Latest / The Daily Reset Podcast / Stop drifting. Start living on Purpose - the audiobook. Chapter 7

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Stop drifting. Start living on Purpose - the audiobook. Chapter 7 · The Daily Reset Podcast

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  SPEAKER_00: chapter 7 coming home my granddaughter arrived too fast she was born at home in
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  SPEAKER_00: a birthing pool before anyone was quite ready for her my daughter delivered her
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  SPEAKER_00: without any pain medication and emerged from
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  SPEAKER_00: that pool holding her baby like some sort of goddess i will remember that image for
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  SPEAKER_00: the rest of my life and
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  SPEAKER_00: then very quickly we knew something was wrong there was too much blood what followed
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  SPEAKER_00: happened at the speed these things happen while the ambulance crew worked
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  SPEAKER_00: i tore through the house in a kind of calm panicked fog both things
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  SPEAKER_00: at once somehow grabbing clothes and nappies for the baby grabbing things
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  SPEAKER_00: for my daughter who went to hospital in my dressing gown because you don't emerge
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  SPEAKER_00: from a birthing pool dressed for an ambulance then
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  SPEAKER_00: the hospital my daughter taking him
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  SPEAKER_00: for surgery what i only found out later had been major surgery and
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  SPEAKER_00: a blood transfusion to replace what she'd lost
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  SPEAKER_00: which is how i came to spend three hours in
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  SPEAKER_00: the hospital holding my tiny newborn granddaughter waiting to find out
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  SPEAKER_00: whether her mum my daughter was going to be okay three hours is a long time to hold
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  SPEAKER_00: a person who is hours old she had arrived wrapped in a towel there had been no time
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  SPEAKER_00: for anything else so the first thing i did was dress her in her first clothes
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  SPEAKER_00: and wrap her up in her new blanket a small thing in that moment the only thing
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  SPEAKER_00: that was mine to do she was extraordinary
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  SPEAKER_00: completely unfazed this little angel who had just made
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  SPEAKER_00: the most dramatic entrance imaginable lying calmly in my arms as though none
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  SPEAKER_00: of it concerned her in the slightest as though she already knew something the rest
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  SPEAKER_00: of us were still learning and her mum the same daughter who built a company with me
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  SPEAKER_00: who carried the payroll dread with me who went through
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  SPEAKER_00: the hardest professional chapter of my life beside me was on the other side of a set
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  SPEAKER_00: of doors and there was absolutely nothing i could do about any of it
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  SPEAKER_00: i want to tell you what those three hours were because they are
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  SPEAKER_00: the reason this chapter exists there is a version of me the one you met at the start
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  SPEAKER_00: of this book on a plane with her laptop open answering emails while
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  SPEAKER_00: the cabin lights dimmed who would not have known how to sit in
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  SPEAKER_00: that waiting room her whole operating system was built
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  SPEAKER_00: to escape moments exactly like it fix something achieve something do something buy
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  SPEAKER_00: something do anything at all rather than sit still inside a feeling
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  SPEAKER_00: that could not be outrun
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  SPEAKER_00: but there was nothing to fix in that room nothing to achieve no amount of more
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  SPEAKER_00: that could touch what was happening on the other side
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  SPEAKER_00: of those doors there wasn't even a chair just a crib i couldn't fix anything
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  SPEAKER_00: and i couldn't even sit down so i paced up and down that room hour after hour breath
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  SPEAKER_00: after breath with a brand new person asleep in my arms fully inside
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  SPEAKER_00: the one moment i was actually
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  SPEAKER_00: in i'm not telling you i was calm i wasn't i was frightened for my daughter
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  SPEAKER_00: and afterwards when she was safe the fear caught up with both of us we were in shock
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  SPEAKER_00: for a while and we said so out loud to each other notice that because the women at
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  SPEAKER_00: the start of this book had one answer to every hard feeling and
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  SPEAKER_00: the answer was fine this time nobody said fine we said
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  SPEAKER_00: that was terrifying we said i'm still shaken we named it we felt it and
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  SPEAKER_00: because we named it
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  SPEAKER_00: it could move through us instead of settling in
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  SPEAKER_00: because your body stores what your mind ignores and I have done enough storing
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  SPEAKER_00: for one lifetime that's the difference the work makes not
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  SPEAKER_00: that life stops going sideways that you can be there
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  SPEAKER_00: when it does my daughter recovered she was throughout the whole thing amazing
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  SPEAKER_00: and I don't use that word loosely I watched her strength up close again
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  SPEAKER_00: the way I'd watched it through sustainably some people you get to witness
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  SPEAKER_00: at their strongest more than once I'm lucky that way
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  SPEAKER_00: i spent the next couple of weeks with the two of them almost all of the time feeds
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  SPEAKER_00: and naps and quiet hours walks around the local park with my granddaughter
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  SPEAKER_00: and here's what i know about those weeks some of what happened was traumatic
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  SPEAKER_00: and those weeks were among the most precious of my life both
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  SPEAKER_00: of those things are true at the same time gratitude isn't pretending
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  SPEAKER_00: the hard parts didn't happen it's refusing to let the hard parts delete the rest
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  SPEAKER_00: i am so grateful i was able to have that time with them the shock and
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  SPEAKER_00: the sweetness all of it unfiltered if this book has taught you anything
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  SPEAKER_00: about emotions i hope it's that becoming a grandmother has sharpened everything
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  SPEAKER_00: for me i look at my granddaughter and i see a girl who will grow up in
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  SPEAKER_00: a world being rebuilt by artificial intelligence a world moving faster
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  SPEAKER_00: than any generation has ever had to navigate it's why i campaign for safe
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  SPEAKER_00: and ethical ai
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  SPEAKER_00: it's why i build technology that supports humans instead of consuming them
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  SPEAKER_00: and it's why helping other women build lives they don't need to escape from feels
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  SPEAKER_00: so urgent to me now because that's what this whole book has really been
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  SPEAKER_00: about not productivity not habits for their own sake escape and the end
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  SPEAKER_00: of it i spent decades escaping myself through drink through work through achievement
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  SPEAKER_00: through more the question
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  SPEAKER_00: that changed my life wasn't how do i become better it was what am i running from
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  SPEAKER_00: and what would it take to stop
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  SPEAKER_00: the answer it turned out wasn't out there for years i believed i needed
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  SPEAKER_00: to become someone else
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  SPEAKER_00: to be enough more successful more productive more disciplined more accomplished more
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  SPEAKER_00: everything what i eventually discovered was that nothing outside
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  SPEAKER_00: of me was ever going to fill what i was asking it to fill
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  SPEAKER_00: the work was never becoming more the work was coming home to myself i want
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  SPEAKER_00: to be honest with you one last time before we finish
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  SPEAKER_00: i am not done i'm a work in progress and i expect to be one for the rest
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  SPEAKER_00: of my life i use every practice in this book myself every single day
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  SPEAKER_00: the morning check-in the one meaningful action the pause when
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  SPEAKER_00: an old pattern shows up the evening reflection the question was i kind
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  SPEAKER_00: and loving today not because i've mastered them because i haven't
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  SPEAKER_00: the old patterns still reappear
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  SPEAKER_00: fear still knocks perfectionism still offers its opinion
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  SPEAKER_00: the more problems still whispers some days that the next thing will be
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  SPEAKER_00: the one they just don't get to drive anymore and
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  SPEAKER_00: that not perfection not transformation into some shinier person is what i want
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  SPEAKER_00: for you a life where you're the one driving a life you don't need to escape from
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  SPEAKER_00: a life you're actually inside of while it's happening these days
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  SPEAKER_00: that life looks like weekends in a camper van somewhere green dancing
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  SPEAKER_00: a creative writing class and 37 years after i lost him learning
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  SPEAKER_00: to play bass guitar my dad's instrument nobody prescribed
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  SPEAKER_00: that i just noticed one day that i wanted to that's what coming home does
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  SPEAKER_00: the wanting comes back i called the opening of this book
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  SPEAKER_00: the night everything changed and it was but sitting here now i've counted again
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  SPEAKER_00: and there wasn't one night there were five
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  SPEAKER_00: the night my dad died when i was 15 the night my daughter was born when i was 24
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  SPEAKER_00: the night that gave me my purpose and the fire to build a better life for the two
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  SPEAKER_00: of us the night of a leaving party i couldn't walk home from the last night
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  SPEAKER_00: of my old operating system the night 10 years ago when i asked a boy i'd known
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  SPEAKER_00: at primary school out on a date he said yes he's still here and
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  SPEAKER_00: the night my granddaughter arrived too fast in a birthing pool five nights
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  SPEAKER_00: some of them happened to me i didn't choose my father's death or the blood in
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  SPEAKER_00: the water and some of them i chose the meeting the date the asking that's what
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  SPEAKER_00: a life actually is not one transformation finished and framed cycles of loss
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  SPEAKER_00: and arrival drift and return nights that change everything coming round
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  SPEAKER_00: whether you're ready or not you don't get to schedule them you only get to decide
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  SPEAKER_00: who you are when they arrive it would be easy to end this book in that hospital
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  SPEAKER_00: because it's dramatic a birth a crisis
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  SPEAKER_00: a grandmother and a granddaughter and three hours that changed the shape of a family
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  SPEAKER_00: but i'd be lying to you if i let you believe the moment is where the life is
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  SPEAKER_00: the moment arrived on its own nobody plans a birthing pool emergency what i brought
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  SPEAKER_00: into that waiting room the presence the breath the ability to feel it instead
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  SPEAKER_00: of flee it none of that was built in the moment
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  SPEAKER_00: it was built in the days the ordinary tuesdays the five-minute check-ins
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  SPEAKER_00: the small unglamorous repeated practice of noticing pausing
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  SPEAKER_00: and choosing again thousands of times and moments nobody was watching
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  SPEAKER_00: the big moments only reveal what your days have already made you so here is
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  SPEAKER_00: the last thing i'll teach you and it's the first thing i'd ask you
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  SPEAKER_00: to do you've just spent a few hours inside my drift the party the patterns
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  SPEAKER_00: the misdiagnoses the long way home
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  SPEAKER_00: now take five minutes to see yours go to balance.ai slash reset and take
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  SPEAKER_00: the balance reset it will show you where your life is aligned where it's leaking and
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  SPEAKER_00: where to begin not someday today because the drift doesn't announce itself and
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  SPEAKER_00: the whole point of this book is that you get to see it before it decides your life
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  SPEAKER_00: for you your life is not created in big moments it's created in your days
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  SPEAKER_00: and your day creates your life welcome home