The Recovering Perfectionist
The Recovering Perfectionist
Generational beliefs, guarding your energy & thriving emotionally with Christine Agha
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Don't lose that. Lovely. Hello everyone. It's Claire Riley, and I'm here with the beautiful Christine Augger. I hope I've pronounced your name correctly.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, totally good. Hi everyone.
unknownHey Claire.
SPEAKER_01So this is a really bit of a random thing that we have sort of just decided to do. So Christine and I met at uh an online networking event with Suzanne Kohlberg, uh, what, probably two months ago now, it feels like forever ago. Um, and we just had the most incredible conversation. I think we had 10 minutes or so. It was like speed dating, and we were one of the matched pairs of three um three different sessions that we sort of had, and it was just, I don't know, a bit of an explosive conversation. I can't even remember exactly what we talked about, but we just knew that we had to come over and share something and do something and all that sort of thing. So we're kind of here to have a bit of a chat about all different things. But before we jump in, do you want to just introduce yourself and I'll introduce myself and we'll make sure everyone knows who the heck we actually are before we start carrying on about things? Awesome, that sounds good.
SPEAKER_00So um I work with so I'm a coach, I'm an NLP mindset coach, an energy healer, and a medium. I don't even know if I shared that with you. Did I share that with you?
SPEAKER_01I don't think so.
SPEAKER_00I don't think I knew the medium bit, no. Yeah, so I work with highly sensitive women like empaths, uh coaches, healers that um really want to learn how to manage their emotions better, and so I support them to do that so that they can be less impacted by the energy of other people around them and just be able to have really amazing strategies to connect with their body's wisdom so that they can really awaken and amplify their intuition and be guided from that inner guidance system.
SPEAKER_01So beautiful. I think we all need a bit of that. Um, whether or not you um identify as a highly sensitive person or an empath or something, we all can totally be completely affected and impacted, good and bad obviously, but by other people and whatever's going on around us and that sort of thing. So the world needs you, and I'm super glad that I get to share you with my people as well. So um, yeah, it's awesome to have you here. Um, so for anyone who doesn't know, I'm on my page, so hopefully we know each other somehow. But I'm Claire and I'm just gonna describe myself as a professional Virgo at the moment because um that's kind of the space that I'm in. Everything is about making things really organized and really strategic and really structured, which is kind of the exact opposite things that you talk about, which is why we want to talk about how it all works together and all that sort of thing. So um it's been a really interesting conversation that we that I've certainly been having, and I assume you have, and we kind of had this conversation a month ago when we chatted as well, was about that the um finding a balance between being you know planful and structured and strategic versus going with the flow and your intuition and tapping into your innate wisdom and all of that sort of thing, and how that actually can marry and what the imbalances look like and all that sort of thing. So I guess I'm gonna hand over to you initially, if that's okay, to sort of talk about what you like, how do you see the masculine versus feminine stuff in business and how does it show up and all of that sort of thing?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I might start a little bit with my story, um, just so I can give you a bit of background of like the where I came in from and how it all shifted for me. So initially I was a super high, well, a super high achiever. Like I'm sure that you can relate to that. And you've got a lot of people in your community can relate to that can relate to that. And I very much lived in my masculine energy a lot of my life, like um, and pushed away the feeling stuff and would just like push through, and it was so much in the doing energy. Um I so after my kids, I had postnatal depression and severe anxiety. And a big part of what I think led to that was this needing to be a superwoman, a super mum, having to like I wanted to be like the perfect mum. Like it was like I needed to needing to be the perfect everything, that whole perfectionist um space. And my husband was working like we had a he had a business, he was working sometimes seven days a week, 14 hours a day. So I felt really isolated. Um, and don't get me wrong, I had people around me, but um I really wasn't fulfilled being like I I needed to be in business, like I knew I wanted to do a business, I wanted to be in business, I wanted to build a business. So at the time I was studying cake decorating and I built a cake decorating business from home, and so they would go to sleep, and I would be studying, and I would be making cakes up to like all hours of the morning. It was crazy. I pushed myself so so hard, and I really got burnt out. Um, and then something happened with my son where he stopped breathing when he was about three weeks old, my second son, and that triggered severe anxiety for me. So I and and it was kind of like that, you know, that point in time where you're just like, I need to slow, something needs to change and slow down.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So went to see a psychologist, she helped me so much, um, but it wasn't quite enough. And so she suggested that I look into becoming a life coach that I went down that avenue, and that helped me so so much. And so from there I went into a business and I worked as a coach inside of this coaching business, and um I was doing all the sales calls, all the enrollment calls, because that was kind of my background. I was like an account manager in my previous life for four kids, and so that helped me a lot with that, but it was still I was still very much in the masculine energy, so I was still in the pushing, learning how to flow into that feminine energy of like allowing myself space rather than just like total, like full-on pressure, doing, doing, doing all the time, and then from there I moved into another business. I trained as an energy medicine practitioner using a um modality called soul psychology, and so I went into that business and became the global trainer, and I was training that certification um globally, like online, and that was so much fun. And I was still doing all the sales and enrollment course for this business, helping with the marketing. So I was pretty much like jumping into other people's businesses, and like I had so much faith in them and what and the product that I could easily sell. But when it came to me, I it's like I I didn't there was like not and I wasn't valuing myself, I didn't know how to put myself out there. So um anyway, within the Energy Medicine Institute, I really found that I was moving more into the feminine energy and learning how to just give myself space, honour my needs, listen to my body. I was clearing a lot of trauma, like um trauma from this lifetime, but also past lives, is that if that's something that you're believing, if that's not, just ditch that. Um, but instead of like what started to become more important than the expectations and the sense of like living up to this perfect mum, this perfect wife, this perfect everything, um, pleasure and joy became more of value. And so I learned how to kind of like weave them both in together, and that's when I decided to build my business. And I guess what I want to share is like despite our gender, we all have like masculine and feminine energies within us, and then you'll find like in some areas of your life you might be more in the masculine energy and that doing, doing, doing energy, but then in other areas you'll be in the feminine.
SPEAKER_01Can you relate to that? Yeah, absolutely, and I think it's um it like I'm also a bit obsessed with anything to do with um personality types and that sort of thing, so it's kind of like the shoes off mode sort of thing as well. So sometimes the shoes off mode is more feminine, but then in certain situations, for example, you might need to put your masculine on, like if you're in a like a more of a corporate role, or if you're striving for a goal, or if you're putting some new project in, or whatever, that sort of thing. So it's kind of like you need to be able to be flexible to switch both of them on and off, you know, for which like whatever sub-project you are even doing, like within life or business. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, 100%. So I think like when I was thinking about what we'd talk about, I kind of pulled out like what uh being more in the masculine energy, like a couple of examples that I think everyone can relate to, um, especially in business. And one of those things was like, I thought about what energy, like the masculine energy looks like in its shadow aspect. So when it's really imbalanced, and you know, that looks like always being on, like that point of like we're always on to where you're really not listening to to your body, you're not listening to your body signals of you know telling you that you need to slow down, you're not scheduling any in you're not scheduling in any downtime, yeah, and you're pushing, and there's like so much pressure. Yeah, is that something that you find a lot with your clients?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it is, and it's um interestingly, I just finished reading Untamed by Glenn and Doyle as well, and she described something so it was a hits hit home so much where when um in her new relationship that her now wife was lying on the couch, like in the middle of the day watching television, and that she would come in and be like huffing and puffing and kind of stomping around, and and in her head, all she could think about was like, Oh, it must be nice to be able to take a take an hour off and lie on the couch, and I felt like that was so me in so many of my relationships and so many of my judgments of other people earlier on that like that whole um uh and it probably came from childhood as well, but that laziness and that idler idleness is you know, anything that is unproductive is a waste of time, and it's laziness and it's gluttony, and it's all these sort of things, and it was so um drenched in shame and um uh what's the other word? Like it just like it was just a really, really bad thing for you to be able to stop and and not be striving all the time. Like you like what's wrong with you? You've you've always got to be moving to something new, and yeah, I think that's a really, really big thing is that um we talked about this yesterday as well, is that um a lot of us women in particular attach our worth to our outputs. Right. So if I'm if I'm not outputting, if I haven't got something to show for what I actually have been working on for the last eight hours, then I'm a failure and I'm I like I should just go and get a job or that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00100%. And I love that you said that it came from childhood as well. Like I totally relate to that, that like you're lazy if you're not doing something. Yeah, so and that's that whole push, right? And when you said that, I just remembered thinking back to like um my parents' relationship. So my dad was a pharmacist, he had his own business, he passed away three years ago. So um he um him and my mum, I just remember them arguing a lot because and it was always about business, like she had all of these ex and I love her to death, and she was not ever coming from a horrible place, like she's a kind-hearted person, but it just she just was not resourced enough to know any other way. Um, and she was all like a real go-getter, like always doing something like that real high expectations of herself and really pushed herself really hard on herself. So I know a lot of my stuff came from her attitude and and how she was in in life. Whereas I look at my dad and I always remember her saying, You don't know how to run a business, you don't know how to run a business. And so and he wasn't phased, don't worry. Um just laugh it off and go to sleep. Um, but I think it's really interesting as a child when you are witnessing uh other people's belief systems around business and around laziness and what it, you know, what it means to slow down and what it means to give yourself a break because it can really impact us, and we sometimes we don't even realize why we're pushing ourselves so hard, and that it's come from that like those generational belief systems that are like even handed down past our parents, like how they were.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I remember um something that mum said to me, I I've probably completely off the cuff, but I remember her saying it quite often, especially when I was little, and I don't really know what the whole situation was or if she was feeling this way or whatever, but she always said, if you want something done, ask a busy person. And when I questioned that, I was like, What do you mean? She's like, Well, people who are busy are always doing things, they're more likely to finish something. People who sit around doing nothing, like they're just gonna continue doing nothing. So if you need someone to help you, ask someone who's already busy. And I when I think about that now as a uh a uh perpetual people pleaser and someone who I'm like I had until several years ago, very, very tied in um to my self-worth was being validated by helping other people and by being useful and that sort of thing. And so I see how somewhere in there I had a belief like the busier I am, the more helpful I can be, and the more people will ask for and accept my help when I offer it if I'm already busy. So I was always busy, I was always doing something, and I was always quite frustrated and um um I guess frustrated by seeing people who weren't doing that. I was like, but what do you mean you've got free time? Like I was, you know, in my early 20s, I worked three jobs. I'd go get up at you know six o'clock, go to my seven o'clock to five o'clock job, um, finish there. I used to work in a shop, so I'd do my and I was a manager, so I'd manage the shop five days a week from eight or seven thirty till five o'clock or whatever, shut the shop, go across the road. I worked in a restaurant, I was an awful waitress, so they put me in the bar, but I'd work in the bar from about six till ten. Once the restaurant shut down, I'd drive into the city and work in a nightclub until three o'clock in the morning. And that was just my routine. And then like that was just sort of what I did. And then when I wasn't doing that, I would be working full-time and studying full-time and starting a business, or you know, or like I've just I used to just fill every single second with stuff. And if I wasn't doing things, I like I didn't even watch television or anything like that because it felt idle, it felt you know, wrong. The only thing that I really allowed myself to do back then was read books, and I read them en masse. That was my only kind of downtime, but that was still felt like I was still being productive, I was still checking a box, and I could still look at the stack of books on my bookshelf that I'd already read at the end of it. Do you know what I mean? It wasn't just being, there was always a uh a goal that had to be hit. Yeah. And it was really, it's a really big one, right? But that whole, yeah, like there's so many of those little stories, and some of them, like I said, are just throwaway lines that someone said about you know, being lazy or being productive or what it meant and all that sort of thing that are just so deeply ingrained. Now that I've you know got the self-awareness and I've done the work and that sort of thing, I see where they've come from and I can call the bullshit on them, but yeah, it's it's a big process, right?
SPEAKER_00It's a big process, and and that was one big thing too. Like I remember my mum always saying you're lazy. Like, I just remember that like it was a thing for her because she didn't give herself permission to have a break. So the one that was having a break was deemed as lazy, right? And I love that you said ticking off a box because that was another thing that I kind of thought of that was one thing that was huge, and I think it's a big thing with overachievers and people that do connect their worth to their outcome, like to their output, yeah. Um and you know, to what they like to their productivity, because you know, we can have there's always something to do, right? And like we can always find something to do, especially if you're a list lover, like I don't know about you, but I love this. Hello, I'm a burglary. It's my life.
SPEAKER_01I write lists of the lists I'm going to write.
SPEAKER_00I just and I I remember like I remember this period of time in my life where there was always a list, and like I'd tick a couple of things off, but then I would add double that amount on, and this list was pages and pages, and I I don't know what actually was in my mind, but I thought that I was gonna get to all of those things. Um, and I remember my coach at the time just really helping me shift out of that need to like write everything down, and so this like idea of like being stuck in all the detail, and it can really keep you so stuck in the busy stuff in business, and it can stop you from making the time um to schedule in those like high impact tasks, those high priority tasks, because you can waste so much time on the busy crap. Well, do you know what I'm saying when I'm talking about it?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely, and I think it's a it's a really good place to hide because if you are busy all the time and you're you feel like you're ticking a heap of stuff off that are inconsequential tasks that don't really move the needle a lot, but you still feel like but you've got a heap done. And so I didn't have time to do that big thing that would have actually made an impact. And and it's a really nice place to it's it's like that fear of failure. What if I actually do the work that I actually need to do that actually yields the results? I might actually be successful, or it might actually fail, or I might actually make money, or people might actually see what I'm doing, or whatever it is. It's it's it's almost like a tool for procrastinating, like doing more stuff. Definitely procrastinating doesn't necessarily have to be doing nothing, procrastinating can be doing just more of the wrong shit, basically.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I agree. And it's it's an avoidance, right? Like the way that you're describing too, it's like it's a real avoidance of the things that will make that bigger impact, like you said, because of that fear of failure. I know one of those things for me, because I've only like been in my own business for about a year and a half now. But the one thing that um I found really hard was the relationship building. Like everyone talking about relationship building is like the key to your business, and I hated Facebook because I felt like it drew it sucked all the energy out of me, like I didn't know how to hold myself in a place where I like I wasn't impacted by all the kind of things that you see going through the scroll and like being in those Facebook groups. Um, and the one thing that really helped me with with that was learning to set an intention before I go in. So I had a really clear I till now I have a really clear intention before I jump on Facebook, so I'm not wasting time and I'm just I can quickly filter because I know what I'm going in there for.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So that was a huge one for me. And and in terms of relationship building, so spending time in there having those conversations, like those in private messages or in Facebook groups, or I love Instagram, so and I love that there's the voice like the voice option because I feel like you can really um have some amazing conversations and connect there. But I think with the um coming back to like the avoiding and going to all like the busy stuff, um a lot of that I feel can be a distraction from uh being with yourself because I think I know and I know this is true for me, and it's true for a lot of my clients, is sometimes you don't feel safe in the space, sometimes you don't feel safe in the being because your mind that's the time where your mind can be on overdrive. Yep, and all of that that inner chatter happens and all of that nasty self-talk happens. So um distracting yourself with always things to do is a really great way to kind of get out of your head and listen to what's actually happening. So it's also kind of a protection mechanism, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01And I think that um that applies to to everything, like that's why it's so hard to switch off and to not be busy all the time, and and even you know, even if you're lying on the couch watching Netflix, that's still kind of a distraction, right? But it's um I think what often happens, we're talking about this with someone recently as well, is that when you do whatever it is, and often it does come out of a bit of a crisis or a bit of a shitstorm or something's gone wrong, and it's kind of like um like the catalyst for you to stop bullshitting yourself about things like this, right? So often that sort of thing happens, and then whatever kind of epiphany comes in, or you see something, or you finally um acknowledge that something's not quite right or it's not aligned or something, you can't unsee it. And once you've had that once, it's really scary to go back there again sometimes, right? Because you're like, no, no, no, no. If I just stay over here and I'm busy, then I can ignore all that other shit because I just can't, I just don't want to deal with it. I don't want to have that difficult conversation, I don't want to have the have to make that difficult decision, I don't want to have to deal with that, whatever. So it's a really nice place to stay over here and be busy and that sort of thing, where actually once this is dealt with, this stuff over here becomes completely irrelevant anyway, right? But it's kind of like you've kind of got to trust the process, but you can't trust the process until you do the process.
SPEAKER_00So, and it's like being it, you're you're so right there. Like I I love I love how you just explain that. Um, and and it's like I think as well, like in that busyness, too, just to add to that, um with when you're so used to doing something, there is a sense of security in that familiar way of being. And so just being able to be a little bit open and willing to change to see how you can do it differently. Because sometimes it is so scary because you don't know what to do, like you're not resourced enough to deal with, and if you've been avoiding it for so long, then the moments in time where you do say, I'm just gonna give myself some time to. And then all of a sudden you're flooded with all of the things that you weren't listening to. And you can think that by keeping yourself busy, it's going to go away, but actually it gets louder. Like your intuition is always talking to you. And so I found with me that the way if I wasn't listening to it, which I was never listening to it mentally, it would manifest as pain. Like it would manifest in my body as like literally I had I have PCOS, but I used to have disrupturing in my ovaries regularly and I'd be hospitalized and I still wasn't listening. I could I would still keep pushing. I got to a point where like I had heel spurs and I couldn't stand on my feet for more than five minutes at a time. And I still wasn't listening. I remember my kids were young and I wouldn't even wake my husband up because I think oh like he's more his job's more important. He's bringing in the money, he's got to get up for work. So I would get up knowing that I needed to stretch before I even walked, and I was making it worse because I was just pushing, pushing, pushing instead of listening to what my body was actually trying to tell me and change my ways. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I love the the quote that says something like, if you don't listen when it's a whisper, it will eventually start screaming. And you know, and I think it takes a couple of those being screamed at moments for you to go, okay, I like I know that I've ignored this and I know that I've made it worse, and you know, the problem's just been exacerbated because I was being a bit of a dick and pushing through and trying to be a warrior about it rather than just you know doing what was actually needed and that sort of thing. Um, and I I guess the the the tricky things are once you've done that is to be able to identify the whispers and not just be not push those aside and like not wait until it gets to the scream sort of thing and go, okay, this is a thing. And and usually it's like for me at the moment, it just feels more like an imbalance. It just feels like oh like six months ago, I was kind of bounding around and I felt like I was over here, and now I feel like a bit flat, like what's missing? So I can like have that sort of self-awareness at that point rather than waiting until I get deathly ill. Yeah, yeah, um, and the same sort of thing. But having said that, it still happens sometimes, you know. It's still you still get to the point like where you go, oh yeah, I probably should have, I probably should have had a sleep sometime in the last two weeks, you know.
SPEAKER_00And you know what, we're human, and sometimes when you hear it, because I guess when I moving into like the mediumship and just being able to hear so much, like my intuition, like I literally like will hear word for word when it comes to like that's how I download my strategies and all like literally I just sit there with a piece of paper and it's like floods through me, right? But there's so many times that I don't want to listen to my intuition because it's telling me to do something that I don't want to do, like you know, the personality me doesn't want to do my ego's resistant, um, and I won't do it, right? But then I'll get to a point where it's like you talked about it this whisper turning into a scream. I like this analogy where um you know it it your intuition talks to you like it whispers first, and if you don't hear the whisper, then it slaps you in the face, and if you don't heal the slap in the face and do something about it that time, then you get hit by a truck. Yeah, um, and so like I think of it like that, and I usually will not usually, but there's a lot of times where I will wait until the slap in the face, like because I hear the whisper, and I still just want to do what I want to do anyway, because it feels familiar, right? And I feel safe and I don't want to like move out of my comfort zone.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, and like we're human, but like there's a it's like there's a challenge at every part of that journey, whether it's like starting to listen to the body and then realizing, oh, okay, something's going wrong here, or for me it's meditating. If I I meditate every single day, and that's like it just grounds me. And I feel like that was the biggest part of what was missing when I was in that pushing mode. And in most like my real masculine energy and ignoring the feminine was the fact that um I didn't feel connected, like I felt like I had no connection, and and that was part of the isolation, I think, too, like really feeling connected inside, yeah, connected to something greater than you, because then you're like divinely guided, like you the information flows when you're listening, and it all comes through the body, right? Like our this body is a vessel for our um our soul, like it's how we receive our soul guidance through like like tingle, tingling in our in our hands, or like a little. I was just talking to a client yesterday and she was telling me, and this used to happen to me ages ago when the mediumship started coming in because I wasn't listening. She would get she gets pain in her ear, like it's like physical pain, like listen to me. And then once she listens, then the pain goes away. So yeah, I don't know. Is that something that you can relate to? Because I know empaths can feel really like it's a physical um communication sometimes.
SPEAKER_01Look, to be honest, I'm kind of I feel like I know there's something bigger and more, and at times I felt really connected to it, but at the moment I'm kind of I'm I'm doing the equivalent of sticking my fingers in my ear and going la la la. Um, and and I know and I, as I said, I've got the self-awareness, I know that that's what I'm doing, and I'm allowing myself to do it, but I also have had lots of messages, and I feel so blessed to be in a um in a space where I'm surrounded by women who call me on my bullshit and who are much more connected to everything than I am, who often just send me a little nudge, and sometimes I'll get a call, a text message out of the blue from someone completely random, or I'll be in an actual session with someone, and it's the same message over and over again. So it's like it's like I notice it a lot when I'm not listening to obviously what's coming directly, it comes through everyone else. But it will be, you know, someone will tell you someone will mention the name of a book, and then in the next two days, 15 people send you a message saying, You've got to read this book, and you're like, fine, I'll fucking read the book then, right? Yeah, like it takes that sometimes. Like I feel I'm probably still in that space of of being really connected and being um looking um still kind of externally, but being really open to all of that sort of thing, you know. I see the patterns and I, you know, have to see it once or twice. I'm like, fine, I'm listening, all right. Take my toys out of the con or concentrate and pay attention to what's going on here. Um, but yeah, I think the there was a really interesting thing that happened probably um almost two years ago now that I had cellulitis in my head, which was this random thing. Like I just I woke up one morning and I'm like, what's going on with my face? And my whole forehead was like raised. I looked like that guy out of Star Trek with the big forehead, right? And I had to go to the doctor and ended up going to hospital and being on a drip, and it was this awful, awful thing. And um, it was kind of scary, like you know, Dr. Google, of course, you have to go and check it out. Oh, I wish I had a doctor. Actually, off your head, like cellulitis in your head was basically do not collect go, do not collect$200, you know, get to hospital sort of thing. And then within, you know, it got worse, so I did go to hospital and whatnot. But I was explaining it to a couple of girlfriends, and most of whom are, you know, much more in the spiritual kind of realm than I am. And one one um one of my friends messaged me around the same time. I don't even know that she'd seen this. She's like, it's just like you've got so much in your head that it's it's just exploding. Like your head is literally, it's you know, figuratively, you've got so much in your head that your head feels like it's exploding, but it's like actually manifested in your head, literally exploding. And I was like, that is exactly what's happening. Because I had was in this sort of time where I just had so much going on, some really big decisions to make, some really big changes to make to my entire life, and that sort of thing. And it was like my body just physically manifested exactly what was actually going on, kind of metaphorically.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01When that happened, I was like, oh yeah, right. I need to that was a bit of a truck-like moment. It was a truck-like moment, exactly.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so yeah, but you know, I love that like I I love that you are so aware because I think that's highly intuitive in itself, like being aware of those universal signs and the synchronicities. Like it's so beautiful when you are receiving messages that way, like you're seeing repetitive patterns or repetitive, whether it's a book or whether it's whatever it is. Um, whether it's a symbol, it's funny sometimes when it's a symbol because you kind of wonder, you need to work out what what the meaning of it is, but it's good when it's a book because it's pretty clear on what it's like.
SPEAKER_01For me, it's a word, and I'm so like I'm so in love with words. We play dictionary games, like in my family, and those sort of things. Like words in the English language just I've just like I just love them so much. So it's no surprise that often I feel like I get them just via words, and and often it's like a word just gets stuck in my head, either that I've never heard of before or that I have heard of before, but I haven't heard anyone say it, I haven't read it in a book, it's just come into my head, and it's like it's like when you have the um like a song gets stuck in your head. It's like just a word, and this word just plays over and like just a word. Go away. What? And then as soon as I'm finally sick of having this word in my head for three days, and I go and check it out and look at a few different like the symbology of the word or what it actually means or what's behind it, and you're like, huh, why didn't I just listen to that the first time? Then it probably could have stopped irritating me even like overnight, and I'll wake up and the first thing I think at three o'clock in the morning is that bloody word that means nothing consciously, but it actually you know had some sort of thing. So there is some sort of meaning. Yeah, it's really interesting to be aware of how you're you know, and I've done the little quizzes about what sort of player you are, what's like player audience, clairvoyant, all that sort of thing, and I think that's really interesting. And I so that's I guess kind of so do you see the word or do you hear the word?
SPEAKER_00I hear it, yeah. So I hear it. I'm very clear, and that's how mine started for me. So I'd be in like processes with my coach, and I'd just be like, I'm just seeing a word, like I'm just hearing a word. Sometimes I'd see it, but most of the time I'd hear it. Um, and that's how it all started for me. And then it's just like, and that's what I used to start doing. I would like used to do, I would um go and Google the word and specify I used to get animals a lot, so I'd go and have a look what the spirit animal mean, what meaning is, and then like pull out whatever kind of resonated with me. Um, but it's really fun like starting to develop your intuition like that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, yeah, so that's really cool. It is quite cool.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I think like for me, I was really lucky when I started my business that I worked with that my clients by and large were in that sort of space. They're very creative, very spiritual, very connected, that sort of thing. And I came in with the business stuff, like the strategy and the organization and the whatever. But in doing that sort of thing and just understanding who I was working with and how their business worked and what they did with their clients, that I kind of got a like a baptism of fire over the space of a year, sort of thing, where beforehand I was a bit like, what? What are they talking about? What a heap of like what hippies, you know, that sort of thing. And then after a year, I was like, Oh my god, I get it now, and it really kind of made sense because I I had so much, um, so many um almost not sessions with people, but just by virtue of working with them that I understood how they did things and what they did, and and it was just a massive download of information with that sort of thing. And I think the really nice thing about that sort of thing is that it doesn't like if one what one person does as a tool or as a modality or as a even their their set of language um uh that they use around whatever it is that they do. If that doesn't make sense, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist, it's just the wrong vehicle for you to kind of tap into. Like I've tried EFT so many times and I just don't get it, and it's to the point that it frustrates me, and I will never do it again because it just it's just not for me, and I'm okay with that. Um but there's other things that haven't worked for other people that I'll rant and rage about because they've been so effective and that sort of thing. But I was really blessed to work with um a woman who was a um an intuitive business coach when I was first starting, and I was like, I'm I'm this and I've like I've got my shit together and I've blah blah blah, and she was like, Yeah, whatever. And she kind of gave me um she asked me the right questions, it was probably the best thing that made me also understand like oh it's not actually what's important, like I don't have to have everything perfect, and I don't have to have my ducks in a row, and I don't have to have both alone, I don't have to have a perfect title for myself before I can put myself out there, like those sorts of things, um, rather than just being very strategic and doing your business plan and sticking to it, but actually tapping into what do I want from this business? What's the purpose? What am I actually gonna spend my time doing that I that will light me up, not just help everyone else? Yeah, you know, and I feel like I was really, really lucky to have those sort of people in my corner rather than in the previous businesses I'd started, which were very much more like, well, here's the hundred-page business plan, and you fill this out and then you give this to the bank and you get the blah blah blah. That's how I thought you did it. And then someone said, No, no, no, you can start making money before you um before you spend any, and you don't have to have it all planned out. Like, let's just work out the next two weeks and we'll figure it out after that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And going, Oh, well, that feels better. And you know, it's like trust the process thing because I'd never done that process, I couldn't trust it, and then once I was like, Oh, fuck it, I'll do it then, fine. And then it worked, you're like, Oh.
SPEAKER_00And it's not right, it's like what feels good for you. It's that's how you know, like, what is in alignment with you. It's not trying to um push through something that feels really crap and you know it's not for you. Yeah, but you keep trying to push through because you know that it's worked for that person and that person, and so you like move into that comparing space. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um, as you were talking, the other thing that came up um that I was thinking about was you this so like moving from that place of like being so strategic to the opposite of where you are like resisting strategy because you are just want like you're intuitive. And um, and this is like when I moved from and I'm such an extreme person, like I go from all or nothing. So it was like all masculine energy to like all feminine energy. I don't want to have a look at strategy, I don't want to like, I don't want everything to be a certain way, I just want to go with the flow and allow what comes. And then that like being in that extreme doesn't work either because when you're resisting like a strategy because it feels too rigid and you're relying only on your intuition, the way that I've learned to see that is um like to shift my mindset around this resistance to strategy was to see that strategy and structure um is can you can see it as a container, like it's a container to hold the ideas because resisting that strategy, I found what was happening was like I was creating all of this content and none of the messaging was aligned.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So it was like I'm getting all of these ideas and I'm sharing them, but it's all really scattered, and it's just like because one day I feel like this, and so I'm sharing this, and then the next day I'm feeling like this, and it's just there's no higher level strategy when it comes, like no content strategy, no like business model, so it's just so super scattered.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So like one extreme, like that over masculine, like the imbalance masculine or the imbalanced feminine, like there's there's a lot of chick things to both, right? Yeah, yeah, it's like learning to find that balance um between the two, because I I found the other thing too when it came to like content and like just trying to do everything solely intuitively and like not having a container or a strategy, was that um I would be super inspired, and I know this happens to a lot of intuitors because I hear this from my clients too, is I'd be super inspired, like there's this period where I'd be really inspired, and I'd just got so much information, and then I got share it all instantly because it was coming through and I was inspired, and then you just have like a dead period, yeah. Like the motivation's gone, and there's because there's been no prep and there's no like strategy, and there's no like there's I haven't scheduled any content in ahead, and you don't have to. I mean, some people do, but you don't have to schedule in content like six months in advance. You could that wouldn't work for me, that would kill my life. But um, like scheduling out a month in advance feels good because then when I'm inspired, I'll like take a photo of my journal, stick it in the document, and then there's a point like I was starting to learn the way that I work. Yep. Then I'll go back to that and be like, okay, so what can I do with this? And then have it there, schedule it in. So even if I'm not inspired for two weeks, it's okay. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, exactly. I often ask um, like groups, especially big groups of people, like, why aren't you doing X as often as you'd like to? Whether it's blogging, social media content, planning, reporting, you name it, doesn't really matter what it is. Um, I invariably get half the people who are like, Oh, because I procrastinate, because I don't know how, because I don't have the support, because I don't have the time, all those sorts of things. But then there's also a group of people who say, Oh no, I never do that because I need to go with the flow and all that sort of thing. And my question to both groups, but especially the ones who are like, No, no, no, I don't need any structure, is it working for you now? And invariably the answer is from most of them, no, it's not working. Because exactly like you said, I get these bursts of inspiration and creativity, and it's all systems go and it's amazing, and there's downloads, and I've got output, and blah blah blah, but then there's a dead period and I've got nothing to anchor to, right? When you have some sort of structure or um strategy or whatever, it means that you don't have to stress, and you when you're in that down period, you're like, Oh, I'm in a down period, cool. Everything's gonna keep ticking along as usual. Yeah, that's fine. Otherwise, that's when you get these massive peaks and troughs in your business and in your energy, and it kills your self-esteem because you're like, Oh my god, this is amazing, and then five minutes later you're down here going, What the fuck has happened? What am I gonna do? This sucks. I hate my life, I hate my job, my business sucks. I'm never going anywhere. And having those kind of safety nets at those points is where you can go, oh, this is shit. But actually, you're still hearing PayPal ping every couple of days because there's something in place that people can still find you and all that sort of like whatever, whether we're talking marketing and that sort of thing. But it just takes the pressure out of having to be on all the time, like we talked about before, having those things um set in place, whether it's having an accountability buddy or a VA or a workflow or a schedule that is um that you can even follow, that you don't even have to pre-schedule, but it just says, Oh, I can't be bothered doing this today. You go to your plan, what am I supposed to be doing? Fine, or do those three things and go on, you know, go on, rather than going, this isn't this is awful, and you don't have the mental space or clarity or motivation to work out what you need to do and do it. How much nicer is it when you can just rock up and just do it? You don't have to do the thinking part of it, you know.
SPEAKER_00So much better. And it's just like it's this idea of like setting yourself up for success, yeah, rather than setting yourself up for failure because you know that that's gonna happen. Like you know that there's gonna you can't be on and inspired all the time. Yeah, and you could, but that would be bloody exhausting, like and it's and that gets overwhelming and it gets messy and everything, like you just feel really scattered. Um, because and it's it's funny that just reminded me. Like, I had a client come um come to me about a month ago and she's like, I want to um awaken my intuition because that was the messaging at the time in the last class that I did. I want to awaken my intuition and I want to be always, I want to be always receiving, I want to be always open, I want to be always channeling. And then, like when we really had a look at the ecology of that, like realistically, that is going to be exhausting. It's gonna be just as exhausting as feeling uninspired and trying to pull inspiration as it would to complete. It's like everything is about balance, right? It's like, and also realizing that we go through cycles, like there is a you know, there's a time to plan, there's a time to take action, there's a time to rest, like totally pause, and there's a time to reflect. And for me, that was huge. Learning that I actually had I could give myself permission to be in those different parts of the cycle rather than always being on.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I love talking about the cycles, especially, especially when it comes to do with business. But like with everything, if it applies to your business, it applies to everything else, right? And it's the kind of seasonal things. So when it's spring, everything's in growth mode, everything's beautiful and inspiring, and then it's summer, it's like, right, we need to make hayweather say sunshines or whatever that saying is, and you know, reap the rewards, and then it goes into autumn where you're like planning for the hibernation, and then there's the dead period, and sometimes you can go through that whole seasonal cyclical thing in a day or an hour or within a project or over the space of a year or a month or whatever, and when you're in autumn with your business, you might be in spring with your love life, or you might be in winter with your um with what's happening in your home, but in summer with you being a parent, like and it's totally okay to allow that, and it's almost like it almost works better when you um when you when you can obviously see what's going on, but give yourself permission to be in a different season across everything because then you you have the peaks and trops, but they're kind of like they all balance each other out, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01When I do things like this, it's going back to being super the masculine sort of things, with um when we do launch planning and calendar planning on a micro level with my clients. We often talk about um at any time, so we have like a calendar, if you think of a calendar, but across there we've got what you're delivering, what you're launching, and what you're creating. Oftentimes, what happens is we're like, all right, I'm launching this thing, but as I'm launching it, I'm also creating the thing that I'm about to deliver, but I'm still delivering that thing that I launched last month, and you end up with this like stack. So for a month, you're like all up here because you've got so much that you're trying to do, and then after that period's finished, you go into this like easy thing, and you're like, There's nothing to do, I'm not launching anything. I've finished the delivery and I've done the creation, and then you sort of not you feel like you're sort of spinning your wheels and you're not you kind of I don't know, you sort of feels like you're looking around going, like, what the hell just happened? Like I just came out of the whirlwind. Whereas when you can go, okay, well, I can't be creating this thing because I'm gonna be putting all my energy into launching, or you know, I'm well I I don't want to be um, you know, trying to start a new relationship when I'm um smashing it with my business, that sort of thing. Like you might pick one thing to be summer for, yes, and let the other stuff just fallow in winter for a little while, and that's okay rather than trying to be all on all the time. Because, like you said, what happens is you do it so hard you burn the candle at both ends, and then it all crashes and burns anyway. Exactly. Being okay with balancing across things within your business, but also if you look at it across your entire all the shit that's going on with your life, and going, well, this is this is up here right now, which means this bit here needs to come down, or you know, that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I love that. So it's like being aware, like really aware of like where you're at and then and just yeah, knowing where it's all kind of coming.
SPEAKER_01Like giving yourself permission as well. I'm also I notice sometimes um I know probably only happens once every three or four months, I'll go through a period for about 10 days where I'm so super productive and I'm so on, and I am like just a uh doing and creating an output-making machine, and I'll work until one o'clock in the morning, two o'clock in the morning, three o'clock in the morning for a couple of weeks straight, but I know that I can't do it ongoing, so and I just give myself permission, like right, I'm gonna do this, but then I always have that fellow part afterwards, so I've smashed it for the last five days, or I've just achieved like three months' worth of work in the last five days because something clicked and it just worked, and I had the energy and the you know practicalities around me that allowed that to happen, but I'm gonna lie on the couch for another week and I don't want to talk to anyone, right? I give myself four. I'm cancelling everything and don't call me. Do you know what I mean? And being okay with that, that's completely that's it's natural. Like we, you know, if you think about cavemen, not that I'm a biologist or anything, but the all the rhetoric about being a caveman, you like you've smashed it, you had to run away from the tiger, and then you could go and sleep in your cave for three days. That's actually cool. You know, biologically, you don't have to be in any of those states for any longer or shorter than you want to be, and that what feels good and doable and sustainable, I suppose.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. And I get that because I remember like my first couple of launches that happened, but what was happening was I would go to sleep and then I would randomly wake up at 3 a.m. with a flood of ideas, and I was just going with it. I'd just go with it. I'd be up until seven in the morning, and that would be okay because I would sleep during the day when the kids were at school, and that would be okay. And so I guess to, I mean, it's not it's not great long term, like to mess up your body like that if it's impacting you. If it's not, then fine, go with it. But for me, it really did impact me. So I had to learn a new way of being so that I could be asleep at night and um, you know, be awake. So I rather than sleeping early, I'll just wait until everyone goes to sleep. Because for some reason I find that when everyone's asleep and the house is quiet, all of a sudden all the energy in the world has settled. Yeah, and I'm just calm and I can just receive information really, really easily without the distracting energy, especially with kids. You know what it's like to have kids around while you're trying to focus, that can be really hard if you're not. How funny is that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. No, I think I think that's a really good point, and just you know, being um being receptive to to trying out different things. I was a bit the same. I went through a period I was waking up at between 4.13 and 4.37. It was one of those two times all every night. And so, and I'd lie there and I'd get frustrated that I couldn't get back to sleep, and then it'd be 6.30, and one of the kids would come in, and then I'd be like just going back to sleep. So I ended up, you know, going through a period of I'll I'll get up and I'll do some work, and I was so productive for an hour and a half or so because it was quiet and it was dark, and I'd made myself a nice coffee and the lights were low and all that. So it was just a really nice time. But then I kind of got into a habit and I was like, Well, I'll just take my laptop to bed so that when I wake up at four o'clock in the morning I can just start work. But then my body was like, No, we're sleeping through now, and I felt a bit like, oh, when am I gonna do my work now? I've got used to having my little lies on the couch and that sort of thing. But I guess it's kind of like listening to your body, and and sometimes your body's like, right, we need to do this thing right now, and sometimes your body's like, uh, no, we're sleeping, and you know, and I like I'd come down in the morning and get the kids ready and get them up, and then I'm like, Where's my computer? And it would be upstairs because I, you know, habitually was going up there, but I wasn't actually working on it, so I wasn't bringing it down the morning. And I was like, wow, we've changed again, have we? We're in it, we're in a new season, I suppose. So that's cool.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and that's like you know, that's such a beautiful way to and it's like letting go of control, right? As well. Yeah, like really letting go of control and just allowing, um, I just think of it as like allowing your body to tell you what needs to be done. Like, I know for me that's a big thing every week. Um, before I start the week uh on a Sunday night, I will meditate and just ask myself, like, what do I feel like I need um to happen this week that is gonna allow me to feel really good and really aligned through the week? And then I can I just get the information because um, and you know, that's something you could do journaling or meditating or whatever, but just planning like setting yourself up for a week that you know you're gonna enjoy, I think is important too, yeah, depending on your energy, because you might have really low energy, you might not want to do all of the things that you had planned for the week and need to shift things around so that it feels good.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, exactly. And one of my favorite questions to ask people is what are the three things that you want to spend more time doing or the most of your time doing, is like especially through the filter of your business or something. And 99% of the time I ask people that, uh, it they're the three things that they're spending the least amount of time doing. Just being conscious of that and going, well, how can I how can I start to swing the balance? It's usually not a flick you switch overnight and you're like, stop doing all those things and start doing this. There's you know, often a bit of a plan about outsourcing some things or automating some things or stopping doing some things or whatever in order to make that a smooth transition but not have everything completely, you know, thrown out or whatever. Yeah, but as soon as you're conscious of it, you're like, like I did this, someone asked me this probably four years ago, and the three things I can't remember what the three things were now, but it was like blogging, um, spending more time with um like running workshops and whatever the third thing was, and there were things that I weren't doing, and I just I as soon as I'm like, I love writing, why do I resist writing my blogs or why do I resist writing emails and that sort of thing? What's going on? It's because I've was making myself busy with all the other shit, right? Like all the things that I should have just been handing over to my VA or not worrying about at all because they weren't the right things to do. And as soon as I then start doing, okay, well, you know, I'm gonna take myself off. I one thing, one thing I changed with that immediately was I think it was every second or third week I went for a Saturday morning from about eight till twelve to my favourite cafe, put my headphones in, took my laptop, ordered my most favourite breakfast, had 4,000 coffees, and I just wrote sometimes. I wrote blogs, sometimes I wrote faff, sometimes I wrote emails or just whatever, whatever I needed to write. And just feeling like like looking back and going, I just spent four hours at a cafe writing. I just spent four hours doing something that I fucking love doing. It wasn't like you know, changing my entire business structure, just changing, making that one little change, changed the whole way that I felt about everything. And when that feels more balanced, automatically start like everything else kind of starts to fall into alignment, right? Because you start making more conscious choices about how you're spending your your energy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I love that because it's like you're prioritizing what feels good.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then it goes, like it comes through, and people can see when there's a different vibe in your business because you've tweaked something behind the scenes. I don't usually know what it is, but there's there's a different it just is different, it's better.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you show up in a different energy because you're fulfilled, you're more fulfilled. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's a thing. We could talk about this for absolute days. I feel like we need to have another conversation about all this, especially for the kids stuff. I feel like there's something going on there, like how to support our kids to not go through that whole process and get it into their 30s by the time they realize they don't have to do that sort of thing as well.
SPEAKER_00So you know what? You're modeling it at the end of the day. Exactly. Yeah, they're around you, they feel that. But yeah, that's totally a conversation for another day. Cool.
SPEAKER_01Thank you so much for the chat. It was awesome to connect with you again. I'm sure there's more chats like this.
SPEAKER_00You're amazing. Thank you. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_01Oh, it was so good. All right, my love. Well, I will see you next time. I hope everyone who's watching and listening um has enjoyed the conversation. We'd love to hear your feedback. So um feel free if you're watching or listening to the replay, pop it into the comments, ask us any questions, give us any aha moments, anything like that. Um, otherwise, we will be back at some point, probably.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And uh yeah, thanks, Christine. Thank you. Bye.
SPEAKER_00Bye.