How to Get Out of My Own Way

 today, we are talking about how to get out of your own way.

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 I love this topic. This is something that I still struggle with in different ways, even with all the work that I've done on myself. Anyone who's come to coaching struggles with this. Anyone who's lived life really has struggled with this.

So I think this will resonate with all of you, and especially for those who are struggling, please share this. Everybody needs to hear this message, especially those that are so sick of their own stuff, but they don't know how to get past it.

So today, I have with me Karen Anson from Ignite, and for me, it's nighttime, and for her, it's morning.

So she got on and said, "Good morning," and I did a, "What? Wait."

I'm still having my morning tea.

You can tell us the future here. That's correct ... can tell from a little bit of her accent, she's from Australia, so already I'm excited. That's on my bucket list of somewhere I wanna visit. Everything I've learned about Australia, I'm like, yes, except for the poisonous snakes and the poisonous spiders.

I'll do without those.

Where I live, there's lots of them here. I live in what we call the bush.

So the desert side, right? Fun.

No. It's, I live in the bush. It's really the mountains, on the east coast, sort of about two and a half hours north of Sydney.

Let me tell you a little bit about her, and then she's gonna fill in all the gaps and tell us her story, which I love storytelling personal experience to really share a message. Going to be talking about her journey of finding her authenticity and getting out of her own way, so definitely gonna resonate with us. She said she was running subconscious patterns that were detrimental to her life.

Does anybody else resonate with this or just me? We do this, and it can be really hard. In coaching we call it our blind spot. It can be really hard to see that. And other people kind of pick at it and tell us a little bit and when we're in that state of denial and we're... that state of really being stuck, it can be hard to really hear it and to acknowledge it.

And she said that it took her several years to really dig herself out of it, so I'm really excited to hear that part of the story. And she said it led her to a heart-centered life that has changed every part of her life personally and professionally. So there's so much here to begin with. I would love for you to start where you wanna start and then share the story with us.

I am happy to do as little talking as possible because I want your story to shine, because I know that so many people will get so many nuggets out of this that will really impact them. So take it away.

Oh, thank you, Autumn. Look, I was really excited to be invited to talk to you about how to get out of my own way. I love what you do, and I always do a little bit of research on someone before I have a meeting.

So, I just love your, product. You have that heart-centered coaching call.

If I'd known about that a few years ago, I probably would've called you and said let's do this." But look, you know, I, quite a while ago, like for many years, and when you talk about a journey, I had my children very young, and my husband was actually 20 when we had our first child.

And we fell into that pattern and I've realized now that this whole idea of romantic love and the idea that you can find your soulmate and it's gonna be all perfect and... But then, you know, the reality hits and you're bringing, the dysfunction from both parties' families, and you're bringing all of your subconscious patterning from your upbringing, and you're bringing all your insecurities and all of the things.

And I always say to people, you know, my husband and I fought for the first 10 years of our marriage, and it wasn't nice fighting. It was unfair fighting and there was a lot of negativity. And what that did for me was not just the marriage part, but every part of my life was like that.

It was difficult. I found it hard to make money. My children are my absolute, my absolute most biggest, happiest part of my life, and I took that responsibility of being a parent so, serious. It was one of the best things that I'd ever done, but I had absolutely no idea how to parent them because I had a very difficult childhood.

My, my dad was a very angry man who had, frontal lobe damage, and we didn't know what that meant back in the '60s when I was born. You know, nobody really understood, and Mom did her very best to manage that, but it was, it was a very tumultuous household. And my mom tended to be... She's a musician and she's a teacher, and she tended to be kind of absent, I guess.

Instead of dealing with things, she would go and play the piano or do... she was always, in her own head and did not really know how to deal with a very extroverted, very, full-on child. I had a lot of emotional problems and didn't really know how to regulate. You know, I've always had that histrionic kind of streak where I would fly into panic.

Up until probably the last six or seven years, I probably ran that pattern for a very long time. If something went wrong, I would instantly fly into that, "Everything's gonna go wrong," and, "Oh, my God," you know? I was always one of those people that would do that.

I guess it went on for quite some time and it was quite interesting that there's a few milestones in my life that have really trajected me into, a more conscious place is the only way I can describe it.

And when I mean conscious, I'm conscious of the way when I feel something, I understand why I'm feeling it or where it's come from, where the root of those issues have been. When my dad left my mom after they were married 47 years and he finally left, I realized that all of the things in my family that I had blamed myself for, that it was always because I was the oldest child, I had been carrying this burden that it was my fault that my family didn't get along.

And I realized that actually I was a child and that wasn't my responsibility to carry the family, you know? And so when that happened, it was interesting because the shift in my marriage also changed. I realized that the things that were happening in my marriage and my husband and I had these conversations over time and we realized that we had been replaying these patterns in our parents' marriages.

And we just drew the line and went, "You know what? It stops now." We actually are gonna be more conscious in our partnership and with our children and be able to show up for each other, not with our pain But with our love and our understanding, and our understanding of our wounds, I guess, of our deep wounds and our programming.

And so that sort of started the revolution, I guess, in our family and our marriage. And I used to say to the kids, the dysfunction in the family and all of the history stops with us. It does not carry on for anybody else. So we now have an opportunity to transmute this pain, to move on from it.

And, you know, they, the kids... I think the kids think I'm completely crazy. They actually do call me crazy. Sometimes they say they go call me mum, they say, "How you going, crazy?" My journey to the person that I am today has really transformed their lives as well.

My grandchildren, I have three beautiful grandsons that are just incredible.

And, you know, even my relationship with my mom is really healthy and beautiful and, and, But I guess the biggest change for me was the money thing. The, the I'm not good enough, the I can't earn money, money's hard to get, and it was... That was the biggest piece of getting out of my own way, was when I started this business and it, 2019, and we know what happened in 2020 was... And of course the old Karen would've gone, "Of course I've started a business in the biggest chronic financial crisis and personal health crisis in the world, but, you know, and I won't get a client," and I didn't do any of that.

I did... There was a bit of grieving in terms of what I had to let go of because of the people pleaser in me, because of the 60-hour-a-week girl that thought she had to be available to everybody 24 hours a day. And, I'd done law in my 40s- And I didn't do it... Well, I did do it because I, I thought I wanted to be somebody.

I wanted a title. I wanted this idea that people would-- I would walk into a room and I would be someone important, because I never felt important. And so it was important for me. But the journey itself actually showed me that education for me was key. It was also key to my confidence in knowing what I needed to know, because I always wanted to be-- I'd always wanted to be a lawyer, and I run this pattern of justice, this injustice that I felt as a child because I felt everything was unfair.

So I've run this pattern of justice my whole life, and it's manifested in this business that I've got now, that I can help people in all facets of their life actually. 'Cause what I've done is I've joined my Ignite HR and employment law and my Ignite Your Purpose business together. And so I do coaching as well as the law.

'Cause people quite often are in a terrible situation when they come to me, and they are quite often running patterns because they feel whatever it is, and they've come to me with a legal problem that's manifested because of the issues they've got in their life. So it's a perfect opportunity for me to go, "Well, how do we get here?"

Look, some people are open to it, some people aren't, but that's okay.

I help them with their legal problems and then I quite often will refer them to... i'm a massive fan of hypnotherapy. I've had some amazing shifts through hypnotherapy, through reiki, through, all sorts of healing.

But the biggest one for me is really breathwork. I became a breathwork practitioner in, 2022, and I did a level two trauma-informed breathwork in '23. That's a very deep practice. That's a Himalayan practice that I learned. I'd actually just came back from a retreat in the Philippines where I was teaching people how to use that because there's a really interesting scientific nature to the deep healing breathwork because your brain is able to process trauma, and the amygdala and all of the things that are storing the issues in your brain and that the subconscious patterns are able to, become conscious when you're dealing with problems and that kind of thing.

So that for me has been a complete game changer. Most days I practice breathwork and meditation, but some days I'm crazy as normal. Get into it 5:00 AM and don't finish till, God knows when. But that's the nature of my personality. It's always like this, but I kinda like it.

I kinda like who I am now. I might be flying off to the Philippines within a week's notice or I decide, oh, I might go to a retreat in Bali. Let's go.

You're one of those Fly by the seat of your pants ... yes. Yeah, so I mean, as I said, the business for me has been the biggest healer in terms of my getting out of my own way.

And knowing how a people pleaser that I am, knowing that I don't have boundaries, boundaries were a huge issue for me, and it's always been.

As a young woman, I let everybody else's happiness in front of mine, didn't even know what my own happiness looked like. No clue what made me happy, no clue what I was interested in because I was a mother from very young. I've always been pleasing my mother and whoever else around me that, that I could make their lives easier, and I had no idea that I actually had the ability to know myself, know what I wanted, know my heart, know exactly and love myself.

You know, people look at me now when I say that I love myself, and they go, "Well, that sounds a bit much." But if you can't love yourself, you can't love others. You don't know how to really give that love because, it's about the boundaries and about not letting people walk all over you and understanding who you really are and what you really want, yeah. So yeah, I went all over the shop there,

Well, let's pull it apart. I do the same thing.

So people who are parents who are listening to this, in the very beginning, you talked about how you were blaming yourself for your parents' failed marriage.

Let's take that apart a little bit. For anybody else who is struggling with this, for most people, they don't realize that what's underneath their iceberg, right, is, like, this is what's really directing them into being a people pleaser and everything else.

Correct.

For people, how did you realize that was guiding you into being a people pleaser and other aspects of your life that were putting up hurdles?

The interesting thing about it is that what I've just recently realized is that, I connected with some old girlfriends from primary school. And we've been friends, since the early '70s. I think I went to school in 1972. So these four women are turning 60 this year. All of us are turning...

i'll in January, but they're all turning 60 this year. And, it's been confronting in some ways because they're still dealing with a lot of their stuff from childhood as well. But, they used to say to me, "Oh, your house was always fun, and your mum's amazing, and your dad wasn't there that much."

But, it always seemed that was the Ruby household, was always happy and I said, "Look- Yes, on the outside. And what that taught me in my life was that I couldn't speak about what was actually going on because I had to do smoke and mirrors and had to be perfect, right? And you think about the Instagram generation and the people on Facebook, and everyone's perfect families.

And when you're having a bad day, you look through everyone's families and all these beautiful family photos and all the things that are going on in their lives, and you feel like crap. You think, "Well, that's not the way I feel." My child is challenging, and they've got all sorts of problems, and they've got emotional this.

I've got a grandson at the moment we've got a few challenges with, and I know my daughter-in-law struggles, and she's blaming herself. And I just say to her, "Well, look, every child has... There's phases." If I look back at my parenting journey, I look at that and I think, that phase felt so long and horrible, but it was just a phase, and you work through it, and then you go and then have a good spot. And then you have another one. And then they get to become teenagers. And then you get, my son was just in hospital. He's 35, for God's sake. And I rushed down there 'cause I thought he was gonna have to have an operation.

It never ends, I guess, you know, in terms of the parenting piece. But what I learned from that, was that you kept it all very, everyone looked amazing, everyone was fine, there were no problems, and, you know, no one talked about it.

So I learned that was the way to deal with it, and that's a very lonely place to be in. When you are carrying the burdens of your family, all of the dysfunction that you feel in your own heart, and you think, am I the only one in the world that feels this way?" And it's scary to actually reveal yourself.

I became so incredibly independent, and I learned through hypnotherapy, actually. When I was seven, I reached out for help I had this memory. And I don't even remember what the problem was, but it was, I'd reached out to Mum, I'd reached out to my grandma, I'd reached out to my teacher, and nobody would help me.

And in that moment, I became so incredibly independent and decided I wouldn't rely on anybody ever again. And that then sets you up for a life of, a quite a lonely life because you can't show yourself. Friendships don't work properly because you're not vulnerable in friendships because you're so busy making it all perfect and it's not perfect.

You're allowed to talk about being... I mean, I've even struggled saying it myself sometimes. You're allowed to talk about your feelings. You're allowed to talk about being unhappy. You're allowed to talk about your fears. You're allowed to have all those things. Doesn't make you any less of a person and I say this in my law practice.

I say, "You know, it's okay to not be okay." And you don't have to carry everything and even if it sounds crazy saying it out loud, say it anyway. But find the right people to say it to because some people-

There's so much peace in being able to say- not okay right now." Like, it gives you-

that space.

And you know, when you don't build relationships, which I didn't in my 20s and then in my 30s because I didn't have those close relationships, it then makes it very difficult because then you become a little bit, isolated I guess. Look, I have hundreds of friends, all over the world.

But I always say to people there's only a very few people that really know me very well because I have spent my life building friendships based on what other people need. That is a crazy thing to realize, that you've spent your life helping other people, but can't speak for your own, for your own issues.

Not that I never do, and I do have days where I obviously do, but generally my relationships have been about other people because I've been helping them, and so that, I guess that's a bit of a crazy place. But for me to be able to be conscious about what the, I guess the residual issue from my parents, from my family...

I mean, our family is a mess. My sister doesn't speak to me, my brother doesn't speak to me, my dad's gone with his girlfriend somewhere up North Queensland. I have a very good relationship with Mom. I don't wanna say don't speak. You don't speak regularly. You might see each other every other Christmas.

And you know those Christmases, they're awkward and they're not real, and they're not authentic, and it's, "Oh, nice to see you. Can't wait to get out of here." And everybody has those families, everybody does. But, I so badly, after that experience, wanted my family to be so authentic and real and bring everything.

I don't care how bad you are today, come anyway. You know, how bad things are. And I think I've managed to do that. I think we've managed to be able to be authentic in our life and the problems that we solve, we solve them together. And yeah, and there's nothing really... i'll give you an example.

My son had a relationship for 10 years and was engaged to a girl, and I was in Victoria working and I get this phone call, and He was... He, he wasn't upset, he was just so silent. And I said, "Are you okay?" And he goes, "I'm not sure." He goes, "I don't know what to do." He's just, "She's left me a letter and she's gone."

And I went, Okay, where are you?" And he lives a few hours from here. And so I just got on a plane and I said, "Can you drive to our place?" And he said yes. I was checking on him the whole way 'cause I was so worried about him. And anyway, he got here- And we just cried for a week like... But the thing is, one of the other things that I've struggled with I've always been a drinker and I said to Davey, "There's no alcohol through this.

We're not drinking. That's not gonna solve our problems because all it's gonna do is mask it for now." And you know, I said, I love a glass of wine and, maybe two or three, probably more than I should, but I'm very conscious about it these days, that it's actually a hindrance in my life and it doesn't make me clear-headed.

And so I, I've made a conscious effort not to involve that. You know, when there's big things happen, when people have passed away and there's funerals and there's, things like that in our lives, I've made a conscious effort to go, "No, that's not what we're doing." And so when he came, because he loves a drink too, and I said, "There's gonna be no alcohol this week.

There's nothing. We're just gonna grieve and we're gonna figure out what you're gonna do next week." And so my husband and I... And you know, I was so blessed and so grateful that he shared that with me because, you know, when it happened to me when I was in my 20s, I broke up with a boyfriend, early 20s, and, I remember going home and Mom said to me...

She actually didn't ask me what happened. I'd been living with this guy for about a year and a half, and I was just a mess and I came home and she never asked me what happened. She just made a bed and I got in it and cried for a week, and then went to work and moved on with my life. But she never actually asked me what happened and it was interesting, years later she said to me, "Oh, whatever happened with you and what's his name?"

And I said, "Oh, he, I actually found he's, was cheating on me." And she goes, "Oh, is that all he did?"

Wow,

is that all we did? I mean, I now understand that my dad had been doing it their whole marriage, and I didn't know- at the time. So Mom had this kind of, well, at the nth degree, everything is fine. We're fine. We're moving on. It doesn't matter.

It's no smoke and mirrors here. There's nothing, you know? So anyway, it's crazy,

isn't it? What a difference.

Oh, I

Know. And how you responded to your son compared to how she responded to you.

Mm.

And the fact that you said no alcohol, because you're right, alcohol does mask it.

Yeah. And then when it's unmasking, it makes it worse.

100%, and I just, yeah, I just knew what I would have needed in that moment, and I think that was a healing moment for me as well, because I healed my pain that I'd had that I didn't have that through that ex- I've never shared that with him.

Anyway, I probably should someday.

Well,

you can listen to this. But yeah, I haven't shared that.

It's amazing. Yeah. I went into coaching because I want to help people. Yeah. But through coaching, I've realized areas that I need to work on for myself.

So sometimes it's like, "Oh, you know what? I'm gonna work on that along with you," type of moment.

And it's allowed me to have my own healing from watching them heal themselves. Never expected these side benefits. I'll take them.

Yeah, yeah.

But it's amazing, even parenting has done that for me. There's times where I've seen like, oh, that was abuse and I didn't realize because I'm responding in a very different way, and I'm looking at it from the lens of a parent and seeing there's no way I would respond the way my parents did here.

Like, no, that's a huge, wrong, red flag. Flashing red light.

Yeah.

So yeah, there, there's so much- It's like- ... more to unravel here. Go ahead. I'm sorry.

t

he I have no bad feeling for anything that happened in my life.

Every single thing has brought me to this moment, and we've only got this moment, right? And you can... the problem is that your brain wants to solve things all the time, and that it's constantly taking you back to old memories and to things that happened and things come up and then you'll have this memory and you'll think, "Oh, hang on a minute.

My brain's telling me don't go there." But the problem is, is that your brain is just keeping you protected all the time. And when you talk about this heart-centered coaching, dropping into your heart and what do you really want, what are you really feeling? Not thinking, but what is it that you want and what is your soul, what is your purpose telling you that this is...

and then people think it's this esoteric thing. It's really not. It's about connecting with yourself every day and that gratitude and being conscious about being your bare modest will be a nice place to live in there. Inside your head and your body, instead of this place where you're always constantly being, telling yourself you can't do this, you can't do that, don't be stupid,

you keep, stay in your box and all of the things that you say. And you know, my favorite saying is what would you do if you knew you couldn't fail? I love that. That absolutely transformed my life. And I'm still crazy doing things that... You know, I swam with whale sharks with my girlfriends on our annual holiday last year.

And, you know, I was 40 kilos heavier than I am now, which is, I don't know how many pounds, but it's a lot. I was probably 130 kilos, which is a lot. But, I couldn't even fit in a wetsuit, and so when I could, the first thing I did was get in one and go swim with the whale sharks.

I realized that I'd been holding myself back in so many ways, and my weight was one of them. I had weight loss surgery, but that's not the fix. It's really about fixing your head, as well. So I have had to do a lot of coaching around that as well. But, it's when you say, getting out of my own way, it's all of those things.

It's, it's a whole person. It's everything about your life. It's finances. It's relationships. It's your significant other. It's your children. It's you. It's every, every part of your life, you know? And what is it that you want? And you're allowed to want something. Your children and your, your family are along for the ride, but if you're not okay, they're not gonna be okay,

they're learning how to mask from you, if you're masking.

Correct. And they're watching you every day give of yourself and be selfless. I love sitting in some of these women's workshops with people and you ask them, "What do you want?" And they sit there with their pen and their paper and they don't write anything.

And they don't know what they want. No idea. "I want my family to be happy. I want my husband to get a good job." Or what- you know.

I wanted to let you know that there are some amazing things happening behind the scenes here that I'm very excited about. The first one is I am opening my podcast up for sponsorships. So if you are an aligned brand with wellness, reach out to me. You can find me wellnessineveryseason.com/podcast/sponsor.

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It's always everybody else. And it's remembering when you are saying that, that your ego is in the way. Correct. You're trying to force them to be happy instead of working on yourself.

Looking at yourself. Yeah. I shared that with somebody that I was coaching. Like, actually, that's your ego in the way and you are trying to control the situation, control them. They need to feel how they feel. They have their own actions. What you're in charge of is your own- Yeah ... and working on yourself and how you show up.

So it's

But being able to call people on that too, when you see behaviors, and that's one of the things that I, that I'm really good at now, is when I see people's behaviors that I actually look at it and go, "Okay, why is this offending me so much? Why is their behavior triggering me to feel..."

Because no one can make you feel anything, right? Nobody can. Your, you are submitting to that for whatever reason. And so when that happens, I'm kind of curious and I go, "Okay, why is this... where am I not healed? What is this showing me today? What have I got to learn about?"

And it's interesting, I learned this technique, I don't know if you've heard of it before, where you locate wherever the feeling is in your body and you breathe into it, and you ask it what it needs. I love that in the night. Anyone going through perimenopause, my God. Because you can solve the world's problems, through perimenopause, waking up at 3:00 AM in the morning,

and, in that moment, you wanna solve the world's problems. You've got everything on your mind and there's so many things I don't know about women's hormones that, I've been through it and gone out the other side now, but I still do the 3:00 AM in the morning and the hot, throwing the blankets off and that kind of thing.

I've recalled some power surges. That helps maybe psychologically because as you get older, you get so much more powerful as a woman, you know? You're not run by those hormones every month.

You know. And oh, look, I used to use it sometimes. I don't know if you find this when you've got your cycle going and the... And the just before my period, I used to be a super cleaner. I used to want to clean everything. I don't know why. I don't have that anymore. I've

actually hired a cleaner.

I think that's the nesting. Is it? Because it is like a mini period, a mini pregnancy cycle, right. Like, you're going through all the phases just in a month instead. So it makes sense that you kind of have that nesting phase- ... right before you hit.

I don't have that anymore. Yeah ... hired a cleaner.

But I learned that with somatics, is that you put your hand on it, you breathe into it, and then, okay, what, why is this triggering for me? What is this trying to say? And it goes with that what's not healed idea. They totally go together. And my husband and I have had that discussion with my own healing journey of like, oh, this is coming up for me, I wonder why.

Like, he-

Yeah ...

he's a natural coach without taking any of the certifications, just learning from things that I've shared with him that I've learned along the way, and being like, "Can I touch this body?"- But my husband's

just

Yeah ... empath, pleaser.

He and I have had to work on our marriage because we're both pleasers, to make sure that we're, yes, we can strive to please each other, but make sure we're pleasing ourselves, and that we're not too busy trying to out-please each other.

That then it becomes toxic.

It's like, well- Out-please each other.

Yeah.

Wow.

And have to, I, we had to work really hard, and you need to have an opinion. And then once he started having an opinion, I needed to actually listen to it, because I was used to him not having one- Yes. ... and I'd just steamroll.

So

we have lots of conversations- And then genuinely take it on board. Not just listen, take it on board and talk about it.

Yeah. And now it's to the point where he'll share things with me, and I'm like, "I don't even care how you got there. I trust your judgment. You're an engineer. I know you over-thought it.

We're good. Just go in that direction. Good for me." One of those, like, delegating, okay, that's your lane, cool, we're going there. But anyway, Having that conversation with him of like, "This is coming up for me and I need you to just kind of listen while I talk it out." I'm very much that type of person where sometimes because of my childhood we have,

You and I had similar experiences in how we reacted. Yeah. Not what our parents did, but like the reaction and, okay, now I'm not- Yeah ... gonna trust anybody. And me not sharing the abuse that was going on with family and friends until much later in life because I didn't understand it. Yeah. Have the words for it.

So I can over-internalize things. So it's having my safe sp- safe person that I will then, okay, here's all this word vomit that I need to get out that's just super stuck in here. And once it's out, I can then kind of see it and then piece it together. Mm-hmm. He doesn't even need to offer advice. Just knowing that he's listening is good enough for me.

Yeah. And I can already start to get to the answer. And then if- Yeah ... he sees that I'm going in a different direction than he thinks that I want to go because he knows me so well, he'll be like, "What if you look at it this way?" Mm-hmm. And then sometimes he won't even be like, "See, I'm right," he'll just gently lead me.

And sometimes I end up where he thinks that I should be, and sometimes I end up in the middle and it ends up being even better. Yeah. But it's just amazing having somebody like that for you if you haven't learned how to do that for yourself.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But you've also got to, I think your partner needs to not hear blame.

That's the thing for me is that When you start to have those conversations I know my husband's got his back up a little bit. He was like you can't blame me for that because, I was listening but I don't feel like you heard me is the problem, and I actually haven't spoken my truth about this.

So don't hear blame. This is my truth, and I'm gonna tell you what I'm thinking and the thing was, I used to start a lot of conversations with him, and I made a conscious effort, 'cause you know the stupid arguments you have with people? It can be anybody, but I used to have these with my husband a lot.

Start with a blame- framework. You never, I hate when you, as soon as they hear that, they think, "Oh, here we go. We're on."

Oh, yeah. My defenses go right up, and I'm not fully listening. Absolutely. I'm just listening to argue back. I'm gonna be the lawyer. Absolutely.

Yeah. It's gone into, I feel like, or this feels off to me, and I need to work on this. It's really shifted things within my marriage of looking at the problem instead of the person. Yeah. Like, we're both looking at it together.

Yeah, and you can even start the conversation with, I was a bit surprised 'cause that didn't seem, for the situation, that seemed a little bit, over the top or whatever." My husband had that for me- And that can help diffuse

too ...

the

other day, and I had one of those, "Oh, huh, you're right." And then I explained to him how I was triggered about something.

He's like, "Okay, that totally makes sense." Yeah.

Yeah.

We just were able to totally move on. Like, it totally was like- A non-issue almost, you know? Yeah. Just like, "Oh, okay." There was like no steam in the sail, whatever saying you wanna put in there. Yeah. But it's like he saw where I was coming from, and I was able to quickly heal that trigger.

Like, once it was acknowledged- Yeah ... boom, done.

The other thing that I think many people might relate to is that anger in women is a bad thing, that if you're angry you're out of control. And, I, I've still struggled with that in terms of when I'm angry, because I, as a child I had moments where I was very angry and I would, and I was almost...

I felt out of control, I guess, in some ways. And a lot of children these days struggle with that. They struggle to regulate their emotions. And I see it, in shopping centers and even older children these days are struggling with that. And it's one of those things that parents have to deal with every day.

And all I can say is that, you know, as a parent to- not internalizing it as your fault in any way is probably the best way, and looking at it with curiosity rather than blame because, you know, it can get to the point where you are... 'Cause I mean, my youngest son had so much rage, from two, and two-year-olds are struggling and challenges but he had so much rage as a two-year-old, and my middle grandson's a bit the same way, and he'd just fly, and then he flies into this flurry of tears, and, "Oh."

Will cry for an hour, you know. It's just- I have a kid like that. It's so difficult to deal with, you know, when you're just trying to go shopping or...

It's exhausting. I have to dig deep- to regulate myself.

Yeah. It is,

And there's times where I can take it, but then I'm dysregulated for a while,

that's right.

Yeah. Somebody else needs to step in while I take care of myself, and then I can step back in to help parent him.

Yeah.

It's

Control is the issue of letting go. It's letting go of the control. You don't have control over those moments in your life. And where people want to control everything, it's a really conscious moment to go, "You know what?

There is no control right now. We're here, and we're just gonna have to walk, work through it, feel it," whatever, find ways of diverting, not so much not to deal with it, but just to divert and calm and that kind of thing, I guess. But the thing it carried in my adulthood was that it was bad for me to get angry.

So I would avoid getting angry at all costs. And a coach asked me, "When was the last time you were angry?" And I couldn't remember the last time I was angry. It might have been years. You know, and anger's a normal part of human emotion. It's part fear-based, right? So if you're not letting yourself feel those fears, where are they going?

You're eating them, you're smoking them, you're drinking them, you're doing whatever you're doing to, mask them and not feeling them. So, you know, the one thing for me is allowing myself to feel all those feelings. Feel it to heal it, my coach always used to say. Feel it to heal it, baby.

Okay.

I like that. Let's go. And for me, the only feeling that I could show that my parents would understand was anger. So for me- Yeah ... it's the opposite, understanding the rest of that feeling wheel. Yeah. And knowing that we are human and we are meant to feel all of those emotions. Correct, yeah. And for me, it's being able to name them.

And if I don't have my feeling wheel near me, and my husband's around, I'm like, "I can't put a finger on what I'm feeling," and it's making it hard because for me, once I can name that emotion, I can release it easier. It just-

Yeah ...

if I can't, then it will start to get into that, anger and just that, toxic feeling, that churning within me, and it totally feels like a vortex going through my chest.

But once I have help, if I need help naming it, it's just like, oh, okay. Human experience. Just move on. It's such a difference. Yeah. And it's interesting because of the way I grew up and the trauma associated with it, I know that I am still growing in that emotions stage. I'm still an adolescent, knowing that I still have room.

I'm still experiencing things. And I think, especially as women, it's common. Yeah.

We're told to say, "I'm sorry." We're told to be- A good

girl. You gotta be a good girl.

And it's, thankfully, society's changing that. But seriously, not enough.

No.

Let's be honest here. Not enough.

We're still programming our children.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

We instantly say sorry.

Week. I'm sorry.

I was recording a solo episode, and I messed up and I said sorry. It made me- Yeah, to who? ... kind of mad editing

it. I just searched for the word sorry and I ended that whole sentence out. But also, who was I saying sorry to? Nobody's in the room but me. Recording. What? But it is so common. I hear women say sorry all the time, and discounting their emotions, trying to water them down as quickly as possible. Yeah.

And what if we remember that we are human beings living a human experience, and we're supposed to feel all of the human emotions?

Yeah.

And

And you're allowed to show that and share that.

Yeah ...

i'm a master now at, what I call, safe conflict because of my job.

And never go into a legal problem or a coaching with any expectation of an outcome. As soon as you have a path or an idea this is how it's gonna go- it's always gonna go wrong. So I have an idea what I would like as the outcome, but I've no idea how I'm gonna get there necessarily.

So there's less pressure on you. There's more curiosity. There's more authenticity in the moment because people can smell and taste and think and feel when you're setting them up, right? They can always do it. When you go into a conversation with an agenda, they know.

Some people, the people pleasers will be happy to sit back and do that, but the other ones won't. They will have you for breakfast, and they will absolutely walk all over you or try to, and they can feel it straight away, "I'm being set up here." So, you know, I go into these with curiosity in a lot of the places in my workplace, and that, for people who are listening today, when you're managing people, is an absolute game changer.

For all the lovely people that love lists and are very organized, which I'm not, write your list of all the things you wanna mention so that you've got your head right. But go in with curiosity. Go in with your heart open and with that idea that if you're authentic in the moment, that that will more than likely bring that, too.

And when people are coming and reflecting anger back at you, I say to them, "Okay, I can see you're getting angry, maybe frustrated. Talk to me about that. Where are we now? What have I said that's in some way triggered that? I don't really understand because this is where we're going here. Is this fear?

I probably, this week I probably terminated maybe 10 people 'cause that's my ... It's what I do. As an employment lawyer, I, I do a lot of that. And so, it's interesting that if you... When I stopped having that controlling aspect of my job and going into it with that lack of, outcome of whatever it's gonna be, it completely changed my world.

Because at the end you're not disappointed, right? Okay, that probably didn't get to where it would li- I would've liked to have gone, but we had a good conversation, and I'll come back with another plan and we'll do something else,

you're releasing control.

That's the only way to do it, because otherwise you go to bed every night and you cannot let these things go. "It didn't go the way it was supposed to go. I'm better than that." You know, all those conversations you have with yourself, and you think, "Well, you know what? I didn't have any expectations, so you know what?

I'm at peace with myself. I'm not pushing, I'm not trying, I'm not forcing, and, yeah, it's a much more peaceful place to live, that's for sure.

Sounds easier to fall asleep at night. Better night's sleep. Sign me up.

So tell me, you hinted at what you do, so tell us specifically-

what you do, who your ideal client is, and then where to find you.

So I have two businesses, as I mentioned before, Ignite HR and Employment Law. I have a, free 15-minute coaching call, that you can log on to just to come and have a chat with me about anything. Businesses hire me because they want that sense check.

They want that overview on how to deal with staffing issues. Most executives, most managers, most people, that's all you deal with in your job all day is people problems. And so I'm a very good problem solver, and I'm good at being able to support people because managers in those situations have got so many competing priorities, and just getting people to do what they need to do is the most difficult part of their job.

So I help people structure conversations. If you've got a performance management issue, I can help you do all those kinds of things. And to help make things a lot smoother. And also, cultural issues and things like that, I can help, people. I do a little bit of HR, not too much, but mostly employment law and that kind of thing.

So, I started my business Ignite Your Purpose a while ago, and it came together about 18 months ago. And what I did that was because I realized I couldn't separate myself from that part of who I am anymore, that there was no separation. Those two sides of me were coming together and that it was a much better place for my clients for me to be.

Not only do I do the legal stuff, but I can run wellness days. I can do things online for people if people wanna learn how to do breathwork and, goal setting and being able to personal wellness stuff, in teams and understand communication better and that kind of thing.

So I do that kind of stuff. But my love and where I'm headed is the retreat space not just women's retreats. I do all sorts of retreats for mainly executives and burnt out lawyers and people that just need to come home to themselves, you know? 'Cause a lot of people in my profession were usually the most clever at school, you know.

You have to do law, you have to be ... Well, not me, 'cause I went in at later age and got, some credit for what I'd done in the past. But most people start and they've done very, very well at school, and then they go into law and they have this idea. But most women, and I, this is true of my experience, don't survive it.

They don't. They either become very hardened or they can't do it and they've realized it's not for them, and they don't practice. It's too difficult. It's a very dog-eat-dog world, you know. Most people are very competitive. I'm probably the least competitive person on the planet, but, there's that competition piece around winning and, you know, money and all the things.

And of course law is a profession that you go into to make money. You don't ever go into a profession not to make money. But it's a very high priority, and unfortunately people get lost in that process. They lose themselves because that, you know, to be a whole person, if money's your only guiding light, then, you've got a pretty, a pretty difficult existence moving forward.

Because when it ta- if it's gets taken away or something happens, you've got ... What pillars have you got to fall back on, so yeah, I mean, that's basically ... So you can, if you click on my website, which is ignitehr.com.au and, yeah, you can click on ... Actually my, both my websites are connected, so you can click on both.

But on the very first page there's a 15-minute call if people would like to contact me just to have a chat, connect. If there's someone who wants to, interview me for another podcast, I'm happy for, to do that too. I ha- I've actually dropped off. Last year I did probably two or three a week- Wow

usually in the US. Wow. And then I ... December I went ... So my husband used to say, 'cause it was 5:00 AM and he'd go, and he'd go, "Oh, are we talking about ourselves again tonight?" And I'd say- I did laugh because I was sharing your story. I said, "Well, look I hope that it's resonate." And I, I have had a quite a bit of amazing feedback from people.

And it, not that I do it for that, but I just think that if somebody hears a nugget of gold in this podcast that helps them, that makes them think, "Oh, hang on a minute. I've always thought that. Maybe I should rethink that, or maybe I should try that," you know? Yeah, it's, it's, that's my why.

That's why I have conversations on podcasts and at the checkout with other people, you know, everywhere.

I do that too. So it sounds like you work around the world. It's not just in Australia.

No.

Correct?

Yeah. I work all around the world. Yeah.

I was already getting that- That's true

but I wanted to make sure it was clear for people.

Yes. Yeah.

Don't have that be one of your excuses as to why you don't work with her because she works- around the world.

No, not at all. And my skills translate everywhere, even in India.

Well, thank you so much for this- I did a

podcast in India

Thank you so much- for this conversation. I know that I will be talking to my husband about it. My kids are all in bed now, so he just gets to deal with me. And I know that I will be sharing this, and I hope all of you found things that you can adjust in your life to make you a little bit more on track of where you need to be.

And please share this episode. There are so many people that, like I said before, are struggling. Maybe they don't even know they're struggling. I've been there, where I just feel like I've plateaued and I'm not sure what, really what's wrong. I'm not sure how to get started anymore. I've even been at points where I don't realize I'm plateauing until somebody else points it out.

Right. So let this be the episode for them. And enjoy your wellness journey because there are so many great things along the way.

Oh, so beautiful. Such a beautiful ending for that podcast. I totally agree with you. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for joining our discussion. If you enjoyed this, please like, subscribe, most of all, share the love with others. Please share this episode so that we can help other people really recalibrate every aspect of their lives so they can be the best version of themselves, and I will see you in the next episode.

I want to have my quick disclaimer here that this is not a one-size-fits-all. If you want one-on-one coaching, let's talk, and we will make sure what wellness means to you is really put into your life, put into practice. I am using my undergrad in applied health and my life coaching experience to bring this podcast to you