Hello, beautiful people, and welcome to another episode of

soul inspired you. I am Melissa

and Beth. How are you today? I'm

very good, thank you. It's a bit frosty here today. What's the weather like

where you are? Is it. Have you got the winter? Minus one?

Minus what? I don't know what the temperature is, but it feels chilly. I'm not

going outside. It's one of those gorgeous days. Back in the day when

I was in the motor industry and I used to have these little

convertibles, I would always get the convertibles in the winter because I

would be the one with my sexy gloves on the roof

down and the heat is blasting on a day like today.

You know, it's really funny, I was in the hairdressers yesterday and there was another

customer in there talking about their. Their car that has this

heated function so they can literally flip a switch on their

mobile phone and it heats the car up. I was like,

amazing. No more scrapey,

Scrapey. Imagine that for a heated seat. Oh,

yeah. I just. I'd want it to go to work for me. That's the only

thing I'd want it to go do, like, a full day's work for me. They

can be that fancy. They can. They can do the things on the to do

list as well. Beth,

what soul inspired things have you been doing this week? Soul inspired

things that I've been doing this week? I

have. What have I been doing?

That's a good question. It's blowing and

growing. Just flowing and growing. I've had, because I've just come out of

a really busy November, I do 30

day long gratitude journey. So that came to an end and I've been onboarding my

new members and I suppose the soul inspired things I've been doing. Now,

my plan was always to have a December. That was that

I'd have more time to do all of the things that I want to do

outside of business and get ready for Christmas and things like that. So the

soul inspired things I've been doing really have been listening to my body more

around when I want to do something or when I don't want to do something

and when I want to go, like, knock on my mum's door or when I

just want to. Just literally just going with the flow. So that's

what I've been really working on in the past week, is just getting

myself into a nice space where

I've got my boundaries in place, where my cup's been filled up and building back

up my energy after a busy hectic November. And it's really nice

to be able to have the reins, to be able to do that and actually

be intentional and plan. Having said that, things

always come a bit left field. We're currently decorating and I

don't think the sofa is going to be here before Christmas.

So there's all these kind of curveballs, but it's just nice to be able to

just go with the flow little bit more. So that's what

happened really this week, just chilling out a bit more. I think it's such

an important part of life and

it's for business owners. We can really

get caught in this trap of it has to be go

and that we have to be our best all of the time and that we

have to be out there and we have to be always planning the next thing.

And if we're not planning it, we're implementing it. And if we're not implementing it,

then we're actually actioning it. And if we're not actioning it,

there's always something. And this is the world that we've

been brought up in. And you think about

regular working life and you get your 21

days holiday, whatever we get a year and it has to

be going, you have to come in and even if you're feeling sick, you've got

to go in anyway. And I think that it

can be really damaging, can't it, that we then grow

up thinking that that's what it should be. And

if we're not, then we're broken. Because when do, apart from when we go on

vacation, when do we get time off? When we're sick? When

we're broke, right? And then, and that's what we think, we're broken.

And actually, the truth is, just like nature,

just like the weather, just like everything, that there

are these waves and there are these cycles. And we wouldn't

judge a flower because it didn't decide

to bloom in December when it's a sunny flower. Yeah.

And for me, and I think for a lot of business

owners, maybe we come into this journey thinking

that I'm going to have the freedom. And for me, I think I shared with

you one of my things was, well, I want to work when I want, with

who I want and how I want. And the answer I got back was, that's

impossible. And that's the

paradigm. That's the old paradigm, I think, that we were living in. You made just

such a good point. I've done this. And you were on the

external, you were holding this space, you were doing all this stuff, and you've got

everything there. And now it is that natural

downturn of the quest. And I think more of

us really need to talk about that and share

about that. And people always say to me all the

time, they're like, oh, Melissa, don't know how you do it. You're so busy. And

I'm like, I'm not really. It comes, I don't know, like, I

don't think, oh, I want everyone to think I'm really busy. Like, I just share

what's going on. And I saw an old friend yesterday and he was

like, oh, you're always on there. And I'm like, is that just an illusion?

Because I'm going with this flow and there's this, these peaks and

troughs. So, yeah, being able

to knock on your mum's door when you want to and rest and just

sit and watch a, a warm Christmas film every now and then

is part of life, I think. Yeah, I think there's like,

there's a guilt, isn't that some people carry, I know that. I've certainly carried that.

If you're not doing the thing, if you're not turning up for work or you're

not answering the emails right away, then there's this level of

guilt that comes. Having said that, I knocked on my mum's door and she was

going out, so it was literally not planned. I got there, knocked on the door

and she said, oh, we're just going out, Beth. I'm like, I'm really sorry. I'll

be around tomorrow. Okay, well, I might actually be working tomorrow.

It didn't go quite to plan, but it was just nice to actually have the

ability to go out of the way, knock on my mum's door and then drive

home and go, do you know what? Okay, I'm not on my mum's this afternoon,

but I'm just going to put Netflix on. I'm just going to finish a series

that I've not watched and just do that kind of thing instead. Have

you ever had that thing like where you're just sitting

there scrolling on your phone or doing nothing or whatever the

tv's on, or you just lie? I just like to sit there and stare into

space. That's one of my things. And when somebody walks

in or you see somebody's about to come in or

whatever, and then suddenly you're like, oh, no, pretend I'm doing something. Pretend

I'm busy. And it's this form of hyper vigilance, isn't

it? I better be busy. Because somebody's watching me. Because at school, if

you were daydreaming, you know, smack your hand. They don't do that anymore, do

they? But click your fingers and turn around and pay attention.

And for me, when I was at uni, and there was

all, you need to be doing work. If you're not at school, then you need

to be doing your coursework. And there's always something that needs to be done.

And if you're not doing your coursework, then you've got your house,

your room to keep and all of this stuff, and, like, where's

the space? And I just think it's. It's one of these.

I don't know what to call it, but it's. All of these things are taking

ourselves away from who we truly are. Yeah.

And I just hope that the listeners can really understand

that it's okay to just. It's okay to stop and take a

break. And actually, you know, it's. Even though we're stopping and we're maybe moving away

from the day to day, things are still

happening. We're still processing our thoughts. We're actually giving

ourselves space and time for those thoughts to

percolate. Percolate and give us ideas and

inspiration. So it's not that we're not actually doing anything. It's actually we're just giving

ourselves that space to renew our energy, but also allow

things to just settle down inside those brain cells and start

to create new and amazing things that we can maybe do,

take action on in the future. But, yeah, we have to find that

balance where we can. And it's not easy not feeling guilty,

because I've always been a do it. I've always been incredibly busy. Like you say

when you're at school, it's that teacher comes into the class, it stand up, sit

up straight kind of mentality, we're ready for learning, let's

go kind of thing. But it doesn't have to. It doesn't have to always

be that way. And it's a shame that no one teaches that when we're younger,

that playtime is

important time as well. Break time should be

break time should be break time. Sometimes one of my

kids will say that, oh, they took ten minutes of our

break time because we were talking. And I'm like, oh, my goodness me. I'm like,

just tell your teacher that break time is the most important part, is when they're

socializing and when their imagination's running free and when they can,

like, all the good behavior that they have to exhibit in class,

this. Don't talk, don't fidget, sit still.

Do listen to what I'm saying to you, even if you don't find it

interesting. Listen to how I'm teaching you, even if this isn't

the way that you learn. Listen, you need that

break. And what's minor, a little two or

minor a little still in primary school. And what do they get? Two

or three breaks a day. And in 6 hours I think about how

I work and there's, there is that kind of up and down time.

And this is a really lovely school that really honors

the children and all of this, but that is just the schooling

system. And then we grow up

and there's no point. There's no point in our lives that we go,

Beth, you're an adult now. You're an adult now,

Beth. Now it's your responsibility to choose when

you want to get up and when you want to go to sleep and what

you want to listen to and what you want to choose and how you want

to show up. Because that is

life, isn't it? But that's not

actually. That's the road less traveled. Yeah. If you

go into employment, then you don't actually have that.

It shouldn't be a luxury, but you don't have that because it's so structured and

there's deadlines and everything else. And then when you move

into. If you move into self employment, then

you carry that not only from employed work, but you're also

carrying it from your childhood as well. Of having that structured, that the teachers can

fit the curriculum in, is that the day is structured in a certain way.

So unless you stop

and think about that ability to structure your time in

a different way and unlearn and unpick some of that, and

it feels super unnatural

to. To stop and just listen to your body, to go to

bed on a Tuesday night thinking, I've got 10

million things on my to do list tomorrow, and then waking up on Wednesday and

really listening to your body and going, do you know what I think actually, if

I push too hard on my to do list today, that's going to be more

damaging than just actually doing nothing today, because then I can be

more productive on Thursday. That's a

difficult shift to me, conditioned

for so long to do it in such a different way. But

I personally find that if even when I've got. There's always things on the to

do list, right, the to do list never really ends. And I could have

done a multitude of things yesterday and I did literally

none of them, apart from maybe answer a couple of emails on my phone.

Yeah. Now I just approach life as

it's a continuum and that what doesn't get done yesterday will

get done at exactly the right time. If everything unfolds and

happens at exactly the right time, if everything's going to unfold exactly when it's supposed

to unfold, then it will happen.

Sometimes you can be worried about, oh, I literally haven't got time to do something.

And then that thing gets taken off your to do list because somebody sends an

email and goes, oh, do you know what? That's not a requirement anymore. So I

think if we trust our

own intuition around

what is happening, can I pause? Can I reflect? Can I stop?

Yes. I would say in most instances, you absolutely

can't, unless the house is literally burning down and something needs to be done.

But I think, yeah, just giving yourself that time and

space to stop and reflect and

think, is this something that can wait until tomorrow?

And then I always find that I'm super productive. I know today I'm

going to have a super productive day because yesterday I was

resting and percolating and stopping. It's

changing that perspective, I think, on now because that

comes up again. Yesterday I had a day off, so now I have to. But

I've noticed something, and this conversation is something that's really

important to me. And I realized, looking back in my

life, that this is what my soul or my energy, or

maybe even, you know, my human, which I always put

down, or it was labeled as laziness and

worst thing, somebody could call me, I realized that

this flow thing was what I was always actually being pushed to

do. And for me,

it's. The more we understand that,

well, we don't have to say yes to everything. There are only

so many hours. Relaxing time or moving your

body time or reading your book time or chatting to your friend

time is just as important as

the other times that actually things just

tend to flow. Yeah. And then

I think, actually, we started this conversation and people

always say to me, how do you do so much? And my reality

is I don't feel like I'm always doing,

because then the moments that you are actually in the

doing, you're doing them with the whole of you, not with

25% of you, because 75% of you doing in

your head all of the other things. Something happens

when you allow these peaks and troughs. I don't know. I

think it becomes that. Your word becomes your word, and that

is what you're deciding. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do

this because I said I'm going to do this. But if I can't, and I

can't be there at 100%,

actually what normally happens is the other person's, oh, thank God you

cancelled, right? Something, oh,

we don't need that. Like you said, we don't need that anymore. That's not a

requirement. The more present we can be,

the irony, the oxymoron is

more gets done, and it gets done well, and it gets done in the

right way, like all of this cycle.

Yeah. And when you said about when people called you

lazy, that's like the worst thing that I felt. Exactly. If somebody says to

me, not, you're not pulling your weight or you're being lazy, whatever, that's.

That would have been at one time the trigger for me to go, okay, you

think I'm lazy, and then just like going 100%

and doing a crazy amount of things, and now what I'm doing is always

enough. And if you've always been the person that

has cut your grass, or you've tidied your garden, or

you've always put your bins out, you'll always be that person. You're not gonna. Just

because you're having a down day doesn't mean that all of the morals

and all of your values suddenly disappear. Someone said that to me

when I was thinking about quitting my job and not

having enough money coming in, or the same amount of money as I

did previously. And they said, but if you've always paid your bills, you'll

always find a way to pay your bills. You don't all of a sudden

lose that ability just because circumstances have

changed. That's who you are. And it's the same with time. Just because we

stop doesn't mean that we're not going to get all of those things done that

we really want to get done. I wonder if all of

this doing time, it's

distraction, isn't it? It's a distraction away from who you truly

are and who your soul is. I suppose

for you, and I'm sure many of the listeners

here, we realize actually how important

our soul is and how important this inner world is and

how important we are. And we will never discover

ourselves, not our true selves, if we never stop.

That's true. I think it's also really important

that the things that we're doing when we're doing them

are the things that are aligned to our souls. So if we

don't give ourselves that time and space to stop. We can't figure out, we

can't get that clarity and intention around what it is really super

passionate about doing. And then we can plan and

create action aligned with those things

and instead we just, we

could question, if we haven't done that work, what am I actually

doing when I'm doing? What am I actually ticking off? Are

these things actually aligned with the higher thing that I want to be doing or

am I just doing. Because that's what I've always been taught to

do, right? It's like we're on autopilot and then we

stop and then all that, suddenly we stop and then the, like,

barrage of emotions and thoughts and, oh,

could have, should have, could haves. And all of this stuff starts to come out.

If anyone's just starting their meditation journey and they're

like, I'm going to sit and I'm going to feel peace for two minutes. I'm

going to feel peace for two minutes. And you sit there and then everything

just comes up. It's almost like there's a part of you that goes,

oh, she's quiet. This is our chance to tell her everything.

And you're just like.

And. But there is a point, I don't think, that

stops. I've been doing this work for many

years and it's not stopped, but it

lessens. And. Or I don't know, maybe it's that when

it does come, there's not an attachment to this. It's, oh, okay,

I'm going to give you this part of me a little time to

vent because bit, I'm not giving you time all day, all

week, all month. And

then it settles down and then you start to hear the voice

underneath it or that feeling underneath it,

which then gives you that aligned

action to take. And when you take aligned

action, it's like it is fueled by something

so different. Yes, I have to. Or

just because that's what we do, it becomes

bigger and bigger. It's like it's

fueling itself. I think if we go back

to the, one of the first episodes when you were talking about when you sat

down and wrote the book and it just came out of you and it was

just flowing ease, it's that kind of energy

that's behind that when we're in that space.

Yeah. Effortless effort. It's

not that we don't do, and I can understand it can come across that

way. You still do. You still got to do. But the doing

is, it's just different. It's, yes, I'm

alive. I'm alive and look what I get to

do. Rather than, oh, I'm alive and look. What I've got to

do. Yeah, it's a good space to be in,

but to get there, we have to stop. Yeah, we have to

stop. And it's available to everyone. It's not just available to special people.

Everyone's a special people. You just got to learn who your kind of special

is. And it starts with stopping and then just

reevaluating. And this time of year is a great

time to do that, to be like, okay,

this is where I am, is this what I want? What do

I wear? Do I want to be over the. Next twelve months

and then not feel like you just got to rush ahead and do it.

And take our time? That's a whole other conversation, isn't it?

It is. I love how you said start and you need to start

and stop. And then I got the image of

harking back to the beginning of the episode with the car with the

convertibles and everything come full circle.

Love that. Our self heating,

self working, self driving car. Well, that's what

it is, isn't it? It's like a self heating

in the sense of it's that comfortable space

cocoon. And then if it's self driving, it's

not that push energy, it's that energy of flow that's taking us to

our destination. And then we just get to decide

what that looks like, what model it is and what color it is and

how fast or slow the drive is. And what

lanes we take and whether we go the fast road or the slow road

and what then does need to happen. It really is a

beautiful push pull

thing. I'm nodding my head. It's like a kind of

metronome, you know, there's this rhythm you can find.

And I suppose if there's one thing that I'd love

for any distance to take away from this is even if you're

listening to this and quite likely looking at

statistics, you're listening to this while you're in the car or while you're doing

your chores or while you're whatever, walking.

What if you just stopped and just allowed yourself, no matter who's around, put your

headphones on and just go, I'm just sitting and I'm just listening. If not

to us, to something else, or just to some nice

relaxing music or whatever, and then maybe you

still feel like you're doing something.

It's like I started doing this brain entrainment with binaural

beats and there's a regime

with it. Three a day. And so when that second

one, the first ones in the morning, last one's at night. But that second one,

I'm like, I'm going to go and do my meditation.

Yeah. And it's okay because I've got my headphones on. It's like, all right,

mommy's busy and I'm just loving life. Sitting,

listening to weird and wonderful

music and sounds. And then I come back and then I'm like.

And it's like having a brain massage. I feel all refreshed.

I have loved the conversation today. Me

too. It feels like the right place to stop.

So we can recharge and do

fold onto the driver. Now we can

recharge our car. Yeah. Plug it in. Yeah. I

love the car, I think. Yeah, it's got legs,

but it's got wheels. Keep on rolling.

And who we put in the car with us, who we take on our

journeys with us. That'S a whole

other conversation and that will be for next

time. So we hope that you have enjoyed soul inspired

you and we will see you again on the next riveting

episode. See you soon.