Life On Purpose Over 40 Podcast
Step into the world of empowerment, elegance, health and unapologetic authenticity – Welcome to the Life on Purpose Over 40 podcast! I'm thrilled to connect with extraordinary women like you who are on a relentless journey to outshine their yesterday selves.Picture this: a podcast that's not just a listening experience, but a transformational journey. Here, we're diving headfirst into the realms of health, wellness, style, relationships, and career, guided by the wisdom of global trailblaze
Life On Purpose Over 40 Podcast
Empowerment and Mindfulness After 40: Journey to Inner Peace and Clarity with Kirti Dayanani
Discover the empowering journey of Kirti Dayanani as she navigates the complexities of mindfulness and empowerment for women over 40. Kirti gifts us with her insights on embracing femininity and managing the inevitable changes that time brings to our bodies. Learn how the ancient Buddhist Lojong practice has become her anchor in managing anxiety and fostering calmness, offering a fresh perspective on mental wellness without traditional meditation. As we emerge from a pandemic world, Kirti urges us to shift our focus from the physical to cultivating mental clarity and communication.
Tune in to hear the heartfelt story of a courageous woman who, facing burnout at 39, chose to close her thriving yoga center in Curaçao to prioritize her mental health. She candidly shares her struggles with exhaustion and societal pressures, particularly for women from Indian and Polish backgrounds. We delve into the cultural significance of yoga beyond physical practice, highlighting the critical importance of self-care and setting boundaries to maintain well-being amidst societal expectations.
Celebrate self-realization and the mind-body connection with us, especially for women navigating perimenopause and beyond. Kirti introduces her passion project, "Befriend Your Mind," designed to reduce anxiety and encourage self-awareness. We explore strategies for embracing mindful living, breaking old habits, and the power of feminine energy in professional environments. Kirti shares her top tips for achieving a fulfilling life by 40, emphasizing gratitude and personal satisfaction, inviting listeners to reflect on their life paths and priorities.
www.lifeonpurposeover40.com
all these things, we start blaming ourselves. We don't own that feminine side of us. Our body does change along the way. Like you said, your muscles start changing. Everything is happening, so tell me about what befriending your mind is.
Speaker 1:So I came across a book. I was given a book by a teacher and it's called the Lojong practice. It's a Buddhist practice where you train your mind before meditating, but every time it's 59 ways or so. They're called Lojong and over time, as I kept practicing it more and more without meditating, I was actually calming myself down because I wasn't giving in to my anxiousness. It's not something I've spoken about till now, and the last two, two couple of years because of pandemic. You hear a lot about loneliness and you hear about how everyone is really struggling, but and the only way I knew I could do that is if I removed myself from my work and really focused on going inside of myself, and that's how my journey started on to where I am today, I guess.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Life on Purpose over 40 podcast, where empowerment, elegance and health take center stage. I'll be your guide on this thrilling journey to outshine your past self. This is a podcast all about transformation. We're plunging headfirst into exactly what health, wellness, style, relationships and career look like as a woman over 40. You'll be hearing from all the most sought after global trailblazers and experts. This isn't just about learning. It's about embracing your inner fierce, fabulous self. Let's get started. Okay, we are starting. Thank you for joining us. We're already laughing, so that's a really good sign. Welcome to the show, kati. We have known each other for over 10 years now. We're trying to remember exactly the first time we met, but we've been in contact for more than 10 years and it's really great to have you here. I'm so excited to have you on my podcast.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Caroline.
Speaker 2:It's lovely to see you again and be on your podcast, yeah it's great talking to you, so we've just had a really nice talk before we started and we were joking that I'm going to try to pronounce your surname. So it's Kirti Dayanani, hey see you in a minute Fantastic.
Speaker 2:So, kirti, it's really great to have you here. You have got so much going on. You've always been around sort of the yoga area and all about meditation, and when we met you were doing more around yoga sort of stuff. So I think you've got a lot to share with us today, because what you're concentrating on now is understanding that women need to think about their mind better and concentrate on what we are doing with our mind, not so much about what we're doing with our hands all the time yes, more to do with.
Speaker 1:Yes, training the mind and training your, your communications yeah, fantastic.
Speaker 2:So take me back because I know you've had a lot of changes over the last 10 years since I first met you. But take us back so you're in the yoga space, but in the last seven, nine years you have changed. So since you were 40, what's changed in your life? What are you doing now and why have you made so many drastic changes?
Speaker 1:Oh, good question. So I actually burnt out. I was 39 when I burnt out and I remember lying down at a yoga center and I hadn't done a class for ages because I was becoming very resentful towards yoga. To be honest, turkish lamp and I'm going, I want to travel the world, I miss traveling and something inside me says, hey, you got a lot of free miles, why don't you just close up and leave? And exactly one week later, that's the decision I made to just close up and leave, and the reason I wanted to leave because I was exhausted and I was at a very fragile stage. Because I was exhausted and I was at a very fragile stage because I was hiding something very traumatizing for me, which was suicide. I was very suicidal at that time. Yeah, oh, my God, I'm shocked. Sorry, no, that's okay.
Speaker 1:It's not something I've spoken about till now. And in the last two, two couple of years, because of pandemic, you hear a lot about loneliness and you hear about how everyone is really struggling. But for I'm a woman of color and I know it may not, it seems really strange, but there was a lot of the way the yoga was going. It felt like a lot of removal of my culture and I was conflicted inside and that had a lot of different issues for me on a deep level, and because I didn't understand it, I wanted to understand it, and the only way I knew I could do that is if I removed myself from my work and really focused on going inside of myself, and that's how my journey started to where I am today. I guess, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's really interesting. But what? What was going on that it got so bad and uh you know, some.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's, it's a really. There are lots of reasons, but one of them was you know, sometimes when you're doing something that is very giving but almost to the point, so I live on, I used to live on the island of Curaçao, which is a very it's a small island, so the center was doing extremely successful. It was just doing really, really well. But every time I would leave, people wouldn't show up at the center, no matter who my teachers were, and that was a little bit pressurizing because you had to be an entrepreneur but you also had to be a teacher and navigating that Plus, you have responsibilities of your family. I you know you take care of your parents and all of that.
Speaker 1:So whenever I would get back, I felt like I was stuck growing in my life and I used to teach classes and people would come to my center and go oh my god, can you please stretch my hamstrings so I can look prettier, or do yoga training, and I'm like, okay, but in an hour before that I was sitting in a child psychologist and I had to hear stories of children being raped and hurt and I had to reconcile that in my head and so constantly having to shift your mind the whole time. You are going through a lot of emotions and then you had to put on a smile all the time, hi. And people would say, oh, you're the yoga teacher. You're so calm, you're so positive, and inside of you you're like I want to just bust a move. I'm going inside of you. There's a whole different dialogue and I just couldn't pretend anymore. So I said no, I'm out of here.
Speaker 2:For a while, me taking care of myself was much more important than taking care of many people yeah, it's, yes, very, very good that you saw that in yourself, because a lot of people don't, a lot of people keep pushing through, keep pushing through. So, yeah, it's really lucky that you saw that.
Speaker 1:It is, yeah, it is. Look, it's a hard conversation, and especially from a female perspective. We are very caring Women for some reason, maybe it's, maybe it's conditioning, it's more likely conditioning. There's that idea that once you have a family, you have to be responsible. I know at a young age the the dynamics for an Indian girl was you're going to get married and take care of your family. That was your dynamics and that didn't work out for us, or for me at least, and so I avenueed that same responsibility towards my work. But then, if you don't know how to say no, this is my boundary, you can go too far. And then I noticed that this pattern is not just in my culture, but it's everywhere. It's quite common.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's true and I think you know your Indian background. I'm Polish background and the Polish background is very much the same. Yeah, you've got to get married, have children and your whole life revolves around making cakes for everyone. That's it, yeah and um, I didn't have my first child until I didn't have my child until I was 40. So that was very like what. What took you so long? Why are you doing it that way? And so I understand you know the different, like the cultures, I think, as much as Indian and Polish are very different in a lot of ways. There is a lot of that. You know that same women are there only to serve.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I wasn't okay with that. I wasn't, but I wasn't okay with it, and I wanted to change the narrative for myself. I didn't want to let go of this enjoyably feminine side of me, but I found myself feeling like I either had to choose and I couldn't calibrate it, and so calibrating both sides is very necessary, for me at least, and that's what I share with a lot of my clients now.
Speaker 2:And what is this about the cultural appropriation of yoga that you? I think that's what we're going there. Yeah, oh, you don't have to to, but I'd like you to yoga is a lifestyle.
Speaker 1:Yoga is a way of life. So it's everything um from um. It's not just physical. You look at a person's tapestry, their whole life, their habits, their patterns, and then you see where you feel stuck or the blockages are, and then you adapt techniques so that a person comes back to feeling calm and centered with themselves.
Speaker 1:And what happened a lot in the West is there's a lot of emphasis on the physical body, there's so much emphasis on standing on your hands and standing on your head and none of it really adds value After a while. It doesn't add value to the pain and the struggles you have inside of you, to your inner conflicts. So what happens is a lot of individuals have too much in their self-care, they're doing way too much and that actually the anxiety is going up. So when I ask myself culturally appropriating it, if I look back in history, which is really, you know you have to talk about it. But most of the female gender learned from a male gender and it came from India, and the Indian male gender has a different perspective about women and their role in society, and so they focused there's a lot of focus on this beauty and chakras and health of the body, but the health of the mind and the health of the body and the health of your emotions. They constantly require calibration and you want to be able to look at your life so that you don't overexert your energy.
Speaker 1:You know, I heard along my travels, it's not how old you are but how many breaths you take that determines how long you live. And I was like well, that means if I breathe really really fast, does that mean I'm going to die really, really young? I mean, you know, that moment you're just like, oh, this is something to reflect on. And so I appreciate the practice of yoga if it's done holistically, from looking at all aspects of life. You look at the role of the person, in their family, in their social patterns, in their work environments, and you see where are they misaligning it, and then you work together. And that is where that wasn't really brought over or shaped or explained well, because it's become very overly spiritually elevated and out there. But it can be very practical and I'm very practical, I like practicality.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've never heard of yoga being explained like that. It's always yeah, we're going to a Sunday class and we're going to go to yoga, and then afterwards we're going for breakfast and we've done our yoga for the week.
Speaker 1:It's you've had an avocado?
Speaker 2:yeah, exactly, and get a photo for Instagram yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And that's the other thing. I mean, when we walked, I used to walk into yoga centers and seeing all our idols placed on the floor, the Hindu idols, that would really, you know, grab me, because it's like me walking into the church and saying, okay, well, place all your idols on the floor. I found it very disrespectful and it was very weird because once I flagged it to someone and they got really offended that I said something Really and I was like, oh really. And in those days, yeah, and I was in the Netherlands when that happened and I was like this is just so disrespectful.
Speaker 1:I had phone calls where I'd say, would you like an Asian woman to give you perspective on this? And they're like, oh no, but are you? Are you what you know? What's your weight? And I'm like, so my size matters here, how fit I look is what gets me into the yoga center, and so these little things were just that was like something is off here, something is off here. And then it was when I heard it was culturally appropriation. I was like, yeah, that pretty much says it all, um, and when you say enough is enough, don't, you know, have respect, like I want to have respect for your culture, and when I see people oming and doing all these mantras, you don't realize that it's actually religious and it has a whole other story to it. But it's like cherry picking what suits us and that is all cultural appropriation and I guess a lot of people are not doing it to offend anyone.
Speaker 2:They're not. They don't realize that it's offensive or no.
Speaker 1:They don't understand. But you know, look, it's a beautiful art. I totally art, I totally enjoy that people are doing it. But if you do it, do it for your awareness, do it for observation, do it for gaining a greater quality of life, that you don't burn yourself out or you don't have anxiety. But that doesn't mean you need to chant or work with what you have. I mean, we have each of us, like you just told me, you have your. Your culture has Polish roots. There's parts of that roots that is so beautiful, even in your healthcare. So why are you denying it? Why not take a look at it and saying, oh, can I bring this into my self-care, can I bring this into my harmony? Because you're honoring the dignity as well of your ancestors. And in our culture that does make a difference. We honor our ancestors, but in a dignified way, and I think culturally there's a cultural removal and if we bring it in, you'd actually understand how much it should be in the self-care as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's a really nice way that you know if there's people out there that enjoy doing yoga. It's probably worth understanding it better. I've never heard it spoken about the way you've just explained it, so that's really nice.
Speaker 1:Well, that's what I said. I'm not against it, I just think honor yourself, honor your roots. So, when we study yoga as a lifestyle, we it's inclusive. It includes your culture, it includes your background, because you don't want to. The moment you start saying this is bad of my past, this is bad of my past, you're actually telling yourself that you're broken. But what if your past actually brought you to this moment? So you rather nourish and say thank you for it. I don't need this now. Or I could do with this now, learning to what you how to harmonize yourself. That gives you energy. It doesn't take away. But when you do yoga and you're constantly sweat doing it and you're over sweating, guess what? You're going to have wrinkly face. You're perspiring more than you need and you're zapping your energy. That's not yoga, that's not what it was meant to do so bikram yoga um, yeah, can we build it up for another podcast?
Speaker 1:so good I.
Speaker 2:I had a friend of mine back in my 20s that used to get very angry that I refused to do big room yoga with her and I was like I don't like saunas, so it's not going to like, just no part of it sounds like fun. She's like, yeah, but that's the best part. Blah, blah, blah. And then I saw the documentary about that guy so then I was like, yeah, so good, I'm glad to hear it from you.
Speaker 1:But isn't that how that that really reflects and when I would you know that really reflects what was going on in the yoga world, where you go, hey, hang on, something is really off here, you know. And then people go. I still honor it. I'm like why? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, have you stopped and bring in your critical observation? Why are you doing this to yourself? And then those, some of those people are the same people that say big farmer is out to get us, and it's like you can see that side of it, but you can't see it on that side. So yeah, let's not get too political.
Speaker 1:So no, it's not. But it's about look at the fundamental. If you say what yoga is, it's about, under self-realization, learning getting to realize yourself, realize who are you beyond your identity, if you let go of the labels and that is a process I mean when I did, I did do that for nine years where I had to let go of my identity, my labels. I had to challenge my beliefs and my values to be able to understand what am I teaching and why am I sharing what I'm sharing and what does that bring, bring inside this person? Because I, this body, is a temple. No matter what size or shape it is, your body is your temple. It is hosting your wonderful, delicious soul inside of you. So why are you spending so much time trying to fix it and hurt it? You know it's like telling a building the whole time oh, now we need to plaster it and give it some shape, and it's it.
Speaker 2:Yoga is, again, not against it, it's counterintuitive yeah, and I think that for women over 40, I think that we have, um, we've all experienced a lot, we've all been through many different things and I think understanding at this stage a lot of women over 40 are.
Speaker 2:You know, I went through it as well that once I started going through perimenopause putting on weight and that's actually I found out the whole reason behind that. It's got to do with protein, and if we don't have enough protein and our muscles get smaller, and then our muscles are actually not breaking down the fat to make us lose weight, so it's actually not that our hormones are the problem, it's the muscles and the protein. So that's a whole other thing. But the most women go through that. Once we get into our 40s, we're going to start putting on weight, and so to think that things like yoga are going to be what saves us from putting on weight is ridiculous, because if your mind is not right, then it doesn't matter what size you are. You can walk around in, I don't care like midriff at the age of 50 if your body's fantastic, but if your mind's not right, your body just doesn't matter on the outside of how many muscles you have.
Speaker 1:You know, if you really practice the art of the physical postures I'm going to say the art of it when you realize that it's almost like a beautiful dance with your breath, deliberate dance with your breath. When you're doing that, physiologically you're talking differently to your body. Physiologically you're sending different information to your mind not to your mind, to your brain and there's a lot of tons of out there and research on all of that. But when you are able to reset and come to a space of acceptance, if you listen quiet enough, your body is telling you something is off. You become more trusting with your body.
Speaker 1:I know when I was also going through well, now I'm currently going through perimenopause but I wasn't sure what I was going through in my 40s or not, because nobody told me I'm 48 now, so nobody told me back then you could be burning out because of overwork, for example, you know, and you're like, yeah, but I do yoga and I meditate. That's impossible. But there were warning signs, you know, they were all warning signs. And I remember when I stopped traveling, I started traveling sorry, the first couple of months I just wanted to sleep. I only wanted to sleep. My body did not want to do anything but sleep. I mean, I was sitting in Australia and it's such a beautiful place and I was like but my bed feels much more comfortable right now, and that's you know. I think we are doing a little bit too much, that we're not listening to our bodies anymore, we're not trusting ourselves anymore and we're leaning towards too much information around us and that's where I think, when you do slow practices, you're allowing your mind to come back.
Speaker 1:You and your mind, you and your body, you and your emotions are allowing itself to just go. Okay, calibrating, how can I go from here?
Speaker 2:so tell me about what befriending your mind is. It's something very passion, your passion project at the moment. So tell us more about that um.
Speaker 1:So I came across a book. Uh, I was given a book by a teacher and it's called the Lojong practice. It's a Buddhist practice where you train your mind before meditating, and I really had an internal argument with this book. I know it sounds crazy, but it was like one of those books that you were like oh, I have to read it. You don't want to read it. You know that kind of a love-hate relationship with it. But every time it's 59 ways or so. They're called lojong, so they're like statements that help you reflect on your patterns and your habits in your mind. But those they played on you. You know you'd be like, oh, I see this now and oh, I see I'm doing that now. And you know, and you're going okay.
Speaker 1:And over time, as I kept practicing it more and more without meditating, I was actually calming myself down because I wasn't giving into my anxiousness, and so I said, okay, well, right, if I tell everybody to go read a Buddhist book called the Lojong Practice, I may not get many people saying yes to this, you know. And so I decided to write it in a format to support generations after me how to relax from the anxiousness. So that's where I started with Befriend your Mind. I initially written the book as a hashtag, but now I'm going to write it in a different way as well. And yeah, I've it's, it's.
Speaker 1:I almost feel like it's been gifted to me and I have to do something with it. So that's what I'm sharing now, and why I like it is because with a lot of clients, I get their number. One thing is but I do yoga, I do meditate, I do do this, I do that, and there's so much I do this, I do. It's like almost like they're ticking all the boxes. They've been told, and yet they're like crying because they're not feeling okay inside, they're feeling so fake with themselves and so, working with them and giving them the tools and techniques to work with their shadows and their inner conflicts, when I get an email and I recently got one that says, yep, I really don't need you right now because I found myself, I picked the moment and I got it and then I go yes, because you're practicing it in your daily life. So that's why I stuck with befriend your mind that's fantastic.
Speaker 2:I actually was, um, when I was looking into doing more mindfulness in general, thinking about what you're going to meditate on and thinking about your problems before you actually go into meditation. So you should be doing pre-work before your meditation to make your meditation work better. And to me me I tried that a few times but I was sort of like, sort of like what you said. There's so much to it. So I guess you've come up with a good concept to simplify it.
Speaker 1:Yes, I wanted to simplify it. So in the practice of yoga there's eight they call it the eight, let's say eight layers or eight steps. The first two steps are actually understanding your beliefs, your values and your disciplines. Then the next step is understanding your energy, your breath, work. Then your next step is how do you cultivate your focus? Then it's mindfulness. So imagine that there are a couple of layers before you go, before you get to mindfulness and asanas, which is the yoga physical practice in the scriptures. Actually, none of the postures we're doing today is actually related to it.
Speaker 1:Asana just means learning to sit with yourself in a certain way, and so when you are working with the steps beforehand so let's say you said okay, pick the things that you wanted to work on what happens is, when you sit quietly, unraveling happens. What do I mean by unraveling? It means you're gonna see this one thing want to work with and your mind is like happy land. It's like, oh, she's going there. We love to be negative and it's going to go and it's going to come from all ends. And then you get out there going overwhelmed, and that is why understanding how to focus with it, breathing and allowing yourself to relax into it and go oh, I see you Okay, oh, I see you Okay. And every time you, because it wants to dialogue with you and you dialogue with it. And so it's think of it as like you're weaning yourself off it.
Speaker 1:And as you wean yourself off it over time, the patience arrives. It's not something you can, um, force yourself to have it just arise. And then when you have that, you go ah, it works. But we live in a culture where we go we want it now and we want it fast. And so you're going into your meditation when we want it now, we want it fast, and your mind is like oh, you do right, and it goes even faster. And so what happens is we get exhausted and we're tired because we're listening to that sound. So you do want to take a few steps back and, like if you practice the yoga, depending how quick the anxiety is.
Speaker 1:This is the way I've looked at it in the befriend your mind aspect. It's asking how can we slowly reduce the anxiousness, slowly relax the anxiousness so that when you look at the very things you want to work with, they're not comfortable, but that you don't run from it, that you don't avoid it and your old habits always kick in right at that moment, and so how do you stop yourself? So step back, and that's why having those slogans can help you go aha, recognize what it is. And go okay, I recognize it's a pattern, come back so give me an example of what you do so one of the slogans is um, um, don't make it personal.
Speaker 1:One of them is don't make it personal. Okay, now, very often when we are speaking to other people, how often inside of us we are comparing ourselves to the other person. Yeah, and then the person says I'm doing X, y and Z, and the answer normally goes yeah, but you know, I don't really do that. You just made it personal, you personalized someone else's situation as your situation because. And then you think, oh, I'm being empathic. Well, no, you're not being empathic, you're comparing. And so it says so one of the slogans. So when you notice that you're about to say that, you go oh, hold on, I'm doing that, it's okay, relax for a minute and you have that moment to actually pivot and go ah, tell me more, I find that interesting, I want to understand more. And you then cultivate a mind of curiosity rather than comparing.
Speaker 1:In our current culture, we have a lot of comparison still, and that's been going on for ages. It doesn't stop. So if you want to step back and say I want to live my true self, well, remember, when you're making things personal, practice not make it personal. So that's one of them. So you give them an. You know, one of the things I'd ask them to do is have five conversations and not make it personal. A lot of people come back very annoyed with me in the beginning.
Speaker 1:But, it opens their eyes. Yeah, it does, because it's again, it's about self-realization, right? It's about when you realize just certain things, you go, I don't have to do that. And that's when the liberation happens. And you go, oh, I don't have to do it. This way, you know, and that's okay. I mean they say no.
Speaker 2:You have an event coming up soon. That's all around. This it's around. Be Friendly in your Mind. So tell us a little bit more about that and how that event, and do you have more than one? Do you do this often? What do you do at those events?
Speaker 1:So I am going to be doing more. I'm smiling because I always try to run away from things. I'm like, oh, maybe I should be doing something else, because you work with a lot of people's resistance. Tried to run away from things, I was like, oh, maybe I should be doing something else because you work with a lot of people's resistance. But recently everyone's like, no, it's time to get back into it.
Speaker 1:So before pandemic I did retreats and now I'm going to be doing more. But I call them a bit of getaways. I'm like, okay, you know you want to get away from everything just for a moment and we're going to have thoughtful, provoking conversations and analyze your life. So I am going to be doing more in Curaçao. I'm definitely going to be doing the master retreats and I'm coming up. I'm playing with doing one in the Netherlands next month. I will be doing more definitely in Europe, because I would like to do more and then support people. You know I do private consultations when I'm asked for it, referrals and I work. I do a lot of talks at corporates and so I'm always, always interested in talking to corporates because burnout happens very quickly in the corporate level and when I hear how much they're doing and the way self-care is being packaged.
Speaker 2:It's a little alarming because people are rolling their eyes now and going this is not effective yeah, so, yeah, I think that's true and I think that we get into a state of, like you said a few times, doing, doing, doing, doing doing, and then we get lost in what we actually should be doing with ourselves.
Speaker 1:Well, should be, or can you give yourself permission and allowance?
Speaker 2:That's a different, that's different right and I came across that when I was telling you before that I through my perimenopause, I got very ill from it and when I went to the doctor here, she's like you need to take a step back, you need to stop doing so much. And I was like what? That's not going to happen me, slow down never. And she was like no, seriously, you need to slow down. You need to get a little blanket, sit in the corner with a book and just do nothing and just relax. And I was like I don't think I can do that. So it's taken me a lot and I like I catch myself where. I'm like, okay, dude, I'm like, no, just sit. Why can't I just sit for a minute? And I think a lot of women do that. What if you?
Speaker 1:reframed it Just out of curiosity. Reframe it Rather than making it like a should, because when the doctor tells you like it should, it's almost like what you resist will persist, right, yeah. So now it's like oh, it's the bad guy You're treating slowing down as the bad guy. But what if you created as not a self-care, like I call it my space of deliciousness? I'm like okay, I'm going to be delicious today. I feel like being delicious, and that could be as much as sitting on my mat and just looking at the ceiling. I'm feeling delicious, I'm just relaxing. Reframing your attitude towards it makes a big difference, because right now, somebody told you off. You gotta go. You should do this. You're like well, make it delicious, make it sassy for a little bit. You know, enjoy it.
Speaker 2:you know that's it when I do that, when I take my daughter outside for a walk and I'm like, okay, I've got a million things to do, then I'm like no, she just wants to look at leaves and pick up rocks off the ground and show me the butterflies, and so I really use that time to just go. I get to be with my daughter, just watch her little hands doing their thing, and I do make that about my time of just. I look at the grass that she's looking at. I look at the clouds we count all the clouds. I look at the clouds we count all the clouds. So I do have those moments and I Are they delicious, yeah. And times when I'm like I've got work to do, I've got, you know, I've got to catch up with whatever, and then I'm like, no, I don't, I don't need to do that.
Speaker 1:Well, she's teaching you to slow down too.
Speaker 2:And that's beautiful? Yeah, definitely no, and I think that children grow up so quickly. So I think when you don't do, that for your children.
Speaker 1:I think you miss them and you know they're aren't. They are picking up and mimicking everything you do, right, if you're the most person they see, they will pick up these whatever habits that show up. And and so if you start now with appreciating and I say the word appreciating not that you have to do it, but you appreciate taking care of yourself, in many ways she's going to learn also to appreciate taking care of herself, and that is something that when you give it a different purpose, you may reframe it and bring it into your life even more, because you're like I don't want to take my daughter to have this Very much, so Very much.
Speaker 2:I see too many people how their children take on what they, their parents, have done, and I think that's part of being an older parent as well. I think I've got that. I've seen everyone go through their twenties and their thirties having children and not taking those moments. And then they complain to me now like I wish I spent more time with my kids. I wish that I had like done X, y and Z, and so I've taken that on board and said, okay, well, I've got that opportunity now to do those things that I've heard people miss out on sitting down with a cup of tea, like my daughter now goes and gets a cup and makes herself a cup of tea. She never drinks it, but she makes herself a little cup of tea to be like mummy and I'm like I love that. I love that. She's like for sure she learns from me.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah there, and so the key word here is appreciating appreciating yourself. It then creates new roots for her to appreciate herself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I listened to you and I will do more of it, so thank you. Thank you, and so tell me about women embracing their feminine energy.
Speaker 1:Oh, you need two, three podcasts on that, one for everybody. Oh, you need two, three podcasts on that, one for everybody. So one of the things I ended up doing is giving talks at organizations and courses and workshops and when I'm always surprised when I arrive, how much the space is still very masculine oriented. So women then start pretending, they start dimming down their feminine side, they go into a mindset of do, do, do, do, do. I have to do it like this, I have to speak like that, and while in culturally or in different races, there's something called code switching, which is you change your behavior and your linguistics to adapt into the environment, I would say more like there's also style switching, so you change your entire style to be masculine so that you can get to be seen and heard in the spaces.
Speaker 1:And what happens then is when things happen, such as burnout, menopause and all these things, we start blaming ourselves. We don't own that feminine side of us, which is not necessarily soft or hard, it's just a side and a benefit, and we do. We have a lot of hormones going through us. Our body does change along the way. Like you said, your muscles start changing, everything is happening and that's constant huh, in our teens we were changing. As we move in our 20s and our 30s, the body is constantly evolving and going forward and so if you don't embrace that part of you and you dim it and go more into your masculine side, it's no wonder that you end up feeling exhausted by the time you get to your 40s and you don't know how to slow that down because you're living it through the lens of a masculine way and a lot of the coaching. Unfortunately, a lot of the modalities are very dominated or been given from a masculine perspective. So I work a lot with women because I want them to embrace, yes, I want them to say okay, you know, honor my feminine side, because there's so much that brings benefits to it and it's needed in today's environment.
Speaker 2:But how do you do that? So you go into these workplaces and there's men and women there, and then what do you do? Like, how do you do you have backlash from men when you're no, no, no, no, do you have backlash?
Speaker 1:from men when you're no, no, no. The beauty of the beauty of the part that I love so much about yoga as a modality for coaching, for example, is that it's gender neutral. What you look at is you look at where you. Let me backtrack it. I had a female teacher, spiritual teacher, who I met along my travels, and she said to me you know, Kirti, in life, if we don't, if we stop treating each other as broken and start treating ourselves as whole and complete, we will communicate very differently to one another. And I went to me in that moment.
Speaker 1:It made a lot of sense, Because if you're listening to yourself always from a perspective of brokenness, you're not able to see your side of yourself as wholeness. So when I talk to these environments, it's both ways. There's so much expectation for a woman to do course upon course, upon course and to fix themselves. And then I asked myself well then, where are the men's courses? You don't see a course being delivered for men only. You see a lot for women. Because, yes, you know, women are not represented enough. So there's constant projection that we're not enough, we're still not doing enough, so the woman is constantly fixing and fixing, and fixing. So I actually say that out loud. It's like let's talk about that monkey in the room, and it works in both ways.
Speaker 1:If you understand that there are, that we have to work together, then, instead of fixing ourselves to be like each other, work towards where are you feeling whole? Where can you are feeling broken, so you can feel whole and complete. And that is so gender neutral. So we look at I look at the qualities of their principles, the quality of their habits, their preferences, their mind, and that's gender neutral. And by that you always find out that a woman is probably saying I'm not enough to achieve this goal, for example, or that I have to give up my career because I have to be a mom.
Speaker 1:You know those kinds of conversations and so working with those inner conflicts helps them come back to themselves, because we all know the answers. We know our own answers. You don't need someone else, you need to come back to you. And with the men it's the same thing. You know, often men feel like if I don't show up and be the caretaker, who am I? Without this caretaker attitude, it's not a conversation, right? So you look at their habits, their patterns, their priorities and then ask them to rephrase that inside of them, and that's how I work with both sides.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that that's really interesting. Yeah, I love that that's really interesting. So I did, um, I knew it. Like when you said about there's always women men. Um, I did that. But when you said I was like, hang on a second. Yeah, that's so true. Like you rarely hear, there's a couple of these men's courses.
Speaker 1:It's like a men's anger management or but other than that, there's not all these causes that we have for women, yeah, and so I think right now we're undergoing a phrase where we have to start assessing the way we phrase things, and especially in the marketing industry. But, like I said, you can go miles in different conversations about the deconditioning the mind on the stuff like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. I think we're learning so much more than we used to know, like 10 years ago, even when it comes to these sort of things, and I think that's a good thing. Like I think that unfortunately for us, we've missed a lot of it. So the next generation, like we're making the most of it now. But I think that you know, if the workplace can change, if you make these changes in workplaces for women, and therefore for men as well, it will make a difference to the next generation that we didn't have that, but I think it's good for the next generation or we can always say that each generation only works with what they have to the best, that they have to open the doors for the next one.
Speaker 2:Of course, but it also makes me sad that there's so much more information coming, and it's not anyone's fault, I don't think. I think that we're learning this because of just research and how we've adapted, if you think about the fact that we were probably never meant to be humans with buildings and iPhones and, yeah, we were meant to be living on the land in a cave somewhere. So, if you think of it from that angle, we've come a long way, no matter what we have yet. Yeah, so I want to talk about your authenticity. Um, audits that you have. You've got an audit that you have, so I have the freebie that you asked me do I have?
Speaker 1:yes, apparently I do have a freebie. I'm terrible at the marketing part, but yes, there is an audit I um, so you get. So I believe it's a workbook and it's about doing an audit, because I think when you do an audit you get to see yourself from a bird's eye perspective and it's really nice because I'm just thinking now, coming up to November, december, going into January, instead of going for a goal, why not ask yourself in your awareness, what would you like to shift? And take one of the things and then shift it, and I'm hoping the workbook will give them that avenue.
Speaker 2:I love that because they've proven that. Something like, if you make a New Year's Eve resolution, new Year's Day resolution, it only lasts in like 12% of people or something like that. And you know, everyone does it every year and we all do it where we go. Okay, we're gonna make this resolution and then we don't fully throw on it. So I like that idea. I think that's really nice. So it's an authenticity audit.
Speaker 1:It's an authenticity audit. I ask my clients to take a communication audit every year Because in life what matters the most your relationship with others, that's what gives a lot of people stress. And so have a communication audit with yourself and then take it from there, because then you can see, maybe there's that one thing that says I could just want to shift this and just focus on that. That's okay, and then, when you finish, try something else. But yeah, I'm like you, I'm not a believer of resolutions.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:They never work no.
Speaker 2:We always. I always cross my fingers and hope that no, but we're now in November, it's the end of November, so, yes, we have to get ready for the new year in some way. So I love that. I love the authenticity, because I think being authentic is the main thing, and I see too many people around me that you can see that they're not being authentic.
Speaker 1:And they're suffering, or as they call it, or they're struggling with themselves and unfortunately, we are still living in a society where we have to put on a fake smile to pretend.
Speaker 2:No, that's true, and I don't blame people who don't realize that they need help. But it would be nice if everyone just said hey, let me just try it, let me see what I can do and help myself.
Speaker 1:Definitely agree on 100% on that one.
Speaker 2:Now, I've had you on the call for a long time and I adore you for being here. I think it's fantastic. I want to finish up with asking you about the three tips that you think all women should think about when they want to live their life on purpose.
Speaker 1:Make a delicious space for yourself. Take that time off, but rephrase it. Don't say I have to take time off. Second one is take shoulda musta have to out of your vocabulary, and what you could do is train it through a calendar. Every day, when you get up, your first reminder should be shoulda coulda have to have to be out of your vocabulary, just like I just did that now earlier. The second thing is or no? The third thing I would like to say is appreciate slowing down, because when you get to your 40s, you don't want to regret in your life. 40s is really a wonderful period of my time.
Speaker 1:I've enjoyed my 40s in ways I never imagined it to. When people ask me, what about your 30s? I'm like. I'm so. Over my 30s I worked, I hustled, I did all that, but in my 40s there was this sense of like oh wow, this is what it's like to be a woman. I enjoy it. So enjoy it. Whatever you got to do, take discernment, be calm, but ask yourself if this really what I want to do, because you don't want to get to 40s and live regrets. You want to be in 40s and go. Yeah, I'm grateful I'm doing this. So those are my three top tips.
Speaker 2:Love them. I absolutely love them, Thank you. I always love because every single guest has given me completely different answers and I really love I wouldn't be able to choose three of my own. But it makes me think now, every time I do an interview, I'm like, okay, I've got to start thinking about those things in my life. So Now, every time I do an interview, I'm like, okay, I've got to start thinking about those things in my life. So, thank you. I think that it was definitely about me calming myself down.
Speaker 1:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2:Wonderful Thanks, Kirti. Thanks for everyone for watching today and if you want to get the authenticity audit or you want to get the information about boot friend in your mind, please check out the show notes. It's all there, Thanks everyone.