A Thought I Kept
A Thought I Kept is a podcast about the ideas that stay with us, long after we’ve forgotten the rest. In each episode, a guest shares the one thought that shaped their life — the one they couldn’t let go of, and maybe you won’t either.
A Thought I Kept
"There Is No One Right Way to Be" — Alice Thompson-Boyd
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
What if the problem isn’t that you haven’t found the right way to live, work or be but that there isn’t one?
My guest this week is Alice Thompson-Boyd, therapeutic coach, podcaster, psychotherapist-in-training and co-founder of the social enterprise Social Bite. Alice spent her twenties helping build an organisation that went on to have an extraordinary impact on homelessness in Scotland. But alongside the success, awards and recognition, she was struggling with anxiety, burnout, panic attacks and a growing sense of disconnection from herself.
After leaving Social Bite, Alice discovered the Enneagram, a system for understanding the different patterns, motivations and internal worlds that shape how we move through life. For Alice, it offered something she had been searching for: a way to understand herself without making herself wrong.
This is a conversation about understanding the patterns we get caught in and finding a little more freedom to be ourselves within them.
In this episode, we explore:
- What the Enneagram can teach us about ourselves and other people
- Why Alice left Social Bite after a decade of building it
- Burnout, anxiety and losing yourself inside meaningful work
- People-pleasing, resentment and the hidden expectations behind giving
- Why self-knowledge isn’t the same as self-improvement
- Letting go of the idea that we need to “fix” ourselves
- Purpose, fulfilment and Alice’s desire for a smaller life
- Finding conviction instead of constantly looking for external validation
- Why Alice believes doing less can sometimes give us more
Show notes & things Alice mentions
- The Enneagram Institute
- Truity
- The Wisdom of the Enneagram, Don Richard Riso & Russ Hudson
- Sarah Cumings episode of How To Be
- How To Be
- Social Bite
Alice Thompson-Boyd co-founded Social Bite, the social enterprise cafe chain supporting the homelessness community and implementing housing policy reform in Scotland, attracting the likes of George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Harry & Meghan as celebrity ambassadors.
But behind the public story was a harder one: burnout that led to a severe breakdown, including a mental health crisis that reshaped how she understands behaviour, motivation and healing. She tells her story warts and all.
Today Alice is a certified Purpose Coach & Enneagram Facilitator with over 2000 hours of experience, working with individuals and teams through periods of change, crossroads, and burnout. Her Deep Work Coaching Programme blends the Enneagram, cognitive behavioural coaching, neurobiology, breathwork, and Internal Family Systems.
She's certified in Applied Neurobiology and Brené Brown's Dare to Lead, and is training as a psychotherapist deepening her expertise in helping people to do shadow work, find meaning, and create positive change.
This is A Thought I Kept — Weekly conversations about the ideas that stay. Listen every Monday morning for a new thought to hold onto this week.
About Claire Fitzsimmons
Claire is the host of A Thought I Kept, a wellbeing writer, author and the co-founder of If Lost Start Here. As a Certified Coach and Emotions Coach Practitioner, Claire helps people navigate the everyday lost moments and all the feelings, from anxiety to grief, overwhelm to disconnection.
Buy Claire's first book, If Lost Start Here: Wellbeing for the Anxious, Disconnected or Uncertain here.
Subscribe to Claire's Substack newsletter here.
Find out how to work with Claire here.
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The music for all episodes from August 10th was made by Leon in the Wilderness.
Hi, and welcome to A Thought I Kept. I'm Claire Fitzsimmons, writer, author, coach, and co-founder of If Lost Start Here. This is a podcast where each week I sit down with a guest to explore one idea that has stayed with them. A thought they've kept. Today I'm talking to coach and podcaster Alice Thompson Boyd. I've wanted to talk to her for a very long time. Because more than a decade ago, when Amanda and I were creating one of the first versions of If Lost with this guy book to life, I came across Social Bite, the social enterprise in Edinburgh that Alice co-founded to support people experiencing homelessness. Yet alongside building an organization that was changing lives, Alice was struggling herself. What followed was a period of anxiety, burnout, panic attacks, feeling disconnected from herself, and eventually having to step away from a life that from the outside looked like it was working. So in this conversation, we talk about that experience, what it does mean to leave something that you've poured yourself into, and how you can find your way back from that. I really hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. There is so much here to explore, to learn about, and maybe even to keep. Here's my conversation with the wonderful Alice Thompson Boyd. Alice, welcome to the podcast.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much for having me. It's lovely to finally be able to spend some time with you. It's been a long time coming, hasn't it? I remember coming across your work.
SPEAKER_02If Lost started as this guidebook originally, and the idea was to find people positive places, the places in the world that could help us, support us, and also make the world a better place. And I had read about social bite and was so excited about it. I went to Edinburgh for university. I have family there still and friends there, so I have this connection to the city. And then what I've loved since is seeing how you have talked about mental health, how you've talked about the shifts away from social byte and towards your new work with like coaching and doing that. So it's so lovely to meet you and to kind of finally overlap.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it really is. Absolutely. And yeah, there's so much to get into from here. The coaching really came as a way for me to make money having deep conversations with people. And it was only a few years in that I realized, oh, psychotherapy, like I want to be a psychotherapist. So it's going to be both. At the moment, I'm calling myself a therapeutic coach. So make of that what you will. I think once you find something that you're really interested in, like somewhere that does feel really purposeful and fulfilling, it can become like an endless treasure trove where you're there's always the next thing to learn about, the next way to pivot and evolve. Or yeah, we were talking just before we started recording about like when we recognize we need to stop doing certain things and like cut that project off so that we can grow more in a different direction. And there's so much um fluidity to what I do now, which is so cool. Because you know, I went from yeah, managing like 110 people at the age of 23 with no training or experience and not doing that well. I went from that to working for just me. And it was like, it was funny enough, like I stopped having a boss because you know, all of your employ you're responsible to all of your employees. And it was an amazing weight off to only be answerable for myself and be able to decide where to go with all this.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, there's so much in that, isn't there? Because I guess in a sense, you think that if you're heading a charity or a social enterprise, that you have all the agency. That there's something in that that you are the boss, right? It stops with you. And I've heard you talk about that period where there was almost a sort of an absence of you in that, that there's a moment that you're less and less uh present and you're less and less involved and you're less and less in the story. And uh from the outside it looks the opposite, doesn't it? From the outside, it looks like it's all agency. And I I know that we'll probably touch on some of these things later, but I would like to ask you what the thought is that you're bringing today. Because you have really, as you said, you know, it's been evolving and expanding. And I'm just curious, out of all those different stages and all the different exposure to ideas and learnings and practices and people, what the thought is that you are bringing today.
SPEAKER_00Okay. So I don't know if I'm cheating or not, but this is what I was thinking about bringing today. Okay. So the thought or the idea that I cannot put down and that has permeated through my life is this thing called the Enneogram. Now that's kind of a cheat because there's like a million different things going on inside of the Enneagram and a bunch of different philosophical standpoints and all of that kind of stuff. But the thought and the idea specifically that really struck me from the Enneagram was coming out of social bite where I felt really trapped, and because I didn't have a degree or anything, and this was the only thing I'd ever done since I was 20, and we'd built it for 10 years, and I'd gotten into debt and then climbed out of debt, and leaving just felt like an impossibility. And it was actually a coach who first said to me, What is it you would do if you weren't at Social Bite? And it was like the question alone blew my mind. The idea that someone would even consider for me that I might be able to do anything else was the first time I had ever, you know, I was young, I was in my 20s, but it just hadn't occurred to me that I could just do something else. So I think when I was there, I was really preoccupied with the external world and people around me and trying to be what others wanted me to be, which means I was constantly in conflict with myself, trying to be this version of myself for these people, but then trying to be a different version of myself for the board and trying to figure out what on earth each different board member wanted from me. And so I think I always had this feeling of like, just what is the right way to be? Like, how am I meant to show up to just get the connection and approval and validation that I deeply amonging for, but no one ever seems to be bloody giving me, or the little bits that I do get don't feel right. You know, that was how it felt. It felt like I was not being acknowledged for what I felt was important or what I was really bringing, and the bits of acknowledgement you get from, you know, wonderful things like honorary doctorate degrees or the ITV Pride of Britain award, like that was all wonderful to be recognized, but didn't feel like the people that I wanted to recognize me were recognizing me for what I was really doing. And it's not about whether they were or they weren't. And actually, this is a big part of my particular Enneagram type. So if anyone listening knows, then I'm an Enneagram type two. So that's actually measuring how much I'm putting in and how much I'm getting back, how much connectional validation I'm getting on receipt of what I'm giving is a huge part of being a type two and of being a human being in general. But for type twos, we tend to kind of anchor there. So that was the way I was living my life. And when I discovered the Enneagram, and it's this personality typing system, that's what we could call it if we were being very simplistic, but it is much deeper and much bigger, I believe, than any of the other personality models out there. I could not be more, well, it's not that I'm bored by Myers Briggs, that's actually not true. It's based on a lot of really interesting Jungian psychology, which I'm really interested in. But I just find stuff like Myers Briggs or Insights, like it's really useful for companies. And that, those are the people that invest in it and get interested in it because it describes the way people behave, it describes their personalities as we can see them, and then that helps organizations to create more healthy conversation, which is great between teams, but it also helps you to like pair the right people together to work together. That's all really useful for a company that wants productivity. But for me, when I discovered the Enneagram, and the Enneagram specifically does not want to get into how people behave or what they do. And actually, the more you try to describe behaviors of any particular personality type, the further you get away from the truth of what the Enneagram is trying to describe, because it's trying to describe nine basic different temperaments that we all have that are very much about our internal world, not about how we exhibit ourselves in the world. So it's about this like what actually drives your behavior. And every type is unconsciously, and eventually consciously, if you work with the Enneagram, is the goal. Every type is trying to avoid something and trying to create something else. So we're always kind of shuffling away from something and shuffling towards something else unconsciously, and then all of the behaviors and stuff that get built on top of that. Well, Myers Briggs can explain some of that, and that's cool. But for me, this Enneagram showing me these different ways of someone feeling and thinking rather than different ways of people behaving was like the lights getting switched on. First of all, for me, because it was like, oh my god, the darkest stuff about myself that I felt the most shame over, the stuff I felt most worried someone would find out about me is being described by this bloody Enneagram type two thing.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So that that sucks. But was also really illuminating and a little bit gratifying because it was like, oh, I'm not broken and fucked up. All of the type twos in the world know what this feels like to have this feeling inside of me. So that was really interesting. But then as I started to learn more and more about all of the other types on the Enneagram, I started to see like, oh my God, that was that board member. They were probably coming from this perspective internally. And yeah, I'm only seeing the behavior and I can't make much sense out of that. Doesn't make any sense to me because my internal world, my internal value system, and my internal motivation and drivers, survival instinct-wise, the things that I'm trying to avoid and the things that I'm trying to create are so different to what this bloody type 8 over here is trying to create and avoid that we're clashing through our behavior. But actually, when I understand the inner mechanism of how someone can show up that way, suddenly we have like more understanding. And I felt really liberated by this fundamental thought that oh, there is no sort of one good or right way to be. There is no one solution to a problem. There are all these different perspectives, and actually, one of those perspectives on its own just isn't whole. We do need a more well-rounded understanding of our internal mechanisms in order to find a really good solution to anything, which means we need more different people in the room, but we need to know how to be able to work with those different people. So yeah, the thought is we are all very different people, and you can't please everyone, and not everyone is going to be your cup of tea. So I guess it's some of that stuff, which for me was born from the Enneagram of just realizing thank fuck that I'm starting to understand. Because I just I left, truthfully, I left Social Bite with a lot of confusion and upset feelings. There's a lot of grief leaving behind an organization that you started and you grew to such a huge visible extent in Scotland. There was a lot of grief and a lot of trying to figure out who I was now without that. My whole adult life, that had been what I did. And there was a lot of me making myself wrong. Yeah. Even when I felt self-righteous, even when I felt like, no, but they shouldn't have. And if they could understand, there was also this thing underneath it of, but I'm shit, and I probably don't get it. And so this Enneagram thing for me was hugely liberating just to realize we're just all internally quite different. We see things completely differently.
SPEAKER_02At what pa what stage were you then? So when you found the Enneagram, had you left Social Byte or were you still there?
SPEAKER_00I had left and it was almost now looking back at it, it's almost like some bloody cosmic conspiracy. It just started slapping me in the face, like literally probably the month that I left Social Byte.
SPEAKER_02So just after, when you're in this kind of confused moment, and it sounds like there's someone doubting of yours yourself, what was it about me? Why couldn't I? And you're in this sort of seeking stage, maybe, or coming to understand stage. That's when you arrived at this system of the Enneagram. And that's when you could start to see what it could offer you.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Yes. And it was not immediate. First of all, someone mentioned it, a therapist mentioned it to me and was like, oh, I wonder if you could be an Enneagram this type or that type. And I was like, oh, that's really interesting. I did a test. I got tested as a type three. I'm not a type three, so it was relatable because I what we call wing in three in the Enneagram world. So it's kind of relatable and enough for me to go, oh yeah, that makes sense. But I never really thought about it again. Mistyping is as high as 60% with the Enneagram. Like you can't just take a test and go, oh, that's the type I am. It will give you a good starting place for getting some data, but you need to really read about it and feel it for yourself to know what the right type is for you. So yeah, then it was like months later, I was joining a group coaching program and they were amazing. And they said, Oh, we're working with an Enneagram specialist who will help type you. Are you interested in that? Do you want to have a session with an Enneagram specialist? And I thought, oh, how funny. That just came up a few months ago. And yeah, I'm interested. Why not? But it wasn't like I didn't care that much about it at the time. And then it was having that session with Sarah Cummings, if anyone's looking for her, although I do believe she's just like oversubscribed because she's so popular. She's so she's a therapist in the Edinburgh area. And I feel like I've recommended her to everyone I know. Like I've got people who I sort of, you know, my my producer for my old podcast, which I'll be starting again at some point, but we all go to Sarah.
SPEAKER_02And she's done your podcast too. She did this amazing episode about the Enneagram. She really helped. So listening to that episode really helped me understand my type. I was like, oh, now I guess it now I fundamentally get who I am.
SPEAKER_00And how I'm Well, I'm so pleased that that was able, that was exactly the hope for that episode. And she did a second episode with us as well about how to be like a better partner, which is through the lens of the Enneagram again. Because yeah, just candidly, like my partner and I have done couples therapy and it's just been incredible. Like it doesn't feel like couples therapy as you think about it, it feels like going on an amazing first date again because you're really learning about each other's insides. And so yeah, we did another episode about that with her. But yeah, so I met Sarah. Sarah was the specialist, and she helped type me. And everything I was describing, she was able to feed back to me through the lens of the Enneagram, and it was blowing my mind. I was like, Yes, how did you know that? Like that's exactly what would happen next for me, and that's exactly how I would feel, and then what I would think and what I'd be then maybe motivated to do. So it felt like this person had a cheat code for me in a way that I had never found with like Myers Briggs or insights or anything, although those things are still really fun and useful in different ways, but this felt like profound. And so that was when I became like fully obsessed with it. And ever since then, I have just spent too much money on Enneagram courses and certifications and books. And I don't think there's any sign of it slowing down.
SPEAKER_02You said something I think that there's something in the Enneagram. Well, maybe I heard this on the podcast. That there's something about it that's quite confrontational. Because I think sometimes from the outside there might be this perception that the Enneagram, human design, astrology, all those systems of thinking could be there's something quite playful about it. And I think there is something quite playful about it. But I think with the Enneagram, actually with all those systems, I think there is also something that is quite confrontational. That is like you said, that this was a cheap code to yourself. These are all the most shameful things that you've thought and felt that somebody else is mirroring back to you. What was it about do you think that particular experience and that moment for you that you saw in ways that you hadn't seen them before and you couldn't have done before? What was it then for you that you were like, oh, now's the moment to see this, and I do see this?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, that's a really good question. So I think it's that I was in my pattern. So the Enneagram, we have patterns, each type has a particular pattern that we tend to play out. And the types get more complicated the more you get into it. You start to find out there's not just nine types, there's three instincts for survival that map over the top of each of the types. So you could get three different types of a type two, for example. So it can all start to get very convoluted. But in its most simple form, the thing that I think made it really land for me is that I had been struggling and grappling with my particular pattern from just being in it. You know, we don't see ourselves doing our personality. Sometimes we have a bit of dissociation or a bit of like nerves, and we start to see ourselves doing it. But it does only tend to be during those like high stress moments that we notice ourselves doing a personality. Most of the time we're just in it. The pattern that I was stuck in that I couldn't figure out, and it was causing me a lot of angst in my life, my personal life, my professional life, was this thing where I show up and I feel like I give a lot. And you know, the type two is sort of the archetypal female, like it's what we're all sort of groomed to be because it's very like putting other people's needs first and stuff. So in my world, I'm just like, I'm showing up, putting all of this work in, I'm doing all of this stuff for other people. If I even suspect someone has like a want or a need, I try and meet it without even being asked, you know. So when I turn around and those people or yeah, those people that I feel I've been holding a lot of space for or doing a lot for don't meet me with the same level of contribution when I feel I'm in need, or feel like they just kind of continue to sit with their hands open, like out for me to keep giving. I think when that happens, I would start to feel very resentful, relationships would break down, I would lose trust in employees because I was like, clearly they don't care about this job. I've been putting so much into them, blah, blah, blah, whatever it might be. Certainly in my personal life, like I could see this pattern from very young when I was a child, to getting really intensely close with someone. And, you know, it's like a fire that burns too bright too fast, and then there's some kind of big thing. And I've got really good, consistent friends I've had for a very long time. But in amongst that, I would have these really intense connections that would come in and come out of my life and maybe last for a year, maybe two, maybe three at a time. But they would always end with this thing where I would just feel like, God, the fuck am I doing wrong? I keep showing up and giving. And then every this person's just taken from me as well. And now I feel like I've got to put up every boundary and every wall, and we get quite like pissed off twos. Like we go from being very sweet and very nurturing to being like, how fucking dare you? And like, I've done all of this for you, and where have you been? You've done bloody nothing. And we can suddenly become very accusatory. Um, and for people around us who aren't type twos and don't get that, that is like, what the fuck? This person was really nice a minute ago, or for the last six months, and now suddenly there's all these boundaries and walls, and I haven't been grateful enough. I didn't realize I never asked for you to do any of this stuff. So I was stuck in that cycle, and that was the thing that brought me the most anguish. And even as I describe it right now, I'm like, oh, bloody hell. I'm like letting people know that this is what I was dealing with, and I still, of course, will the rest of my life in a different way, although I do find it's those types of relationships are happening way less now, which is amazing and much more healthy in that sense. But Neogram gave me this understanding of that is what happens, the two gives and gives. And when that personality sort of defense mechanism, because that is what our personality is in the world of the Eneagram, it's a very sophisticated defense mechanism that helps us cope with the world. We bounce over to lower qualities of type 8, which is the challenger, which is all about being comfortable with conflict and having boundaries and being direct about your needs and your wants. And so that was really interesting to see the cheat code of like that's exactly what happened. So now I'm gonna have to become more aware of my part because I wasn't aware that what I was doing was showing up and giving where people were not requesting that I give. Like I didn't realize how much extra I was putting in, and then kind of sitting around and feeling resentful about the fact that people don't acknowledge what I'm putting in additionally to what they might have asked for. So I think that has become it was really painful to see. But now I'm I'm not necessarily able to get in front of it all the time. And the more you work with the Enneagram, the more you realize like you'll never stop being a human being. We're always going to be fallible in our particular personality way. But hopefully we become more aware of it, we create more spaciousness and we start to find new tools and strategies so that we don't always have to be in that reactive state and we can more proactively choose when and where to play our skills, our experiences. So yeah, that's. The thing that made a really huge difference to me, like, oh, I'm a participant and actually I'm a catalyst for this dynamic I feel stuck in. I'm not, you know, and I was genuinely open to what am I doing wrong? How do how does this happen again? But in the end, it was no one could really tell me. I couldn't tell me. And then of course, as soon as you find a type two description and you show all your loved ones, like, oh yeah, that's what you're doing.
SPEAKER_02It's interesting because you said I think that when you left Social Bite, there was a sense of what had I been doing wrong? There was something about what was that about? What kind of went wrong? What was that? But it also sounds like when you found the Enneagram, although it was there was something in that of like, you know, there's something here that is painful and I'm seeing it didn't doesn't sound like it was the trap. It wasn't something that, you know, like sometimes I think with self-knowledge, self-help, self-improvement, we can find the thing that almost in a way it becomes like another way to bludgeon ourselves with. It can become another thing where we're like, oh God, now I've realized I'm a people pleaser, so I'm a terrible person or whatever it would be. And I think it sounds like for you, the Enneagram showed you something that was deeply uncomfortable, but also familiar and also needed. And then it actually had this kind of sense that it liberated you in a sense. How did you manage to use it that way so that it felt like helpful and supportive and directional in a way that was still internal, but also gave you this sort of outward connection?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So first of all is the self-awareness piece, which we've chatted about. So I think you have to be aware of your dysfunction. And dysfunction can even be like being a high achiever, like there's a type for that. Type threes are the achievers of the Enneagram, and they're very successful. They're probably a lot of them are CEOs. And so we want to see our dysfunction first. We need the self-awareness, but you're exactly right. It can just become another stick to beat ourselves with. And because the Enneagram is quite Jungian, like it's quite archetypal and quite sort of blatant and clear, and it makes it takes no prisoners. It just describes exactly what you're doing, even though it's unconscious and unintentional, it describes exactly what you are doing and how you're showing up for yourself internally and for others internally as well. So that was the first piece. And then I think the second piece was doing the therapy with Sarah. So Sarah, who I met on the coaching program, continued to work with her over the years. So she uses the Enneagram really beautifully. She pairs it with internal family systems, which is where we start to meet all the different parts of our psyche. You know, we have all these different voices in our heads that conflict with each other. And the Enneagram works just so powerfully when you pair it with internal family systems, because the Enneagram is all about these nine different parts of us. We anchor in one, but we know all nine of them and we've kind of forgotten the nature of our wholeness. So the Enneagram is trying to point us back towards more freedom away from this particular type mechanism rather than putting you in a box. It wants to show you how to get out of the box. And I find that the internal family systems psychotherapeutic model works really well with that. So now I'm training as a psychotherapist and going to specialise in internal family systems as well, because I've just found it to be so fundamentally transformational for my sense of well-being and self-worth. So I think it was the therapy piece. And then thirdly and lastly, I think it was the more that you go on a journey with the Enneagram, and I'm always like, oh, I don't want to make it sound too much for people. I want people just to get in wherever makes sense for them, just learn about your type, and that's a great start. That's all you need to worry about. But for me as a practitioner, there's this thing as well of like doing the learning in the courses, which are much more about the deeper philosophy behind these concepts in the Enneagram, because it's talking about nine basic human struggles, like the suffering of the dark nights of the soul, of what we can discuss as human beings as our experience. It describes these nine things that are seven of them are the seven deadly sins for a start. And it's got nothing to do with Christianity, it just happens to be that they map with the seven deadly sins. The seven deadly sins was originally eight things, and it was Evagrius Ponticus, which was a monk back in like the fourth century who came up with these, these were the eight things that he was able to identify as the things that distract us from presence and distract us from mental clarity. So they weren't big scary sins, you know, at the beginning. They were eight of these concepts that then we added a ninth, sort of in like the 60s or 70s. There was a guy who was really working with the Enneagram and trying to place all these different psychological dispositions onto this map called the Enneagram, which is just a beautiful diagram. It's it means nine-pointed diagram in Greek. We added a ninth to describe one of the mental fixations that we just hadn't really named yet within the Enneagram, which is fear. And of course, fear or doubt or anxiety, whatever word you want to pick. Is that six? That's six. Well done.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'm so proud. Oh, you're six. Well, I'm either six or I'm nine. I think I'm probably nine with a very I don't know whether you can be this, so I don't really know so much about the Enneagram, but I think I'm nine, but with a tendency to six.
SPEAKER_00Or I'm either or I don't know, but that's what I'm nine and six is on a line. This is going to be insufferable for your listeners, but nine nine has a line to six. The Enneagram, like I say, is this diagram, and we have lines that connect certain numbers. They have a relationship with each other. So nines move to six when they're struggling, basically. Um, that's the fear place, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So fear is the one that was missing, and I think it makes really good sense when you're looking at all of the different philosophical struggles that we're talking around. It makes sense that fear should be added there. So I love that that we've got nine of these really deep philosophical dilemmas to sit with and ponder and notice. It's just like we've just all stopped being philosophical, you know, like before the Industrial Revolution, before the technological revolution, we used to just sit around a lot more and think and read and chat and figure out what it was like to be in the world because we weren't behind computer screens, you know. And now it's like no one has any time to really sit and go, what does it mean to be a human being? And which one of these things, which one of these sort of dark philosophical traits of a human being seems to be the one that I am in relationship with? And so I'm just obsessed with it.
SPEAKER_02Do you think that's what's behind this longing for these systems? Because there has been such a resurgence and of interest in the Enneagram, human design, but all these different modalities. Do you think that yearning is about understanding depth, connection with something that is more than, I don't know, connecting a digital device? What do you think is behind that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I really don't know anything about human design other than I do hear lots of I hear lots of people saying wonderful things about it. But I don't know, I wonder, yeah, that longing for depth of understanding and connection to ourselves and each other in a way that feels more real than what we can have over the screen or over the email. I think that could be part of it. And I also wonder if like some of the self-development angles on this, because you can look at the you know, the Enneagram, you have so much different content out there, and depending on which teacher or which influencer you subscribe to, you'll get different varies of quality in terms of the content. I can't help but wonder if some of it has also been a bit of a self-development-y, you know, social media came along and the way that we are perceived became paramount. So I can't help but wonder if people also want to if there's some insecurity around it as well, if it's like trying to figure out how we can be better so that we don't look bad, because we're increasingly in a society that won't tolerate our mistakes and where our mistakes are public and where we're cancelled if we make a mistake. So I also wonder if there's some fear around it of like just fix me. And and that's why I've stuck with the Enneagram, that's why it keeps coming back to me, because it it's the more you work with it, the more in depth you get with it, or the if you just work with a practitioner, the more you realize that you don't need fixing. And the obsession with wanting to fix yourself is the suffering. And in order to not want to feel like you have to fix yourself, you know, that it's gonna need to be like some practices, and there you can't just clip your fingers and go, okay, then I won't fix myself. Because yeah, we we want people to, you know, be self-aware and evolve and become more of who they are and not more restricted. It's like when you look at politics, and this is not a new idea, but of course, we have become so polarized. The left has never been more left, the right has never been more right. And it's like we're just becoming caricatures of ourselves because we're getting more and more entrenched in the box that we think that we live in that identifies what we identify with this is who I am. But actually, the the truth and what the enneagram really tries to point us back towards is like the truth of being a human being, the truth of anything existing is that it's multifaceted and it all belongs to one thing. You know, when you zoom out on a more cosmic scale, both literally, like geographically, we suddenly see, you know, when Artemis II or Apollo 11 goes to space, we start to see the Earth as this really vulnerable little thing floating in space, and suddenly it all doesn't look so separate anymore. But also in terms of time, like we're here for this blip, like it feels so convincing, so real, so long-winded when we're here. But realistically, in the grand scheme of time, we're here for like a millisecond. So the Enneagram is trying to remind us of this much wider perspective of like come back to some of the nature stuff, to some of the stuff that's more true about who you are as a human animal. You're not separate from nature, you're not separate from the universe, you're part of this whole thing. And so I love that the Enneagram is trying not to fix you, it's trying to liberate you into just being more of yourself, being more at ease with yourself, integrating the shadow rather than refusing and grappling with the shadow.
SPEAKER_02I really like that. It just made me think: what is it like for you being in a very different industry? So there is the what are we calling it? Self-help, well-being, self-development industry versus being in social enterprise. Helping people who are experiencing homelessness that feels in a sense that it's very external, it's very outwards, it's helping people on a very I'm gonna be really careful, real, practical, everyday way to something that is around what could be internal and that is very much not visible in quite the same way. What has that shift been like for you and how do you navigate from one kind of field to the other one?
SPEAKER_00Oh my gosh, I love this question so much. So thank you, that question. I it's amazing for me. It's been the tonic I needed because social bite was so externally facing and dealing with very practical things. I loved so much of that. Um the supporting homeless community. I had the first two homeless employees come and live with me for a good like nine months or so as well. It was a long time. So loads of that was amazing, but it was so externally focused. And the more, you know, the longer it went on, the more celebrity endorsements we got. We had George Clooney and Leonard DiCaprio and awards and things. And it just started to feel like it was it, it wasn't that it was performative, but I felt like this weird imposter syndrome that I think many of us could get on board with in that situation where you start to wonder, should I be getting all this attention? I don't know if there's anything of substance here. And it really did a number on my mental health and my sense of worth. So moving to a process that is so much more internal and so much more about people's internal world. And now that I do this like very specific therapeutic deep work coaching, it's so far removed from the type of coaching I started out doing. It feels more real and it keeps all of the things that I loved about the work I was doing before, like helping anyone, you know. I work with some clients for free and stuff because I still have like an altruistic bone in my body. But I love working with people on their potential and helping them realize that because and that that was the same, you know, at Social Bite was realizing these guys are totally capable, they've just not been given the right environment to thrive. So that stays. And also I think a lot of the skills have been wildly transferable, like running a business, project management, like pure outrageous tenacity to just keep firing on. All of that has been hugely helpful for this new chapter. So it's really different, and yet all of the good bits that I loved about it, I feel like I have been able to keep.
SPEAKER_02And where are you on the impact piece? Because you have said you're very altruistic. You also said that there's something about helping people, fundamentally helping people that you need. Where are you on how much impact you're having, having shifted to something new?
SPEAKER_00For a long time, that was quite complicated for me because the impact was so huge at Social Bite and so sort of nationwide level politically speaking, changing housing policies and stuff. That was a little hard for my ego at first, but it's become easier. And we were saying before we started recording that I woke up, it was one of those nights last night where I woke up at 3 a.m. immediately thinking about work and kind of couldn't sleep again all night. But one of the things that I was really thinking about and journaling about, because you know, when you can't sleep and you just get to a point where you're like, I just need to start writing some of this down, like, what am I doing lying here? And I was really just recognizing like I actually am craving a smaller life now. Give me privacy, give me a deep way to work with one person at a time and for it to feel like it really means something to me and to them rather than funnily enough, it feels this doesn't make any sense, but what I can tell you is that it feels to me more real when I'm working with someone one-to-one or when I'm doing group coaching with perhaps just six people on a call, than it did being able to say, we've just housed 800 people in this new housing policy. Because I don't know any of those 800 people, I wasn't working with them directly. It just became a lot for me like working in an office. And a lot of people that work in the charity sector will tell you that, you know, it's like once you get the job, you're just turning up and doing the job every day and let you know, sure, you know, assuming you're not like a support worker on the ground with people and stuff. So yeah, the impact thing sits a lot easier with me now. But I mean, in terms of that, I do have dreams of I have so many dreams. Who knows which ones I'll actually end up realizing? But the big dream right now is moving up to the Highlands where I grew up, the Highlands of Scotland, in a couple of years' time, once I finish my psychotherapy qualification. And then I would love to start a charity in the Highlands offering free therapeutic services, hopefully using the Enneagram and internal family systems, but offering free therapy to parents, because I think helping to, I don't think we're gonna ever end generational trauma, and I don't know if we should want to. We're not AI, we are human beings. There's always parents, teachers, they're always gonna make mistakes, we're always gonna be impacted by that. But I think that there's a lot of unnecessary suffering that happens because parents are dysregulated and they haven't had the space to process their own childhood traumas or difficult experiences, their own reactivity that now plays out on their children. So I'm like not really interested in working with the child because I'm like they'll be okay if the parents are more regulated. So that's my dream at the moment. So there's sort of thoughts about impact and how I'm able to use what I love doing now in a way that would benefit my local community and and still have their impact on a larger scale than what I'm able to on my own. But that will be a couple of years away.
SPEAKER_02There is something, isn't there, about working in a space where you really do realize the impact you can have on someone and on their lives. And it's it's a classic where you think, if only everyone could have this, if only, if only everyone had access to a therapist, a great coach, some sort of support, somewhere to take their thoughts and their feelings, somewhere just to tell their stories and better understand themselves, if only. And I think you know, the more access I mean, access is such a huge issue for right now, isn't it, with mental health, but yeah the more access there is with that, and the more understanding and the more compassion, I think it it would be very needed. We have our three the five word segments. Let's see. So there are certain words I think that for some of us hold some attachment. And I think it's really interesting about particularly in the context of your work, what what kind of might come up for you? And I'm just gonna say a word for you. There's no right or wrong answer. And it's just seeing seeing what comes to mind. And of course, I think the obvious word you've probably been asked a thousand times is a purpose. And I feel right now there's a really interesting discussion around purpose because I think there is something about meaning making there, but also there is some pressure to have a purpose. And there's something like we all need to have a purpose now. So I'm just curious about where you are on purpose.
SPEAKER_00Oh my god, these are such great questions. Thank you so much. It's such a privilege to be able to come on any podcast and be asked questions because you get the opportunity to think about this stuff for yourself. It's amazing. So, purpose. I'm currently feeling quite over purpose and the word purpose, but it remains in my job title for the time being because that's like how people find me now. So um Isn't that interesting?
SPEAKER_02Yes, because that's what they're drawn towards. But then when they get to what what happens?
SPEAKER_00Then I send them an email. They come through my website and then I send them an email basically saying, listen, this is the kind of work I do. It's deep work, it's vulnerable, it's therapeutic coaching, it's shadow work. If you're up for having a vulnerable, long, intensive coaching session or program of coaching with me, then we'd be great. But if you're not looking for that type of work, then I won't be the coach for you. So that's how I meet that a lot these days. And also, I mean, this is pretty new. It's like this year, I got back in January from our honeymoon and rebranded a little bit on the website and stuff and stopped saying this is your purpose program because I run a program as well as just doing ad hoc. It's not called the find your purpose program anymore. It's called the deep work therapeutic coaching program now. Because I do believe people can find a sense of purpose and fulfillment and meaning if they are able to do my particular way, anyway, my particular way of doing it is to do the deep work internally. I really believe that the outside stuff will take care of itself if we're okay on the inside and if we're more friendly with our shadows. So the purpose thing is like, I don't believe that you have one purpose and everyone has to find their purpose. It's not about finding a cause and attaching yourself to it and then saying, I do such purposeful work because I tried that, it doesn't work. It is about finding what brings life to you, what brings energy to you and honing that internally so that you can then bring it externally where it counts.
SPEAKER_02It's interesting because as you said that, like I think we work in quite a similar way. And I was thinking about this idea that it's hard to lead with that. It's hard to lead with the value in that. But there is something in our culture that does value purpose. Like that in and of itself is like the shiny status oddly object. That's the thing that we aspire to. And sometimes it we get a bit wobbly, I think, when it's like, is it enough or could it ever be enough just to really fundamentally understand who we are and what we need and how we show up and what we need to bring to life. And I think that's really interesting. That is the work in a sense. That is where so much of purpose lives, is in that deeper work. But it's very hard sometimes, I think, to value that as being an artist.
SPEAKER_00Totally. Totally. That was why for six years I never rebranded. I just I was like purpose coach. I used to run a purpose business. People will come to me for this. And it was while we were on honeymoon, my husband and I had a really long chat about my feeling of discomfort with how I was branding the program versus what I thought people were actually getting from it. And it was a choice of like, I have to be willing to make less money because people might not find me as much, or they might not want to do like a therapeutic deep work coaching program. You know, there's loads of structure to it, the program. Like there's loads of structure. There's some neurobiology stuff in there about how we set and achieve goals. Like, so there's loads of ability to, you know, make it for you about changing career or whatever it might be through this deep work, but it will be different for everyone. So we had to have a conversation where I had to basically I had to have a conversation with my husband around, I just think I'd rather make less money and feel good about what I'm packaging, what I'm selling, and the right people finding me. And then that hasn't happened yet. Like I have not made less money yet. I've found people are finding me that much easier, which has been really surprising. Okay. Yes. Really surprising.
SPEAKER_02I think that's really hopeful. That's very exciting that people are drawn to that and they need that.
SPEAKER_00It is hopeful. I do feel hopeful at the moment, but yeah, touching all the wood, still superstitious over here, worried it's going to be taken away at any moment.
SPEAKER_02So my next word for you is around fulfillment. Clearly, in your own life, it's really changed. Like what would have fulfilled you at 17 is probably quite different than what would fulfill you now. But what does fulfillment mean to you?
SPEAKER_00Do you think now? I think now, and I've got a nice short answer for this one. I think now it means doing less. How I think stripping more and more away, life feels more fulfilling. I'm able to be present where I am a little bit longer. And just oh, it's I'm hearing myself saying it, and I'm like, oh, it's so annoying. I've heard people say things like this before. And until you have an experience of it, it doesn't mean anything to you. But the thing I'm thinking is like the simplest things, like just walking the dog, making dinner, not having to be anywhere or speak to anyone that night, other than my husband or the pets, or maybe one day a baby if we get lucky, then you know, it's that the simplest things are so underrated and so all we need. And I think we overcomplicate everything. So I think actually the more you can strip away, it's the classic Buddhism thing, isn't it? The more attachments you have, the more suffering you'll have. But for me, fulfillment means like doing less.
SPEAKER_02Okay, I know where I want to go with this one. Conviction. I have seen you use that word a few times, conviction.
SPEAKER_01That's really what I'm getting from you as you talk about fulfillment. What is conviction to you?
SPEAKER_00Oh I think I love you, Claire. Conviction to me is just life force and liberation because I just didn't have any of it for so long. I was throwing it around like I was Billy Big Bull's, like I really backed myself. I think I it's not like I was any kind of victim. I gave as good as I got, but underneath all of that was this desperation to get other people to see my point of view and this lack of having just my own conviction where it's like it doesn't matter what they think. This is how I see it, this is how I'm gonna operate about it, and that's okay, that's how I see it, and that's how I want to handle this based on my conviction about this. Like needing that validation from everyone else, it's so exhausting. And as a six, if you spend any time in the six space, I can only imagine that on the Enneagram. I mean, I can only imagine that's familiar to you as well. Like, how is can I check this with everyone else? Is everyone else okay with this? It's exhausting, isn't it? It's very tiring. I think finding your conviction is what everyone is really searching for. When they come to me for purpose or fulfillment or therapeutic coaching, whatever, I think people are just like, what is my conviction? Yes, what on earth do I want to do here? So yeah, I'm still on a journey with all of this stuff, but it's stuff I spent a lot of time thinking about. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Okay, let's come back to your thought then. So it's clearly had such an impact. It's not you live, you work with, you implement, you talk about. And usually what I ask guests around now is how they remember it. And I'm wondering what happens when you ever forget it, actually. Do you ever forget it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, all the time, of course. Yeah. It's in my life every day. I have friends joke to me. We're all just numbers to you now. Like whenever I meet anyone, I'm just in my head trying to type them, always getting it wrong. I'm always wrong. But what happens when it isn't there, when I forget it? Oh, is I get really fast. I get really, I'm rushing everywhere, I'm rushing between everything, trying to do everything. That's what happens when I forget about it. And when I remember it, it's yeah, taking a minute to slow down. I have it tattooed on my wrist now, so there's no forgetting it. I'll get it once or twice a day while we make it up, but you know what? Oh, yes. Yes, the Enneagram is trying to remind me to be present. It's trying to remind me to disentangle for a second. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so if somebody wants to know about their Enneagram type, what would they do? I know there's lots of, you know, you go to Google and suddenly you've got lots of different voices and different perspectives and different, like, where do you rate really lost be as valuable as a resource to find out?
SPEAKER_00Oh, okay. There are a couple of different ways. If you're just looking to do down and dirty, get it quick, you might get it wrong, but that's part of the strategy you're going with. You can just Google free Enneagram test. Truity has a pretty good one. They do a bunch of different tests. You don't have to pay for your description at the end, although it will try to make it look like you do. You can just say no to that. You find out what type you've tested as, that's not necessarily going to be accurate. It might even feel really relatable, but unless you feel quite uncomfortable reading parts of the description, you haven't found the right type. And the way you can find the best descriptions is once you've tested and you know what type you've come out as, it will try to charge you to see the whole description on Truity's website. If you don't want to do that, you can go to a much better website that offers the descriptions for free, but doesn't have a test. And that's the Enneagram Institute. And they have incredible resources from international thought leaders on the Enneagram, where you can read much more accurate type descriptions than what you'll find on Truity. The Truity just, you know, it's a little bit personality typey, like it likes all that stuff. So it's a bit more, it will throw in more anecdotes about how types will behave. And that's when you'll start to not be sure whether or not that is you after all. You want to stay with descriptions like the Enneagram Institute's website, which talk more about the internal mechanism. That's how to do it real quick. And if you want to do it the long-winded way, get a practitioner because that will probably how you find the most accurate type. And there's a great book called The Wisdom of the Enneagram by Russ Hudson, and there's a way of scoring yourself for each of the types as you read about each of them. But depends on how deep you want to get into this. But the test is probably the thing I feel like that's people's entry point. And just bear in mind that you very may well test incorrectly. So you just have to take it with a pinch of salt. It's a starting place.
SPEAKER_02I'm going to plug your episode about the Enneagram because I had a suspicion around three, six, and nine. And I listened to that and I was like, oh, okay, I've got some clarity here. The descriptions are so fantastic in the episode. So I would highly recommend that as well.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much. That's a great idea. Yes, the How to Be podcast, which I did a couple years ago. I just did seven episodes and will be returning to as soon as I can. But that is a great idea. It's a great go and listen to that episode, How to Be. Well, I can't remember what it's called, not knowing your Enneagram type, something like that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Thank you for being here, Alice. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. That is such an incredible system and so extraordinary. And it's so generous of you to walk us through it and the impacts it had on you and your life and where you are now. So thank you so much for being here today.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. This was just a bloody delight, and it's great to have met you finally. Thank you.
SPEAKER_02As always, I'd love to know whether the thought or the system, the modality that Alice brought today is something that you'll also keep, share, or forget. If you are interested in exploring Alice's work further, I've added details in the show notes. There you can find details about the course that she mentioned, the program she mentioned, the how to be podcast, and how to work with her. If you're curious about exploring more about where you are and where you want to be, then of course do come over to If Lost Dot Here. That's the well-being company that Amanda and I created for the moments that we are feeling anxious or disconnected or certain and we're just trying to work out where we are and what comes next. It's all designed to get you to a better place, whatever that means for you. Thank you as always for being here. Thank you for listening. Thank you for bringing to your stories and your questions and your experiences of these conversations. I found it really fascinating hearing about what really does land with you and what you're interested in hearing more of, and the thoughts that you are really keeping. I will be back next Monday morning with another guest. It's a really great episode next week. And another thought that you get to try on in your own life. So until then, let me know whether you'll keep this. Maybe you'll forget it. Maybe even you'll share it. That would be so great too. Bye for now.
