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Welcome to the Period Power podcast. I’m your host Maisie Hill menstrual health expert, acupuncturist, certified life coach and author of Period Power. I’m on a mission to help you get your cycle working for you so that you can use it to get what you want out of life. Are you ready? Let’s go.

Hello gorgeous ones. I am feeling really thrilled to be doing this episode for you. It’s day nine for me of my cycle. So I’ve landed in the summer season of my cycle, the ovulation phase. So I’m feeling rather fantastic. To be honest though my spring season was a bit like how the weather in the UK is at the moment. It just doesn’t feel quite right, usually at this time of year we’re at the beach already and we’re in the sea. And yet here I am still in my winter jumpers.

So I’m having a hard time reconciling that it is the end of May already and summer is officially beginning in a few weeks. I just can’t get my brain around the fact that we’re almost halfway through the year and I think a lot of that is to do with the weather. It just isn’t adding up and it’s been the same internally with my cycle. Things just don’t seem to be adding up quite right. They’re just kind of shifting a bit for me. And recently the spring season and my cycle has been I would say a bit lacklustre.

I’ve definitely had some thoughts along the lines of really, is this is it? Because I’ve had this love affair with my spring for the last couple of years and it’s just not what it has been I would say. There’s some room for improvement if I was going to give it a report card. But admittedly the past week, as I went from my winter to spring has been more full on than I would prefer it to be.

I went up to London for an event. I shared that with you recently and then I went to Bath to speak at the festival there which was amazing. But it basically meant spending most of the weekend driving and that was totally worth it because I got to spend a night in a hotel on my own which was just incredible. But the level of concentration required to drive for such long stretches after not doing that for so long, it took it out of me.

And I was actually sharing with some of the members of The Flow Collective on one of our calls that I ate a lot of service station food that weekend, basically like cheese and onion pasties, a bag of M&Ms and just all the caffeine that I could get my hands on.

And I brought this up with them on purpose so I’m sharing it with you very much on purpose as well because in the membership we spent May focusing on reducing inflammation. Because of its impact on health particularly when we’re talking about the cycle and menstrual pain, and mental health too and I wanted to give them an example of how this could have been an opportunity to beat myself up.

There was definitely a moment where I had a thought of who are you to be coaching them about inflammation when you’re eating this? And there was some self-judgement and criticism that came in. But I was sharing it with them because I caught that thought so quickly and just observed it as a thought. And in that moment I just decided you know what? I’m not even going to entertain this thought. And so I shared that with them because it’s so important that first and foremost we are treating ourselves with kindness.

I also want to say on that note that there is no such thing as good or bad food. And a cheese and onion pasty, a bag of M&Ms and several cups of tea gave me exactly what I needed to get home safely.

Okay, last week I spoke about being lazy and how there’s really no such thing. And the response to that episode has kind of taken me by surprise because it was an important topic for me to talk about. But I just hadn’t quite considered the response that you all would have. And I actually wanted to talk about, I suppose, in some ways the opposite of that this week but also how this topic can be a problem.

So this week I want to talk about being ambitious. And the problem with being ambitious that I have recognised in myself in the past and is also what I see in many of my clients. So if you didn’t already know this about me I am fiercely ambitious and driven. And I have huge goals. And I really kind of enjoy stretching myself. I really love learning things. I really love growing.

And my partner Paul likes to joke around that I’m a completely different person to when we first got together. And I’m like, “Of course I am.” And it’s so interesting because he’s basically been the person he’s been since he was a teenager. Not to say that he doesn’t grow or that he’s not evolving but he’s just been very solid in who he is as a person from a young age whereas it took me I think until my late 30s to really settle into who I am.

And when I talk about all the things that I want to do and all the goals I have sometimes he just jokes around and is like, “Okay, that’s enough now.” And he’s totally joking around because I always have these grand plans. And in case it’s not coming across he loves them. And I know that he really admires and respects my desire and determination to have an impact on the world. But I am compelled. And I think that can appear exhausting to other people or maybe it’s exhausting if you’re the partner of someone who is compelled but it’s not exhausting for me. It’s just fun.

And because self-growth and ambition are important values of mine it’s no surprise that they’re things that my clients value too. So I often have conversations about where their ambition, and drive, and their determination comes from, not in terms of why do you think you’re so ambitious? Which I think is a great question to ask, but in terms of where is it coming from at that moment in time. And I’ll explain what I mean by that.

So when you’re driven and ambitious and particularly when you value self-growth you can end up in a position where you’re always chasing things and never stopping to appreciate what you have. I was coaching one of my clients the other day about how when you’re hiking up a mountain it’s important to stop and take in the view and see how far you’ve come on your way to the top. It’s not all about the climb and getting to the top. In fact I’d say that’s a sure fire way to end up disappointed.

I often question my clients’ ambition, not because I don’t want them to be ambitious, like I said, I love ambition but because it can come from not enough-ness. So you can think of this as insufficiency or lack. But when you’re operating from lack perhaps you have an underlying belief that you’re not good enough, or that you’re just not enough, full stop.

So your primary drive to do a master’s degree for example is to prove yourself and try to become enough but this never works. And this can come as such a shock especially when you’ve worked on something really hard and invested time, and energy, and money into doing the thing, whatever it is. And then you finally get it done and there’s this expectation that you’re going to suddenly feel great about yourself. And you might for a moment but then you revert back to how you’ve always been.

And this happens because the reason you don’t feel like you’re enough has nothing to do with your qualifications and everything to do with your thoughts about yourself. So when you reach your goal there’s a while where you might be thinking I did it, I did an amazing job, I pulled it off etc. And because you’re thinking things like that you feel proud of yourself. But unless you keep those thoughts up you’ll just slip back into your regular old thoughts, whatever they happen to be. And possibly they’re going to be quite critical and judgmental ones.

This is why I encourage you to work on changing the thoughts you have about yourself and then decide if you still want to do the master’s or whatever it is that you want to do. So you do the work to love yourself exactly as you are and make decisions from there. You see the difference? Other ways that this can show up is if you’re in a rush to do something. Maybe you have to do the master’s this year or you have to start a project as soon as possible and there’s this rush to get it done.

If there’s a sense of urgency then that’s because you have a belief that you need to do something. Again, this need will come from insufficiency and a belief that you’re not perfect exactly as you are. If you feel a need to immediately jump into action that’s also a strong indicator that you’re operating from not enough-ness. You will also be very attached to your plan because of what you’ll make doing it or not doing it mean about you.

Let’s say you have a plan to do a training of some kind this year. Now, how would you react if I said, “Oh, you can’t do that this year?” Notice where your mind goes at that suggestion, of course if you plan on changing your career and this training qualifies you to make that switch then it makes sense that you’d be gutted. But that’s still likely coming from a bunch of thoughts that you have about your current job or situation that also come from lack.

But in the vast majority of cases you already are able to do a job. In fact you’re probably overqualified but you’ve been socialised to think that you need more qualifications and that you’re not good enough. There’s this statistic, I want to say it comes from Hewlett-Packard. I could be wrong but I know there’s a statistic out there that men apply for a job when they are confident that they can meet 60% of the qualifications. But women apply if they meet all of them, if they meet a 100% of the qualifications. Wild.

So when my clients are trying to figure out if they are in this camp, the not enough camp I encourage them to pay attention to how their body feels. Is there a sense of urgency, a graspiness, or hustliness going on? And that might show up as mild or even intense nervous system activation. When I’m in this I feel it in my upper abdomen and in my forehead. There’s a tension, a bit of a stress response that can feel like anxiety, or worry, or even panic. But it could be very different for you and how it shows up in your body.

One other thing I find myself doing is that I often lean forwards, it’s like my physical body is in a rush to get to the next place. In contrast and where I recommend you be ambitious from is a place of healthy detachment. And here’s what I mean by that. You’ll be detached from the plan. You’ll be focused on the result that you want to create but how you get there and when you get there is less important. This doesn’t mean that you don’t care but you’re less caught up in the how as in how that result will happen, how it will be created.

And this often comes from having a high level of self-confidence that the result will happen, feeling that it’s inevitable. And because of that there’s no urgency. It also becomes a would be nice rather than an essential because you don’t need it to happen. And the reason you don’t need it to happen is that you don’t need the result in order to feel a certain way or think about yourself in a certain way, which as I’ve said, doesn’t work.

I think I’ve mentioned this on the podcast before but sometimes I speak to people who want to write a book. And when I ask why they tell me because they want to be seen as an expert. And you might have your own version of this. It might not be about writing a book but you might have another goal.

So if you question your goal and ask yourself how you think you’ll feel when you achieve that goal or what you’ll make it mean about you, how do you answer that? Is it that you’ll feel proud, or accomplished? Or you think that you’re suddenly going to stop thinking crappy thoughts about yourself? Because that won’t happen, you can’t rely on achieving a goal to do this for you because you’ll get there and you’ll still have those thoughts about yourself.

You might feel proud and accomplished for a moment but unless you’ve created those thoughts and feelings along the way they won’t stick around. This is what I mean by stopping to appreciate the view on your way up, recognising yourself and how amazing you are, celebrating all your achievements along the way whether you ultimately achieve your goal or not. And this is why you can end up always chasing more goals because it’s never enough. You always need a new goal in order to feel that momentary relief and think differently about yourself.

You’re never going to think you’re enough unless you decide that you are and think that you are constantly or as much as you can on purpose. That means choosing to think thoughts like I’m enough exactly as I am, instead of the crappy thoughts that might be your default like I’m no good, I’ll never amount to anything, nothing I do is ever good enough. Why can’t I be like so and so? If I did this then my life would be perfect or whatever your version of those thoughts, are.

And once you’ve done the work on loving yourself exactly as you are which is what I teach you to do in The Flow Collective but you can also start doing this now using everything I share with you on the podcast. Once you love yourself you might still decide to do that training or whatever it is but not because you need to in order to prove your worth in the world, or because you have these perfectionist tendencies, or you have a desire or a need to be acknowledged, or seen, or valued by others.

You’re just doing it because it interests you and because it would bring you pleasure in some way if you did do it. It’s very different. You might also decide yeah, I’m not going to do that because you realise that you don’t need to after all. Either way is fantastic. When you’re ambitious but you’ve dropped the hustliness and the not enough-ness, it’s going to feel very different physically. There might be some excitement for sure. But you might also discover a sense of feeling grounded or being rooted.

For me I feel very certain about the goals I have and the things I want to achieve in my lifetime. And physically that shows up in this solid feeling in my abdomen and in my chest as well. And at the same time it feels expansive. I feel open to how it all might unfold and happen very different to the tension, and tightness, and anxiety that comes from feeling like I’m not enough and that I have to do things in order to be worthy.

I was coaching one of my one-on-one clients about this recently. And she described the two different physical states as noticing when her inner race team had been activated versus when her inner growth team were onboard. And I thought that was such a perfect way of describing the difference. So I wanted to share that with you.

Okay, that’s it for this week. Next week could be an interesting one as well because I think we might be moving on to the topic of feeling guilty which I know a lot of you struggle with. So have a good one. Let’s hope the weather improves between now and then and I will catch you next week.

Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of the Period Power podcast. If you enjoyed learning how to make your cycle work for you, head over to maisiehill.com for more.