30 minutes to put the washing away, it will take 30 minutes. So by leveraging this principle and the key thing here is I'm not saying that you work on speed the whole time and you rush and you, you're stressed and you but you can actually shrink a huge amount of tasks that you are doing because they're just expanding and you don't realize this.
Jo:This was how we fit on Saturday's, my netball in. It's like, okay, well, we're gonna squish the other things that were the errands or whatever. It's like no, just squish it and it will fit in, and it does. And once it's in, then you can add more in as long as the concept of habit stacking. So if you do it gradually, then it will fit in. You don't tend to go from nothing to all of this.
Jo:So when you really leverage Parkinson's law and reduce the amount of time that you spend tidying the house, I used to spend hours. I remember when I first did my first time audit, I was spending between 25 and 30 hours a week, sort of in the home category, shuffling baskets from room to room, and if you'd asked me then could I shave any time off that I would have categorically said absolutely not. There is no way. I'll bet you a million dollars I cannot get any more time Like. There's no way that's going to fit. My life is too busy. And yet here I am and it fits, and the washing still gets done and the cooking still gets done and the house still gets tidied. So more can fit in your life than you realize. So let me share what I've let go of all the muscles I've built in order to get to this place where I fit it all in, because to me the lessons have really not been in fitting it in, it's been in what I've let go of. So I have minimized and worked really hard on my procrastination muscle. So it's pretty rare.
Jo:When I sit down to focus, I focus at work. I get it done. I don't faff around. When I'm doing something, I'm present, I'm fully doing that thing and I do it. I didn't realize how exhausted I was from trying to do 50 million things at a time and therefore I was actually never effective. I never felt like I was getting anything done and I didn't get anything done. Everything was half finished.
Jo:I still remember one day very vividly when I decided to I don't know clean out the linen cardboard or something like that, and I was at it for hours. Mick walked up to me and he said you know, the house is messier than when you started. And I burst into tears because I'd spent hours cleaning, trying to tidy the house and, you know, clean all the crap out, and yet I ended up making more mess and then spent another hour trying to clean up everything that I'd done. So the time, you know, my activity completely expanded because there was nothing on that afternoon and in reality, about six months later, I ended up having the same experience of I need to clean out the linen cupboard. We were putting our house on the market, so you know, people open the cupboard and you don't want stuff to fall on their heads. I set a timer and said I'm not leaving this spot. I cleaned out the linen cupboard in 12 minutes and the day before or you know, six months earlier, it I was hours and hours and hours.
Jo:So so this is where really learning to focus, really learning to be present, minimizing procrastination and minimizing distractions can have a huge impact on how much you can get done, and then you free up space for more of what you want. I also have very little screen time. I have 30 minute timers or app limits on my phone and the only time I ever break those is if I'm running a Facebook challenge or something like that for my business, and then I'm obviously in there a lot more responding to things, but I don't tend to scroll very much. I don't read the news, so I don't lose. When I started making some of these changes, I realized I was spending two to three hours a day on my phone, just I don't know doom scrolling, watching stuff. I don't know where it went, and so by getting rid of that, I freed up more space for what I really want. So I'm not a robot, I'm a human. But by leveraging these principles really stopping all my self sabotage programs, being really focused where I am so that I can sit down and while I might be working 40 to 45 hours, I reckon I'm probably getting 60 to 70 hours a week of work done because I sit down and I smash it out and then I go and do something else. So being really present has been a game changer for me.
Jo:How I also keep myself fueled up and able to cope in this busy life is my rituals. So people always ask me Jo, what are your rituals? And those of you that have come through my programs know I share a lot about what they look like Now. My rituals have changed and morphed over time, particularly when I had littler kids who used to wake me up with either crying or a poke in the head every morning. My rituals looked very different then to what they do now with kids who I can't wake up in the morning. So my rituals used to all be nighttime based. But now if I get up I don't know before eight I'm typically the only one awake. So my life is different. So I'm able to structure things now based on what works for our family and the stage of life we're at.
Jo:I am not someone who typically anymore has a super fixed routine. I've got lots of friends that have, and clients even that have, a morning routine and they wake up and they meditate and they journal and they do that every single morning and that's awesome. That works for them. I have found that, because my life can be in a state of flux and I'm running first thing in the morning so I might be out the door at quarter past six, that I have created space more for snack sized, you would say rituals that tend to fit around other things I'm doing, but because I've become so ingrained in who I am, they don't get forgotten. So some things that really work for me as if I am not running in the morning or I don't have to run children around is I often start with some journaling. I will often do some meditation before I wake up or before I go to sleep, depending on timing, and for this year, one of my focuses in 2025 is really stepping more into my power and really revealing that to myself, and so I've often do a power hour first thing in the morning. So, whether that's, you know, doing some more intuition, that's something that I've been really really cultivating.
Jo:What I have also found is that routines and rituals are much easier when kids are back to school. When you have a routine and you have more certainty, it is much easier to find that rhythm that you need and most of us. When your kids are back in school and you have that structure, I find that makes it so much easier to be more consistent with what you do. But one of the biggest things that I would probably call this now a ritual, even though it may look a little ad hoc is I make space every day for connection to myself and that's a check-in on what do I need. It drives my family nuts Every time I get in the car, probably 90% of the time.
Jo:Rather than I used to always be a put on music or put on the podcast, I was terrified of silence. Now, most times, if I'm ever in the car alone, going to drop off a child, pick off a child, or whatever I'm doing, I am in this in silence, and every time the family jump in the car after I've been in it, they're like why isn't the music playing? Mom's been in the car. The volume's turned down to zero because I don't want any noise. I use those little moments to connect in to. You know, I often walk the dog in silence. I don't listen to anything. I'm listening to my body. I'm allowing space for downloads. My intuition to tell me what I want to do and that's something that really rig fuels me is able to find the space in something else that I'm already doing.
Jo:I'm a person who values efficiency, so if I can really make that 15 minute drive to dancing rather than making it something that I have to do and I don't want to be doing it and I'm this and I'm that and I'm in obligation and I'm in resentment. It's like, okay, I'm driving to dancing, I'm going to have some silence and I might do some deep breathing, I might be feeling my hands on the steering wheel, I might be looking at the flowers as I drive past them. So I turn up to wherever I'm going, actually feeling quite recharged because I've had this check-in time with myself and we do a lot of back and forth to dancing. Usually it's about 12 to 15 times a week and we tend to split that up. So I'm in the car a lot for these and forth to dancing. Usually it's about 12 to 15 times a week and we tend to split that up. So I'm in the car a lot for these short, you know, 10 to 15 minute go here, go there, go to the shops, go back, and, rather than just being dead time or time when I'm trying to pull more and more information into my head, I'm actually able to use that as a way to build that intuition muscle of mine to connect in with self. So that is how, again, my rituals have morphed.
Jo:The only last thing that I tend to do consistently is almost every night I shower by candlelight, and that has been a game changer. You turn all the lights off, I have a little sort of candle set right by my uh, right by my shower, on my vanity, and it makes something. Again efficiency, use of time, something that we typically do every single day, and when I do that at night before bed, that's a beautiful way for me to wash off the day. I wash off anything that's still attached to me. I really do a lot of intentional work in there in terms of, okay, well, you know what's my intention for tomorrow, or what is here right now, what do I need to like? Go off, and it's just a beautiful environment. So I'm all for. You're already doing something. I'm already driving to dancing, I'm already having a shower. Is there a way for me to make that time mean something to me? Can I make that time refueling, rather than then needing, you know, 15 hours to sit somewhere? So, again, you can see these morphing and I really encourage you to work out what works for you when it comes to your rituals, when it comes to what you need to really top yourself up. And then, lastly, I guess this sort of feeds into what I fit in and my rituals is.
Jo:I often get asked what support do I have Given? I'm a coach and support so many others. Do I have coaches of my own? Do I continue to do my own work? And the answer is absolutely. I don't believe you should ever hire a coach who is not doing work on themselves, because I have to continue to grow. I have to continue to evolve. My business will only ever grow to the size of the problems that I can solve. So if I want my business to plateau, then the best way to do that or probably shrink is to start working on myself. I've had again over the last five, six years. I've had a whole different range of people that support me in a variety of different modalities, in a variety of different ways. So I was in a very expensive coaching program for a couple of years. That was great at the time. I made lifelong friends. It really catapulted my business to the next level. But I'm not there anymore because that just doesn't feel like the place that I need to be.
Jo:We have invested significant amounts of time, money and energy in our health. This wasn't necessarily by choice. It was by necessity when there's a myriad of health problems, but we have invested in naturopaths and nutritionists. We have a lot of technology around health, so I wear an aura ring which gives me a lot of stats on how my body is doing, and we've also. We have almost like a biomat that really repairs us at a cellular level that everybody lies on every day. We have a body coach who is from the UK. I call him my magician, and he's really helped all of our family really rebuild ourselves from the ground up, from a muscular and sort of the way we function, and he's also been a big catalyst in us visiting cutting edge health clinics and seeking out some alternative treatments to modern medicine. So we've been my husband and Stella have been twice to a clinic in Norway, all of us have been as well and really saying, you know, we're not going to settle for anything less than optimal health. This isn't how we look, it's about how our body functions, and so that is been a really, really big area of focus. Thankfully, everybody is stabilizing now and all the work that we've done has fundamentally changed all of our lives. I was told that Mick was very, very unlikely to make 50 if we didn't make some changes, so I know that. You know that trip to Norway that was on a limb, that was very much an intuitive hit, has saved his life and you could never put a price on your health. So that is where a lot of our money and support has gone.
Jo:But also, I tend to really wait to see what coaches or guides find me. I've really enjoyed kinesiology. It's something that I've now trained in and I've worked with the same person fortnightly or every two weeks for the past two years. So every two weeks I continue to dive into what is holding me back, what is in my way, how do I move it, and, over time, a variety of other modalities, whether it's Reiki or having various other readings. I've done some fun woo things as I go down various rabbit holes and past life hypnotherapy. But I've also had business coaches and strategic coaches. So I again, I am really open to what guide do I need right now for this phase? And they've always found me. I always know when it's the right thing for me, and so I follow those nudges. I sign up for lots of masterclasses and do lots of these things, but it's just been a really fun.
Jo:Part of my journey is saying, okay, well, what do I need. Now let's see who's going to appear. So really not holding on very tightly to what support that I have or what support that I need has been a game changer and trusting that intuition that when the student is ready, the teacher appears, so says the same. And, you know, depending on what I'm focused on depends on what support I need. So that is, I guess, a summary of Joe's world, how I operate, and I hope from this you've really pulled out some core principles, whether that's, you know, leveraging Parkinson's law to fit in more time for you, and it's not just me this works with.
Jo:I've got hundreds of clients who never thought that they could run or never thought that they could find time for a hobby or never thought that they could, you know, go back to tap dancing lessons, which is something they've wanted to do since they were a kid. You can find time, it is actually there. It's just something that right now, until you do the work on yourself, you can't see. There's no possible way. You will swear blue murder that there is no way that that time is ever going to appear. And yet we have evidence from hundreds of women that when you do the work, when you have the right tools, you can get put back in your lives. I hope you've learned that you can hold on loosely to rituals and you can do the thing whatever that is for you that works. You can fit it in in various ways. You can have consistency if that works for you, or you can find something that works within your life, depending on how busy and how that looks, and that the right guides will always find you.
Jo:I found that many of my guides knocked for quite a while and often I would ignore them, like nope, not going there, nope, and then they just kept bumping and they kept bumping, and this is what I know many people who find me like I listened to every podcast episode and you kept coming and you kept getting in my head. Well, usually, if I keep getting in your head, that might be a sign that you know. Depending on who else you're working with, maybe it's time for you to come and see what it is that we're about. But I will leave that up to you because once again, when the student is ready, the teacher appears. Up to you to decide what that means. So have a wonderful rest of day.
Jo:I hope this has been an insightful, inspiring episode and, if any judgment or any other emotions have come up. Just think of this as a mirror. What is this trying to tell you? What is this? Do you think this is completely farcical and I should be giving you a rainbow and a unicorn with this, or are you like? You know what? If she can do it, I can too, because, no matter where you are, very, very strong chance.
Jo:I have been there. So here's to more time for ourselves, more rituals and more support. I'll see you next time. Thanks for joining us today on the Balance and Beyond podcast. We're so glad you carved out this time for yourself. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend who might need to hear this today and, if you're feeling extra generous, leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice would mean the world to us. If you're keen to dive deeper into our world, visit balanceinstitutecom to discover more about the toolkit that has helped thousands of women avoid burnout and create a life of balance and beyond. Thanks again for tuning in and we'll see you next time on the Balance and Beyond podcast.
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