How to Be Fit Without Making It Your Personality in Your 20s (Ft Motivate With Maria)

Have you ever felt like the world of sports and fitness has shifted from being about health and connection to constant competition and pressure? Like if you start running, people immediately expect you to sign up for a marathon?

This week, we’re joined by 22 year old rugby player and content creator Maria, known on Instagram as @MotivateWithMaria. Maria opens up about her journey with fitness, grief, and self-expression and how movement can be a healthy outlet rather than your whole identity.

We explore how fitness can serve as a release during tough times, especially in the face of loss, and how it doesn’t have to come with expectations or prove anything to anyone.

This episode is a reminder that it’s okay to take up space in the fitness world without chasing extremes and that healing and health can look different for everyone.

Chapters

• 0:34 Meet Maria: Sport And Purpose
• 3:37 Fitness and Community
• 11:13 Tackling Bias In Women’s Rugby
• 14:38 How To Support A Grieving Friend
• 18:35 Creating Content And Being Seen
• 35:44 Final 20s Advice

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:17

Welcome back to another episode of the 20 Survival Guide. This is your host, Emily. I am joined by another amazing guest. And that is Maria. I've met her through her social media pages where she talks a lot about fitness and grief, how you can mix those two and just her journey overall throughout her 20s. I knew that I wanted to have her on because firstly she did it so well and spoke about topics that are so delicate but so important for us, especially now. If you don't know her already, I am going to let her introduce herself.

SPEAKER_00: 0:53

Hi everybody, I'm Maria. I'm 22 and I'm a fitness lifestyle, wellness content creator, girly. I like to say that I'm a jack of all trades. Like I love sport and I love movement. I love women's sport. Um, I play rugby, and more importantly, I like sharing and empowering and educating and making sport and wellness accessible to everyone, which is I think what my content is about. But recently I've been opening up about my journey with grief and making that less scary and less shameful, and you know, reminding people that young people also grieve. Exactly. Yeah, opening up about the journey about that.

SPEAKER_01: 1:42

We're gonna start with talking about fitness and your fitness journey in general, how it's impacted your 20s so far.

SPEAKER_00: 1:48

Like movement is medicine, and fitness has been integral to my 20s because I hated P at school, I hated sports when I was younger for an enormous amount of reasons, but then in my 20s, I finally got to navigate it on my own accord. You know, you you're let out into the world and you have to decide what you want to do. And I went to uni, and this girl was like at a house party, shout out to Evelyn. She was like, Do you wanna play rugby? Like, wanna try playing rugby? Like, you look like you could play rugby, and I went, Yeah, and I never looked back, you know, four years on. I'm well, still at uni, but more importantly still playing rugby, and rugby opened up everything to me, you know, like my love for gym, then my love for running. I wouldn't be where I am now working with some of my favourite brands, meeting incredible people, having this conversation if sport wasn't a part of my life.

SPEAKER_01: 2:51

I've experienced after leaving school that a lot of people don't continue with their hobbies, whether that's like hockey or netball, which you do at school, but then you go to university and socializing kind of takes over, which is so normal. But at the same time, it's can be quite sad that you lose that community feeling. I wanted to go back to rugby because I think rugby is such a cool sport. Weightlifting is super important because you need to be strong out there, but also strong in general. Do you think rugby has made you feel more confident in a space that's male-dominated?

SPEAKER_00: 3:26

I think the first thing I want to say, because you said something that sparked this thought, was a lot of people quit fitness when they leave school or when they leave university. And I think that's because a lot of people think that fitness or connotate fitness with performance and elite and these kinds of things. So when I say I'm a rugby player, I'm not an elite player player, I'm an amateur player. Like I refer to myself as an amateur athlete, and I have absolutely no problems with saying that. I love that. I don't play at you know premiership level. I'm not gonna be in the next Red Roses squad, but I'm not gonna belittle myself and say that I'm not a rugby player, like I'm a girl who plays rugby, which automatically means I'm a rugby player. Exactly. The same way that if you get up and you go for a run, you're a runner. It doesn't demean anything, like take away from anything saying that. And I actually started training in the gym about a year and a bit before I started rugby. But rugby has made me more confident in so many ways because it's in my opinion the only sport, especially in women's sport, where you don't have to look a certain way, you don't need to weigh a certain amount. There's a pli there's a position for every single person out there, and incredible, incredible female rugby players like Sarah Byrne, Alona Mayor, you know, Elie Kildan, they're all showing this. Like they all look completely different, they play completely different positions, and they are inspiring men and women, girls and boys to show that fitness isn't defined right by your body and by your body type. There's not like one body type that can do sports, exactly, and that's a reminder to me because I used to dance, I did ballet, and I was told that you know I don't have the right body shape or the right body type to be a professional dancer. Obviously, that knocks your confidence, especially when you're a kid. So when you get to that age, you mean you look at the average age for people to drop out of elite gymnastics, it's 16 or 17. Because by that point, your your body is physically done out, that's really sad because then people fall out of love with the sport, and then you know they leave university and they find it difficult to get back into sports, so like playing club rugby, playing club football, finding those communities for adults. Unfortunately, those communities haven't been as prevalent, but now with the rise of social media, with the rise of run clubs, with the rise of you know, people falling back in love with sport, taking away from the word fitness because fitness has these scary connotations with sport, yeah, it's opening up all of these incredible communities for adults. And by adults, I don't mean you know in our 20s because we're we're we're a different category of people, but I'm talking about like our parents' generation getting back into love with sport is such a beautiful thing to see.

SPEAKER_01: 6:35

I so agree, and now that I've left university, I found it really hard trying to find those communities again. Like maybe it's in your borough or in in your area, your local netball club or your local rugby club, and you can go every Saturday and just train, even you know, if you've got work, you've got commitments, it doesn't have to be an extremely intensive thing that you need training six days a week for, but you can also still do it and still compete every now and then, and I think that finding those um outlets to be able to carry through your adulthood is just so important.

SPEAKER_00: 7:17

When I ran Paris Mouth and this year, my favourite thing about it was that I was running in a crowd of 50,000 people. That's amazing, and we were all doing the same thing. We were doing something that we love for completely different reasons, and in that crowd of 50,000 people, it doesn't matter how fast I run. It doesn't matter, like it doesn't matter what I look like, it doesn't matter what I'm wearing, it doesn't matter how much I weigh, it matters that I'm there showing up for myself, doing something that I love, doing something that I enjoy, and I am so grateful to the amazing running communities that I run with, primarily Tom's Run Club. I just have to, you know, put them out there. They are incredible people and they've changed my relationship with running. If you enjoy something, you are infinitely more likely to stick with it, and we are, and I'm so glad that we are slowly moving away from hustle culture. And by hustle, I'm referring to all aspects of life, but yeah, we're talking about fitness. I'm so glad that we're moving away from this narrative of to be a gymbo, you have to eat chicken rice every single day, you have to weigh out all of your food, you the gym has to be your everything like that's because that's not what it is. If you look at challenges like 75 hard and you know, even the Gymshark 66 challenge about building new habits, yeah. If the habits that you pick are habits that you don't enjoy, you're probably not going to reach them. And that's not to say that you can't pick difficult habits, like you're not going to enjoy every single aspect of your life. And yes, say if you want to start training in the morning, you're probably not going to enjoy waking up at 5 a.m. But there are things that you can do to make it less. Am I allowed to swear? Yeah, of course. To make it less chitty. Exactly. That's that's that's what it is. You can eat super clean and you can eat high protein meals, but they don't. That doesn't mean your chicken has to be unseasoned. Put a bit of paprika, put a bit of whatever. I always say, I'm not an expert, but from the research that I do and the research that I know in my content, it shows that a lot of people, when they join the gym or they want to reach fitness goals, they have this like tunnel vision perception of what that has to look like. And I'm so glad that there are incredible creators out there who are moving away from this idea that fitness it doesn't have to be a competition. We've had people in our in the rugby club that I've just joined where they had never picked up a rugby ball four years on, they're now playing for teams like London Irish professional levels. You are that is completely okay. If you have a goal, you strive towards it. Exactly. I'm not saying you shouldn't do that, you should weigh up whether or not it's worth like destroying your mental health over something that you should be enjoying. I find it really funny when I tell guys that I play rugby, and this is when I say when I tell guys, because the response is wildly different from when I tell girls that I play rugby. When I tell guys they're like, oh, oh damn, oh, I shouldn't mess with her, which is a great response. I'm glad, yeah, don't mess with me. I feel like they respect me more when I say that I do like a contact sport, the same thing when I say that I um like do MMA or do Muay Thai. Like, I feel like people have more respect for you because maybe they feel a little bit intimidated by you. Which is fine, it's valid, but it's sad that they don't have that respect for me in the first place. But whatever. Um something that I get, something that I'm sh I've been struggling with recently is that a lot of people don't take, and by people, unfortunately I'm referring to men, don't take rugby seriously or don't take women's rugby, aren't um interested in women's rugby because it's a very queer-dominated space. I had a comment on my on a video about this about saying that people don't really want to watch women's football or women's rugby because such a high percentage of the players are gay. And that's a really, really sad realization to have because it's like oh, so you can't be interested in a sport simply because you're not attractive to the players, and I think I've I face that within my own club of people making comments being like, Oh, this season the clubs are really straight. That's kind of weird. Because sport doesn't have any sort of definition, like you do not have to be gay to play women's rugby. I think that's something that a lot of women feel like they can't join the sport if they're straight. Bullshit, come and play. Like, not once has it ever crossed my mind as a queer woman, not once have it has it ever crossed crossed my mind when I'm on the pitch being like, oh my god, I'm getting up and close and personal with women. Like, that's not how that's not how I or the majority of women think. Um, but yeah, I've been the first for many men. Um that sounds weird. I mean in the I mean in the sense of I've been told by many men that I'm the first girl that they've ever met that plays rugby, is where that sentence was going. I've had guys be like, oh, I've never met a female rugby player or female who plays rugby before. And I'm like, that's really cool because hopefully that opens up that conversation for you that you know rugby is a beautiful sport. You don't gain anything by expelling your energy into hate and into anger, and if anything, you end up pushing those people further into the narrative that they're already in. I realize that I there's a lot of people's opinions that I can't change, whether that's about women in sports, whether that's about being queer, whether that's just about being a woman, whether that's about morality and politics. And it's sad and it's frustrating to have to acknowledge that and be aware of that. Coming at this guy with frustration and aggression isn't gonna change his point of view, it's gonna give him more ammunition, and I just I think I've just learned when to pick my battles and how to pick my battles because I as a person am very happy to leave the anger and the fighting to the people that want to do that. I don't want to do that, so I'm not going to. It's that's as simple as it is. Some people might not be happy with that.

SPEAKER_01: 14:21

So I don't talk about grief too much on my podcast, but I have experienced quite a bit of grief this year, and I have had people around me who know me well enough who know what to say, but I also have people who don't, and that's okay, and it's just knowing when the right person says the right thing, it can make a huge difference in terms of feeling like you're less alone. But as someone who talks about this a lot openly and has a lot of experience, I wanted to ask you what your advice would be to someone who is supporting another person grieving at the moment because it's also difficult for them to know what to say.

SPEAKER_00: 15:06

I actually think that one of the most powerful things that you can do to show support of someone who's grieving isn't something that you say. Like it's it's actions speak louder than words, so just showing up for them, and a lot of people who grieve, they they cut themselves off. They you know, they don't want to do anything, they don't want to leave the house, or maybe they have so many errands to do with the person that they've lost that they need to do, whether that's going and sorting out the funeral, whether that's doing admin, like sorting out, you know, all the tax and stuff. Oh my god, it's so expensive to die, guys. I know, right? And also they're dead, so they don't deal with the expenses.

SPEAKER_01: 15:51

Like, isn't that crazy? I I still it is I really struggle to get my head wrapped around this concept.

SPEAKER_00: 15:57

Yeah, like it's so expensive to die, but obviously that's extremely difficult, especially when especially if someone dies um suddenly, so you don't have time to prepare for it. And I think the biggest thing that you can do is just keep showing up. I'm so grateful to my friends for the fact that they'll ask me to come out and do something a hundred times, 99 of those times I'll probably say no. Yeah, but the point is is the 99th time I've said yes, and the fact that they keep showing up and keep trying to make plans. I know that that's difficult. I know that you in your head might be like, Well, what's the point? You never you never come anyway, but it can make a massive like world of difference, especially in England. I think we're so used to saying, like, oh hey, like how are you going, mate? Like, how are you doing? Yeah, and you're automatically in your head when you are experiencing something different, difficult, whether that's grief or a different form of trauma, in your head, you kind of go through this like speed run of like, what am I gonna say? What do I say? Like, if I say that I'm not doing well, then they're gonna ask more questions, and then do I wanna do I really want to talk about it? You go through this like speed dial of like shit, I don't know what to say, and then you go, Oh no, I'm fine, like I'm okay. I'm great. I'm great, yeah. I'm I'm doing great when everyone knows that you're not doing great, and I think the best thing to do when you're supporting somebody who's grieving is to take the pressure away of saying, like, how are you feeling? Um just reminding them that they don't need to be okay, and like it's not your responsibility as the friend of someone who's grieving to fix them or to be their therapist, but it is if you care about them your responsibility to create a s a safe space. So, you know, I I wrote this in the six pieces of advice that I'd give you if I wasn't scared of hurting your feelings. If you keep telling people that you're okay, people are gonna stop asking. Like it's it's just it's just the it's just the truth, it's just a fact. But if you instead of saying, Are you okay, how are you doing, saying, I know right now's a tough time, I wanna remind you that I'm here, that you can talk to me about it. You don't have to, but you can. Reminding that, checking in, you know, just send it if you haven't heard from them in a while and they haven't answered your messages, send them a follow-up message and just say, Hey, I'm thinking of you. Like, you don't have to answer this, you know, it's just like a hey, I saw something that reminded me of you today, and I just wanna let you know that I care about you, I wanna let you know that I love you, I wanna let you know that you're not alone. It's like little things like that.

SPEAKER_01: 18:44

Yeah, that means the world, I think it's so hard. It's something I always try and of I always avoid personally when I know someone else is going through grief because I I struggle to receive it myself, is when people say they don't know what to say, which is totally fair enough, but people just say, Oh, it's going to be okay when you're in the worst of it. Oh, and it's it's like to me, it it just feels like my feelings aren't being validated and it's not okay. And I want someone to sit in the mud with me rather than pick me up, and you just need a friend who can do that. And by being able to be the person that's like, I've been thinking about you, or you don't have to talk about it. If you deal with grief by just getting on with things, and this is your escape by hanging out with me, then that's great. We can do something and not talk about it. But if you want to talk about it, I'm here, and I think you probably just really makes someone feel so much m less alone by being in the world.

SPEAKER_00: 19:45

Yeah, I remember when my friend called me and I just said to her, I was like, it's really shit. Like her younger brother called me and she was like, he was like, When is it gonna get better? And I was like, dude, you can't navigate a life like that. Oh my god. It's it's not that simple. And with grief going back to this idea of like linearity and it needing to be linear, it's not linear. So your friend might be fine for three years, yeah, and then one day they come crashing down and you don't understand, you don't need to understand, you do not this goes with anything in life. You do not need to understand it to be compassionate and to be empathetic. If you are not in a position to provide care, that kind of care and support to your friend, that's okay, but make that clear you're allowed to put in your own boundaries if you find something triggering that doesn't make you a bad friend, like just be honest with yourself and be honest with them because it is shit. And there's nothing wrong with saying I don't know what to say. I think the best question you can ask is what can I do for you? Yeah, how can I show up for you? Because I say this to people, I say like I'm fully aware that I go through cycles of like depressive episodes, and what really helps me is when people reach out to me and they go, Hey, are you gonna come to training today? or hey haven't heard from you in a few weeks. How are you doing? Don't be a stranger. It helps me, even if I don't respond to the message, it reminds me that people do actually care about me, um and that I'm not alone.

SPEAKER_01: 21:23

So yeah, that's amazing. And it's just subconscious, it's knowing that they don't have to reply, but you're just being there. They might see it and be like, oh, that meant so much to me. That that's changed that's changed my idea. I feel so good that they're thinking of me, but they just don't have the mental emotional capacity to reply at that time.

SPEAKER_00: 21:45

Technology has really changed the way that we grieve, and social media and like messaging and cell phones and stuff have like created this environment where we expect instantaneous response. So true, and that's just not how processing things works, and technology, especially. Like I'm gonna publish my next article about this. Is that technology has changed the way that we grieve, it's changed this like instantaneous, everything is instantaneous, it's not so I'm really bad at replying to my messages.

SPEAKER_01: 22:24

I'm the worst person.

SPEAKER_00: 22:25

I leave people undelivered for days, if not weeks, sometimes months. And you know what? Same. I'm not sorry because unless you're my mum. Yeah, unless you really need to know I'm alive. Yeah, unless you're like, yeah, unless you're like my mum or my best friend who's been in my life for like seven years, but even they don't get that instantaneous response. You don't, you don't who gave you the right to think that you're entitled to me to entitled to think that I'm gonna reply to you within two minutes, like shush. No, exactly. So even more so, like, you don't have to reply to people and tell them that you're not okay or that you are okay, and and yeah, and I think also a big thing is like follow creators who reflect your life, like it is really scary to follow creators who are grieving because they're talking about something that is vulnerable, talking about something that is so real, but oh my gosh, it helps, it can help so much to listen to people talk about their grief because it reminds you that you're not alone.

SPEAKER_01: 23:31

You're a prime example of that. One of the things I think, if you guys don't know, Maria, about your page and the grief and the fitness. Um I wanted to ask you a little bit more about the creating content. Not everyone has as much confidence to go out there and post about these things. And I, for one, think that we need people like that because you're creating this positive space and people really just are attracted to human connection, and it means that people can watch your videos and feel like they know you, and it's beautiful because that's how I felt when I when I discovered you and your page. But there was one thing which you spoke about on a previous podcast, and it really stuck with me, and I just wanted to touch on this lightly because it goes back to a lot of what I speak about, which is people pleasing. You were telling me that you were in a relationship with someone in Australia, and it was in a long-term relationship, and they said that they were embarrassed to introduce you for creating content. And when I listened to this, it made me really angry because who are they to say that, but also it's just goes back to caring about what others think and and why you can't just let someone do what they like and do what they want when you have one life, and also to just be a cheerleader for that person, you also never know what someone's going through behind closed doors. So I think it was just something I wanted to pick up on and just say, like, how do you feel like experiencing things like that have shaped your view around confidence in yourself?

SPEAKER_00: 25:19

No, it's so funny. Like, I'm I'm I'm laughing because of the in the last week or whatever, I've spoken more about that comment than I had have in like the the whole time that I dated him and since we broke up. And again, like I have I have no ill will or hate towards him. He will always be like my first big love. Um, and I I I want him, I guess, in a weird way, I guess maybe this is people pleasing. I want him to know that I am not, you know, mocking him or villainizing him or anything. And if people decide to do that on my behalf, that's your responsibility. I don't take responsibility for that. Um but yeah, it was shit. Like it was shit doing something that I loved that people pushed me into doing because the way I started content creation was because people were telling me that I should post videos. People were there was there was a I don't want to say there was a demand for there was a demand for demand and the supply with that like there was the demand for motivate with Maria to become motivate with Maria, and so she just she gave the people what they wanted, you know. She gave the people what they wanted. It really then sucked to have someone that I looked up to so much, someone who was also older than me, to make fun of something that I enjoyed. So when I was like posting on my stories about running and filming myself when I was running, he would make comments about being like, You'd run fast if you didn't film yourself and this and that, and and being like, and even questioning whether or not I was being authentic and saying, like, did you actually run 20k or did you just film yourself and say you ran 20k? And I'm like, sir, why the animosity? I would have thought that you know me, and you know my character. Like, what is this? And so really, and I remember telling my best friends about this. Um, and I think he already wasn't in their good books, so that sound like it's so then saying, being like, Oh, he is not supportive of my social media and he thinks it's stupid, and you know, I was what people in the social media world would consider a small creator of like 5,000, 6,000, which is crazy. Imagine 5,000 people telling you in real life that they like your content. Yeah, it's not small, guys, it's a massive achievement. Um, being like, oh, not believing in myself and thinking that it was stupid, and my friends being like, get rid of him, like get him gone because it's not stupid, it's something that you enjoy doing, it's something that's helping other people, inspiring other people. Um a couple weeks ago, I got a beautiful email from this guy basically being like asking me for advice and then being like, I've signed up to my first half marathon because of you. Oh, and I literally I like teared up when I when I read that because I was like, because I I had to reply to him and be like, actually, I hate running, but I'm really proud of you. You don't you do it, like I will gladly keep running marathons and half marathons because I like collecting shiny things, and as I said earlier, I like the people. But yeah, it really it really sucked, and I still have I feel like now that I have a K next to my followers, people take it more seriously, which sucks because people should take it seriously regardless. Like I follow loads of I love I love supporting women in everything that they do, um, and other people, but primarily like women in sport, and I love following the girlies that you know have just started that have 200 followers or they have 2,000 followers, the same way that I would support the girlies that have a hundred thousand followers or five hundred thousand followers or a million followers. Like we're all growing, the internet is big enough for all of us, and if you know somebody that does content, support them, guys. It's free. Like literally, they're putting themselves out there, no, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 29:44

And trying to do something that they want. If they're whether you think it's funny, whether you think it's interesting, whether you don't, like if they are someone that's important to you or someone that you know you come across, it really doesn't cost anything to cheer them on.

SPEAKER_00: 30:00

It means the world to me when my friends repost something on their story. I don't expect them to post to do that for every single post. But it is sad to admit that more often than not people find that strange. Rangers support them way more than their friends do. And my ex was a really good example of that because that is somebody that I really loved and really cared about. And to know that they think that something that I love and I'm passionate about is stupid or would be embarrassing to mention is really sad because the same way that this podcast is your baby, yeah, my page is my baby, and my you know, my grief blog is my baby, and all of these things, and it's become a massive part of who I am. And now it's like, well, if you don't like that, or if you think that it's stupid, sorry mate, I don't have time for you. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01: 31:01

Like I think I think that it's a really good lesson to people and to you guys that when people feel a certain way about something you're doing or something that is a passion or interest of yours and they make any comments or they make you feel discouraged, there is there is so much more that than just that comment, and you and so much more that you have to give and why you should put your priorities, you should not let others tear you down from things that you really really believe in and really are passionate about, and not and not let other people stop you because the rewards are so much greater.

SPEAKER_00: 31:42

It says way more about them than it says about you.

SPEAKER_01: 31:45

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00: 31:45

I wish I could sit here and say, like, I didn't let those comments get to me. Because it's not true, because while I lived in Australia with him, I stopped posting.

SPEAKER_01: 31:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 31:54

You know, I didn't really post because they made fun of me, and you know, like we would go to the gym and he'd be like, Okay, I'm gonna go sit in the car for 15 minutes while you take yourself in in the changing room, and so I was like, okay, cool. So I stopped doing that, like I stopped filming myself, like he wouldn't want to train with me. There was just a lot of things that knocked my confidence, and that I've grown from and that I've learned from those behaviours, and more importantly, I've learned that I've never wanted to make people feel that way. So, and now it's like I get people asking me for advice on confidence, and I sit here and I just think I'm grateful that somebody gave me the opportunity to learn those skills, to learn how you were saying, to that I'm composed and that I'm confident, and you are people gave me the opportunity to learn from their behavior to become who I am now. I didn't just I wasn't born like this, like I learned through other people's mistakes, and he made a mistake, and whether or not he thinks that it was a mistake is besides the point because it was, and I am all the better for it.

SPEAKER_01: 33:12

You absolutely are because we're here, and I think that if you didn't keep posting, we wouldn't have been sitting here filming a podcast talking about some really important things, and I wouldn't be able to bring you guys motivate with Maria.

SPEAKER_00: 33:28

I hope you guys are motivated.

SPEAKER_01: 33:29

I'm feeling really motivated. Just before we finish up, I wanted to say you just bring very positive vibes and energy and a very good perspective on life, which is really hard because sometimes we feel shit and we have bad days, and like we always are gonna have bad days, and I'm the last person who's gonna be like, Oh my gosh, you need to feel better quickly. Like, this is normal. Some days I just want to do absolutely nothing, some days I'm gonna have a Menti B, like, and that is just part of the week's schedule. But it's a really good reminder when we are feeling down, like there's always something to learn from it, and if you do learn from it, you can get much further, much quicker.

SPEAKER_00: 34:07

Yeah, that's been like one of my life mottos is you can't control you can't on a vague, you can't control what happens, but you can control how you react to it, the same way that you can't control somebody else's reactions or somebody else's actions, but you are in full control of how you decide to communicate yourself, how you decide to react to something, how you know, and that takes away the power from them, brings the power to you, and more importantly, it gives you a safe place to like reflect and react. And the world is big enough for all of us guys, you do not need that one person who makes you feel shit, like you don't you don't need to put up with that. I also realized that we subconsciously matched.

SPEAKER_01: 34:55

I know. I can't believe we did this because I have got into a habit of just wearing a plain white tee when I didn't know what to wear, and it makes me feel good.

SPEAKER_00: 35:04

So yeah, I just realized that. Like I was I realized that like about 25 minutes earlier, and I was like, I need to mention this.

SPEAKER_01: 35:13

One of my finishing questions on the podcast. When I have guests, what is one piece of advice that you could give to my listeners that you either wish you knew earlier or that's your favourite piece of advice at the moment in your 20s? It could be a quote, it could be something that's just resonating with you right now.

SPEAKER_00: 35:31

So I'm not taking credit for this. This is my best friend's like signature statement. But what she also she always says is if they don't like something, you or you don't like something, it's an ish you, not an ish me. Yes, I love that. I have been thinking about that. She's been saying it for like the last six like seven six years that I've known her. She needs to she needs to copyright that she needs to copyright. But like she's been saying it's recently I've been like hearing it a lot more as she's been saying it because she was like, Yeah, that's an issue, not an ish me. And I was like, Yes, babe, it is absolutely an issue and not an ish me. And that's to all my haters out there, that's what I have to say to you. It's an issue, not an ish me.

SPEAKER_01: 36:22

I love that, and I feel like I'm gonna I'm gonna start using that. I've absolutely loved having you on, and if you guys don't know Maria, then don't worry because I'm going to link her page in the description for the episode, and you should go and follow more of her amazing content if you like this episode, which I absolutely loved filming. I hope you all have a great rest of your Wednesday. I shall see you next week. Bye. Bye!