Inside this episode I’m chatting with my client Genevieve Steven. She is sharing her inspiring journey of struggling with burnout and her quest to restore her health.
She’s done a remarkable job of taking care of her body, changing the relationship she has with work and creating a new framework to achieve more in her career, but do it in a much lighter way.
Inside this episode we discuss:
Genevieve has been working with me inside my mastermind program. Elevate The Mastermind is your pathway to calm, sustainable success.
Work With Me:
Elevate The Mastermind
The 4 Step Process To Release Emotional Stress Digital Course:
Visit my website: annabellematson.com
Social Media
Find me on:
If this podcast serves you, I’d really appreciate it if you could leave a rating and review.
Share this episode with a friend who may enjoy it too.
Inside this episode I’m chatting with my client Genevieve Steven. She is sharing her inspiring journey of struggling with burnout and her quest to restore her health.
She’s done a remarkable job of taking care of her body, changing the relationship she has with work and creating a new framework to achieve more in her career, but do it in a much lighter way.
Inside this episode we discuss:
Genevieve has been working with me inside my mastermind program. Elevate The Mastermind is your pathway to calm, sustainable success.
Work With Me:
Elevate The Mastermind
The 4 Step Process To Release Emotional Stress Digital Course:
Visit my website: annabellematson.com
Social Media
Find me on:
If this podcast serves you, I’d really appreciate it if you could leave a rating and review.
Share this episode with a friend who may enjoy it too.
Hi, it's Annabel Matzin and welcome to the Steep your Soul podcast. Soulful guidance for women who are seeking deeper truth and meaning to their lives. If you're ready to move past what's been holding you back and awaken to your full potential and purpose in life, then let's get started. Hello and welcome back to the podcast. It's Annabel Matzin here and inside this episode I'm chatting with my client, genevieve Steven. She's been part of my program, elevate the Mastermind, and she joins me on the podcast to share about her inspiring journey of struggling with burnout and her quest to restore her health. So Eve works in the agri sector in a professional role and also chairs a not-for-profit called Woman in Agri Business, and she's really passionate about supporting women to grow in the sector. So she is a great fit for us here on the podcast and I love how Eve has been willing to share her story so openly. It's not easy to get on a podcast and discuss some personal things, things that often happen behind the scenes, so I really honour her for doing that. You might be here right now where you're feeling burnt out, finding that work is really heavy and stressful and you're looking for some insight on how to move through this. Maybe you want to avoid it happening to you. This episode would be great for you, and I think also it's so important to have these conversations and for Eve to be willing to share her journey and her story about this, because a lot of people would see her as very high achieving and high functioning. I think there's definitely a degree of vulnerability around acknowledging that our approach to achievement has been coming at a cost to us personally. So she's done a remarkable job of changing the relationship she has with work and taking care of her body in a different way to bring more of that balance back and ultimately really creating a pathway to continue to achieve in her career, but do it in a much lighter way. So inside this episode we're discussing how understanding the root cause of her burnout was a really significant step towards her healing and recovery, and the unconscious belief system and set of beliefs that were playing a big role in the stress that she had been experiencing, and how uncovering that has really helped her make a shift in the way that she has approached work. We discuss why many high performing, high achieving women can find it hard to live from their feminine energy and therefore find it hard to create that balance with work and how we can be bringing more of that softness and balance back to our lives. She discusses the importance of self care, learning how to relax, nurturing the nervous system, and her most recommended daily practice to support the body with stress. So I know there'll be something so valuable for you inside this episode if you can relate to Eve's story, whether it's a place that you're in now or somewhere you've experienced in the past or maybe something you want to avoid in the future. If you're new here, be sure to subscribe to the podcast wherever you're tuning in from, and if you know of a friend or a colleague that would benefit from this episode, please do share it with them so that they can hopefully receive some value from the discussion that I have with Eve today.
Speaker 1:And, as I mentioned, eve has been working with me inside Elevate, the Mastermind, and this is my program. It's currently open for enrolment and we begin on the 2nd of November. This is a four month journey where we redefine work and success in a calm and sustainable way. In the Mastermind, we meet three times a month for live sessions. We combine coaching and teaching and a beautiful, intimate community. You're going to experience the power of working light and emerge from the Mastermind with a much more balanced relationship with your work. You're going to learn to feel more relaxed, more at ease, more grounded. As you step into your next level of success and do things outside of your comfort zone, you'll radiate a belief and a confidence that welcomes in new opportunities and supports you to expand into your full potential.
Speaker 1:So, whether you're looking to reclaim your energy, balance your relationship with work, or you're ready to step into a new level of success, the Mastermind would be a great fit for you. So there's a link with all of the details about the program below and let's get into the episode. So good to have you on the podcast today, marina, and Abel lovely to be joining you. Can't wait for our conversation and, yeah, this thrill to have you here and I'm really looking forward to hearing your perspective onto things that I know a lot of people experience at work. So thank you for being here and I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Thank you for your help for the last few months. Really nice to actually be able to pay it forward and, yeah, hopefully help some other women.
Speaker 1:Love it Okay, so why don't we just start by you introducing yourself and telling us a little bit about you before we begin?
Speaker 2:Sure, so I'm Genevieve, also just run by Eve. She's probably out of alcohol in the session. I'm 29. I'm based in North Canterbury. My career has been in the agriculture sector. I'm from a farm down near Tamaru and currently living on a farm with my fiancee. I'm from a family farm towards Kaikoura and yeah, so my whole career has been in the agri sector, worked for a number of amazing businesses, really love supporting women to grow and bring young people into the sector. So, alongside my day job, also involved with a non-profit which I cheer for women and agri business so, yeah, involved in some really cool things in the sector Amazing.
Speaker 1:You've done some incredible things in your career. Today, and just speaking really personally, I attended the women in agri business event a couple of weeks ago and it was such a beautiful event, like I said to you, it had such a wonderful energy to it, like this really supportive, warm space where women were coming together and talking about things that were. You know well, if people have listened to this podcast, you know that I'd love to talk about things, to normalise them, those things that come up for us in our work and career. Now life, and I just really appreciate and value what you're creating through women in agri business, the events that you're creating and the spaces that you're creating for women to enter to have those discussions. It's so important.
Speaker 2:Thank you. It's really kind of you and I think just every time we have an event, it really reinforces to me how hungry women are for those safe spaces and to have the conversation and for it to be normalised, and particularly in the agriculture sector.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's a real hunger for it. There's a lot of incredible women doing amazing things, but there's still definitely quite a strong masculine energy through the sector and I don't think we really realise it until we start to learn about masculine, feminine and have these conversations and go oh okay, this is what it's like when you have 50 women in a room and to have these amazing discussions and all the problems that get solved. It's pretty, it's neat special, very special.
Speaker 1:It's really helpful Before we go any further, because I think this is going to provide some content for what we're about to discuss. Do you want to describe your personality?
Speaker 2:Sure, I think people would describe me as very confident, very outgoing, super bubbly, positive person. I can make people frisily warm and comfortable. Yeah, and I'm pretty high functioning in that. I'm super driven, very motivated, love being busy. I can juggle quite a few balls at once Successfully sometimes not so successfully other times. But, yeah, I love giving love, being part of community, love working with groups, and I think that's the best way to describe me.
Speaker 1:Cool, I love to have you. We actually didn't talk about this at the beginning of the episode, but you've been part of the Mastermind that I launched three months ago. You're part of the first enrollment and it's just been so great to have your energy in the group, because you have brought all of that and so much more to the group, so it's been so, so cool to have you be part of it. Why don't we talk a bit about where you were at prior to joining the Mastermind, like what was happening to you and lives and work before you and I got connected and you joined.
Speaker 2:So it's probably interesting in terms of how we were connected. A friend sent me one of your podcasts and I said you need to listen to this. It sounds like you, you nutter. And then I listened and I was like, oh gosh, that is me, oh dear. And so I listened to quite a few more podcasts and reached out to you, because it was like 10 days before you were starting mastermind course and at that stage I had just come back from seven weeks overseas.
Speaker 2:So I'd had a lovely break, a lot of time to reflect and think about things as also coming back and starting a new role, working for the same company amazing business but moving into a new role. So it's kind of like a bit of a fresh start in some ways. And my fiance is going to be overseas for another three and a half months. He's still over there, but it's just kind of like a nice space just to come and have some good thinking time for me. And I wasn't really sure what I was going to get out of the course. At that point I think I'd realized my body was burnt out. I sort of worked out that I was burnt out, but I was still sort of thinking oh, actually I'm being a bit dramatic. I'm not burnt out.
Speaker 2:I'm like there's way more stuff going on in their lives, with children and businesses and all these other bits happening. I'm just being silly, but I've realized I was burnt out, as well and truly burnt out, and I had started on a bit of a pathway earlier in the year. So in February I reached out to Sarah Vickers, her amazing lady, who you've interviewed on this podcast before Annabel yes, she is amazing and she's an holistic health consultant and she's helped me to really get my body back on track, functioning.
Speaker 2:The first real clue for me that things weren't working I essentially was super puffy. I was really sluggish, not able to go to the bathroom for a few days.
Speaker 2:so very uncomfortable, really low energy, just feeling really flat. And through my work with her, I really understood and understand what was happening for me health-wise, and so that looked like I had no immunity, essentially. My liver and pancreas went functioning properly, total dyssymbiosis. In my guts, I had all the bacteria and fungi that you don't want and I had them in e-pick proportions. I even had strep throat, which should only live on your throat and my bowel I'd lick your gut and not was on absorbing healthy fats, so not able to absorb avocado and salmon and all that. So, as Sarah politely said, I was reasonably acute. So that was a real wake-up call for me because I was fit and healthy, eating really well, rising regularly, living on a farm, riding my mountain bike, running around the road, doing all this stuff. But I was still feeling really heavy and I was carrying more weight than what I needed to be and I just couldn't work out why.
Speaker 2:And so for this journey with her I probably one of the first questions she asked me was do I get stressed? How do I manage stress? I said, oh, I'm fine with stress, I'm all good, this doesn't affect me. Yep, I'm really good. To some extent I was coping, like I felt like I had the mental clarity. I was super sharp, but that was just because I was in flight and fight mode the whole time. I was just running on adrenaline.
Speaker 1:Yeah, adrenaline was like to be sharp.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was super sharp for the last few years and it was like, oh, no shit, no wonder I'm burnt out. I've been running on adrenaline for years and so, yeah, that was interesting and it took me a few months to really come back to her and say, oh, actually I do think I have some issues with stress. And she said, well, yes, like, with how, like gut results and blood results as bad as yours, you've definitely got stress issues and so I think it's the work that I've done with you and through Mastermind has really helped me to link that physical health to, I guess, my way in my mental health and my whole being, and find that connection, the energy connection, which has been really, really valuable. So, yeah, I so just answer your question. I've turned up, body burnt out, still accepting, needing to accept that I was burnt out, and a really cool place to sort of start this journey.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so cool. And I remember when you and I we first jumped on a call to talk about it before you decided to join, you were saying you know, I'm not, I'm in this new role like life is actually feeling a lot more like peaceful and sort of balanced compared to what it had been before that. And I said to you like this is actually a really good time to do the work. You know, when we're not in a place of urgency where we're feeling like we have to leave a job or something is feeling really uncomfortable that we're wanting to move away from can actually be. I mean, I've been in space both spaces when I've done work like this.
Speaker 2:So it's not one is not necessarily better than the other, but it is can actually be really nice to do this exploration, to do this work when, when things aren't really bad, when we're actually coming out the other side of it- oh, totally, and I'm so grateful that you gave me that advice and I did did do it because I just looked at it as a way like it's just filling up my toolkit and, to be honest, it's filling up my energy reserves and helping me to heal from burnout and helping me open my mind and be ready for the next thing. I'm not. I'm not ready yet. I'm still just kind of in the season of just just being safe and thinking, letting everything sink in. But it's, it's a really I know I feel like I'm in a much more sustainable space in terms of energy and for me, the stress why I burnt out partly was I was in a pretty a intense role media facing public, facing lots of presentations. You have to be your best all the time and to be successful in that role.
Speaker 2:I was often in my masculine energy to be able to be speaking to big rooms of people, often mostly male. I was, I was really in that masculine space. There were some other areas of my life that were causing stress too, which I probably hadn't fully appreciated. So there, there were a few things, yeah, going on for me. But the other element of it is that I, because I am such a like high energy, bubbly person, I get over excited about things. So if I get over excited about something, that causes the same response in my nervous system as being stressed. So for me that's been a big lesson and kind of managed getting too excited but also to manage stress.
Speaker 1:I remember you shoot that in our recent session in the mastermind. I feel like that's such a great awareness or a heart that it is the similar ceiling and it's almost like that excitement is such a great part of who you are and you know just that you can like you get on board with things and you run with things that love that about you. But knowing that like okay, maybe then there's a way for me to also manage the emotion that comes. It comes with that too, in the same way that we manage stress.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Just sort of going back to what you said earlier. Isn't it interesting how the body always knows first, before the mind does? And it's like your body was really saying to you I'm not coping here. There's, there's a lot of stress here, but the mind it takes longer for the mind to catch on to that being the reality of what's happening. And I remember actually early on in my journey I can't remember if I shared this with you in any of our sessions, but that's really how I got onto this path, into into this work. Was it started with like a really similar health experience to you? And I would go to these specialists and they would say so, how stressed are you? And I would say, oh no, I'm not stressed, I just feel like I'm busy.
Speaker 1:And then there's just like such a fine line between busyness and stress isn't there and it's like is it busy or is it almost like more okay and acceptable to say that we're busy more than to say that we're stressed yeah?
Speaker 2:And I think I'm probably similar in that that busyness, and that I'm a sort of person I'll run five lists at once. I'll have them on the fridge, on my phone and on my computer and then I also have them on paper. So like all those lists of things to do and it's like really motivating. You wanna get all this stuff done, like I love a good tick beside an action. But I think so much of it's been around learning to like sit back from the to-do list and just to reframe it, rethink it and I keep it on the weekends I'm getting better at like don't worry about it. Monday morning, you know, I'll start working a bit earlier and tick off some of these things and actually just try and sit in to read my book or get in the garden or do something else, like I'm in the house with a tip.
Speaker 2:Actually, I'm not gonna bother cleaning it this weekend.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's one other thing I've got from this program is I've been politically in this. Sorry, it's pretty exciting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and just having you know more of that ease and support available in your life so important. I'm gonna come back to that in a second. Something I wanna ask you is so you were talking about you know your experience with burnout and stress. You can see it was very much a part of the demands of the role that you were in and also some other wider factors that were occurring in your life. Through the work we've done in the mastermind and your own reflections during this time, like how has your experience or your perception or understanding of the burnout changed in terms of maybe some of the underlying reasons like why that burnout was occurring, can you kind of speak to that for a bit?
Speaker 2:Well, it was really in our first session, when you kind of talking about a really busy, high-performing woman who's got the screeds of to-do lists are kind of operating like that. Often they're operating like that because they're trying to prove something, and they're trying to prove something because there's a belief behind that that's driving that behavior, and so that was really like a huge aha moment of what is the belief driving my busy, busy, go, go, go, go go behavior. And when I worked out what my belief was, I got off the call and had a damn good cry. It was like holy smokes, that's such a stupid thing. Like I'd essentially been telling myself for years that I was a silly young woman and didn't know anything. And I've got to prove myself to all the senior male leaders of the sector and I was like it was silly in many sense because I wasn't backing myself and couldn't see the value that I could bring just by being me and making my contribution in the small way that I could.
Speaker 2:And then I guess also I don't know, I was just such a huge thing, I was trying to eat the elephant. Really All in big one, big bite. And I think credibility and respect is something you quietly build over time and you've got to do it in a really natural you do it in a natural, authentic way.
Speaker 2:So it was interesting, testing the logic, my logical brain, against what I actually thought, against what I was believing, like what I was telling myself inside. And once I clicked that out, that was just like pulling out a bit of a pin for me. I was like, oh okay, that makes sense. And now that I understand it, I've been able to call it out. It's not an issue. I don't actually think that.
Speaker 2:And now I've been given my inner child permission of like no, you're a big girl now. You don't actually need to prove anything, just be you and do good in the world and be a good human. That's all you got to do. And so that's been huge. So I understanding my belief and understanding how that's driving my behavior has been huge, and that's been the starting point to then enable all the other learning that's going on to start, I guess, building on that belief, changing the belief, shifting the belief, identifying some of the other areas of my life where I've needed some different beliefs around my family life, et cetera. And so yeah, it's, there was a really big, important first step in that.
Speaker 2:I don't think you can make any changes until you understand. What is that in a trial telling you to do?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. What's the inner stuff that's driving the outer experience? And you were talking about how we discussed there's a high performing woman often don't want to recognize that we have a belief system that says something like I'm not enough, because outwardly we could say, like you know, work with a lot of people and say, well, look, and you know, you're the same. Look what I've achieved, look all these big things I've been able to do.
Speaker 1:Like I don't think I've got self worth, stuff Like you know, I'm confident I can step up into a room and talk to people. You know that's definitely been your experience, right. But we actually talked about this at the women and angry business of the difference between self confidence and self worth and sort of how I define it is. Self confidence is like do I have the ability to go out and do the thing? Self worth is how do I feel about myself as I go and do the thing, and that really reveals a lot of our beliefs. I think in that space is like how am I feeling about myself? What is my emotional experience as I go about my work and my life? And if we're experiencing a lot of burnout and a lot of stress and a lot of pressure, I think it's with real compassion and softness to sit with ourselves and say like there's got to be a belief here that is achieving me. And sometimes we don't want to look at that if we're kind of identifying with being quite a capable person, totally.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm super self confident I'm not for an outgoing and I was really shocked to work out that I was lacking self-belief. It really saddened me at how horrible I'd been to myself and how that belief just was not serving me and that the pain of the cause is and that sort of yeah, by recognizing. It's been like oh, huge aha moment. But then over the last couple of months I've almost been grieving for how horrible I've been to myself and how much harder of my life for myself Just by this awful thing I've subconsciously been telling myself. I haven't even consciously been telling myself, it's been subconscious.
Speaker 1:That's it, yeah.
Speaker 2:And it was amazing. When I told my fiance this, you know what my belief was and he said no, you don't believe that. That's just how you've been made to feel. My people and understand it's a really interesting male perspective on this. You know I haven't formed a full view on that, but I think you know there is an element of that. But to be able to be resilient in those situations where you do are made to feel less or that, you need to have the resilience to be able to, and the self-belief to be able to bounce back from that. And I've certainly been in situations where I've been made to feel very small and it is hard to bounce back, and it's probably only now that I'm properly dealing with the emotions around those experiences.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great, that's really cool to hear to speak to around that. Anything else you want to be sharing around some of your lessons, around the burnout and kind of what's come through unpacking it a bit over the last three months.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I mentioned that I've changed roles and I changed roles before I had done any of this work and it was just like a really natural career progression for me and, in a way, I'm finally doing a job now. That's a natural fit for me, I'm using my strength to do this role and it feels so good.
Speaker 1:I feel, so light.
Speaker 2:I feel like I'm just like floating on clouds all day. It's really motivating. It brings me energy. I have energy left at the end of the day to do things that bring me pleasure.
Speaker 1:Yes, so good.
Speaker 2:And it's funny, I was talking to a friend who you also coached about the point which I was thinking about, what my next step was gonna look like career-wise, and she said you don't have to do what's hard like you can do what's easy. You're crazy, like always taught through schooling and all career is unless you're doing something hard, you're not growing. And I've had the mantra and like I used to go to career days or whatever and say to people I try and do something hard every day and scary every week. I was like, oh my goodness, I'm so sorry to anybody I gave the terrible advice to Don't do hard and scary things. Things that feel good for you, do things that naturally stretch you, but do it with the right support.
Speaker 2:And so that's been a huge, like big light bulb for me and that sort of happened a little bit before this course but it's seen a lovely foundation for me to now be in a great space to really embed more and more learning. And I think the other big thing that's come out of understanding my behavior has been masculine and feminine energy and that I was on my masculine a lot at work and understanding how that was coming home. So obviously I was living in Christchurch a few days a week and living on the farm a few days a week, so driving up and down and it's a two out drive and so that alone was pretty draining and unsettling, being in two places and then flying for work and being all over the show.
Speaker 2:Absolutely and so I was often coming home from a week I'm doing presentations or whatever, just getting home on a Friday night, driven two hours I've had to do my click and click grocery cup, get home and there's nothing out for dinner and he's not home off the farm yet and you have to turn out the mode because there's a vacuuming to do. I've got to take the rubbish out, I've got to cook dinner, all these things and you kind of just go into this like word and he'd come home and obviously you know when I'm in my main masculine, there's not space for two people to be in the house. So naturally he'd go to where it's safe, you know, out of the way of knives and pans flying around the kitchen and go lie on the kitchen Just really sensible place to go, like I'd go to church, go on the kitchen, play on your phone and you know, chill out because he's just done a huge day on the farm. So totally you know fair enough.
Speaker 2:And so it's just really interesting understanding of me how that masculine energy has been coming home, what the impact was on my relationship and I think when I was really stressed, I was numb, I was in that flight or flight mode and I was numb, so I wasn't experiencing the sensation of love, I wasn't experiencing all the really good things in life, because I'm so privileged and I've got a wealth of love and wonderful people and things happening in my life and I was pretty numb to all of that. I wasn't able to fully feel it, and so that's been another big grief point for me and I sort of clicked after one of our sessions of that. I cried for half an hour in the car, which in hindsight I probably should have pulled over because it was probably a bit dangerous but sobbing in 100K zone. But that for me was another big pain to pull out. I was like, oh my goodness, like I just feel sad for what I missed out on the last couple of years.
Speaker 2:I think of just not being fully myself, not being fully there in my relationships, people. So that's been huge. So I'm really excited to be able to live more fully and I thought I was already, you know. So yeah, those are some big, big lessons for me, huge lessons?
Speaker 1:yeah, absolutely, you've raised some really important points and one of the first things I want to say is I know Brene Brown has this quote where she says like we can't selectively numb emotion. If we numb the pain, we numb the joy. I'm kind of paraphrasing, but it's something like that. And so you know, when you say that you felt really numb to the good things in your life, like that makes so much sense, like when we're in fight or flight, when we've just when life has just become too much, like the demands are too big for us in our nervous system. We you know, we've been talking about the various nervous system responses in the mastermind, you know, for freeze mode for you is just to freeze and to go numb and it almost becomes too much, too big to handle. And if we don't have tools and support around us to be able to process that, that is the light, the plates that we'll go to is to shut down and to kind of block out and numb out.
Speaker 1:So it makes a lot of sense when you say, like I couldn't access the or make the most of all of the good stuff in my life and that's because we can't go like, oh well, I'm not going to feel the pain, but I'll leave myself feel the joy and say if we're not letting ourselves feel the pain, the frustration, the stress, the anger, the resentment, whatever it might be, we absolutely cannot access the joy either. So we've got to kind of go through the emotion, through some of that tough stuff, to then be able to come out the other side and really open our heart up, to go like oh, now I can feel all of this good stuff that's actually already been here, but I get to receive it and to feel it in like a deeper, much more sort of rich way than before.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I think I was almost, I thought I was managing stress well, because I could come part, mentalize, yes. So I thought I was putting everything in little boxes in my filing cabinet, which is my brain, and I was literally visualizing my filing cabinet Like it's not crazy. And I was, yeah. I was literally like, oh, put this in this box, put that in that box, and in a way. And I was like thinking, oh, I'm coping with everything, fine, because I've got it under control, I've got everything tidied away in its drawers, but I'm putting all the good stuff in there too. Like that was the thing.
Speaker 2:So to cope with everything else. I was actually having to block off some of that stuff too, which is really sad because you know, I live on a farm. It's an amazing place. I love tramping, guarding really outdoorsy person, and I think I was getting a lot of. I think I was still living fully when I was out there and being very mindful of the wind and the birds and very much myself there. But I think, yeah, I don't know, I just it is just only so much you can cope with.
Speaker 2:And so people got pushed aside yeah, pushed aside, but I was still with them and still managing lots of friendships and family and, you know, still fully. Yeah, people probably think I was still the same. But, yeah, I have a family weekend and I'd spend time with family, but I just feel exhausted because you sort of wind down and you're not. You know, I feel gutted that I wasn't there to fully and fully enjoy it, because I was just shattered, because you're sort of like, oh, I'm safe, I'm with mum and dad. You know, back in that safe space, you just feel shattered, absolutely.
Speaker 1:We have to have so much compassion for ourselves, I think, to really see ourselves like we there are. There are actual limits to how much we can take and I think it's really important when we do see ourselves as capable and high achieving. We might not think that there are limits, but there very much are and like you've experienced that right that your body has showed you that there are very real limits to how much we can take on.
Speaker 1:So just having like a lot of compassion for ourselves helps us move through that. I think to to show up and to start responding to that in a different way. Just want to touch on the masculine, feminine stuff in your relationship. So I think that's a really important point. What do you think you're in like a really unique position, with George being away at the moment on his sort of overseas adventure and Tim coming home soon, how do you kind of feel like you might shift what based on your having more of an understanding of masculine, feminine energy and coming out of your masculine warranty or feminine? What are you kind of going to lean into in that space? Do you think moving forward in your relationship?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good question. I think it's going to be really interesting, firstly when he comes home, because I feel like I've been on this huge growth journey. I feel like I've changed so much. You know, we've been together eight years. We're in a wonderful relationship. I feel like I've changed so much.
Speaker 2:So I haven't been able to talk to him much because he's been out of service pretty much most of the time. So I'm really looking forward to being able to share with him what I've learned about myself and I think it's going to be really important to share those reflections with him to help him understand We'll be able to think back on when I've been in tornado mode, what's been happening and for him to understand what was the why behind that and I think, really acknowledging that you can only have one masculine, one feminine energy in our relationship and by me sitting back into my feminine energy more, my feminine energy needs to know that there's the structure and trust around things that he's going to lead in those areas. So I think it's probably just actually improving our communication on a few things and we've had some really good discussions about this on our mastermind program amazing relationship discussions.
Speaker 2:And it's been. The beauty of it is having a range of, you know, lovely small group but a few women who have a bit further through life than me. I've got real richness of experiences with you know, kids and partners and all that to be able to share and so it's been some lovely suggestions. But how do you just make that time for you guys and, I think, really prioritise that and amongst the demands of lives and family, etc. And so I think we need to. Yeah, he doesn't know this yet.
Speaker 1:He's going to know.
Speaker 2:He did wonder if he should listen to the podcast before or after he came home. Anyway but I think, yeah, just for us, you know, just little, little things that make a big difference, and time there and just turning the TV off whilst we eat dinner and having a good chat and, yeah, just communicating, and I think that we couldn't have, like. It's been so important for me to understand the why piece for me, so that I can explain that to him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and I think tornado mode. I love when you see that on our call the other week because I honestly can feel like I can flip into that really quickly as well. That tornado mode and it describes it really well and I think it's just having that awareness of like, when you're in that space, it's actually a part of you. That's like I'm not feeling safe and I need to feel safe and I think really that, like when we come home, we've come off this sort of high achieving energy and then we've got to try and we try and drop down into this like body based present state. It's really hard to do that just like that, like as a like, okay, I'm home now, let me do that.
Speaker 1:I think we almost need to take have some space to be able to process what's come up during the day, what's come up that's created tornado mode that maybe made us feel unsafe in some way, emotionally unsafe.
Speaker 1:So processing that stress, processing that emotion, that's what allows us to access that softer, more feminine state. Right, and, as you say, like being able to communicate with him when you see me in this state. That really it's. I'm asking for safety. That's what I'm needing. I'm needing, I'm going to do my bit and making and creating that safety for myself and processing my emotions, maybe taking myself away for a for a period of time just to kind of process what's coming up for me. And then I'm also needing you to kind of lean in and like, create that like beautiful, like masculine safety for me too, and that is like a beautiful formula to be able to shift into, back into those natural roles of you being in that more softer feminine state and him having the space to kind of step up and support you and lead you in the way you want to.
Speaker 2:I think the other thing, that's it's really come through for me as a tool, has been breath work and I always used to think sort of meditation and breathing was all of it. You know, very, very, you can mean to burn a heap of incense and say namaste, but really for me it is a crucial tool for relaxing my nervous system, telling my nervous system it's safe, telling it's. Telling it it's safe either when I'm stressed or when I'm overly excited, because it's the same response.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I feel my body, it's safe and I have to do that a few times a day. So I'm getting quite disciplined around doing it in the morning and doing it at night. It's as simple as 10 deep breaths and for four out for six. I do it in the morning and do it when I go to sleep, and then during the day, if I feel myself coming into that racy space, I'll do it in the car or do it in the bathroom, whatever. So just just slowing everything down and that's enabling me to stay in that feminine energy, not sort of go into that masculine like bulldozer tornado mode.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's also what it's allowing my body to do is when your nervous system is safe, your body digests properly and you detoxify.
Speaker 2:So, my body is detoxifying and it's working, which is super exciting. And you know, I can see the difference in my body from Monday to the next. If I've been like really hustle, hustle, hustle one day and I haven't done my breathing properly, if I haven't fully made my nervous system feel safe, I can see it in my body. I can see I'll retain extra fluid and that's because I'm not detoxifying. But when I'm doing it properly, I look in the mirror and it's like oh, it's me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So it's really interesting and I think making that connection between stress and your nervous system is so important.
Speaker 2:So, I think we all know it but I don't know. I've I knew it but I didn't really really know it. And now I really understand what it means for my body and for me it's going to take a few years I understand it, according to Sarah to rebuild that nervous system resilience, because I've just cooked mine so badly. It's going to take a bit for me to actually build that resilience back in it. So when, when I go away for work or something or something happens that it doesn't have the same, I don't, my body doesn't react in the way it has done previously.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's just yeah, all about healing and it's exciting.
Speaker 1:It is Absolutely. And the reason why I love that nervous system is it's about being able to return to that healthy baseline. You know, it's not about, it's not a problem that we go into fight or flight or freeze load or we see some of these nervous system states show up. It's just not dealing with that or addressing it when it shows up. Yeah, that's the issue, because we've got to be able to return to that healthy, rest and digest state, that healthy baseline, because, just like you've said, that's what creates the resilience to stress later on, so that if we're, if we come into fight or flight and then we we have the ability to guide ourselves back to that restful state. And it can be as simple as what you've just shared. You know, some breathing, taking yourself off to the bathroom and doing some breathing, returning to that safe and healthy baseline. That means that the next time a stress shows up, we're less likely to, you know, get a little bit more nervous and you'll be completely taken out of the game by it, you know. And then you start to stack that up over a period of time and you see how you develop much greater resilience to stress and to trigger so things that really used to trigger us or worry us or send us into overthinking or self-doubt. All of that stuff, you know, impacts us way less because we've got the nervous system capacity to be able to handle it.
Speaker 1:So, you know, taking care of our nervous system, nurturing it, is so important, you know, through from a physical health perspective, but also from, you know, emotional perspective. But also it's what supports us to step into more growth in our work and what we're doing. We can't expand into the next level if we've got a nervous system that's completely taxed and fried. As you say, we've got to be able to really nurture and support the nervous system so it has the capacity to take on more responsibilities, new challenges and things like that. And then the challenges get to be fun and exciting rather than so stress-able and terrified.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think. Unfortunately, often the way it is is that we don't really stop and listen to our bodies until things get so acute that we can't keep going. That we then really are open and ready to do the work and to address the issues. And so I think you know I was definitely well, I'm truly past that mark. I was probably a few years down the track, I guess anyone listening, I think if you're listening and you're not sure if you're yeah where you are at on the spectrum.
Speaker 2:I guess. Take the first thing there was just. Take some steps, I think, to start moving towards creating that safety for yourself and just the daily discipline of breath workers as a huge first step. Yeah, really important. And I have just got so much out of the mastermind course. It's been so wonderful to have not only your coaching in a bell but the coaching of three other wonderful ladies and the group and I think some people probably go oh, I'm not sure about a group environment, like will I get enough one-on-one time?
Speaker 2:What will other people think of me? Can I really share? But what I found was that you do get lots of one-on-one coaching and you get the coaching from you and all the other ladies, and always wonderful discussion, and we created, we created a lovely, safe space very early on. Well, I was also like, oh, I've spent the money, I want to get the most out of it, so I'm just going to overshare, and that was kind of the attitude I took. But I think we've, you know, we had a call last week and it was just extraordinary, the vulnerability that in the trust we all had in each other. And we all keep saying like we don't even talk to our friends like this, but we're talking to these other ladies who we didn't know a couple of months ago. So it's been a truly special, special experience. So I just, yeah, highly recommend Mastermind. I'm probably going to do it again next year, just just as an extra top up.
Speaker 1:If I love it. I would love to have you back, eve, if you felt that that was for you. It's been so good to have you in the program. I've just really loved guiding and supporting you and, as I said, like just having your energy and your presence in the space has been really special.
Speaker 1:And I think there is something amazing about community, isn't there? Being able to come into a space with other women who have similar challenges, whilst they might not be expressed exactly the same way as in your life, because the undercurrent or thing that sits underneath that is often the same. So, yeah, there's just a lot of feeling. That happens, I think, when we can come into a space with other women who are working through similar things, you realize you're not alone, you know you're not the only one that has this stuff, and then we get to move through it together and so there's a, there's the connection there, but there's also that like lovely momentum, like the group momentum, that kind of keeps you moving through things as well.
Speaker 1:So I've had such a great time leaving it being like a real highlight for me this year. So I'm so pleased that I've run it, can't wait to run it again. So thank you for being part of it. Is there anything else you want to share? I know you need to head off soon, so anything else you want to share before we finish up?
Speaker 2:Just breathe. My mother always tells me that, but I used to infuriate me. It's like Mum don't tell me to breathe. Calm down. She was onto something, as mothers usually are. Just really, if you could do one thing, try and breathe morning and night properly breathe and you'll feel the tension release in your face. You'll feel it, you'll feel calmer, you'll feel it in your body and I think disconnecting, understand what it means to make your body feel safe is a really important starting point, and you've heard from them Absolutely and it's almost.
Speaker 1:safety is the beginning and the end. Really, everything is born out of a nervous system and a body that feels safe. Any change that you want to experience in your life I could basically chop down any change that you want to experience will be born out of a body and a nervous system that feels safe. So if we can give that to ourselves, trust that any other positive change you want to experience will flow from there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Thank you for joining us, Eve. So good to have you on here and looking forward to watching your journey from here.
Speaker 2:My pleasure. Thank you so much, Annabel. Lovely chatting and cheering.
Speaker 1:I hope you enjoyed this episode with myself and Eve.
Speaker 1:I loved recording this conversation and if you know a friend or a colleague who might benefit from what we discussed in the episode, I would love for you to share it with them. And don't forget to subscribe to the podcast and also check out some of the other episodes. Have a browse through the feed and see what else is jumping out at you, and if you're interested in joining us for my mastermind program, this is the place for you if you want to step into calm and sustainable success. So if you've ever felt the weight of burnout or the struggle of self-doubt or the pressure to constantly hustle for success and to get to that next thing, you can think of the mastermind as your sanctuary, a place for you to take a deep exhale. It's not a place where you're pressured to do more or become more. In fact, it's the opposite of that. You're really supported to trust and to deepen into what you already have, so that you can see that as enough to create what you desire in your work and your life.
Speaker 1:I've recorded a podcast episode I think it's episode 38, that discusses in a bit more detail about the mastermind, how it works and what to expect, so you might like to check that out if you're interested. The link to the program page is also below in the description of this episode. We just start on the 2nd of November and would love to have you join us if it feels like a fit, and I look forward to connecting with you in another episode.