12 - The Joy List and the Power of Choosing Love with Ali Mortimer

Today I’m joined by the radiant Ali Mortimer - global life coach, speaker and guide for women ready to reclaim their joy. Ali’s story weaves together threads of high-flying corporate success, deep personal loss, and the transformative power of choosing love.

We explore burnout, body image, grief, feminine leadership, and the courage it takes to rebuild your life from the ground up. Ali shares her “joy list,” a deeply personal story of rising through challenge, and how the teachings in A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson helped guide her.

We also talk about the incredible Karen Heras-Kelly — a soul-led leadership coach whose presence and work has influenced us both.

This conversation is filled with heart, humour, and hope for anyone navigating change or looking for permission to begin again.

Connect with Ali Mortimer
🌐 Website: www.alimortimer.com

📷 Instagram: @alimortimer_thejoycoach

💼 LinkedIn: Ali Mortimer

Mentioned in this episode
📖 A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson
🌹 Karen Heras-Kelly: www.karenheras-kelly.com

📷 Instagram: @karenheraskelly

🎙️ Say it Sister with Karen and Lucy
💼 LinkedIn: Karen Heras-Kelly

I would be so grateful if you could buy me a coffee using THIS LINK. This helps me fund the podcast and keep it going 🙏

Transcript

Today, I'm joined by the incredible Ali Mortimer, a woman who has truly lived many lives in one, from her high-flying career at Accenture through seasons of burnout, heartbreak and loss, to rebuilding a life grounded in love, peace and purpose. Ali is now a global life coach, mentor, business owner, daughter, wife and mum. Someone who believes that every breakdown can lead to a breakthrough and even to miracles.

So this conversation is for anyone who's ever felt lost, weary or ready to begin again. A tender reminder that joy is always waiting to return. I can't wait for you to hear her inspiring story.

So a very warm welcome, Ali. I'm just delighted to have you here today. Story is such a powerful one, from corporate success to burnout, from loss and heartbreak to really rebuilding a life full of joy and purpose.

I've personally learned so much from being part of your love club and the way you invite us to see life through the lens of love and to find miracles in the everyday. You've certainly helped me to reframe my own thinking in life and in my business. And you've really reminded me that everything begins with how we choose to show up.

And if we can show up with love and compassion and authenticity, then our life will flow more freely. I know our listeners will take just as much encouragement and inspiration from hearing how you've turned your challenges into growth and your pain into peace. So let's just start at the beginning.

Back in the late nineties, you launched into your career with Accenture, climbing the ladder quickly and reaping the rewards. What do you think was driving you at that time and what did success mean to you? Do you know, hello, thank you so much for inviting me. Maybe I should just start there with hello, and I adore UK, thank you so much.

Or ever since you've come into my world, you've always just been this, I almost feel you, you're like Tinkerbell. That's all I can feel in my mind is you're like Tinkerbell, every now and again, dropping into my emails or in the love club with your gorgeous voice, just sprinkling your own level of joy. Because I know joy is so important to you as well, and you really are a joy as well.

So thank you so much for inviting me to come on your podcast. I feel really, truly humbled and honoured to come here and help spread more joy, peace, love and abundance that I know that you're very keen to spread as well. I'll answer your question.

So 1990s, do you know, it feels like such a long time ago now. I bet. It really does.

I remember exactly when I started my corporate career, James and I were actually in Toronto. So James, my now husband, we were early twenties at the time. And we were in Toronto trying to sell our 1972 convertible Beetle.

And we'd rented an old brick mobile phone so that we could receive telephone calls for people who were interested in buying our bright orange 1972 convertible Beetle in Toronto. And I'd given it to my mum. And then just say, we've got a phone for the week if you want to ring.

And so of course she did. But she rang and she said, Ali, I've got a letter in front of me and you're gonna be so delighted. It's a letter from Accenture asking you and inviting you if you'd like to come and enjoy in their graduate programme.

And you've got a golden handshake of, I think it was something like 24,000 pounds of which you get it in two instalments. So you get 10 grand when you start and then you get another one spread out over the course of the next year. So for two travellers who've been living on like, and James being an accountant, we were allowed 50p a night forever and not to sleep.

To be suddenly received that information was incredible. You know, James, I'm like, oh my goodness. So James took me to celebrate.

Do you want to know where he took me to celebrate? Where? Where did he take you? Ooters. I don't know if anybody knows what Ooters is. I didn't know either.

But it's basically a wonderful bar where very pretty girls in very, very short skirts and rollerblades come round and serve you drinks. That just makes me giggle so much to remember that. So when, you know, at that time, that was, you know, it was so interesting as I see my young sons now beginning to embark on their university careers.

What was success to me then? Do you know, I don't even know. I think I was, you know, up until that point, success had been so defined by everybody else who I've been surrounded by. You know, my wonderful parents who had great relationships with, you know, they wanted the best for me.

My dad was the one who said, Ali, it's such an exciting time now. You can have it all. You can have the career.

You can have the children. You can have the impact. They wanted to make sure that I was given every opportunity to be able to do that.

And they supported me with incredible home life and incredible, you know, schooling and, you know, championed me all the way. But everything was success was achievement. You know, all the way up through my schooling was the grades.

I got A's all the way through GCSEs, A's in my A levels, went to a Russell Group university, got a 2.1, didn't quite make the first, but I was having far too much fun, you know. And then got this golden handshake and went into Accenture and got all these promotions. So it felt like success was like getting that next step along the ladder, you know, achieving this, marrying my childhood sweetheart, having not just one, but two boys, you know, an heir and a sped.

And Princess Diana always say that, I think, you know. And it was just like, yes, ticking all these boxes. If I'm doing all the right thing, I'm doing the right things.

And I'm, you know, keeping on going. It definitely felt like the rungs of a ladder of what society, excuse me, really felt like I was meant to be doing it. And, you know, and my parents were always very happy with me.

My mum was always very happy with me. My mum was very keen to make sure that I had a healthy body, but also a very visually beautiful looking body. And for, you know, that definitely wasn't me when I was growing up.

I was like a chubby little child. My sister was the skinny one and I was the chubby one and I wasn't allowed puddings, but my sister was allowed double helpings. And it was very much, I suppose, what it looked like on paper.

Yes, you're progressing and yes, you look good. And that's really what success looked like for me, I think, until everything that have once been a successful criteria on that ladder, you know, the profession and the corporate, and then, you know, the marriage and the health of my body and how I looked and being, you know, whatever size you're meant to be looking good when everything kind of like disappeared was made me really, really question what success was, I suppose. Yeah, I think that actually, that's probably a very general way of being brought up.

I was brought up in a similar way and it's almost a tick box exercise, you know, to achieve what you are. You're almost, I'm not, you know, it's almost as if we all need to follow the same route. And as long as we're polite children and behave properly in company and do well and we've ticked all the appropriate boxes.

And that was probably parenting and probably still is to some extent. Although I think perhaps now parenting is now much more about how you're feeling. Yeah, I think there's been a shift, hasn't there? Yeah.

I don't blame my parents in any way. They didn't know any different. And as, you know, as a parent now myself, it's like, well, what do we do? Okay, well, let's just follow the tried and tested route that everybody else is.

You know, you go to school, you get your grades, you keep going. I don't blame them in any way. That's just the way it was.

And I'm sat with our boys now at the start of a very similar journey. And part of me is very much like, well, you know, get your good grades, go to school and go to university and follow the path and get a job. But then I think, is that actually really what's gonna make them happy? Because I look at my youngest son and I'm not entirely sure that that's what happiness means to him.

So we've had to go back and hold ourselves back and say, yes, there is the traditional route, but we're not going to discount all of the other incredible routes now that are so open to not just children, but to all of us. I mean, you and I, Kay, we've changed what success means to us. We've changed the way that we've earned money and income.

And, you know, there are so many different ways and probably hundreds more that we can't even imagine yet. Well, maybe you can, because you're a manifesto in human design. So you can probably see it before the rest of us.

Well, yeah, now, so that's an interesting topic to move on to, because I knew nothing about human design before I knew you. So would you like to just speak a little bit about that? Because I think it's a fascinating topic. Yes, of course.

Do you know, throughout the, maybe I'll go back again. So when everything broke down in my life and I lost all of those traditional kind of like symbols, I suppose, of success, you know, the marriage, the jobs, the titles, the car, everything to do with that, I wrote that new definition of success. And I may often tell the story of when I sat down after I'd left my corporate job, I was like, right now, what is my definition of success? If it's no longer going to be the next promotion and the next pay cheque, what is my definition of success? And I sat with my journal and it was probably the very first time I really experienced channelling in a way when I just let my mind go free and let whatever I wanted to write come out on a page.

And it just said to me, and I stared at the words looking back at me, is success is loving what I do, loving who I do it with and loving myself. As in, when I look in the mirror, I'm really proud of myself. I respect myself and I love what I'm creating.

So that became my new definition of success. And on the back of that, by putting love at the heart and centre of everything I did, I started to realise that, you know, life felt so much easier because I was actually using that as the filter to say yes or no to things. Yes, I love this.

Yes, this brings me joy. Or no, this doesn't, and I'm not going to do it. So I started to build a life around love.

And one of the very first things that I wrote was a joy list. And it was on that joy list, I wrote down all of the things that I loved and all of the things that brought me joy. And that became my very first tool.

Joy was a tool. The joy list was a tool. And on the back of that, more tools kept coming into my life, very simple ones.

So then I learned, when my mom died, I quite by chance learned mindfulness and meditation because I lay under a tree and just couldn't believe that my mom, I mean, if you've never lost anybody, and Kay, I'm so sorry I know that you've lost many people dear to you, but up until that point, I'd never lost anyone very close to me at all. And it hit me like a tonne of bricks that I was about to lose someone very important in my life. And that meant I would never see them again.

And that was such a big and overwhelming feeling. I wasn't really quite sure what to do with it. So I lay under the trees in the garden and I just watched the leaves and I just sat with my breath.

And I didn't realise that that was what meditation was. Just to recognise how I was feeling and honour it and give it space, that became another tool, meditation and mindfulness. And I went on to learn and get coaching and qualifications in that.

I learned that when I lost my mind, so after mom died and then some other traumas happened in the rest of my life, meditation became that tool to help me through a lot of what happened. It was a tool. My body wasn't so great and I started to look at myself in the mirror.

And although I was incredibly painfully thin, I still saw myself as fat. I knew that I had to do some work and that was a physical practical thing. So I went off to learn about what is the real health? What does real health of body mean? And I went off to do qualifications in nutrition.

Nutrition became a tool. So I started to add all of these tools to my life. And in 2021, I was gifted another tool.

I started working with a coach as I was building up my own business, become an entrepreneur. So it was taking what I'd learned in mindfulness and meditation and joy and life and nutrition. And I wanted to understand how I could make this into a business.

I'd always worked in other people's businesses and I didn't really know how to run a business myself. So I was working with a coach and she gifted me my human design. I've been on a very long winded journey to explain like tools.

So it became another tool. And when, and I've still had the piece of paper as I was listening to the audio, she was talking to me through my human design and explaining to me that human design really is just a map or a guide or a chart. Cause it is, you've got yours.

It is a chart really. And a map when you start to understand it, to understand you and your feelings, your energies, your thoughts, your beliefs, how you can make decisions. And it's like a guidebook really of understanding yourself.

And I know you felt the same. When I read mine, I was like, you know, it's just like such a, it's almost like a shock and a relief at the same time to be just see yourself in such high definition. I love to use the words and the play on words of HD being human design, but also high definition.

Cause you suddenly see yourself in absolute high definition. And what you knew on some level, seeing it in black and white makes you think, oh, I can do that. So when we compare this to the journey that I've been up, up until this point of, I just followed somebody else's guidelines and guide rule books.

This then gave me a rule book to say, do you know what? I'm going to step off that path of everybody's been telling me what to do and how to act and how to make decisions. Which all make logical sense. I'm not meant to be like that.

I meant to be something completely different. And this was the tool that helped me understand me how to create my own path, how to make my own decisions, how I could honour my own energy and look in the mirror and say, yes, you are living your life. Yes, you're living in alignment with your soul and your spirit and your energy.

And the more I use this tool as human design to help me amplify the joy that I wanted to feel in my life and the love I wanted to feel, it was like, gosh, it was like an explosion of joy has just, it's just like magnified. And I've become this self-fulfilling prophecy of my own definition of success, which if we go back to it was loving what I do, loving how I do it, loving who I'm with and loving myself. So the more I allow joy to lead by using my human design to amplify it, I became a self-fulfilling prophecy for my own success.

So it's helped me become this incredible super attractor for success on my own terms. Which definitely. Yeah.

Yeah. You definitely are, yeah. That I, yeah.

And it's, I often think it's really quite sad that the biggest challenges take us to the, take us down so far, but actually lead us to our own truth. I mean, this is all really arose out of the things that went wrong for you in your life, be it burnout, loss. It's almost as if there's a kind of lazy gene in the human being, isn't it? That unless somebody comes up and hits you and says, wake up, we kind of toddle along on a path because it's safe and what we know.

I mean, when you gave up your magnificent job, I mean, there's the salary. You've got a home, you've got children, you've got a family. I mean, it's a big thing to do.

It was a huge risk. But again, at the time, logically it made no sense for me to leave a six figure salary and a nice job that I enjoyed and helped pay the bills and the mortgages and took the pressure off James. To go from such a big income, joint income to one single one was a huge burden and a pressure on our family.

But the contrast was also putting so much pressure and a burden on our family because my health kept dropping, the pressure on our relationship because it was just so much for both of us to have such incredibly high power careers in corporate lives and have two small children and have a mum who was dying, my mum, the pressure and the guilt that I was feeling that I wasn't with them. And when I was with her and supporting my dad, the guilt that I felt that I wasn't with my sons, that I wasn't supporting James, that pressure was almost worse. So we did take a big decision.

And the final kind of, as James reminded me the other day, I like to say that it was the guilt and the pressure and the juggle of motherhood that made me think, do you know what? I'm just going to stop working and look after my kids. But James actually reminded me, it wasn't just that. The final point was when I found out that my male colleagues and peers were being paid significantly more than I was.

And I was devastated by that and I confronted my employees and they just said, oh, but you have to look after the kids so we don't feel like we can give you as much. And I was like, but because I have my children, when I'm here, I give more in less time. Yeah.

And that's, if we want to talk about energy, that's one of the biggest things that I love to use. It's not necessarily what you do, it's the energy with which you do it and gives you the results. And I think that the results that I created when I was in my career was because I was so focused when I was working and I was loving what I was doing, I was loving my team, I was loving the impact that I was doing, that when I was there, we created incredible change.

But then when I was at home, I was with my children. So that really felt like a big smack in the teeth that they were looking at the hours that I was giving rather than the outputs that I was honouring. Yes.

And I believe that that hasn't changed that significantly. When James reminded me of that the other day, I went and did some research around it. And it's still, there's such still an unequal page about between men and women.

And it's usually not, and it isn't because the women aren't bright enough or smart enough or clever enough or brilliant enough. It's just literally that they don't believe that they can handle that level. So they don't take those top level jobs or they burn out because they're trying to do it in a very masculine way.

Or like me, they just realise that they're not being paid as much as their male colleagues. Yeah. But I mean, that wasn't the only thing, was it? The burnout that you've actually had to deal with multiple things.

Yeah. Your mother's Alzheimer's, for instance, will have been huge. I think that I've got friends who've got dementia and I know how that impacts on families and it does hugely.

It's a terrible loss because it's not just a finite loss of life at the end of the day. It's every time I saw my mom, there was a little part of her that had gone. So it was a grief every time I saw her over a decade.

And that definitely takes its toll. It was not only just the grief that I felt around my mom and the relationship that I had with her. It was the grief of a future.

My mom would always tell the story when we were younger, she couldn't wait to be a granny because her granny was so wonderful and would treat the children and give her, sugar on toast was their thing because they didn't have sweets like we do today. But her granny used to spoil her all the time. She just said, I can't wait to be a granny so that I can spoil my grandchildren like I was spoiled.

So for me, and it still gets me so emotional, but she never really got that opportunity because by the time the boys were born, she was already deep in the throes of Alzheimer's. The boys still fondly remember her, Tom especially, because he's older. But it was that, and it was also the loss and the grief of watching my dad have to become a carer.

He recognised two years before mommy died that he completely lost her. And he, I mean, he is a legend, my dad. I talk so much about my dad, but he just took on the role of carer and knew that that's what his job was towards the end of life.

Even though we would try so hard to get him to get help, he was only, this is my job, this is my role. Until it became unbearable when my sister and I created a coup and an intervention. Because his life was in danger at that point.

Well, that becomes an issue. Who cares for the carer? Yeah, exactly. Indeed.

I also really resonated with your mirror about body image because I had a very attractive mother, Icelandic mother. She was very slim and she was very attractive. And I went to the same boarding school as you went to where we were well and truly fed.

Stodge. Dodge three times a day and four sometimes. And I just ballooned.

So in the swinging sixties, when everybody was aspiring to look like Twiggy, I was the polar opposite. I also had a sister who was very slim who was much younger than me. So about four years younger.

So all of that pressure to look a certain way was very much part of my youth and silly diets became a very big part of my youth. Eating all sorts of rubbish in retrospect now because it was slimming. And then I read a book called Fat is a Feminist Issue.

And it's a wonderful, wonderful book because what it looked into was the thinking behind why you want to be thin. And you keep using the word reframe so beautifully, but it reframed for me, do I want to be thin or do I want to be well? Yeah. And then that changed my eating habits because I wanted to feel well.

And that was very powerful. What helped you turn the corner? I love that, Fat is a Feminist Issue. Very similar to you actually.

It was actually when, so after in 2016, all of those really awful things happened in my life. You know, losing my mom, the guilt that I felt, then my marriage breakdown. I was very thin, I couldn't eat because I felt so sick.

The PTSD, the clinical depression, almost just couldn't eat. The thought of eating just made me feel sick. So I was very thin, like painfully thin.

And I still looked in the mirror and I saw a fat person. I hadn't got your fat, but yet you could see my ribs and my hip bones. And as I was coming out of one of these, self-flagellation moments in front of the mirror, trying to decide what to wear.

I came out and I saw Willie, my youngest son. And we had this incredible big mirror on our whole landing. And I could just see him through the crack of my door.

And he put on some new clothes and a hat. And he was literally looking at himself in this ginormous mirror. And he was dancing in front of it, finger pointing at himself going, you look hot, you look cool, you look great.

And he was just dancing. I was like, oh my God, I need to be more Willie. That was my defining moment.

It was like, it didn't matter what I ate because we all know what we should be eating and what not to be eating now. It's so prevalent, we're taught all of that. And especially if you're well-educated, you know exactly what you should be doing.

But I had to, you say fat is a feminist issue and the thin piece and wanting to be well, I was like, I just needed to think myself thin. Because even though the physical was there, I needed to think and see myself as truth of what was reality and create new neuropathways. And for somebody at the time, I was in my early forties, it was all of those conditioning from my mom who did look like Twiggy.

She literally looked like Twiggy. She was tiny and thin and incredible, beautiful lady. And I know that everything that she said to me was coming from one of a place of love.

She wanted me to look good and she knew what society was like for fat people and first impressions and all of that for a fat person and overweight, I don't know if we're meant to say those sorts of things, but you know we are. So I know everything she said to me was very, outborn out of love and protection, but it did condition me so that I had those neuropathways that I could only see myself as a fat person from how many times she told me that, oh, you shouldn't wear that, your bum looks fat or you look fat or you're the fat sister or you can't have this. So it was, I often refer to myself, obviously from my days in corporate, where I used to actually write code and write code from systems so that they could speak to each other, systems could speak to each other.

If this condition happens, then do this, et cetera. It was a reprogramming of my mind. My mind had been programmed to, if you see yourself in the mirror, say that you look fat.

Do I look fat in that? So it was about finding and replacing the code that wasn't working, just like I did in my corporate life to find and replace the code that wasn't working for systems to function, that were making them fail over and fall apart, but to go in and find my own piece of code that was making me not happy, not joyful. And it was that. And seeing Woody just standing there going, I look hot, I look cool.

I was like, oh, I've just found my new piece of code. I need to find the piece of code in my brain that says, oh, you look fat to say, you look cool. And I just had to keep doing that over and over and over again.

And it is a devoted way of seeing yourself, not a hard way. It's just, yeah. Is that true affirmations? Is that true looking in the mirror? Explain how you actually did it.

I did it by looking in the mirror, which was one of the hardest things. And you and I have a really wonderful joint friend, Karen, and she was my very, very first coach when I left my corporate job. I did not know what I wanted to do.

And I was consumed with all of everything, the heartbreak from my mom, the heartbreak from the infidelity in my marriage that I didn't really know that was going on at the time. I just had this sense that there was something wrong. There was all of this going on with my body.

And she made me do mirror work and she made me look and say to myself the horrible things. She said, I want you to say out loud all of the horrible things that you're saying in your head. I said, I can't do that.

And she goes, you've got to. And so we started to do that mirror work. And you hear it in your head, but if you don't see yourself when you're saying it, it's just in your subconscious playing over and over and over and over again.

And that's the subconscious code that makes us act, behave very differently. Yes. Whereas when you're saying it to yourself and looking at yourself in the eyes as if you would a friend, you would never say that.

Like the things I was saying to myself, I would never say to anybody else. But if you look at yourself in the mirror and say it to yourself, it's horrible. So you don't want to do it anymore.

So it was about saying, okay, what are you going to say differently? So Willie gave me the answer of what I had to say. So then it was about honouring all of those nasty things that I was saying. It wasn't about suppressing them or squashing them.

It was being aware of them and honouring them and saying, okay, I see you. I hear what you're wanting to say and what you're automatically saying to yourself, but is there something else you'd like to say to yourself as well? So I think affirmations are wonderful, but you have to honour the opposite too, because that's what you truly believe. And affirmations will only work if you actually believe them.

But you can say them, because I've been saying that to myself for years or people have been saying to me, oh, Ali, you're beautiful, you're slim. James would say to me all the time, you're so beautiful and you're so slim, but I didn't believe him. So you can't overwrite it.

You have to find it and love it and let it go with love and say, I'm choosing differently. I see you, I hear you. I hear what you really want to say, but shall we choose something differently? And it's that devotion to doing the loving work in the mirror and just saying, well, that's not very nice thing to say to yourself, is it? What would you also like to say? Well, you do look beautiful today.

You've got beautiful eyes today. You look great today. You know, anything, just gently.

It's not hard, harsh work. It's a very soft work, the way I do it anyway. And does that help? Yeah, it does, it does.

I call that looking out with kind eyes. So what would you say to a friend if that was a friend? Would you say, oh God, you look so lovely in that dress? You know, if you can use that kind of language and the language that we use for ourselves is not very often kind and it's not gentle and it's not self-serving either. It'd be things like, oh, I forgot her birthday.

Oh, I'm useless. You know, that sort of language is really unhelpful. Yeah, it doesn't help you solve the problem, does it? I think one of the other things, the kind eyes, I love that, seeing yourself with kind eyes, I think is a beautiful way.

One of the other ways that I know has worked for me and I know for many of my clients is when you recognise that we are souls and if you are enlightened and are in touch with that spirituality in whatever way that you like to define it for yourself. Spirituality for me, on my path of, you know, personal development and spirituality and curiosity to understand and ask that question, what was spirituality to me? It became, okay, spirit to me was I have a spirit. I have a soul.

I also have a body. So all of this work, when I started to bring it in front of the mirror, it wasn't necessarily just what we've talked about before. It was like, could I look myself in the eye and see my soul and connect with my soul so that my soul could speak and say, thank you for this beautiful body that's giving me life.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for that beautiful arms that allow me to hug my children.

Thank you for the legs that let me go for a walk. Thank you. Thank you for, you know, my tongue that enables me to have delicious food, you know.

I think one of the other biggest things that happened in mum dying and then tragically a few years ago, one of my dearest friends dying, that was also just another kind of, I'm so grateful to have my body in whatever shape or size it is, no matter how old I am, it doesn't matter, I still have life. You know, my darling friend, Juliet, she died at 47, leaving two children behind. And I think, oh my God, I'm so lucky.

It doesn't matter what I look like or how my body forms or shapes or ages or how many wrinkles and grey hairs or how many stretch marks I have or cellulite on my ass, I am here. I'm here and I can hug my gorgeous sons like I did this weekend. And I get very emotional about this because that was the thing that changed it.

It was like, I'm here. So if I can look at my soul in the mirror and hear her say those words, thank you. Thank you for giving me life and I love you and you're beautiful.

Thank you. So that was probably the biggest shift. What was the second shift? Well, I always believe every death leaves a gift.

So it might be tolerance, it might be understanding, but there's definitely a gift in everyone. We just look at the emptiness, but there's always a gift left behind in one capacity or another. All of these things that happen to you, your sense of burnout, your mother's illness, your near-divorce scenario, they all seem to happen in a really short space of time.

How the heck did you cope? I don't think I did. Right. I didn't.

I didn't, Kate. And I think that's probably one of the gifts that I learned from that, is that many of us feel that when tragedy and trauma and loss happens, you feel like you have to cope. And what I realised was that you don't have to cope.

You can break down. And I think I allowed myself to do that. And I allowed everything to just fall away.

And in the allowing of everything to fall away, I found that peace, because if you're fighting all the time to try and keep it, to try and fix it, it's exhausting. So it was like, you know what? I'm just gonna let all of this happen. And I think that was the practise or the tool that I had there was the mindfulness and the meditation was just like, and if we think about real mindfulness, where meditation releases the act of intentional mindfulness.

Mindfulness is the ability to be able to live in the present moment and in the now. It's about not living in the past or going back to the past and reliving and suffering the experiences, which is ultimately what was happening to me in PTSD. And it wasn't about looking forward and trying to understand what was happening next, because I was trying to create a certainty in a future that was never gonna be certain.

Yes. That was causing me such overwhelm in trying to understand all of my options. It was like, I don't have to force myself to think about anything in the future.

I don't have to relive the past and just gently bring myself back to this moment, to my breath at the time. Or I would often just dream and I would allow myself to go into a transcendental meditation and just lift myself. And the one word that I focused on was happiness or joy.

And I was just like, the question to myself was, will I ever be happy again? Because I was so consumed by sadness and grief because of all of the trauma and loss that happened in a short space of time. It was, I don't know how circumstances will present themselves in order to bring me happiness, but I can feel happy now. And in those meditations, I just allow myself to feel happy.

And I would often find myself just being in a beautiful green space, sometimes with my boys, sometimes dancing, but I just allowed my soul to show me how happiness could happen. And that brought me happiness within me. So that was one way I suppose I started to cope with it.

The other way was I used my joy list, a tool I spoke about earlier. It was I wrote on a very small piece of paper, which I still have in my drawer. And I allowed myself to say, well, what really brings me joy? If we think back to the definition of success that I'd written for myself, if I thought about what is joy, what is success for me, not my parents, not society.

And I wrote down things on my joy list, such as running, cuddling the boys, cuddling the dogs, cooking, baking, writing, reading. And I just said, if in my darkest times I can just do one thing off that joy list, I will give myself a glimmer of joy, a glimmer of happiness from a circumstance. And so I focused in on doing that every single day.

And what I realised once I'd become, moved through all of this, I looked back and what I was doing quite intuitively was giving myself injections. I call them doses now, the daily dose of happiness. And I say dose, and it's one thing I love to, this became the gift and the tool of joy was that the dose stands for dopamine.

The dopamine of every day ticking something off the list gave me that dopamine hormone shot. The oxytocin, the oxytocin is a hormone all about bonding. So hugging the dogs, hugging the children, hugging my friends, that gave me the oxytocin, another hormone in my body.

The serotonin, the feel good factor, the sunbeaming, getting outside in nature, meditating, that allowed me to have the serotonin, feel good hormone in my body. And the endorphins, which is the hormone that helps relieve pain. I was in a lot of pain, not physical pain, but heartache pain, emotional pain.

So eating chocolate, meditation again, being in nature, being with friends. Every day I was flooding myself with this dose, dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins into my body that compounded every day that I did it. So that over 12 months, that became my medication, the daily dose of joy, of happiness.

So it got me through, which is why my first business was called Heal Yourself Happy, because I'd use the happy hormones to heal myself, not drugs or medication, even though I was offered them. So it took you a year. Took me a year.

That's a long time, isn't it? But is it? It's a long time when you're experiencing it. It's not a long time when you're looking back on it. That's right.

But because I was using those practises of mindfulness, of I'm living in the moment every day, it didn't feel like I was looking at a long period of time. And people will say to me, oh my gosh, that's too long. I can't wait that long.

It's like, well, what's your other option? Yeah. Yes, you can go and you can get medication. And I'm a big believer in medication for those who need it, if you need that lift to help you see this.

But I tried medication and it didn't agree with me. So it was like, there's another way and I'll give myself the time. If I can allow myself to heal properly, to make myself stronger.

And I didn't know at the time it was going to take me a year. If you're using the maxim of living in the moment all the time, you're not thinking about how long it's going to take. Exactly.

I didn't know, but I looked back and it was, it was that length of time. And that was when my dad said, gosh, Ali, I'm so proud of you. Everything that you've overcome, what are you going to do now? And I said, I want to help people do the same.

Yeah. Because what I've experienced in a short space of time, people won't necessarily experience in a short space of time. Changing a career, leaving jobs, losing a parent or a loved one, suffering grief and loss, issues with bodies.

I think 99% of all women have that. I can help them with that. And I think, you know, tension in marriage.

I mean, ours was pretty heartbreaking and harrowing at the time, but now that we have looked back and that was 10 years ago. And it feels like a very strange experience that we came so close to separating and how hurt we were and how heartbroken we were and the damage that it caused. But I always think, and you've already said this, you know, that there's always a gift.

That was our gift. You know, was it right or wrong? We don't know. We practised, again, mindfulness.

It was like we didn't force ourselves to make a decision, but we just said, right, we're going to work through this with love, with the fact that, you know, we're always gonna be in each other's lives. So how can we do that? And let's heal. And we did.

And joy and love was the healer for our marriage. And, you know, that took a long time, but it was worth it. Well, anything valuable does take a long time.

Anything meaningful or deep takes time. Yeah, it really does. Because everything has to settle within in order to build up trust and connection again.

It all has to calm down. You have to move away from the fire to find the right temperature again, I think. And trust was a really important part in everything.

I think if you can trust yourself, when we touched on human design, human design shows you how you can trust yourself. Don't look outside of yourself for the answers. Trust yourself to know, to listen, to hear, to feel, to sense, you in particular with your splenic authority, to sense, to know the answers.

Mind's my sacral, to know in my gut what the right answer is and to recognise that my head or my mind is going to come in with all the reasons why I can't do it. But it can also give me all the reasons why I can and show me a path forward. And I get to be the master of my mind rather than my mind being the master of me.

Well, I think it's integral to how we need to live. I often say this in my classes, you can't Google how you feel. Google has an awful lot of answers.

There's an awful lot of knowledge. But how we feel, if we lose sight of that, we adrift very, very quickly. It's true.

It's so true. Even last week, I had two clients I was speaking to and they were talking about the fact that they had been using AI as therapy slash coaching. And after our calls, they just said, gosh, do you know what AI, Google, doesn't know feelings.

You hear the tone of my voice, you hear and sense the feeling in my voice and you can pick up on it. A computer can't do that, only a human can. No, and it's only as good as the information you put in anyway.

It's like any kind of system, isn't it? Oh, absolutely. You know, it's one of the things I learned a lot about through being a listener. Don't just listen to the first thing that you hear or the top thing that's said, because it's underneath where people hold much more emotion.

So I think it's an interesting way of looking at life. I'd like to ask a bit more as well about the rose practise. Yeah.

So how can that help people to reconnect with joy? So the way of the rose was really born out of the words of my legendary dad. It makes me feel quite emotional whenever I tell this story, but when I was in the really, the darkest of spaces, I'd just left James. My mum had died.

I didn't know what I was doing in terms of work. I was in a really dark space. I went down to see my dad and he just said to me, he said, Ali, do you know what? He said, Brooks, my maiden name.

He said, all Brooks's have a tonne of SH1T thrown on them. It's like the manure that we used to throw on the roses at the farm. He said, all of the most beautiful roses grow through the smelliest of times.

And he said, Ali, you will be the most beautiful rose in the garden because you will grow through this. And he said, and I'll grab my shovel and I will help shovel you out too. So let's go.

So the rose became very much this thimble for me of hope, of growing through dark times of that smelly, smelly poop and coming up to be the most beautiful, beautiful rose. And dad, he said it to me again this weekend. He just said, you know, crap can be thrown at you but you can come up smelling like roses.

So the rose really is, has been the symbol of hope. And it is this breaking down, the breaking down of yourself in a way. And I think that's what, we talk about wake up calls or everything that got stripped from me or taken away from me from life circumstances, my mom, my job, my marriage, everything, my health, my body, everything.

I lost everything. It was almost like everything had to be broken down. All of these identities broken down so that I could break through.

That moment that the rose starts to break through, you can start to see and you can come through but you can only lift up and power up when you start to let go of what's weighing you down. So in the meditation practises, when I stopped suffering and looking at the past and that was hard. You know, the more I chose to let that go every single day, the more I rose through.

And as I could break through, I could start to see the future and I could start to see the light. So you start to break through and see what's coming next. And then after that, you become the rose.

You become the very vision or the self-fulfilling prophecy of what you were. And you know, it's a cyclical process. You know, the roses in my garden, which are beautiful, they're beginning to fade and fall away.

And as their petals drop and their leaves drop, that's just fertilising the soil for next year's roses. So you just, everything, we've talked about gifts. Every experience is a gift.

Every hardship is a gift. There's always that, because that's what's fertilising the soil where your roots grow and that's how you grow stronger and you rise. That's the symbol of the rose.

Yeah, it all creates compost. Fertilisation, absolutely. You use the word a lot, which actually I first really learned properly from our friend, Karen, who is a love coach.

Because I was speaking to her one day about all the things that I should do. I must do them, don't I? And she said, would you try and get rid of the words need, I need to, I must, I should, I ought, and just replace them with I choose. And it's something that you constantly remind me and everybody else about that you know.

You are now a very sought after keynote speaker. Yes, which is fun, isn't it? I was about to take a laugh. Where has it taken her? Because I've always been talking, my human design, I have a defined throat chakra with many gates lit up.

So I've allowed myself the power of my voice. And even when I started my coaching business, it was, I hadn't even started my coaching business. I was learning, you know, mindfulness, I was learning nutrition.

And so I started to use the social media platforms very much as a way for me to practise my voice. But for me, to remind me, to tell the story of my life so I could look back and have a document of what was it like when I tried the Ayurvedic? What was it like when I tried the poppy diet? What was it like when I did this? What did it feel like when I did this meditation or when I did this practise? It was very much a documentary. And the more I share with my voice, the more powerful I feel it's gotten.

And so I love to share my story through the power of my voice. I started it all by writing a blog called The Ali Sandwiches, and I love writing as well. It's just another form of expression.

But I do love to speak and to stand up because I think there's so much power in words. My love language is words of affirmation. So I love to use words.

And speaking gives us the opportunity to really connect, I think. Well, it's the best way to connect, isn't it? Yeah, the power of words. I love it.

And do you know what? I just love speaking and being able to tell my story, which I feel is just such a story of hope, of inspiration. And you'll love this as well. In one of my coaching sessions with Karen, everyone's gonna have to go and look up Karen now because we keep talking about Karen.

She said, put her in the notes. We'll add her into the notes. Yes.

And I do still have the piece of paper. I was talking about it at my feet. And she said, what spell do you wanna cast into the future? If words can be spells, what spell do you wanna cast into the future that you want to be? And I remember in 2014 when I was beginning to shape my new career of what I wanted to do, I just said, I want to be the inspiration that gives people hope and courage to change.

And I don't think that that's changed. And so I say that all the time. You do it.

That's exactly what you do. But I also think you have that ability to help. When you was talking earlier about affirmations and whether or not you believe them, I think you have the ability to help people believe in those affirmations.

Yeah. And I'm not sure that that would have happened if you hadn't walked the path yourself. It's through the fact that you've experienced all of these major events in your life, any one of which was enough in its own right at the time, nevermind combining together in a flood, really, that's made your words carry such real gravitas and weight.

And that alone is powerful. But also you've got this unbelievable endless energy. I mean, it's like there all the time.

It's quite extraordinary. So that in itself is a gift. It's a big gift.

Just before we came on, I explained that. So I've had this horrendous cold for the last week. And if I look back, if I was doing work that I didn't love, if I wasn't working with people that I didn't love, I would have used this as an excuse to not, if I think back in my corporate days, it was just like, I didn't love it enough to keep going.

I would have said, I'm not well, I'm not coming in, I'm not doing this, I'm not doing that. But I have found that because I have literally been living that success mantra or criteria, because I love it, because I love you, I am here, and I can find the energy because I love it. And again, that's using human design because I now understand that I can decide what I choose and understanding what feels good in my body because it feels good, I will do it.

I can keep going and I've got this bound for synergy. I'm a generator. I'm here to always be switched on, turned on.

And the way I'm able to do that is because I literally revolve around love and joy. And I choose to do it in that way. And that's why I feel like I can.

I mean, sometimes my physical body can't quite keep up with my energetic one. And it does make me sitting in front of the fire with the dogs and just eat crumpets and toast, but then that's okay. My soul quite like that too.

Yeah, you know, in winter in Qigong, there are five seasons in Qigong. And in winter, the elements, it's related to water. And it's linked to your kidneys and your adrenals, which is where we hold fear apart from in the psoas muscle, but it's the organs in which we hold a lot of fear.

And the practises are about transforming fear into wisdom. And that's exactly what you've done, Ali. You've transformed all your fears into a very deep wisdom.

And then you've not just kept it to yourself, you've shared it out, which is really a very beautiful, beautiful thing to have done. Life-changing actually, not just for you, but for an awful lot of people who you've touched in any way, either through your words or through your sharings, your mentoring, your teachings. Or anybody who's just passed you by on Instagram.

I'm just wondering now, if you could whisper one piece of wisdom to your younger self, what would you say? Keep on loving, keep on going, no matter what, come back to love. My current mantra is what I would whisper. When you align with love, you will live a life of joy.

We'll amplify your joy. And when you amplify your joy, you become this super attractive for success on your own terms. So keep loving, keep living, keep being joyful, and you will live the most incredible life.

That's what I would say. Fantastic, so what excites you about the next chapter of your life? Well, we're embarking, I think the next chapter is very much our children are growing up, and their life will change very dramatically, I feel, when they leave home and fly the nest. It becomes a very different energy in the home and an energy in the life.

I think I will still keep the same mantra, you know, Kay? Just keep aligning with love. It will still always be about loving what I do and how I do it. It will always be about loving who I do it with, and it will always be about loving and honouring myself.

And, you know, James and I just want to continue to enjoy life and allow ourselves. You know, that was another big thing that we allowed ourselves to do is it's like, even though we have this beautiful life already, why can't we have more? We can have more joy. We can have more love.

We can have more abundance. We can keep on enjoying all of that because why not? Why not? Why not, indeed? Why not? Yeah, there are so many things that we all feel so guilty about, which are really quite unnecessary, aren't they? Yeah, why not? That's a beautiful quote that says, you know, if I can bring joy to myself, I can bring joy to others. And when I say that joy becomes a super attractor, I really do believe that that's the case.

You know, people want to be with joyful people, happy people, loving people. They don't want to be with people who are miserable or cynical. They want to be around people who are going to light up a room.

And that's why, you know, I feel so blessed that I get invited to come on podcasts like this and be keynote speakers in, you know, other areas because people want to hear about joy. There was so much tragedy and devastation and frustration outside of that. But if we can find joy in our life every day, that's what helps us get through.

I go right back to the joy list and the toolbox and the daily dose. That's what helps us. You know, joy is a veritable emporium.

It is a tool. It is a gift. It is a lifestyle.

It is a strategy. It's all of those things. And you just have to decide which part of your life you're on and how you're going to use joy.

For what? It can be as simple as that. It doesn't have to be hard. Right, make the choices then.

As you said, you get to choose. Choose joy, choose happiness. I think it was love.

Yeah, I think it was Marianne Williamson said that love is something that we're born with and fear is something that we learn. It's a quote. That's right, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, you do. You're only born with, I think it's two or three fears. The fear of loud noises and the fear of falling, everything else is learnt.

Really? Okay, so if you watch a baby, loud noises, they jump, they fear falling. That's what they fear. Everything else is completely conditioned.

Goodness, there you go. Is that so? Wow. Wow, wow, what we have to do then to deal with our conditioning, right? Speaking of Marianne Williamson, I read her books.

If anyone is listening to this and they want a great book to start, Marianne Williamson wrote The Return to Love. You introduced me talking about miracles and it's that book that helped me create a miracle. It was turning my fears into love and choosing love to create that miracle because that is what a miracle is when you can turn a fear into love.

The fear of losing my family, the fear of losing loved ones, the fear of losing my husband, the fear of losing friends, I chose to love instead and that's what created a miracle that created a life I never thought would be possible at one point in time. Well, I think it's a bit of a miracle that I crossed your path because you changed my life so much for the better, gave me so much energy and renewal and reframing was the word, reframing. And I think we're meant to meet the people we're meant to meet in life.

Agreed. I'm very grateful that I'm meant to meet you. Where can people get in touch with you, Ali? Do you know what? I love social media.

I love all of the social media platforms. It has been one of the most beautiful places for me to share my mission, to share joy. So you can find me on LinkedIn.

You can find me on Instagram, those are the two places that I love to hang out. I have a website, which is very easy. It's just alimortimer.com. You can find all the information there.

And my email is just ali, with an A-L-I, at alimortimer.com. So you can find me in all those places. Those places will all go into the notes. Thank you, Kay.

Thank you so much for being a beautiful light in my life too. Thank you. Thank you, Edward.

No, goodness, you are a joy, an absolute joy. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you for sharing your journey, the courage and openness. And what shines through so much is the reminder that even in our darkest moments, we can find some light. You've given me such hope that we too can choose love, joy, and peace, no matter what life throws in our way.

So I know the listeners will carry your words in their hearts long after this conversation ends. Thank you. Thank you.

I'd like to just sit a moment with Ali's words. I think what really strikes me is that it takes courage to stop, to say this isn't working anymore. I think so many of us push through our own conditioning, if you like, or stories of our definitions of success and the right way to be.

And Ali's just such a reminder about the fact that we have to trust our truest selves. So May today, you need that reminder too, maybe. And as Ali said, your storm isn't here to destroy you, it's here to clear the pathway that love, peace, and joy are not things you have to earn.

They're choices, and that way you can begin to make one small step at a time. So as you go back into your day, I invite you to pause, breathe, and ask yourself, what would it look like to choose love for myself in this moment? Thank you.