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.

Hello, hello lovely people. I have just had to have a little dance around because I’m very excited about today’s episode because I have a guest with me today who I love very dearly. We were just expressing our love for one another before we hit record. The wonderful Maggie Reyes is here, relationship coach. I call her the queen of love because that’s how I see you. So, welcome to the podcast, Maggie.

Maggie: Hello everyone. I am delighted to be here. My voice is a little raspy today. So if you’ve heard me talk before and I sound different, I’m different today. Hi. I just have to say I love being in Maisie’s presence. We talk sort of behind the scenes about coaching and we nerd out on different things. And one of my favourite things to think about is there is a psychologist named Stephen Porges who says, “Safety is the treatment.” And then I say in coaching, that presence is the coaching.

And Maisie’s presence, I know if you’re listening to this podcast you already know this, but I just want to echo it even more deeply, when you’re in her coaching containers, when you get the joy and ecstasy of getting to be her friend in actual life, her presence is so, so, so deeply healing. And this wasn’t really what we’re going to talk about today but I jus want to mention it. We went through master coach training together. We were in different classes, we had different teachers, but we were doing it at the same time.

And I vividly remember, I don’t remember what project I was working on or what the actual details were, but I remember Maisie checking on me and I was just sobbing on a call with her. And I can’t even tell you what she said to me. It was just her presence that was so comforting and so deeply healing that helped me sort of get through that moment to the next moment which is what life is all about. It’s getting through this moment so we can get to the next moment.

So I just want to say for everyone listening, I think sometimes we hear people we admire and we’re like, “Are they really that way? Is that how they really live?” And I think Maisie’s one of those people who just shares her whole life and how you see her is how she lives. But as someone who gets to know her, who has the honour, deep honour of getting to know her outside of the stages that we’re on. Yes, she really is that way and it’s such a blessing any time you can be in her presence. I’m so excited for our conversation today.

Maisie: Well, I’m going to use one of the phrases that you have taught me very well and modelled to me which I receive all of that.

Maggie: Yes, receive it.

Maisie: Which we spoke about before, so if you’ve been around the podcast for a while, I did a previous episode with Maggie where we just basically loved each other which really is a kind of window into every conversation that we have.

Maggie: Yes, picture it.

Maisie: Yeah. So you’re here because you’re amazing and I wanted to have you here. You’re the first repeat person to come on the podcast.

Maggie: Wow. That’s so special, oh, yay.

Maisie: And I don’t have many other people that come on the podcast. And I feel like I do need to mention this, it really is invitation only. Every time a guest comes on I get an uptick in people, companies pitching to come on. And I’m like, “That’s not how I do things.”

Maggie: Yeah, me neither.

Maisie: So I love it, I love people for asking and it really is invitation only.

Maggie: I’m going to say this, I know several people who follow you might also have podcasts, or if you’re thinking of starting one or whatever. So here’s what I tell people. My criteria for guests is my clients who have learned from me or teachers I have personally learned from. And so anybody who doesn’t fall into that category is a no. Or just someone who I find fascinating who I want to have on. So when we’re setting boundaries around things, I know one of the things we’re going to talk about is boundaries on both sides, setting them and maybe making some of our own for ourselves.

And so I find it so useful to have bullet points, or scripts, or little things that I can say, “What is my criteria around this?” And then I don’t have to be thinking about it all the time. I don’t have to take it on a case-by-case basis. I don’t have to spend any time on it. I think, wait, does it meet this criteria or not? And then I’m done.

Maisie: Yes. It removes so much of the hassle. And I love that you’ve touched upon this because we weren’t planning on having this in the conversation but we kind of knew we’d get into all sorts and here we are already, is that when we do create these criteria or standards for ourselves it takes the weight out of individual situations, and it depersonalises them. And so I have standards for The Flow Collective and how our community is and how we all show up to that.

And I have standards in my personal relationships with people. I have all these criteria in different places. I think sometimes that can sound like a very fixed kind of rigid thing but it’s more for me, like a scented grounded-ness in this is who I am, this is how I’m doing things, this is how I’m inviting you to do things as well. And if you don’t want to do them, that’s cool but this is how I’m doing things.

Maggie: Yes, love it.

Maisie: Okay. So the reason that I have the lovely Maggie Reyes in front of me today is because there’s been a conversation that is coming up quite, it’s always been there but it’s really been coming up a lot in The Flow Collective recently. And what’s happening is people are coming in and having these tremendous shifts in their own lives, and they’re like, “Oh my goodness, I can’t believe this is possible. I can’t believe the transformation I’ve experienced with this. And now that’s meaning I can do this.” And it is incredible.

And what kind of happens quite quickly off the back of that is people kind of have this overwhelming urge to get their loved ones onboard with things as well. And I have some thoughts about that which is why I thought, well, let’s talk about it here between us because you’re the relationship expert and I can bounce my theories around with you and we can explore it.

Maggie: I can’t wait to hear your theories, Maisie, go for it.

Maisie: So it’s going to be a juicy one. Now, the context I want to give everyone, in case you didn’t hear the previous episode is I had the wonderful experience of doing six months of relationship coaching with Maggie, was it two years ago?

Maggie: Yes, it was October of 2020.

Maisie: Your memory’s so good.

Maggie: It was the very first iteration of my group programme. So I will never forget, it was class one.

Maisie: Wow. So we did six months in group coaching together and it was amazing. And I share that because, okay, we’re kind of touching on different subjects already but they all kind of will converge together. When I start telling people, “I’m doing six months of relationship coaching, people were like, “Well, is Paul doing it with you as well? And I was like, “No, it’s just me.” And I could really feel people’s confusion about doing relationship coaching but it just being me that goes.

And I think if I’m honest there was a part of me at that point in time, it was also why do I have to be the one? Why is it always the woman that has to do this? But now I know because I’ve been through it, and I know why. And it worked very well for me, and I know it does for others. So we’re kind of going off on a tangent already but I’d love for you to speak about why you do things that way.

Maggie: Well, absolutely. I do think it speaks to this urge that we have to get into other people’s business, which is [inaudible]. I was thinking about this the other day, somebody asked me, “Why do I do it this way?” And to be honest, when I looked back at how I started, it was totally by accident. I trained as a coach, I coached one person at a time and then I started coaching on relationships. I would just coach one person at a time, it’s what I did.

And then that became an accident, after I started doing it for a while became a decision that was very intentional for these reasons. One, I coach women who want better marriages. They’re usually very Type A, very driven, very successful in different areas of their life. And in their relationship something is off, something doesn’t feel as great as it feels in other areas of their life. And the idea that you would have to wait for your partner to get the result you want is just ridiculous. Why would we allow that?

Maisie: Agreed. Especially if you’re Type A, the idea of waiting for anyone else to get onboard.

Maggie: It’s ridiculous to me. And then sometimes what happens in [inaudible] case is my clients are the ones who want something different. Why is it that you come and do it? It’s because your partner is amazed you even looked at them twice. They are very delighted to see you every day and they don’t want to rock the boat in any way that could cause any problems whatsoever. But my clients are usually craving something deeper, craving a different kind of connection, craving not feeling the way that they’re feeling.

And all of those things can be done by them working on whatever is happening for them. Now, I want to say a couple of things about that. One is you go first, it doesn’t really end up being that you do all the work, it’s that you go first and then your partner responds. And now you’re just having different conversations about all the things. And one of the things we spend a lot of time on is you stopping doing a bunch of the things that exhaust you, that aren’t getting you any results.

So being like, “I shouldn’t do one more thing.” Actually we do the one more thing, so we stop doing the 10 things that aren’t working. So that’s a little bit of the behind the scenes of that. And in the work that we do, and I think why we’re talking about the topic of getting, well, you have an amazing personal development moment where you’re just in a new level with your life. Join The Flow Collective, you’ve had this amazing breakthrough. You want everyone to have it. It’s like if you had the secret elixir to life, right?

Maisie: Yes. And that’s why you and I do this work because we know the power of it, and we want everyone else to have it too.

Maggie: Yeah. Here’s the thing though, you can only help people who want your help. So the first thing for everybody to take away, tattoo this in your soul, I can only help people that want my help. Does this human want my help? Whether it’s your mum, your dad, your husband, your wife, your cousin, your child, do they actually want my help? That’s the first question to ask yourself.

Maisie: Gold already. I mean literally we could end the conversation there and there would be huge shifts in people’s relationships of all kinds. Yes. So this is a nuanced conversation and here’s my take on all of this. Here are my thoughts and theories. I think there can be that urge, this has just been so amazing for me, and I want you to have this experience too. So that can be there. And I think it can also be we’re not happy with them and we want to improve them somehow. And I know this is going to be uncomfortable for some people to maybe bring some awareness to.

But really thinking, well, why do I want to help this person? Why do I want them to experience the transformation that I have had? And I think sometimes it’s because we’re actually seeing them as a problem that needs to be fixed. And that how the other person is showing up, who they are being, their particular patterns, and tendencies that they have accumulated across the duration of their lifetime maybe aren’t even a problem for them but they’re a problem for you in your relationship with them.

So sometimes it can be this disguised as, I want what’s best for you, I’d love for you to have some of the experience that I’m having, and they can also be a kind of undercurrent of, well, I don’t really like this thing that you do. And my life would be better if you could use thought work and coaching to get over yourself so that then I don’t have to experience you as a human being. And maybe I don’t have to have a conversation with you that’s challenging, or I don’t need to state my needs.

And basically we’re trying to get ourselves off the hook somehow by getting someone else onboard. What are your thoughts on this?

Maggie: Okay, Maisie. I love it all. So as you were talking about, I want you to do something so I can feel better, is the essence of what I took away from that?

Maisie: Yes.

Maggie: We all have that. We all, Maisie and I didn’t really teach this stuff for a living, and I just went through that with someone in my family where I was like, “It would be so much better if you did this.” And they’re like, “I don’t want this.” The difference between me now and me 10 years ago is 10 years ago I would have kept going like a dog with a bone. I would have just kept going. And now they just said, “No, I don’t want that.” And I said, “Okay.”

Maisie: And then we can just go back to loving them. You keep loving them rather than arguing with the reality of who they are. And really causing ourselves so much suffering and likely the relationship suffering as well.

Maggie: And I always say this, this is what I’m going through in my own personal life. So I’m just going to share a little bit about it because I just think it’ll make it really vivid for everybody. In the pandemic I really was on lockdown, I took it very seriously and for lots of different reasons, which is another episode. But anyway, I was very much at home most of the time for almost two years. And I was seeing people on Zoom and things like that, but I wasn’t seeing people other than my husband, live.

And I found a lot of comfort in things. And so my house got a little bit messier than it normally is. Papers, for some reason, I find lots of comfort in papers. And I have books, and stacks of papers and things. And it wasn’t like that before the pandemic and then during the pandemic and even coming out of it, I still have a lot of these things around me. And I noticed, I found the comfort in the things when I didn’t have a lot of people around me. And I have a couple of family members who have a lot of things, what you and I would consider a very excessive amount of things.

And I was like, “Wait, I think it’s better for them if they ‘remove these things’.” But what the hell do I know? What if these things give them immense comfort and removing these things propels them into a depression, or propels them into a sadness that is overwhelming? Who cares if they have a ton of things. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, or good or bad. I’m just saying, what do I know about another human’s path, especially if they do not want to make that change?

If they want to make the change and I’m there to support them, it’s a completely different thing than if they don’t want to make that change. So everyone listening, I know because you listen to Maisie that you believe in agency. That you believe in your power to choose your life. Let’s not get amnesia about what we believe when we have a family member or someone we love in front of us. Because if we believe in agency for us and the power to decide and make choices, and that we get to choose what’s right for us, we have to remember to believe that for them too.

Maisie: Yes. It’s very, when we’re in the midst of something with someone, especially someone that we’re close with, very easy to forget that or to kind of move into something for us that we’re not seeing that it’s also for someone else, the person that’s in front of us who we love.

Maggie: And I think it’s very important, when we feel truly that we have found [inaudible] made our life so much better, where we really have had that moment of breakthrough, that we just like Maisie said, so really we just question why we want to share it. Is it an invitation or is it a command? There’s a big difference between an invitation, you must do this, it’s so important. Versus, I would love for you to experience what I’m experiencing, are you interested in doing that? Would you like to do that? And even if you don’t have an interest in what the person takes away from it.

So recently I went to a one day retreat that I really wanted my husband to come with me not because I wanted him to have any huge revelation, although that would be delightful. I just didn’t want to do it by myself. I think that was my real reason. And I told him, I said, “I would love it if you were there with me. I don’t want to do it by myself. It would mean so much to me if you came.” Genuinely, truthfully because I really wanted to, whatever happened for me there I wanted us to be able to just talk about it. And for him to know how it went. And he said yes because it was an invitation, not a command.

Maisie: Yes. And you were also being very honest, clear, and explicit about why. And I think because you were able to be honest with yourself and make that request to him, it wasn’t like maybe if you didn’t have that awareness, or you weren’t able to be honest with yourself and with him, you maybe would have shown up differently in terms of, no, I really want you to come, it’s going to be so great for you.

Maggie: Yes. When I say to someone, “It’s going to be really great for you”, you need to question that. Before that sentence leaves our mouth, we need to think about that.

Maisie: Yeah. For sure because like you said, how do we know? I was coaching one of my clients from the membership about this recently. And it was about a close relationship and the choices that the other person was making with regards to their health and ‘a healthy lifestyle’, whatever that means. And I was really questioning, well, why? Well, first, how do we know what’s healthy for this person and what’s not as you gave that brilliant example from your own life? And also why are you so invested in convincing them that this is what they should be doing?

And they were fantastic, really open to the coaching and were able to be very honest about things because as was the case for her and I think is often the case really we’re trying to make our experience better somehow or we’re trying to get out of something. So the question I asked her was, “Well, by doing this, what does it get you out of doing?” Because sometimes there’s a conversation we don’t want to have, a boundary that we don’t want to give.

There are things that are uncomfortable or challenging for us that we’d rather not do if we had the choice. And so the brain’s very sneaky and is like, well, if I convince this person to do this thing, or to start doing self-coaching, or whatever it is, then I’ll have a way of not doing the thing that feels so uncomfortable and scary to me. And that can be any number of things.

Maggie: And when you told me that example, what I thought about, I see this a lot also in coaching on where we judge our partners, if we decide to live a healthy lifestyle or something and maybe we’re exercising, or we’re eating differently or stuff like that. Or maybe our partner says, “I’m going to exercise and eat differently”, and then they don’t. And then we try to control what they’re doing because we want them to live longer. And so what’s going to happen in the end. I like to give people really extreme examples to jar them, to shake them.

And to like, “Wait, okay, so if your partner has – I don’t know – 10 slices of bacon every day for breakfast for the next 20 years, they could die at 85 instead of 86. We could lose a year of their life. Okay, so what if that’s their choice? What if they enjoyed their 85 years of eating bacon and then they die.” That’s their choice. It’s like we’re trying to avoid a future sadness by sometimes making our lives miserable in the middle. Because we could have 30 years without complaining about what they’re eating. Or we could have 30 years of enjoying their presence.

Maisie: Have bacon together.

Maggie: And the bacon together if we want. You get to choose how many slices you have. But I just want to really take it to that place of you think you’re helping them because you’re wanting them to be healthy. But they get to choose.

Maisie: Yeah. I’m just spotting, because as you said, we are coaches, we do this for a living. And there’s places in our own lives where we do this. I’m just mentally clocking.

Maggie: Yeah. Sometimes we set the best intention towards a goal and then another goal becomes more important and then we’re like, “I’m not going to focus on that right now.” And if our partners just judged us every time we changed our focus, that would not be fun. Maisie was saying it earlier before we started recording this, “Would you love it if your partner did that to you?” And that’s something I ask all the time. “Would you be delighted if your partner did exactly what you’re doing right now to you?” You wouldn’t be delighted. It’s a clue.

Maisie: Yeah, because it sucks to be on the receiving end of basically someone not seeing us as not good enough in some way, or like a project that needs to be improved, or a problem that needs to be fixed.

Maggie: Yeah, it’s not delightful. And really think about the idea of an invitation versus a command, it’s delightful to receive an invitation.

Maisie: It is.

Maggie: It feels like I’m included, I belong, I am loved. It’s wonderful, it’s delicious to receive an invitation. A command is like living under a dictatorship. That is not delightful.

Maisie: No. People don’t thrive in dictatorships.

Maggie: It’s been proven. We know, we have the data.

Maisie: We have the data.

Maggie: Something else that we said earlier that I want to come back to, and I think it relates really strongly to this is checking our reason for why we want to involve the person or invite the person to whatever breakthrough we’ve had. And the importance of transparency. So first figuring out what is our real reason, going deeper. Okay, I want them to feel better. Okay, why? Okay, because then they’ll live longer. Okay, why? Then I won’t be sad if they die sooner. Okay, why? But we want to ask that to get to really the root of why we want this.

And then I teach a tool called soul centred communication which is all about really communicating effectively, making conversations productive. And one of the aspects of that is creating psychological safety. And one of the things that we do, we cannot control what another person thinks or feels, we never can, we cannot control. But that doesn’t mean we can’t influence what they think and feel. And so when we are transparent, when we practice transparency we contribute to creating psychological safety in the relationship.

But in order to have transparency we have to have awareness, which is why The Flow Collective is set up the way it is which is why we as coaches ask the questions we ask, all of those things.

Maisie: Yes, exactly. And I think the other thing that comes to mind just as I was hearing you say that I was just thinking about the roles that we play in our relationships. And to come back to how we started this discussion today which was about women do the bulk of unpaid labour, and emotional labour in relationships and that kind of thing. But I do think that ultimately if we’re really honest with ourselves, we do this, we come to coaching. I came to you for relationship coaching and yes, I wanted my relationship to improve.

But ultimately this is about my experience of my relationship. And I just think if we can be honest with ourselves about that, it’s like, yes, we’re doing this for our relationship but it’s for me because I am the one having this experience of the relationship. Then for me, that’s what took away that kind of argument of, well, who’s the one doing the work and blah, blah, blah.

Maggie: Yes. It’s like having self-transparency, am I being honest with myself about what I want and why I want it.

Maisie: Yes. And so that then brings me back into the whole, well, wanting someone else, our loving partner, or best friend, whatever to experience the tools and the transformation that we ourselves are having is that especially if you are in a heterosexual relationship and you are aware of disparities in unpaid and emotional labour that exists. But what we’re actually doing in that moment is adding to our own labour. And I don’t think people realize that.

There’s, I’m trying to do this but actually what we can end up doing, particularly if our partner isn’t receptive, or doesn’t want this, is we’ll often end up, I give the analogy of we’re trying to drag them over a garden wall. And for me that’s over-functioning, over-responsibility in the relationship, especially if you’ve got someone who’s down that like, “Well, I don’t go anywhere, I’m quite happy here where I am.” So I often think about, well, does it feel like I’m giving someone – what we call it in the UK, a bunk up. Am I there just being like, “Hey, do you want this thing? This is what it is.”

And then they get over the wall themselves, or does it feel like I’m trying to haul them over the wall and do all of the work?

Maggie: Or you’re making all the effort to pull them and they’re not making the effort to pull themselves up.

Maisie: Yes.

Maggie: That’s such a good analogy with the wall. And I’m there at the wall with you, yes. Yeah, if you’re doing all the work to pull them up the wall, stop, drop them immediately. Go drop the relationship. Just let them be where they are in relation to the wall.

Maisie: Tell them why that’s important.

Maggie: So many reasons, Maisie. So here’s the thing. First of all, you have your own walls to climb. You need all your energy for your walls.

Maisie: Ding, ding, ding. I wish I had a bell to ring every time you say one of these things. You have a bell. I forgot you have a bell.

Maggie: [Inaudible] Okay, so first of all, you have your [inaudible]. Second of all, it takes so much energy to do that, not only for your own walls but for what you could have in the relationship. It’s like, sometimes we get so focused on what it could be and how it could go and what it should be and what it isn’t. As opposed to what is the relationship I can have with this person right now. What is possible for us. We just miss it because we’re so focused on these walls that we need to climb. So that’s another thing.

There’s over-functioning, I mean that’s a whole other episode. I’ll say a few things about it. This is what’s coming to mind for me which is sort of different than the way I’ve explained it before. But there is an author named Carolyn Elliott that says, “Having is evidence of wanting.” When we have something at some level even if we are upset, and resentful about it, or disgusted by it, or all the things, there is at some level having is evidence of wanting. We have it because we want it for some reason.

Now, part of the reason could be the socialization of our culture, the cultural narratives that tell us we’re supposed to want it. The way that we were raised and that we think we have no choice, so we think we have no choice, so we do the thing, but still there is an element of that having is an element of wanting. We maybe didn’t want it for the best reasons, but we did want it at some level. So when we over-function, sometimes it’s this quest for safety. Sometimes it’s what we saw modelled for us. This is how a marriage is supposed to be and we’re supposed to do all these things.

And then you listen to something like this and you’re like, “Wait, I could create it how I want it go, it could be different and in this we loosen the grip on some of those cultural narratives.” And this over-functioning, what happens is it also, if you think about the idea of you teach people how to treat you, it teaches the person, if the person never has to climb their wall, they’re never going to learn to climb a wall. And the way that I say it most of the time is the most loving thing you can do for another human is let them experience their own consequences.

Whether they eat the bacon, or do whatever it is that they’re doing, we think we’re helping them by cutting in, swooping in like Superman, and not letting them experience the way their life would blow up if they kept doing the thing. But their greatest growth comes from experiencing their consequence and then figuring out what they want to do in the face of that. If we think about people that have had things like drug addictions and stuff like that, where there’s so much around, they have to hit rock bottom for themselves before they find their way forward.

You can’t do it for them. There’s no, no matter how much we wish we could, we can’t. So there’s this element of the most loving thing I can do is take a step back and let them experience what happens as a result of their choices.

Maisie: Yes. And that also means that we have to sit with ourselves.

Maggie: In our discomfort, yes. And something I want to say about when we have an amazing breakthrough and we want to have everyone to have it and all like that, is I really think, as we touched upon at the beginning, presence is the coaching. Nothing is louder than your joy, nothing is louder. You go and you climb your walls, climb more walls, get bigger walls, climb those, build a freaking wall, and then climb over it. Nothing is louder to the people in your life than you living your consequences.

When you do that, you will be amazed, people, remember, you can only help people who want your help. So the people in your life who are interested will say, “What are you up to, what is different, what’s going on?” They will ask you and then you can share whatever you want with their consent. They may still not want to do any of those things. But your impact on them can just be the possibility that their joy is also possible because your joy was possible.

Maisie: Yes, I agree. And this is I think the other thing is just most of us have been socialised to take care of other people. And so part of that, the urge to do that is coming from our socialisation. And so I think it’s just such a great way to turn that urge, tendency, socialisation around and just say, “Can I have this for myself? Can I experience this for me?” And to just let that shine out in whatever spheres or places that you exist in because I think that’s also something really powerful for people to see.

Just like you going out there doing your thing, rocking it without kind of rushing to bring everyone else with you. And of course we want to bring everyone else with us, but I think there’s a kind of nuance in that of we’re socialised to think that that’s what we have to do.

Maggie: And there’s anther aspect of this that I want to mention because I think it’s so important. When we’re out there living our life and living our breakthroughs and doing the things we always dreamed of doing. But especially when we’re in intimate relationships with people, whether it’s your partner, or a family member, or something like that. This is something I tell my clients. I want every single person listening to know this. No conclusion’s without context.

Because maybe you listen to this podcast, maybe you’re in The Flow Collective, maybe you’ve unpacked it for an hour and a half with your bestie. You’ve come to the conclusion, I’m going to Bali, okay, fine, great, you’re going to Bali, it’s awesome. Then you go to your partner and you’re like, “Bali is the best place ever. This is where we have to be. This is where we have to go.” They have no idea of the three months you’ve been thinking about it.

Maisie: I’m laughing because I do this all the time.

Maggie: So no conclusions about context. So you go to your partner and you’re like, “Hey, I’ve been working with my life coach. I’ve realised I really want to spend some time in Bali, I’m going to go there first. If you want to join me, you’re invited.” An invitation, not a command, whatever your Bali is, whatever it is for you. But it’s like, don’t come to the person with just the conclusion and then expect them to be all in and then they have all these questions. And then you get mad at them because they have questions.

Maisie: Yeah, I think this might have happened with Paul and I this morning or last night.

Maggie: So everyone, okay, write this down. No conclusions without context. Give the person that you’re talking to or negotiating the thing with or whatever, some context. I’ve been thinking about this for the last three months, I really want to go to Bali. This is really important to me. This is why. And I know it may not make any sense to you but whatever, whatever. You can give some context to the person as opposed to we’re doing this.

Maisie: Yes. And I will also say that’s different to thinking you have to explain yourself, or apologise, or defend, that’s not what we’re talking about, that’s different.

Maggie: Yes. This is not about apologising for wanting to go to Bali at all or defending why Bali is important. This is just, this is the context within which I’ve made this decision. This is more informing and being in transparency about what’s happening, not about defending or anything like that. I love that nuance, it’s so important.

Maisie: Yeah. I’m so internal and I’m so happy in my internal world and my kind of ongoing monologue, although I often talk, like I was saying to you. I was having a whole conversation with you the other morning in my head. And I was like, let me just actually message Maggie and say some of these things. But because I do that it just requires me to work my brain a bit in order to remember to actually have these conversations out loud and to actually share things. And so it is definitely kind of easier for me to just think, like you said, I’ve been thinking about this thing for a while.

I’ve already made a decision and now I’m just sharing it. And I think this is the thing is how you run your business is different to how you are in your loving relationships as well and learning that there’s different ways of being and different ways of existing.

Maggie: Yes. Different contexts require different things of you. And I think it’s so important, whenever we learn anything, even when we learn a new tool to think about in what context am I using the tool. And so people are like, “What do you mean by context?” So I always give this example which is, it is perfectly appropriate for you to be naked in your shower. When you’re taking a shower, that is perfectly the right thing to do.

But if you walked into an emergency room, you walked into the middle of a hospital at 12 noon, it would not necessarily be appropriate in most places on Earth for you to walk in naked. It would just not be the thing you do. The context in which you are doing the thing matters. So if you’re in a programme like The Flow Collective or The Marriage MBA and you want to talk about your thoughts and your feelings. And you want to unpack something in this programme with these people who are going through it with you.

The context’s totally appropriate, unpack the thing. Question the thoughts, whatever it is you’re doing. If you’re going to do that with your cousin who’s never heard of these concepts we’re talking about and they’re like, “What is transparency? I don’t even know, what are you talking about?” That’s a completely different thing, context matters.

Maisie: Yes, it really does, it really does. Anything else we want to touch on here?

Maggie: I think the number one thing is to remember that when you’ve had a huge breakthrough, celebrate it, own it. We also have this idea; we live in a culture that tells us our productivity is how we’re measured as humans. And that part of that impulse and that urge is like it doesn’t count unless I get somebody else to do it with me, unless I share it or teach it. And it counts if it’s just for you, it counts.

Maisie: That’s so powerful. And something that we’ve kind of explored a little bit here but I just want to draw attention to before we wrap up is you describe it as the power of one. And by the way, for everyone listening, Maggie has a podcast with so many incredible episodes in there and as well as other ways that you can work with her, which we’re going to tell you about in a moment. But you’ve got so many great podcast episodes out there. And have you got one called The Power of One?

Maggie: I do, yeah.

Maisie: You do, okay. Great. And this is the power of one person doing the work in their relationship, in their life, in whatever way. And then the influence of that in their relationships and which I still feel. I’m like, oh my gosh, we worked together two years ago and still every week I’m like, there I go using that thing, that tool that Maggie taught me, or it’s a way when things, you know, there’s little niggles here and there. I can immediately see, that’s because I wasn’t doing that thing. That’s the time when I slipped out of being intentional.

I can kind of course correct very quickly. So it’s really amazing to me how we do this work once, and it just keeps going. And so it’s the power of one in terms of the multiple versions of us throughout our life and all the relationships that we have and systems theory, and how if you change one element in the system then it influences the others. So I just wanted to name that for everyone and direct everyone to your podcast. But also, and I hope you don’t mind me saying this, I want to talk about a message that you sent me in the last week.

Maggie: Yes, feel free.

Maisie: So we had been talking about doing this episode and I had asked you, I think, about a time to record and you had come back to me. And I hadn’t replied to the message. And then I realised that I hadn’t, and I was like, “Maggie, that was not my intention. I’m sorry.” And your response was just so powerful for me. And I don’t know exactly, can I pull it up and read it?

Maggie: Yeah.

Maisie: Yeah, hold on.

Maggie: Yeah, absolutely, sure. I think that I think just us modelling friendship and love, I think is valuable for people. I’ve got chills all over. So yeah, this feels important, you can read it.

Maisie: Yes, okay. So here’s the thing because this happens all the time in our partnerships, in friendships, there’s so much suffering going on about messages that weren’t replied to. In actual fact I had someone message me earlier because I think I’ve said in a recent workshop in The Flow Collective about, it was something about most of the time someone not replying to you has absolutely got nothing to do with you. And it will just about the context of their life and whatever. So I got that message today. So I know it happens a lot.

And so I had sent you a voice note apologising and trying to figure things out. And you replied, it’s totally okay, just remember I love you as you are and sometimes we will miss things. Both of us will sometimes miss things and it’s just totally okay. And first of all, that was just a very Maggie message to get. You are such an embodiment of the work that you teach, and I think it’s like the meta lessons that someone learns through working with you. And it’s just so meaningful, so powerful to have that modelled especially by someone as wonderful as you.

And when I got that message I was like, I just really softened within myself, and I noticed, or I had a little bit of self-judgement that I didn’t reply to Maggie. And for me that is such a good example of the power of one because you just said this message, it had this powerful effect on me that has then kind of had this mushroom effect in ways that I would need to sit down and really think about. But I just l know in my being that it’s had a mushroom effect in other things as well and that’s what’s coming up.

Maggie: I have a friend who I’m thinking about where we had a similar thing where we hadn’t talked for a while and then I just said to them, “I’m sending you a hug.” And their reply was like, “You have no idea what it’s like to get a hug instead of why haven’t you texted me?” I’m like, “Of course I would send you a hug, I love you, you haven’t texted me because you’re busy obviously.” But we live in a culture where that’s not the norm. So let’s make it the norm. Everybody listening here, the next message you miss, miss it with love.

The next person who takes a while to respond to say, “Hey, I love you. We’d love to hear back”, with love.

Maisie: And that’s the thing, without the say that we’d love to hear back without the demand.

Maggie: Yes, it’s an invitation, not a command, from that energy. I mean it’s a beautiful space to wrap up and to just be with everyone and say, “Listen, we’re all being human here, we’re all going to be human. We’re all going to make mistakes, can we just make space for those mistakes?”

Maisie: I love it. Maggie, thank you so much for coming on today with all of your wisdom and brilliance. Tell the people all the ways that they can work with you because people are going to want to.

Maggie: I love it. So I have an in-depth six-month programme which is coaching, and mentoring called The Marriage MBA. And if you’re married and you know you could be happier in that relationship, come on over. If you know you love your honey and you want to stay with them and you just want to have a better experience of your day to day life, I want to see you. The place you can find it is maggiereyes.com/group. So as you record this, we are starting an enrolment in a few weeks.

But whenever you listen to this, who knows, when you listen to this, just go to maggiereyes.com/group and whatever is there it will be the latest, greatest about the programme. And if you love podcasts, The Marriage Life Coach Podcast, I have an episode called The Power of One, I have a fabulous interview with Maisie which I will send Maisie the link to that one so she can put it in the show notes for this one. Because it’s so fun to hear just another side of Maisie. Anything with Maisie is a good idea. So we’ll link to that.

So The Married Life Coach Podcast and then on Instagram I’m @themaggiereyes. Come follow me, come tell us what your favourite takeaway from this episode was. We want to hear. We’d love to hear that, I know both of us would.

Maisie: Maggie hasn’t told you, she also has a book.

Maggie: The scandal, I have a book, it’s called The Questions for Couples Journal. And it’s fabulous. It’s 400 questions to enjoy, reflect and connect with your partner. And I don’t know if it’s available in the UK yet because it just came out in the US. But there are cards, there are conversation cards which I’m showing Maisie on the video for the very first time. And so it’s a card deck with different questions. So you can either get it in the book, sort of journal format or in card.

Maisie: Sorry. I’m cracking up laughing because I’ve just remembered, when I got your book, I was like, “Great, there are questions I can ask Paul.” But I forgot to give him the context of why. And I just started springing questions. He was like, “What’s going on? Why are you asking me this question first thing in the morning?” But I was like, wait, I need to give him the context of I got this book.

Maggie: There you go. That’s a great example. No conclusions without context.

Maisie: Well, thank you, Maggie.

Maggie: Thank you, Maisie, much, much love to every single person listening to our voices. We love you. We are so blessed to get to spend time with you.

Maisie: Very true. Okay, everyone, we’ll be back with another episode next week. Have a good one.

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.