Today’s Guest

About Jo Casey

Jo Casey has over 20 years experience of working as a trainer and consultant in the corporate, public and third sectors. Her flashy clients and workplaces have included Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PWC), The NHS, BT, Toyota Motors, Peugeot Business School, The Welsh Assembly Government, The Girl Guides UK, Vets4Pets/Companion Care, several Local Government Authorities, and The Department Of Work And Pensions. But she’s also worked with many no less wonderful smaller ventures, micro businesses and SMEs.

She’s a self-confessed nerd and has taught at college and university levels and is a visiting lecturer at the University of Chester. Jo has a Masters Degree in Coaching and Organizational Development and she’s an NLP Master Practitioner, MBTI qualified professional certified Emotional Intelligence EQi 2.0 consultant.

She’s been coaching for over 15 years now – clocking up over 1000 hours of coaching experience. Basically, she carefully treads that line between being passionate and a tiny bit obsessive about what she does (obsession often wins). Jo runs accredited coach training programs and coaches people from all over the world via the power of the internet.

Listen to this episode

    

What You’ll Learn

• Why coaches and healers need support, too – even when we have our own tools to help ourselves
• What happens when we don’t get the support we need
• How to reach out and ask for help – before we reach burnout or overwhelm
• How do you recognize when you need help
• Why we need energetic boundaries – and how to set them
• How to find places where it’s more give and take – where we don’t have to keep up appearances
• Why we need spaces where we can show up as us, with all the bits – and where to find these communities

Things We Discussed

• Brené Brown
• HSP (highly sensitive person)
• The Supernova Collective
• Tanya Geisler

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Related episodes

• 336 Joanna Hennon + Holly ~ Can You Be Addicted To Healing And Personal Development?
• 334 Holly Worton ~ How To Let Go Of Toxic People In Your Life & Mind
• 331 Holly Worton ~ Facing Your Fears & Overcoming Them
• 322 Holly Worton ~ How Much is Too Much Healing? Is There a Limit?
• 288 Joanna Hennon + Holly ~ How to Know Which Investments to Make in Your Personal & Professional Development
• 283: Joanna Hennon + Holly ~ Remember, It’s Not Just About Energy: Balancing the Inner and Outer Work
• 244: Joanna Hennon + Holly: Can You Expect Miracles From Doing Transformation Work?

Transcript

The transcript for this episode can also be downloaded here (no opt-in required).

Holly: Hello and welcome to the Business Mindset Podcast, episode 250. This is your host Holly Worton and I am back with another co-hosted episode with the fabulous Jo Casey. Today we talk about something that is super-relevant for both of us and I think probably for you as well: who heals the healers? Who coaches the coaches? Why is this an issue? Because we are not used to being vulnerable and oftentimes we don’t know where to go to get help when we need it. Having an online business can be lonely, sometimes we lose friends that we had before we started off on this personal development journey of healing and coaching, and oftentimes we are the person that other people go to with their problems. So, it can be hard to reach out and ask for help when we are often the receptacle for other people’s stuff. It can be hard to find places where it is more give and take, where we have healing, coaching friends, who are kind of on a level ground with each other. And we can have that: I help you, you help me, but that can be challenging too, because oftentimes we feel like we have to keep up appearances. If we are a business coach we often feel like we have to have the perfect business, if say, I am the business mindset alchemist, I sometimes feel like I have to have all my mindset shit together, even though I tell you on a regular basis that I don’t, that I still do work with myself, that I still do work with other people, trying to get help with my mindset. There is still a part of me that feels that I have to have my shit together and you know people say to share your shit when you are on the other side of it, when you can come out, when you use it as a learning experience and teach people: I recently went through this, here’s what I learned from it, here’s what you can learn from it. But, where do we go when we are in the middle of the shit, that’s very, very, challenging, and so that’s what this episode is all about.

We are going to talk about why coaches and healers still need support from other people, we can’t do it all ourselves. We talk about energetic boundaries and why we need them and why we set these boundaries. We talk about what happens when we don’t get the support we need, how to recognise when we need help before it is too late, and we are burnt out or overwhelmed, and why we need spaces where we can show up as we are, all the bits of us, where to find these spaces. So, hope you find this episode interesting and useful and before we get into the actual episode, I am going to once again invite Jo Casey to come on and tell you a little bit about her membership program, which as I have mentioned before, is super awesome, I have had a look inside and I think it has got lots of interesting and useful stuff, super useful templates and things that your coach or healer can use. 

Jo: We know that building a coaching, healing, or holistic business can be challenging and isolating, so at the Meaningful Business Academy we don’t think you should have to go it alone.

We have pulled together all of the tools, training and support you need to get more clients and make more income, without you having to resort to the dark arts or sleazy manipulation techniques.

Instead, you will find done-for-you templates, master classes, guest expert interviews and a supportive, like-minded community, all for a low monthly price.

Check out the Meaningful Business Academy at: http://MeaningfulBizAcademy.com because it is time to do business differently.

Jo: Hi everybody this is Jo Casey and I am here with Holly Worton, this is our monthly joint podcast and today we are going to be talking about something that has been on my mind a lot and Holly andI sometimes we choose the topics, literally months in advance and sometimes they are just: this is what’s really pressing for me right now. And, we just had a bit of a chat about it and we filled twenty minutes with: oh, and this, oh and this. So, we have got lots to talk about on this. We are going to be talking about: who heals the healers and who coaches the coaches. Because this is a pattern that I notice in myself and I notice it in my clients who are coaches, and healers, and holistic folks about the fact that we are so very good, we are gifted even at caring for other people, healing other people, using our gifts to help people move through this world in a way that is easier and gentler and all of that good stuff. And yet, time and time again, I see us burning ourselves out, or I see us not living our fullest lives because so much of our energy is spent and not replenished through healing other people. So, that’s just something that I am thinking about a lot at the moment and I mentioned it to Holly and Holly said: oh yeah, we have lots to talk about that. So, I am going to throw it over to Holly and almost immediately say, that’s my experience with it, is this something that resonates with you too?

Holly: Absolutely, yes, I am a big fan, and I say this all the time on my own podcast, in my blogposts, when I am talking in my books, I do a lot of work with myself, but I also work with other people, obviously, I get help with other people, I get support from other people, I get healing from other people, I get coaching from other people. But it is something that I don’t do consistently, I kind of go through phases with it and I might not always get the support that I need when I need it, sometimes it takes me time to realise that I need some extra help and I do have a problem and I recognise this in opening up and being vulnerable and really spilling it all out. I have my mastergut group, we meet a couple of times a month, and I am really good about being open with them, but not always necessarily with other coaches and healers.

Jo: So, what, if this isn’t too personal, what I am saying, if this isn’t too personal of course it is personal…

Holly: If you don’t mind telling this to the world. {laughing}

Jo: Yeah, no one is listening, it is just you and I, what do you think gets in the way for you of getting that help, is it that you don’t always recognise it, or is it something else?

Holly: What gets in the way of me getting the help I need when I need it? I think I do have this underlying feeling, some part of me thinks that I should be able to just deal with everything myself, even though another part of me knows that obviously I can’t do anything myself and I need support. I think because I have so many tools in my toolkit and I help other people and I know how to help myself, I think sometimes I feel that I should keep on trucking on and doing it on my own. And sometimes I don’t even think about getting help sometimes. And then, other times I feel a very serious need to get help. It is like sometimes I don’t even think about and I think it is because that part of me thinks: you have got all the tools you should be able to do this on your own.

Jo: We were talking before we started recording about how that’s a refrain that can go through your brain if you are somebody who is very skilled and does have a lot of those tools around: well you know you should kind of be doing this for yourself, shouldn’t you? And also, there are other people in our lives who will say: I thought you knew this stuff?

Holly: Yes. 

Jo: So, there is a guilt and a shame that can come up around it, shouldn’t I be on top of all this by now? Shouldn’t I be fully baked as a human, shouldn’t I have reached that state of…

Holly: Yeah, it is like me with the business mindset stuff. I am very clear about the fact that I have been working on my business mindset with myself, with other people, for the last five years and I have still got a ton of stuff to work on. I still come up with limiting beliefs and blocks and fears and crap that gets in the way of me doing my business and taking the action that I need to take, and I am very clear about that, but yet again there is a part of me that feels like: I am the business mindset alchemist, I should have all my shit together, my business should be sparkly, and shiny, and perfect, and super supportive. And it is not that way, I am still doing work, not as much as I was at the beginning, but I have still got a lot of work to do.

Jo: I know, when we talk about it like this, it is so obvious, it is like: oh, so you are a human then, you haven’t elevated to this kind of level, but of course, of course, because we are humans and we grow, and we change, and we revisit the stuff and use the tools and sometimes the same issue will come up again and again and it is like…haven’t I dealt with this now? And it comes up in a different way, because that’s part of being a human.

Holly: Or it comes up, the same kind of thing but at a different level, because you have grown, so it is kind of a higher-level aspect of the same thing.

Jo: Is it Steve Maraboli says: new level, new devil? I can’t remember who that’s from?

Holly: Yes.

Jo: Definitely true and doing the work that I do around feminine conditioning and those things that hold us back from shining as brightly as we deserve and as we need to, that kind of idea that there are some kind of common things that come up again and again. This thing of being visible, being visible is something that’s not like: oh yeah, I have got that now, I can launch something and be doing Facebook lives every day and be on podcasts and be super visible and then it’s like: ah I want to go hide in a cave now.

Holly: Yeah.

Jo: And it is just as hard next time to come out of the cave, maybe not just as hard, but still hard to kind of go: okay, it is safe for me to be visible, what I have is… You have to go back to the tools, I wonder if it is this kind of culture that we have, especially in personal development, of: I can ease everything, you just take this pill, or take these vitamins, or take my course, or follow my blueprint and you know, you will be fearless forever and that’s not true but I think on some level, even those of use (use the should word) maybe should know better can still fall for it. Our inner critics can fall for it, we can still get tangled up in that self talk.

Holly: It is because it is so appealing, like who doesn’t want a magic wand, who doesn’t want a magic pill, that will fix everything forever, that would be so easy.

Jo: It would, it would be brilliant, I would adore that. {laughing} And I think that has lead me to invest in courses and things that you know, I kind of go: why did you buy this, you knew that this wasn’t going to deliver, on some level you knew, but there is that fear of: I haven’t got the answers I need, the extra thing, I need the blueprint, I need the roadmap, yeah.

Holly: I need someone else to show me the way because I can’t figure it out myself. 

Jo: Yeah, there is that. So, in some ways we can kind of go, because it is ironic, so we can go: okay, I will buy the course, I need someone else to show me the way, and yet, that doesn’t involve us having to be vulnerable and say: I haven’t got all the answers.

Holly: It is a weird double-sided, it is like a double-sided sword.

Jo: Because you invest in a course and that’s really easy, if I click that PayPal button I don’t have to say: you know what I am really having a day where I am doubting my abilities, and I am not sure if I can do this. And, at my darkest hour I worry blah blah blah. I don’t have to do any of that, I just click the PayPal button and it just relieves some of that anxiety. Whereas actually reaching out to a friend, or a colleague, or my coach, or my mastermind and saying these things, that requires me to be vulnerable, that requires me to be emotionally naked and reveal my soft squishy parts, and that comes with fear and shame. So, I wonder sometimes if buying the courses, is a way of trying to outrun that feeling of vulnerability.

Holly: yeah, it is like we are getting help but not exactly the kind of help we need.

Jo: Usually not in fact remotely the kind of help that we need, because it is rarely the course, or strategy, or blueprint that you need. It is very rarely that.

Holly: Yeah, but it can be really hard, because this is really, and I know that I do it as well, it is a really crappy thing, but we put out this image of ourselves online that is not 100% accurate because obviously if I am having a bad day I don’t put all of my shit out online. So, even though I try to be authentic, people aren’t seeing 100% of me.

Jo: Yeah, I always think that’s such a tricky line to walk because I say to folks a lot, and this has very much been my experience, the more you can show you, the more you can share your opinions and your values, the why behind your work and the more people get a chance to resonate with you and make that informed decision as to whether you are the right person for them. Or not. But, there is also, if I have had a row with my partner and I am doing the ugly cry with mascara down my face and I am having one of those days when I feel like a piece of shit, I am not going to go online and do that, because that is way too vulnerable and also that is not relevant to my business, it is almost like that… I don’t know, it is too much, too much exposure, it is like a switch for people, it is like when you get into a conversation at a bus stop or the train station and they suddenly start telling you these really intimate details of their life and it is like: woah, too much.

Holly: Too much information!

Jo: Yeah, so, the sharing the really bad stuff, or just the low days online isn’t appropriate. Brené Brown has this phase of: you share those moments with the people that have earned the right and social media hasn’t earned the right to do that. I know there are people who have built brands around doing that, but then at the same time, I do think it is important to be able to share the relevant struggles and the fact that…there is something about sharing when you have got a bit of distance from it?

Holly: Yeah.

Jo: So, I have a post in my Facebook group on a Friday and it is called: Failure Friday, and it is to encourage people to share the times when you tried, and you failed, because actually the victory is in the trying, not necessarily where you succeeded and what can you learn from it. And in that post, I shared the story, and I should have probably shared it on the podcast before, of one of the first clients I had who was paying me buttons basically and did a session with him and he revealed that he was not only in the car, he was on cocaine, in our coaching session. Or I share the time, in our first group program that I launched, and two people signed up which was worse than nobody signing up, because then I had to go to those two people {laughing} and say: er, this didn’t fill remotely and… But then I worked with them one-on-one. I think it is important to share those experiences and what you learn from them, because otherwise you end up with this feeling of: well, I am not perfect, everything I do is not a massive success before there is something wrong with me. And that’s not the case at all, I do think we need transparency around that, but that still begs the question: what do you do on those really low days?

Holly: Yeah, because also even if you are working with a coach, you are probably not working with a coach or a healer who can attend to you right now. You have to wait for your next session.

Jo: Exactly, exactly and that’s traditionally where the role of friends come in, but one of the patterns that I see show up a lot, I thought it was me for a long time, but I see this a lot, particularly with people who have recently got into a modality, they have leaned how to be a coach, or doing their reiki practice, or NLP, is that your friendship change because as you learn these tools you start to view the world a bit differently and you start to act in different ways and you change your patterns and that can really test friendships. And that can actually be quite lonely after a while. I can remember having a group of really close friends, there were four of us, really close friends and when I started getting into personal development and doing my coaching work, I no longer had any interest in: let’s just sit around and have a bitch and a moan. I don’t do that anymore and I can’t see the point and I am also aware that I probably came across as super judgemental during that. It was really difficult and there was a real sadness that these were women, we had got on so well, and yet they weren’t my people any more and I wasn’t theirs, and there was a real loss there. And then it’s: how do you still cultivate friendships; how do you build those friendships up in a way that is balanced and supportive and isn’t all about work or being perfect or let’s try this tool.

Holly: Yeah and that’s the thing, I think a lot of us once we have moved away from some of those earlier friendships in our lives, and we start getting into the personal development world, and getting into coaching and healing and all that, often then most of our friends are from the business world, so they are peers and they have all these tools and they could be theoretically be super helpful to have these conversations with, but then also they have businesses so you might also feel like you have to maintain a certain image in front of them.

Jo: Yes, so, this is kind of tangential, I have recently joined a membership site from a coach I worked with in the past, someone I really, really admire, and when I got into the membership site there are loads of people that I know I there and I immediately thought: ah, I don’t think I can show up and go: I am really struggling with this, can someone help me? Because, some of them have been clients, do I want…? I had to really wrestle with this thing of, I am still doing the thing of expecting myself to show up perfectly and never show any of the behind the scenes and the inner workings and things like that. But, I think it does require vulnerability to show up and say: I don’t have all the answers, I need some help with this and on one level I know that, people listening I know you know that as well. But, at the same time, it is really hard to do it in practice it is really hard.

Holly: Especially on something as kind of public as an online forum, I think one thing is having a one-to-one conversation with someone but in a community like that, that’s even harder.

Jo: And yet the purpose of the community is for other entrepreneurs to support one another and it does become tricky. What about new friendships, how do you find new friendships with…some of my clients call them muggles, people who don’t work in the healing art or coaches or things like that? It seems really rude saying that.

Holly: It does it seems very disrespectful…normal people. Yeah, it is very weird because my life is so much a part of this healing and coaching world and a lot of my good friends are online. I don’t have a lot of friends in the offline real world.

Jo: Me neither!

Holly: It’s a weird life like to me it is normal, and it probably is for a lot of people listening to this, but it is very weird to me. I think the only people I come into contact with who aren’t in this world are say, people in my kickboxing school, so I do kickboxing a couple of times a week, those are just normal people that do a variety of things and then my meetup group for women walkers, women from all walks of life who just want to get outside and walk and then last weekend for example I went on Lowland Leader Training course and I was the only non-teacher in there. Everyone else was a school teacher who was doing it to get their D of E certification to help lead D of E groups and I was just doing it because I am leading people on walks. That was really interesting because it was such a different group of people, people that I don’t normally come into contact with, they were lovely, and it was a great time and it was so nice to have contact with people who were not in this business world, but it doesn’t happen to me very often.

Jo: Me neither and it is one of the things that I know my family do worry about for me, the fact that: but you don’t have any friends that you go out and see. I do, but like you, most of my friends are…not that I have not met in real life but that I have a…the majority of my friendship with them is conducted with them online. You and I are in the same country and we have met up on occasions, but we live at opposite ends of the country, so we don’t do it at often.

Holly: We have done it twice.

Jo: Yes, we have done it twice. Is that all?

Both: {laughing}

Holly: I talk to you all the time, but yes, we have only seen each other without a computer screen in front of ourselves, twice.

Jo: It feels like so much more! That blows my theory out of the water.

Holly: But that’s what it’s like in our world, I don’t think we are the only two people who are like this. I consider you to be a good friend, I. have other friends that I consider to be…the women on my mastergut I love them, they are such good deep friends to me but I have only, one of them I have only seen once, offline, another one I have only seen four or five times, but we have these really deep connections so I think our world is changing to the point where we can form deep connections with people, even though we only see them on the other end of Skype.

Jo: I do agree, I don’t want to sound a bit defensive, I do have real friendships even though I make them on the Internet. I do agree and I suppose the thing that I have realised is that it takes conscious effort to do that, because it is not like you are just going to bump into somebody at the photocopier in the office, Or, I think of friendships that I have had in the past and how I have made friends, it has been because you were in physical proximity, you worked at the same place, or your kids went to same school, or you went to the same school. But, online we have to make more of an effort and I still love it when I meet somebody, and it is like: shall we just meet up for a virtual cuppa. I really like doing that, because there is a need for that. I think it is really interesting though, one of the dangers I see with friendships outside of this world and even in this world is that because of the work that we do those friendships can become quite lopsided. By which I mean…I have a number of relationships in my life that I have realised actually I am the one that people go to for advice, or someone to talk to, because that’s part of whoIe am, I am really good at that. And I love doing that, it feels really good to do that for people. But, I then feel like that there is no space for me to reciprocate and go: actually, I could do with a bit of help and support with this, because this pattern of relationship has been established that is lopsided. And there have been times when I have tried to do that and the other people has been: err how do I deal with this? Because it kind of breaks up the dynamic of the relationship that has been established and I realise that I can’t blame other people for that, that’s me that’s been as complicit in establishing that. And I have had this conversation with numerous other coaches and healers and there our default comfort zone is being that person that other people can rely on, other people can talk to. But there is a danger that that then insulates us from that vulnerability (there’s that word again) that self revelation that is required in establishing in really depending a friendship. We can be our own worst enemies with that because we can default to our skillset. Does that make sense?

Holly: Absolutely, absolutely. So, what happens if we don’t get the support that we need and we just kind of keep trying to figure it out on our own, or just suffering with it?

Jo: We burn ourselves to a crisp, we frazzle. Again, this is a pattern that I notice within myself, and it is one of the reasons I first got into doing work around resiliency because I recognised this pattern in myself and it stills come up. I think for women it is something that we struggle with a lot, because part of our feminine conditioning says that to be good we should put other people first, we should care for other people and this is not me saying turn into a big selfish arsehole. It is a really nice think we need more kindness and empathy in the world not less. But we need it with good boundaries and I think that’s the bit that many many of us miss, myself included. I am far from perfect on this. We miss having boundaries around how much effort we are putting out for other people and a little nourishment we take back or support we ask for until quite often it is too late, and we hit that exhausted point, or I am burnt out. And I see this happening time and time again, with my peers with my clients, because it is one of the things that we wrestle with, we have this gift and we want to give this gift liberally but at the same time we can give to the point where we have nothing left and we are spent. And if you do that for your business as well then you have kind of got the double whammy of it.

Holly: Exactly. So, what are the waning signs? How do we know when we need to get this extra support? Because sometimes it is hard to, when you are in the middle of the shit you sometimes don’t realise that you need help, you just feel like crap.

Jo: And I also think another pernicious thing that we have is that we have to do it all on our own otherwise it is weakness if we don’t. So, we have this really individualistic culture that is all around solo entrepreneur, be the hero of your own journey, and all of that stuff and I am more and more coming the conclusion that we are not meant to be doing this on our own. And I am sure I have mentioned this before but there is a phrase that I keep going back to, we have this model of: capitalism, for want of a better word, which is really messed up, that is all about exploiting resources to their depletion. If you are running your own business, you are your own primary resource and if we are still modelling on this idea that you exploit your resources to depletion then we are exploiting ourselves to depletion. And so what can happen is, we end up getting burnt out or just at best we are not operating at the top of our game and at its worst we end up having to shut up shop and go and do some serious healing on ourselves because we end up just burning out and I think that some of the warning signs of things like that are loneliness, feeling very isolated and: I have to do this on my own, I have to figure it out, shifts in energy so being really tired all the time.

Holly: Not sleeping enough.

Jo: Not sleeping enough. Just struggling to switch your mind off. That kind of: I need to do that, I need to do that. All those signs of being in a stressed and depleted state, forgetting things, not being as efficient as you would normally be, dropping the ball and things, not being as on top of things… I know that there was a time when I was super stressed, and I was doing an event in London and realised that when I got to the train station that I had booked the wrong tickets for the wrong days. So I had booked my return to go back to Manchester for the day I was meant to be going to London and vice versa and I was there in the train station going: I have no idea how I have even done that, because our brains just don’t operate that well under stress, so noticing those types of things, the silly mistakes that you are making, the forgetting stuff can all be indications of: I need to be doing something different here. And that feeling of overwhelm as well.

Holly: That is a classic symptom for me, making stupid little mistakes that under a normal situation it would be really easy for me to get right, but because I am stressed and overwhelmed I just do ridiculous things. 

Jo: And the other thing that is really important is about boundaries, not just boundaries around work and how much time we spend on other things, but I think there is something about energetic boundaries as well.

Holly: Yes, and energetic boundaries in our relationships, not only with clients but with friends, business friends, personal friends, whatever and kind of not taking on too much of other people’s stuff and being willing to get the help that we need.

Jo: I think particularly if you are HSP highly sensitive, if you are very intuitive, if you are naturally somebody who is very sensitive to other people’s energies then it can really overwhelming, really quickly and then if we don’t have the language or the mechanisms to put some of those boundaries in place it and really take it out of you. There can be days when due to the amount of interactions with people you can kind of go: I am exhausted, and it is only 10am. I have not done anything that I needed to get done.   

Holly: Or another thing I notice when I am in that exhausted state is that I can’t get anything done and I can’t focus on anything. I will go to clear out my inbox and I just can’t manage to respond to the emails or if I had to do some work, I can’t manage to get stuff done and then I end up browsing Reddit for a couple of hours or doing unproductive stuff because my brain can’t focus on the stuff that I need to do.

Jo: Yeah, I do that, or I find that I do things and they just take me three times longer than they normally do.

Holly: Yes.

Jo: Like writing a blog post, there are days wen I can flow… But it is like I am squeezing the words out of a stone, I am trying to excavate, it is just such hard work.

Holly: So, what’s the solution, so if we get to this point and we finally recognise that we need help, what do we do? Who heals the healers, who coaches the coaches? Where do we need to go?

Jo: There are a number of place and I don’t think it is a one hit thing, I genuinely think we need a cultural thing, I am thinking about this more and more, we need a shift in the way that we are thinking about this so this isn’t just a: I feel burnt out, I feel exhausted, I need to go hire a coach, or need to go and do some sessions with a healer and then I will be right. And then I will go back to business as usual. I think we need to be cultivating collectivism much more, community. One of the things that I just instinctively thought, this is what people need, when I was designing my group program, the coaches collective and now after running two rounds of it I am like: oh my God, I had underestimated even that. We need to have a space where you can show up as you, you can show up with the good, the bad, the ugly, the funny, the quirky, that you can show up vulnerably. Where there isn’t that pressure of: ah I want to ask for help but I also want to be there…I have to show that I have to have my stuff together, where people can get to know you. Whether that is through formal mastermind, if you can find places where they have put some thought and some effort into this then I think this is really, really beneficial. You can set up these spaces. One of the things that just warms my heart so much is that the last group program, the last round of coaches collective, that group we almost have a passing of the baton thing, that group have now carried on meeting without me. There is a little bit of me that kind of goes, I want to be there! But it is not appropriate for me to be there, they have that group and they are still supporting each other, they are each other’s people, that is lovely. You have your mastergut I have mastermind that I am in that I have been in a number of years that we have really worked hard at cultivating that environment where we have some ground rules, we have some boundaries, some agreements that we will show up as we are. This is not a place where we will put on a front, we will be kind, we will be honest, we will be vulnerable, and we will be courageous. And, it is really important to have those places. Yes, have a coach as well. I am coached, the coach that I am working with this year is Tanya Geisler, she is amazing. She also has this real drive for cultivating community and recognising that need for collective support. I think there is also something about using our own tools.

Holly: Yes.

Jo: And taking the time out to use our own tools.

Holly: Yes, exactly because even if you have NLP, PSYCH-K® whatever it is that you use, you need to make the time, the self care time to use them with yourself.

Jo: Yes, one of the phrases that Tanya Geisler had said to me, is you need to treat yourself with exquisite reverence. I thought: oh my God, I don’t think I have treated myself… That’s so outside of my emotional… The more I think about it the more I think, yeah, we do, we all do. Because it can sound like a cliché: if you are not refilling the well, then you have nothing to give to other people but actually that is so true, and self-care has become almost this eye-roll thing of: go and have a bubble bath but self care is self maintenance it is self nourishment it is giving ourselves the fuel and the tending that we need to operate as fully rounded humans. And I think we almost need it doubled for us healers because we are giving out so much of our energy and our life force and our care and our healing. And yet, we have this double bind because we are the ones that do the healing and not the ones that need the healing. And so…we resist it, we can it can feel indulgent, or: okay, I will do a ten-minute meditation because that’s all I have time for today. Do you know what I mean? We downplay our own need for self-care and nurturing which we need to stop. Because I keep saying this I see this as a pattern again and again. It is so tied to the message that we get as women and then we add this double-layer of being a healer because it feels good to use our gifts, why shouldn’t we use them? But, we also need to use them on ourselves and that is the bit that we are missing and that is the bit that will keep us small. That will keep us tired and not being able to radiate out at the level that we need to, because we have been told somewhere along the line by patriarchy that that’s a selfish thing to do.

Holly: And we keep hearing that analogy of the oxygen mask and the plane, got to put your mask on first before you take care of other people and it is like hear that over and over but somehow it doesn’t sink in. We absolutely have to take ourselves.

Jo: Yes, somebody pointed this out to me not so long ago, that actually that is still playing into this idea that for women it is somehow selfish because it is kind of saying: no, no, no it is not selfish if you do that then you can take care of of more people. But actually, how about: just put the oxygen mask on because you need some frogging oxygen, because you don’t want to die either.

Both: laughing 

Jo: I think we do have this real kind of knot of cultural stuff and belief stuff around yeah but, I can do it faster than other people, I don’t need it as much as other people. I will do the shortcut version of the self-care or the nurturing and there are some realities to it as well. How do you build this in and still be able able to do all of the things, maybe we can do all of the things and we need to be a bit more judicious about which things we are putting our energy to? 

Holly: Yeah and you have got to prioritise. And sometimes put yourself at the higher priority level.

Jo: Yeah, I think, I am not there yet, but I think on some level, we have to put ourself at the centre of our priorities all the time.

Holly: Yeah… 

Jo: I struggle with that! {laughing}

Holly: I was just thinking on Monday I was so tired physically from the weekend, doing the training course and mentally because I was learning new stuff that was totally different from anything that I am used to learning, and then I had traffic coming back from Oxford on Sunday. Monday got up was trying to work and I had one of those days when I couldn’t focus and knew I had to take a nap because I had one of those days when I hadn’t slept very well the night before and I wasn’t closing down and taking a nap, I was trying to forge on ahead, but I wasn’t focussing felt really guilty. Finally said to my husband: I need to take a nap, just so you know, I am getting off the computer – because he works from home too, so we are in the same house, office, whatever, and so I took an hour and 45-minute nap and felt AMAZING afterwards and got so much done. How amazing my day would have been if I had just done that earlier in the day and taken advantage of the time, but I didn’t out of guilt, because he was working downstairs in his office, I felt bad that I was going to be taking a nap when he was working, ridiculous stuff. And he is so supportive when I have to take a nap or when I am not feeling well, and he always says: why didn’t you do this earlier? But you know…patterns.

Jo: Yeah patterns totally. I have that too, my husband will say: well you don’t have to do anything today and I will be like: ahh I do, I have to do be doing because if I am not what does that make me? And those feelings are so pernicious and so deep that, and we have to keep reminding ourselves and one another and I also think that there is something about modelling for each other as well. There is something about saying: it is not selfish to do this you are helping other people, but I think if we can also model for one another, taking a nap taking a break when you need to, not working the 12-hour days, taking the day off when you have been working too much a few days before hand, listening to your body, tuning in, if we can start to model that then that starts to shift the culture around it as well. But we have to do it together, we can’t just be one person, and we can’t keep running into the wall and falling down exhausted afterwards and being: why did that happen? I know why that happened, okay I will never do that again. Okay, feeling better, back at it…

Holly: It is hard to break the patterns.

Jo: It is very hard to break the patterns yes. Anything else that you want to say on this subject?

Holly: I feel like we have covered it.

Jo: I feel like we have come to a nice conclusion with it which is to say that this stuff is hard but necessary.

Holly: Yeah exactly.

Jo: And just because it is difficult doesn’t mean that it is not something that we need to be examine and look at a bit more and picking apart those messages and those patterns and doing our own work and leaning into vulnerability and asking for help. Maybe when we are not at the stage when we are like: I really need some help, but maybe we can try asking for help when it is just: I need a bit of a hand with this, before it gets to that desperate level. Maybe that will make it more of a habit. 

Holly: And I think that the more that we do that the more we start to recognise at those earlier levels that we need help rather than waiting until shit has blown up and it is obvious.   

Jo: Yeah, I think you are right. That was a great episode, I enjoyed that conversation.

Holly: Yes, so more on the story: get help when you need help.

Jo: Absolutely, I will speak to you soon, take care. Bye. 

Holly: So that’s it for today, I hope you found this episode interesting and useful please drop me a line and let me know what you thought of it. You can email me at [email protected] or find me on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram and get in touch there. I would also love for you to join me in my private Facebook group: Business Mindset Alchemists, so we can continue the conversation there. Podcasting is such a one-way conversation Jo and I just talked at you for the last 45 minutes, so it would be great to have you join me in my Facebook group to get some feedback fro you. Jo is in there as well and you can let us know what you thought of this episode and we can have a conversation with you about exploring this topic further. So, if you head to http://HollyWorton.com/group you will be redirected to the Facebook group. And finally thank you so much for listening if you enjoyed this episode please leave a quick review at iTunes or Apple podcasts it would mean the world to me.

And remember to visit: http://HollyWorton.com/250 for the show notes on this episode.

Next week I am back with another solo episode. Thank you very much and have a great day.