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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 folks and welcome to episode 69 of the podcast. I am thrilled to be here with you today. It’s been an interesting week because it’s the Easter holidays, my son is off school. He was meant to be doing forest school for three days this week. I was like, amazing, I’m going to get three full days to work and kind of typically he’s ended up being a bit poorly this week. So I haven’t been able to do much this week so it’s even more special to me that I’m here in my studio with you, all fired up to talk to you in today’s episode.

And I’m recording this podcast later than I usually do. It’s Friday afternoon and I’m feeling particularly excited about that because we are off on holiday in three days’ time. So when this episode comes out, we will be in Portugal in Porto. We’re there for a week and it’s the first holiday we have been on in six and a half years. So the last time we went away I was six months pregnant, and we went to Marrakesh, so it has been a while.

And I shared with you at the start of the year how my word for the year, my power word for the year is expansion. And part of that was about wanting to travel and to go on adventures. And I’ve actually now got several trips coming up. So we are all off as a family to Portugal. And then I’m going to take Nelson to Paris for a long weekend in a couple of months’ time and I’m really looking forward to that. I think it’s just going to be really fun, just get on the train, go to Paris, no particular plans. I just want to hang out with him and do something different.

And then we we’re all going to go away together as a family in the summer and I also have a work trip in the summer because my coach’s mastermind event is happening in Florida in Orlando. So I will be over there for a week and it’s actually at Disney which I just think is the weirdest thing, it’s so hilarious but it’s such a big event. The level of production for her events is huge. And there’s so many of us and we need ballrooms, and then breakout rooms, and accommodation for everyone. So the hotel at Disney is where we’re going and it’s a really full-on week in the best of ways.

So there’s not much time for hanging out. I know a lot of the people who are going are planning extra time so that they can go to Disney. It’s not really my thing particularly because with my sensory profile I get sick as a passenger in a car, let alone going on a moving ride of any kind. So I’ll definitely be skipping that. But there’s not much time for hanging out, I have to say. It’s great to see everyone. I love connecting with my friends and colleagues but really it is a week of working our brains very hard and getting to work. So I’m excited for that.

But before I head home to pack for Porto, I wanted to record a set of podcasts for you. And these ones have been on my list to do for some time because these two topics, this week and next week have been really present for me, especially over the last few months. And it also just came up in the last weekend as part of our Spring Forwards event in The Flow Collective. So now just feels like the time to talk to you about loving your past self.

So as part of our Spring Forwards event I gave my clients a worksheet that had a series of journal prompts, questions on it to help them explore the winter season. And when I say the winter season I mean the winter season of the year, not the cycle. So they went through the worksheet answering the specific questions I’d given them just to review the winter season and to reach a sense of completion and evaluating how it was for them. So that then we can move into spring. And it was such a valuable process to go through.

I had done it myself in advance but the feedback we had was incredible because it was just really fun to see them realising how valuable it is to take the time to reflect because it really is and especially when you come together as a community to do it, it’s even more powerful. And then I just coached them on what came up. And as part of that I showed them how to reframe things in a way that’s helpful and kind because we have a knack of viewing ourselves and our behaviour in the most negative way.

So think for a moment about the places that you do that in your life. Where is your tendency to think of yourself in the most negative light? And you might even notice that you do this with your successes. So that could show up if you’re just not celebrating them, if you’re not celebrating your successes or you’re not celebrating the result that you’ve really wanted, and you managed to create it. And instead what you do is talk about how it wasn’t good enough or that it could have been done better, that kind of flavour of things.

Or another one is that we didn’t do it perfectly either in terms of it wasn’t a perfect end result or the way in which you did things, the level of execution wasn’t done perfectly. And I was actually just messaging with someone that I know from a previous life, and we were just messaging on Instagram about some business stuff. And she was sharing how she has created a seven-figure business. And I was like, “That is incredible.” She was like, “I don’t know how I’ve done it. I’ve just been winging it.”

And I’m like, “Why would you describe what you’ve done in that way? That is the worst way that you could describe yourself. You have created a seven-figure business. So few women do that. It is incredible that you have done that. Please don’t frame it as, I’ve just been winging it. I don’t really know what I’m doing.” So even with huge success like that in this example, there’s still that tendency to minimise and diminish what we have achieved. So just keep an eye out for that.

And we’re just so prone to focusing on the things that we did do or the things that we shouldn’t have done. As in the things that we’ve done but we view them negatively, or the things that we could have done better, or the things that we didn’t do, and we should have done. So basically what you end up with is just a bunch of really shitty thoughts. And then you accept them as that, you accept them as truth. And you make it all mean a lot about you. So then these crappy thoughts just form part of your identity, they become who you are.

So let’s say that you didn’t do what you set out to do. Maybe that could be taking care of your health in some way or a goal that you had in mind. And for whatever reason you didn’t follow the plan that you had initially set out. But instead of being kind to yourself and thinking about how you were unwell, maybe you had COVID, maybe your kids were ill, maybe there was other stuff going on, whatever it may be. You just don’t give yourself that grace. Instead you just make it mean things about you like I never follow a plan. I don’t know why I set them out in the first place.

And at the same time I would say it is helpful to evaluate why you didn’t follow the plan that you set out to. That’s a helpful question to ask but you’ll be able to do that far more effectively if you’re not feeling shame because you’re making the fact that you didn’t follow a plan mean things about you. And when you evaluate things it might just be, actually I was being very perfectionistic with this plan. And that might be the reason that you didn’t follow it. Actually it was a very loving thing for you to not do that.

So there can be all sorts of reasons but if you’re already feeling shame about it then it will be hard for you to spot those things within it. So I walked the members through a self-coaching process, and they examined their existing thoughts that had come up as part of the exercise. And then we reframed things in a way that serves them. And I coached one client on how they hadn’t done the exercise that they thought they would. And that they’d been eating cheese and onion crisps.

And I coached someone else on their recent PCOS diagnosis, polycystic ovarian syndrome. And the thought that they had that I can’t remember what it was exactly. But it was something along the lines of they should have done more, or they should have done something better, they should have known better, something along those lines. It just basically boiled down to them thinking that they should be able to diagnose themselves, they should be able to treat themselves.

And what I pointed out to them is that they were being overly responsible. This is very, very common amongst my clients. I’m sure plenty of you do it as well. And if you’re like, “What’s being over-responsible?” Definitely check out episode 34 of the podcast because I did a whole episode about it as part of the Being Responsible series. And by the way, I have to say, I have the best job in the world. I mean I get to coach people on cheese and onion crisps and plans, self-care, PCOS diagnosis. Coaching is the best. My job is the best. My clients are the best. I’m so grateful.

Can you tell, I’m really happy to be able to work today? So I told everyone how to handle all these rubbish thoughts that come up. Like I said, they’re so common but then we want to change your perspective because those thoughts, they’re just such an awful way to think about yourself. They’re very critical. They’re judgemental and that’s a fast road to feeling shame. And then throughout all of this, what’s going on is you’re not in a loving relationship with yourself. And you’re also putting morals on your behaviour.

For the record, for all of you to hear loud and clear, eating cheese and onion crisps means nothing about you no matter how many packets you eat. I definitely have thoughts about it as a flavour but eating crisps, or cake, or ice-cream doesn’t mean anything about you.

And whilst we’re at it, the same is true for rice bowls, is that what they’re called? You know when it’s an Instagram worthy bowl of super healthy food, it’s like vegetables, and salmon. And there’s a green smoothie on the side. It might feel great to you to eat a meal like that, you might really enjoy it. But it doesn’t make you a better person because food has no moral value. My point here is that whatever you have done or not done it’s in the past. So you may as well think about it in a way that’s supportive.

Note that I’m not saying amazing. The way you think about it may end up feeling amazing to you, but it could also just be more neutral to you, less loaded. And that’s where you can end up once you remove that judgement and that criticism. So the reason that this has been on my mind is because for many, many months we have been working behind the scenes on the new website for The Flow Collective. And as part of that I was reviewing some of the content that I made way back in the beginning of the membership.

And let me tell you about those videos. First of all, some of the calls we used Zoom for. But some of them I used my phone for. This gets even more interesting. So the first version of The Flow Collective was a private app. And it had this live streaming option. So it’s a bit like if someone goes live on Facebook, except it wasn’t very reliable and it would crash. And there was quite a delay between people commenting and asking questions and me getting to see them. I don’t even know why I used it.

I think it was because it was just it was there as a feature so I thought that I should use it. That’s such a thought error I see amongst my clients as well, is it’s there, if I’m not using it, that I’m not getting the most out of this. It’s such an unhelpful thought and it’s just not true. So after a while I did stop using it. But some of the calls from the first month were using this livestreamed function on my phone. Just having a moment to giggle to myself.

So the other part of this is that I didn’t have a tripod for my phone. Such a simple thing to get, very easy to get, for some reason I didn’t have one. I have a feeling that it was a bit of demand avoidance coming in which is something that as an autistic person is kind of in my autistic profile. And I will resist things even if I want to do them, even if I know they’re helpful, I’ll just avoid doing them.

So instead of having a tripod I would have my laptop open and then just balance my phone quite precariously between the screen and the keys. And that meant that the light from the screen of the laptop would also light me up which was great because I also didn’t have a ring light. So on these videos you can sometimes see the keyboard from my laptop. So they’re not great in terms of the execution of them.

And I also did the call at the start of every month at 9:00am on a Monday to begin with, probably because I just had this thought that a kick off call should be at the start of the week, and it should be at the beginning of the day. So I usually had wet hair and no make-up. And look, I have thoughts about looking ‘professional’ and what that usually means and how it’s used against us. And that’s even more relevant if you’re black or of colour. So there’s that but that’s not what I mean here. It’s just it’s not how I would choose to show up. It’s not my standard for being on a call.

But it’s what I could do at the time so I’m pretty sure at that moment in time I was busy doing mum stuff. Nelson would have been three, I think. So in my book having a three-year-old and being washed and dressed at 9:00am was incredible. That was an amazing result. But as I was reviewing these calls, I was cringing a little bit to begin with especially about the lack of the tripod situation. And I was also doing them in our living room. And sometimes I would use a whiteboard, but I didn’t have a stand for it, so I’d just prop it up against the sofa.

So the execution of them is not how I do things now. But it’s what I could do then, and it helped people. My clients got results from those calls. And I was tempted with the new membership portal to refilm them, but I decided not to because the content of them is so good. What I teach and explain in them is still 100% usable and helpful. We hear all the time from members who have watched those calls, implemented things from them and had improvements and changes.

The other thing is I really want my clients to see that things don’t have to be done perfectly to be effective. I know that my clients perhaps like you are prone to perfectionism. And it was important to me to model that to them, to show that we can do it messy, and it can still be great because imagine if I’d waited for things to be perfect. All of my clients would have had to wait for me. They would have struggled for longer. So I’m incredibly grateful to my past self for showing up on a Monday morning, for knowing the execution wouldn’t be ‘perfect’ but choosing to help my clients wet hair and all.

And I was having a conversation with my friend, Becca Pike who was on the podcast recently and I can’t remember what we were talking about. I think we were just talking about the growth and transformation that we have both experienced in recent years. And she said to me that if you’re not cringing about something you did two years ago then you really haven’t gone for it in those two years. And she said that from one entrepreneur to another so you can take it or leave it. But please don’t use it against yourself.

Remember that this episode is all about loving your past self, not judging your past self because you haven’t done enough, and you don’t have anything to cringe about. Now, as you consider your past, I’d love for you to consider where you’re being harsh about yourself. And you might find yourself doing this if you’re thinking about how you should have known something, you could have done it better. You should have done this; you shouldn’t have done that.

Basically this idea that you should be perfect, that you should know everything. And not just know it all but know it all in advance. And instead of viewing your behaviour through this kind of negative perspective I want you to reframe things in a kind way. So you can literally think about having your eyes tested and how they swap out the lenses in the frames and as you do that what you see is different.

So right now maybe you’ve got a crappy lens in the frames. So you’re seeing this, you’re seeing yourself, your viewing your behaviour, the things you’ve done, the things you haven’t done in this negative light. You’re viewing yourself in the worst way possible.

So then you’re going to take out that lens. And put in one where maybe you just see things more factually because when you do this then what’s happened in the past will just be more neutral to you. What you did or didn’t do won’t seem so loaded. It won’t have this weight to it, and you won’t be making it mean lots of things about yourself. And you might even put in a lens that’s really insightful and helpful that helps you to evaluate things more positively or more usefully because as I said, what happened has happened.

How can you view the things that you’ve done or not done in a way that serves you and helps you to take your next step, whatever that may be? So this is part one. Part two is coming up next week. And then I will be back with you after my holiday. So I’ll catch you all on the other side.

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.