If you are in the horrors with menstrual cycle issues or you want to learn how to harness your hormones, then you are in the right place.

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.

Alright my lovelies, here we are finishing off The Secrets of My Success series that we’ve been doing. I’ve had so much fun putting these together for you and been loving all of your feedback. I’m glad you’re enjoying seeing what goes on in my brain and in my business. So we’re finishing off with some questions. Well, questions and answers, not just questions because you have given me some amazing questions for today’s episode, and I can’t wait to just riff on them.

We’ll see how it goes but we may need to split them up into two episodes. I just want to make sure we fit them in because they’re such juicy questions. Most of them have come from members of The Flow Collective but I also popped something up on my stories last night. So I’ve got some questions over from Instagram as well. So thank you for your questions, they are incredibly juicy. I am really looking forward to answering them, some of them I feel slightly nervous about but that’s okay, we will just do it.

So before I get going I want to do a quick listener shout out. This one is from Yasmar, and she shared, “Like a flower blooming, I made my way to this podcast after hearing Maisie as a guest on another show and I was intrigued by the idea of getting to know my hormones and how they impact my everyday life. This podcast is so much more. Each episode has a nugget of wisdom that gets me thinking and the result is living a more intentional, thoughtful, and enjoyable life.

It’s easy to get lost in distractions and let life pass us by, coping one day to the next. This podcast inspires me to see my own path more clearly so I can be the woman I want to be and make the world a better place. Sincerest thanks to Maisie and contributors for the work you do.” Well, thank you Yasmar for leaving such an amazing review. We love doing the podcast and just appreciate your feedback.

Now on to our questions. I’m going to start with the more general ones, this series is all about the secrets of my success, but I had some more general ones about success that are going to be so valuable for me to answer. And the first one is from Julie. So Julie asked, “Can you feel successful when society doesn’t approve your success as success?” And yeah, some of you are going to get a bit of coaching in this, it’s not just me answering. I’m also going to be asking you some questions.

So I wonder if you could get more specific about this, who in society doesn’t approve of your success? Is it really society, or is it a group of people, or one particular person? Because our inner critic, it loves to keep things really vague. So when we ask it to be specific then sometimes, we find there’s actually nothing there or we can get more focused with what comes up. But either way, Julie, this is just your thought. You have a thought that your success isn’t a success and you’re projecting it onto society, and we all do this.

And here’s how I know this is your thought because you’re asking the question. If this wasn’t your thought you just wouldn’t ask the question because it wouldn’t concern you. So my recommendation is that you focus on approving your success, you, because when you do that you won’t give a flying you know what about whether other people approve or not.

I mean you probably will a little because that’s just how humans operate. But it won’t be so dominant, it won’t be an issue because you get to sit in your success, you approve your success. Other people just won’t matter so much when you really do that.

Okay, Katie asks, “Does anyone ever reach their definition of success, or do you think everyone should strive to be successful?” This is such a good question. And this is why I love my clients to get specific about how they will measure success. And in The Flow Collective we are very results focused but the goals that our clients set are sometimes external and sometimes they’re internal ones. Sometimes it’s about doing more. Sometimes it’s about doing less. There’s a lot of variation there.

And there are also many flavours of ambition and success. So I have a friend who I’m pretty sure would not describe herself as ambitious or successful. But through my eyes she is and she’s a mum and the way she parents is ambitious. She may not feel successful day-to-day, but I would say she’s successful but she’s probably measuring herself against perfection and thinking that she’s not good enough. And ultimately, I don’t think we ever get there.

I don’t think there is an end destination and that’s why we always want to measure from where we started, not what’s left to do or what could be done otherwise we’re just always moving the goalposts and using that as a way to beat ourselves up rather than see just how successful we already are. And you are, you just have to take the time to see things that way because otherwise your brain will just automatically go to what hasn’t been done, what could be done, where you weren’t enough, things like that.

And I think it’s human nature to keep striving. It’s definitely my nature at least but there’s a huge difference in if you’re doing that because you don’t think you’re good enough versus if you think you’re good enough already and you just want to do this goal for whatever reason.

Okay, the next question is from Babette who said, “Is success only an event or achievement? Is there such a thing as sustainable success?” No, it’s not only an event or achievement, it can be that. But I think we’ve been socialized to believe that success is about external results, things that are tangible, things that can be seen by others. And actually for women the success we have that’s typically celebrated in society is usually limited to getting engaged, getting married, pregnancy and having a baby.

But for me of course success is so much more than that. And it’s definitely more I think for me personally and I would say this for my clients as well, or at least my intention for them is that success is about who we become along the way because I can actually fail at an external goal multiple times and I have. I have failed at goals multiple times. But I can still achieve great success as a result of who I have become in that process.

And it’s interesting that you’ve asked, is there such a thing as sustainable success because that sounds like you have a thought that success is exhausting or that it’s going to cost you, or something in that realm which is very common by the way. And this is why I go on and on about how we get a result is just as important as the actual result because yes you can achieve a result and have some success, maybe even a lot of it.

But if you got there by berating yourself, flogging yourself like a racehorse, or being a perfectionist, or critical of yourself, which is essentially two sides of the same coin anyway. But if that’s how you created success then of course the idea of doing more sounds awful. Why would you do that to yourself again? And if that’s what your idea or your experience of success is then it won’t be sustainable. But to me success isn’t those things. Yes, it’s hard work often, sometimes it’s easy but it’s also energising and fun. And I love it.

There’s challenges, sometimes I want to quit and run away. But success doesn’t exhaust me. And get this, the success that you have rapidly becomes normal anyway especially when your focus is on the process of who you become along the way because if you do that then the result you want just becomes inevitable. And then you’re already embodying that success in advance of you actually achieving it. And remember, being successful is a thought that you have in your brain.

There are very successful people who do not see themselves as successful. And that can be in a self-deprecating way, but it can also be in a more nonchalant way where they’re just focused on doing their thing. So that’s my thoughts on that one. We’re definitely going to need a couple of episodes, everyone.

Okay, this next one is from Emma. “How do you sustain the business and keep it going?” I’m so glad you asked this question, Emma. The business is sustained by people, amazing people. Our clients are amazing, our team is amazing, and that really is a huge part of what sustains the business. Every time I have a guest coach come into the membership and do some coaching, I always get a message afterwards going, “Oh my gosh, you have the best clients.”

And Serena just guest coached this week and she immediately messaged me and was like, “I mean I knew your people were going to be great, but oh my goodness, they are amazing.” I mean I think her message probably had some swear words in it. I can’t remember exactly but it’s every coach who comes in is like, “Oh my gosh, these people are incredible.” And that’s a huge part of what sustains the business, working with amazing people. And it’s the same for our team which is small but it’s mighty. And I just have such great people. So that is a large part of what sustains the business.

And also, I have a vision that I stay true too. So at the moment I am working with a few different external teams, external contractors and that means that I’m being exposed to other people’s thoughts about my business. So that means I’m hearing their opinions of what I should do or what I could do. And that’s partly why I’m working with them. But I also get requests all the time from people saying they’d love it if I could do this or do that. And everything sounds amazing to me. I’d love to do it all but it’s not going to happen.

And if I did jump on every one of those ideas, or requests, or invitations, or opportunities, even all of the ideas that I have in my brain because I’ve got plenty of ideas but if I did all of those then this wouldn’t be a sustainable business and it would probably feel very off for our clients too and for all of you. So I think you would all have a sense if I was not doing things that were true to me, you would probably get a sense of that vibe somehow and it wouldn’t feel congruent to you. It would be a mismatch for everything else that I talk about.

And I also believe very strongly that you don’t need endless webinars and content. So those things are helpful but there’s a lot of that already particularly in The Flow Collective and through the podcast etc. But what you need is help understanding why you haven’t done these things or been able to use them, why you’re still stuck and figuring that out because you can have all the information and tips but that doesn’t mean that they’re all going to be used. And once they are there’s also then more stuff to coach on.

So I’m much more interested in getting to the root of things and making lasting changes, that’s what I want for you. And so the more I do this work the more I want to refine that process for you and to make it as simple and as doable as possible. So the longer I do this the more I want to refine and simplify and repeat things because they’re useful. And the more I do that the more our clients get results, and they get them quicker too.

So that’s also what sustains the business, saying no, staying true to my vision, making things simpler for everyone, refining my teachings, my concepts because that’s what’s sustainable for our clients and for the team too as well as me. I have one final thing, I touched on this a couple of episodes back, but I also feed the business a lot, that’s what sustains the business, I feed the business. I invest back into the business. I invest in myself, and I did a whole episode a couple of weeks ago about that so you can go back and listen to that in more detail.

This next one is from Amy Rebecca who asked, “How do you stay present and enjoy the sometimes long process of working towards success? I love being in the process, that’s the fun part for me. It’s the frustrating part as well but that’s also fun for me, it’s fun frustration. So just notice the thoughts that I have here because you can use them too. I love being in this process, this is fun, this is fun even when it’s frustrating. That’s how I do it, I think thoughts that help me. It’s really that simple, I promise you.

I also have a brain that loves to figure things out. So to me it really is fun. I think it’s also, this is the importance of having a long-term vision because otherwise there are times when my brain could be like, why is this taking such a long time, trying to figure this out, trying to do this. But ultimately, it’s a very short window of time. Let’s say if I invested one year, two years into figuring something out and really trying to achieve some success with something, that’s two years out of how many decades? It’s actually not that much. So sometimes it’s helpful for me to just zoom out and remember that.

Okay, next up, I have some great questions from Kathleen. So, Kathleen prefaced this with talking about neurodiversity and then said, “How to focus and get stuff done. How to cope with rejection sensitivity, how to plan around my brain, and its way of hyper focusing, losing motivation, swapping from project to project, and not planning the next idea.” Okay, let’s go through all of these great questions because I know for many of you this is an issue whether you are neurodiverse or not.

So when it comes to focusing and getting stuff done, there is an entire webinar in the bonus section of The Flow Collective called About Time. And I give loads of suggestions in there so rather than just repeat them, I’m going to direct you to that resource. I don’t know if you’ve watched it yet, Kathleen, but it’s right there, might be worth revisiting it.

Or just bringing your stuff to Ask a Coach by the way. Ask a Coach is our written service. So anyone in The Flow Collective can just show up there, submit something they want coaching on, and a coach will reply to them, so you could do that. Okay, now when it comes to rejection sensitivity and maybe some of you haven’t heard this term before, but rejection sensitivity is emotional sensitivity to what you perceive as rejection, being rejected by someone.

And this can happen where you perceive that you’ve been rejected and then have an internal response where your mood plummets for example, or it can be externalized where you react to the person who is ‘rejecting’ you. And it can be quite sudden, it feels quite intense, and other people might describe it as excessive, or kind of being over the top in your response, you might describe it that way as well.

And this can be from an actual rejection, like if you’ve applied for a job or you’ve asked someone out on a date. Or it can be because someone said no to you over what might actually be a minor thing. And I would say that I did fall into this category. I don’t find it helpful for me currently to think of myself in this way. But I would say I have a kind of a tendency towards it but now I’ve just built the skills to be more resilient to it or with it I should say. And I did that in three steps because I know you’re all going to want to know how I did it.

I started naming and processing my emotions. I started noticing and naming my stress responses and taking care of my nervous system and how to care for myself when I’m in a stress response which is kind of really what rejection sensitivity is. And I mean that’s my experience of it anyway. And I also learnt how to manage my mind using thought work, that’s it, three things. Do those three things on repeat and your life will change, whoever you are. This is why we focus on them in The Flow Collective.

Now, you also mentioned losing motivation, and I just don’t think that way. I don’t think that I lose motivation because it’s just not helpful for me to think that it’s something that can be lost in the same way that I can lose my keys. And I’m not talking about the science of motivation here. I mean that it’s just not useful for me to think that it’s something I can lose because then I have a feeling of giving up in my body and succumbing to something that’s inevitable.

And that’s actually how I lose motivation is when that happens, by thinking that it’s something that happens to me rather than something within me that I can turn on and off like a tap. If you have an ADHD brain, then you have the ability to think creatively and do this. That’s what I will say. And you can also not make it a problem that you switch tasks and go from project to project. But it might be helpful for you to create a way for you to keep track and I don’t mean by buying another notebook or pretty stationery. If that does work for you, by all means have at it.

But I know that people with ADHD and other types of neurodiversity are usually pretty big on notebooks. So that’s my thought on all of that. And I think a large part here is just not making the way your brain works a problem. Yes, find things that help you, ways for you to manage, things that support you, all of that. But what if we just described how your brain works in a different way, something that’s much more loving.

Alright, the next one is from Mariana who asked, “Was self-trust ever a goal for you and how did you support yourself in achieving this, i.e. what were your rocks?” I love that you’re onto this with yourself, Mariana. So let me give some context for those of you who aren’t in The Flow Collective. At the start of every season you as a member have the opportunity to come to a workshop. And in that workshop, you determine a goal for yourself for that upcoming season.

So everyone’s just done this for summer. So you come up with your goal and then you find your three rocks. And your three rocks are basically your three essential things that you will do in order to meet that goal. And I got into detail in episode 76, so it’s all about goals and rocks, so check that one out if you haven’t, it’s a really good one. And to use this as an example, what Mariana’s asked, if creating self-trust was my goal, I would then find three things that I can do to lead to that result.

And I’m just playing here with what I would do because remember the process that I guide you through in the workshop, it’s all about you determining what will help you which might be different to what would help me. But this is a good example to just share and go through with everyone. And I love it because we’ve touched on this in lots of ways. We’ve just spoken about success, and goals, and that they don’t have to be external. And this is all coming together rather neatly. And I always love how this happens.

So if my goal was to trust myself I would first of all decide what it would look like if I were trusting myself. So how could I measure this result and know that I’ve met the goal? So that could be, okay, if I was trusting myself, I would reach decisions quickly and easily. People who don’t trust themselves struggle to make decisions and take action on them. They also seek out the opinions of others and want to make them responsible and kind of delegate responsibility to them.

So can you see that as I’m doing this, just by looking at how you could measure this goal, we’re also coming up with ideas for what the rocks could be? So I love doing this so much. This always gets my juices going. So I’m making this up, but my measurement could be that I make a decision within a certain amount of time, could be five minutes, 30 minutes, a day, it doesn’t matter. What makes sense for you and is less time than you currently take, I would go with that.

But I’d also argue, hold that thought, I would also argue that whatever decision you can make in a day, you can also make in five minutes but that’s a topic for another day. So my measurement could be that I decide for myself before hearing anyone else’s thoughts on the matter. And also that I don’t go to bed at night worrying about the past or the future because those are also common traits of people who don’t trust themselves. So can you see how that’s already more defined? It doesn’t mean that yours would look like this, Mariana.

So now I have a sense of what my rocks could be, and the rocks are again simply the essential things that you need to do to meet a goal. So going with this example, the rocks could be to make a decision within five minutes. And I actually really love this because it’s going to bring all your shit up which is perfect because then you’re creating opportunities to practice trusting yourself all the time. And another rock would be to form my own opinion first and to stick with it.

And the third would be to use thought work to make decisions and find thoughts that help me to trust myself, but it could be so many other things. And self-trust is an ongoing process. In answer to your question, I do think I have a strong ability to trust myself for all sorts of reasons. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t need to do this work too because it’s ongoing.

So every time I do something new, or different, or bigger, every time I initiate a conversation that feels challenging, every time I make a decision of which there are many, it requires me to lean into that self-trust more, even more. So it’s ongoing for all of us I would say.

Alright, final few questions for today come from Katarina who asked, “How exactly do you go about visualising your success?” This is an interesting one because I do want to say for all of you, not everyone can visualise things. And I’ve been trying to think about and figure out, do I visualise things? And I’m not sure if I do visualise them. Well, maybe I don’t visualise them in a way that would meet the description that other people have of visualising things. So let me explain what I mean by that.

I feel into the quality of success, particularly how my body feels, so the connection to myself. And then from there I feel into the connection with others because my success relies on both of those connections, to myself and to all of you because it’s my connection to all of you that creates, literally creates everything that I do, my book, my podcast, everything in The Flow Collective etc. And I do this all the time. And that includes me imagining future success but it’s all the same really.

I visualise myself connecting with all of you and it isn’t anything specific. It doesn’t look a certain way. So for me, visualisation isn’t what something looks like, it’s what it feels like. And the next part of this question was, have you experienced or how would you coach someone who is in the process of visualising their success, and they’re imagining themselves as more acceptable, attractive, intelligent, a better spoken version of themselves in order to be successful.

This is such an insightful question and I suspect that in asking it, you know there’s a tinge of not enough-ness going on. And that’s why you’re asking. And when we do this there’s usually some perfectionism going on and most of us will have done this. I’d bet on anyone who listens to the podcast having done this, including me.

But this is the difference between coming up with goals from a place of already loving and accepting yourself and coming up with them because you don’t think you’re enough. And that if you do something or be a certain way then you will get to think and feel about yourself a certain way and that other people will see you a certain way. It’s the same thing here, it’s just a different version of it.

So my recommendation would be to stop doing this altogether and just to focus on loving you as you are and once you’ve got that dialled in because remember, these are all just skills that you can build. But once you do this then you can start to play with visualising your future self. And I reckon you will know when you’re doing this from a place of not enough-ness because it will feel graspy and needy, there might be an air of desperation to it.

Or you might just be spending an excessive amount of time living in the future where everything’s going to be amazing rather than being you now because you’re already awesome.

Okay final question. How did you find your crowd, people who are interested in what you do and have to share? I didn’t. I didn’t look for them. I just trusted that they were out there somewhere and that they would find me. I just focused on being me and being generous with what I share and doing things that feel in alignment with who I am, that are in alignment with my values, and I just kept going, that’s it. It’s not complicated. Our brains love to make it complicated, but it really isn’t. You’ve just got to be you and keep going and love yourself through all of it.

Okay, we’re going to break here and I’m going to continue but the next batch of questions you will hear on next week’s episode. So thank you again for these questions, this is just, I’m loving answering them, so I’ll 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.