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Discover How to Manage Stress Through Diet And Lifestyle · Work It Like A Mum

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, I'm Elizabeth Willits and I'm obsessed with helping as many women as possible achieve their boldest dreams after kids and helping you to navigate this messy and magical season of life.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: I'm a working mum with over 17 years of recruitment experience and I'm the founder of the Investing in Women job board and community.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: In this show, I'm honoured to be chatting with remarkable women redefining our working world across all areas of business.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: They'll share their secrets on how they've achieved extraordinary success after children, set boundaries and balance, the challenges they've faced and how they've overcome them to define their own versions of success.
• 0:42
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• 0:44
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• 0:45
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• 0:49
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• 0:57
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• 1:07
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• 1:10
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• 1:16
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• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Now back to the show.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the work.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: It like a mom podcast.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Today I am delighted to be chatting with my favorite nutritionist, um wilma mcdonald, and we are going to be chatting with my favourite nutritionist, wilma McDonald, and we are going to be talking all about how you can support stress within your life and brilliant stress management tools through diet and lifestyle choices.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: So thank you so much, wilma, for joining me today.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: It's a real pleasure to chat with you.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: If people haven't um heard us try it before, um, can you give people a little bit of an overview as to who you are and what you do and who you support?
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: absolutely so thank you for the introduction.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: I'm Wilma and I'm a nutrition therapist.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: I worked in banking and finance for about 10 years before I had my diabetical career change and part of my reason for changing career was because of the impact that stress and my poor lifestyle choices and diet choices were having on me physically.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: And from that I transitioned into nutrition and I support women to get their energy back, manage their stress, find their perfect weight and then find themselves in the process.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: And I work a lot with mothers and perimenopausal women who work in um, corporate environments you know, office environments, all that kind of thing and they've just kind of lost themselves in the whole process and we just need to rediscover who we are and get our get ourselves back and get our oomph back absolutely so.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: I think we all probably know why stress is bad for us, or maybe some of the reasons why stress is bad, but maybe you could just clarify.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: You know what is stress and why is it so bad for us.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: So I think, um, we all need a little bit of stress.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: I think it's it's um, like we need.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: So one of our stress hormones is cortisol, and cortisol is one of our hormone that wakes us up in the morning.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: If you stand up, there's a little bit of stress that goes on, and even exercise to a certain extent is a stressor on the body, but it becomes an issue when it doesn't switch off.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: So I had I got to speak once for Christmas and I love it, and it's called why zebras don't get ulcers and I talk about it a lot with some of my clients because when they're in the savannah and the zebras are, you know, having a drink of water, and then suddenly this tiger I don't know if this is right, don't tigers eat zebras?
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: But we're going to go with it anyway this tiger comes out and starts chasing after the zebra because it wants lunch, and the zebra gets this rush of cortisol and adrenaline fight or flight mode and starts running for its life and it either gets eaten or it gets away, and if it gets away, it just the stress response is finished, it forgets that it was nearly eaten by.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: I didn't because, you know, when you were saying about the stress, I was like imagine, you know, in the wild are they not just always stressed?
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: no, and it's like, even when and the thing with like for like, when you think of I don't have a dog, but when I've seen with dogs who have a stress response, they shake afterwards, yeah, that's them completing the stress response and getting the residual cortisol adrenaline out of their system, whereas we humans are not that smart.
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: We, we don't.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: We sometimes don't complete the stress um cycle, so we don't let it go.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: We don't let it go and we remember.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: So we've been running for our lives, yeah, like, but usually it's not a tiger that's running it after us, it's either deadlines, small humans, an untidy house, I don't know what else can you know?
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: somebody asked me what's for dinner for the hundredth time that week.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: These kind of things like we have kind of like layers of stress that we can handle and then suddenly something tips us over the edge and we have this spike of cortisol and adrenaline which makes the body think, oh, my goodness, something's running after me.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: I need to.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: You know, I need this stress response to keep me alive, but the tiger doesn't stop.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: So the stress response keeps going and going and going and before we know it we're in perpetual fight or flight or freeze mode where we're living on an adrenaline, where we're living on our stress response.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: And I see this a lot in women, and especially in mothers who work for a living, because mornings are really stressful.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: And then I've had a very stressful morning.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: I'm just like nodding here.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: I'm like, my god, yeah, I had.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: As soon as I feel bad, as soon as I drop my kids off, I'm like, maybe, maybe I didn't let all the stress go.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: Now you know, you're like.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: You're like oh, and it's kind of like you and we don't.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: We have to, we have to, um, what's the word?
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: My words are forgetting me to snip.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: We have to intentionally complete the stress response, like we have to do something, and that's why a lot of people, you know, exercise becomes a thing for them.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: So I do boxing twice a week.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: That's part of my stress relief and I've not done it for a while because I'm sick and I can feel it.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, my god, um.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: So we need to intentionally close off the stress response because if not, we just have this like perpetual fight or flight response in our body and when it's doing that, it's shutting down other things.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: You don't need to digest, you don't need to make babies when you're running for your life, so for that reason it kind of starts interrupting with your digestion and your um hormonal, your other hormones.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: So we want to have like whenever my aim is not a stress-free life, like that's impossible in 2024, impossible.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we know, we have children, we have jobs, we have bills.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: Well, the news like oh god, yes the news can like.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: You know, it's enough to kind of set you off.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: We're sometimes sleep deprived.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, sometimes we're not nourishing ourselves in the right way.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so they all.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: And then so these are the things that kind of like layer on top of one another and then suddenly you stub your toe and it's just tips you over the edge and makes you lose your shit and I think the toe is not that big a deal, but because of everything else that's been going on, it's just enough to tip you over the edge and make you lose the plot.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: And I think I get this.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that's the thing it sounds like when, when we're at work, like when I think of, like when I used to work in finance, you know in itself, you know it wasn't there was always pressure, yeah, but it would always be the layers of things that would kind of sometimes tip me over the edge.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: And you know it can manifest itself for me.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: It manifested in me losing my hair and really chronic insomnia and that kind of had then long-term consequences and impacts on my health.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: And sometimes it's not that big a deal.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: But then if we look at everything else we're doing alongside having a really stressful job and a really stressful life, if we're kind of living off coffee and sugar to kind of keep us going, that in itself adds an extra level of stress onto the, you know, onto the lifestyle stress we've already got.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: So it's like we need to approach it from both sides.
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I would love if you could quit your job and go live on the beach in Hawaii if you want, but that's not feasible for everybody and, quite frankly, and that might have different stresses as well.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, if you don't have an unlimited bank account exactly, and I think that's what I did.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: I kind of had a knee-jerk reaction.
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: I quit my job and I thought this is gonna be great and then obviously another different stresses appear.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: So I was doing everything I thought was right with my diet, but I was still not feeling great and when I look back at it now in hindsight, it's a great thing.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: I didn't really know how to manage my stress, because it's not something I was ever taught as you know a child or a teenage, whatever to manage my emotions, to manage the stress response.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: I mean, we, everybody was stressed out, everybody had lots going on and it was just the way it is.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: And then, you know, we'd go out on a Friday night and drink two bottles of champagne and that's meant to be a stress relief, but it's not.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: That's kind of another stressor on the body.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: So it's kind of like so what can we actually do?
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: That means that we don't have to change everything in our lives, but we can create a safe environment for ourselves and that's what it's like can create a sense of safety in our body and completing that stress response, so that we're not in perpetual flight or flight or living off our stress hormones.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: And sometimes I can tell like when a client sits down in front of me, I can just tell by looking at them that they're really stressed out, like you can just tell by a person when they're living off their stress hormones what kind of vibes are you getting off those people?
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: then I get this kind of have this really kind of like yeah, big eyes, big eyes.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: Like and it's like, and sometimes it's just even kind of like they're physically not necessarily shaking, but I can just tell they're really agitated.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's agitated and fidgety even though I'm kind of moving around, but like, just kind of like that there's just.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: I just get this feeling and I don't even have to be in the same room as them, but I can just tell, um, I can just tell by looking at somebody that they've, that they're really stressed out wow, this has been a really, a really powerful thing.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: I just think sometimes, like with my husband, you know, I think as a woman you do take on more.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: You know it's like who's gonna?
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: You know things like we'd run out of milk, so I'm there arranging for like food and milk delivery and.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: I don't even get like a thank you, and that really, really annoys me.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: And then it's just constant.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: It's building up, building up, building up.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: And then the other week he mentioned something about um and normally he's very good and he's not like this but he was like, oh, this looks a bit rubbish, that I'd cooked and actually normally he does the cooking like 90% of the time but I just flipped.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: It was the school holidays, so I'd had the kids.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: Well, he'd been away and I went crazy and then that's it.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: I think then it's like this women then are suddenly crazy hormonal, like you're irrational and you can't, you're too emotional, you can't control yourself and it's just like, and I'm like no.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: I had.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: I basically controlled myself talking to you now for like four weeks, because it was that point in the school holidays.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: You know it's about four weeks and then yeah, and then I just flipped.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: But I can see now how it all built up yeah, and it all builds up unless we and sometimes, you know, having a conversation with the other person does work for a certain period of time.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: But for me and for what I recommend to my clients is you can't control other people, you can only control your own response.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: So when I like when I worked in finance and I was really stressed out, it was a lot, it wasn't to do with the work, it was to do with the individuals around me, stressed out, it was a lot of.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: It wasn't to do with the work, it was to do with the individuals around me.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: And I wasn't very good at switching off when I came home and I would stew on it and I would.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: That's what losing sleep, and it was.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: You know, I hated going into work and it was.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: You know, it was really, really stressful, but I didn't, you know, I didn't take control and control my response and create my own sense of safety.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: And I think it's only with experience and hitting that rock bottom that I was like, okay, what do I actually need to do?
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: And you know, meditation, mindfulness is, you know, gets kind of a bad rap and get.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: You know, sometimes in part of corporate wellness packages you get access to these mindfulness and well-being apps, but do we actually use them?
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: Are we actually wanting to?
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: What's the intention behind them?
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: And it's kind of like for me, when I first started, I was like, well, I need to be more productive, I want to be more focused.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: It was always about doing more and more and more and wasn't actually about me as an individual.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: And I think that's where we have to kind of be selfish and be kind of okay.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: If I look at and after myself as an individual, I might not lose my shit so easily and I might, you know, sleep better, sleep better feel, and when you sleep better, everything changes, feel better with myself.
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: Like stress contributes to everything, like contributes to hormone imbalances, skin issues, hair issues, digestive issues.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: You know, you can feel it in your body, like your bones, and weight gain, weight loss, all of that stuff.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: It has a massive impact on it all and it's it's systemic and I think we forget that and that's why it's so important that we don't just think, okay, well, I have the perfect diet and I drink lots of water, but you're still stressed out of your mind and you know.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're not going to get the full benefit are you?
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: You're not going to get the full benefit no.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: So, I'm guessing we get bits of stress thrown at us all day, whether you know it's emails from clients or your boss or kids, as you know, not liking the food you've cooked or whatever it is yeah, you know, on the middle.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: So there is, I'm guessing, constant little stress that's building up.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: So how do we, as humans, obviously we talked about dogs shaking and getting rid of that excess stress.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: What are the tips that we could use to get rid of that excess stress?
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: so what I am?
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: You do you do the same thing as dogs?
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: Do you shake?
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: Really?
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: There's just like you can even just like.
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: For me, when I feel really stressed out, I get I get this weird feeling in my arms and in my shoulders and it's really bizarre.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: So even just somebody told me, just going like that, like literally doing what taylor swift tells us put taylor swift on and shake it off honestly or even like kitchen dancing, like dance in the kitchen.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: It's like move.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: It's like you actually have to physically move to get, and it doesn't have to be like 10 minutes of high intensity exercise.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: It can literally just be kind of like.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: You know, I think about adopting this, yeah, moving it, and just kind of like getting rid of that excess energy that is pushing around your body and figuring out what the triggers are that get you to a place where you are having that maybe extreme stress response.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: So if you know you're feeling that things are kind of starting to pile up, it's kind of I kind of try and remove myself from the situation.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: I take myself out of the room.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: I even say to people I need five minutes, myself out of the room.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: I'd even say to people I need five minutes, mommy needs five minutes before shit.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: Um, and just like taking myself out of a room and somebody else was saying, it's kind of like, if you do, kind of why that?
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: no, you're touching our noses, yeah, yeah no breathing, oh breathing, yeah, so blocking one, oh, holding one nostril and the other so you can look it up and I think there's lots of um information out there so that.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: But there's always, like for me, nutrition wise, the things we can do, and people always get a little bit annoyed when I say this, but coffee is not your friend if you're stressed out yeah and no caffeine drinks are and um, I had there was workmen in the building the other week and they were drinking like monster at like nine o'clock in the morning and I had to like I've seen those energy drinks I'm like honey, don't do it.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: Just do not do it like, please, just don't, it's just really bad for you.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: Um, so caffeine, especially if you've not had anything to eat, is going to trigger your cortisol response and it's like that's what people think.
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: Well, it's giving me energy, it's not, it's giving you fake energy.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: So it's giving you a big boost of cortisol and then you're going to come crashing down and then you're going to need another one.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: And that's where we have that rollercoaster all day where you're craving caffeine or sugar or something to keep you going and that's.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: And then you get to the evening and tired, but you're tired, tired but wired.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: It's a really good indication that your stress, um, your stress response is a bit all over the place, because you're meant to be tired in the evening.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: But what I was finding, um, when I was going through my really stressful period, that I was really white come 10, 11 o'clock.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: I was like wide awake but I was knackered, but I was so wired that I couldn't sleep.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: So it's kind of like I'd obviously had my cortisol was like a bit elevated at that point in time.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: What was you actually wanting to get the cortisol to be going down?
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: So I had to do things to adjust my um cortisol response times and that was things like having a set bedtime, no phones at night, um daylight on my face first thing in the morning, going for walks.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: It was never.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: It's the stuff that we forget about and we think that doesn't matter.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: And I, you know I notice I try to meditate most days and if I don't, cold, calm and collected is not my default situation, shall we say yeah, I don't meditate um my temper matches my hair.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: So I have to be really mindful of how I um manage my emotions and what.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: I know what my triggers are and like not having the default response to these triggers.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: But we need to support from a lifestyle point of view and then look at what you're feeding yourself.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: Is it giving you fake energy?
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: Because what you want is stuff that's going to give you in the consistent slow release energy that's going to last all day, but it's going to support your um hormonal and stress response as well yeah, I'm sure you're probably going to say no to this, but you know like wine after you know, you know before bedtimes and chill down I think the thing, the thing, thing, the thing, the thing is um, I feel like I'm a buzzkill here.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: I was like no wine, no coffee.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: Um is that alcohol in itself is a depressant and can spike your blood sugar level as well.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: So that can then have an impact on your cortisol and your hormonal response and it always disrupts sleep, like if you're having wine in the evening, you are not going to have a restful sleep.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: So then you're going to wake up in the morning and you're going to be tired and sluggish and it's going to kick off that cycle of not making great choices food, wise, caffeine, all that kind of stuff.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: And I think from a lot of what I used to see with my, what I see with my clients, is that wine was kind of like that transition, like if they had a glass of wine while they were preparing dinner.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: It was almost like marked there to transition from work into family evening time and it's just like finding something else that helps with that transition.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: And it's just, especially as women are getting older, wine can contribute to like what flushes contribute to, like hot flushes.
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: Are there's research to show that?
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: If, why?
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: If not necessarily, but alcohol is limited, then we may not have such uh reaction like hot flushes in the at night time.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: So it's kind of like it's gonna like choose, like choose what you want to do, like be smart and kind of like decide what's worth it.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: For me, alcohol is not worth it anymore.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: I get tired, I get grumpy, like I know, because of what I do, that it's not serving me in any way, shape or form.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: I don't sleep well, I don't make good choices the next day, so to me it's not worth it at all.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: Um, so it's kind of like choose your heart, choose how you want to react.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: How do you want to feel?
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: For me, it's kind of like okay, future Wilma, what does she look like?
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: How does she behave?
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: Because I'm only going to meet future Wilma if I take the actions now and I don't want to be tired, grumpy, stressed out or moodly challenged in my 40s.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: It's just not something I want to do.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: So I have to make choices now that supports the lifestyle I want.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: So you mentioned meditation.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: If someone's listened to this and has never done meditation before, um, how would you get started?
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: So I, when I started, I tried lots of things.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: I I tried guided meditations, I went to like I did some meditation workshops and it's just finding something that kind of works for you and what.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: There's different styles and it is just a case of experimenting.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: And some people like walking, like they want to do walking meditation, some people want to sit down, some people fall asleep, some people like don't have time, but we all have five minutes and sometimes it only takes all you do is like tune into your breath, even a minute to kind of tune into, kind of noticing, because I used to be a really like shallow breather, like I wasn't really taking proper breath because I was just like everything's so busy, gotta keep going, gotta keep going.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: But actually when you are having like I remember last year I had a really stressful event happening and I couldn't, I remember I couldn't catch my breath at all and I was just kind of I started hyperventilating and somebody came up to me and they just like, while my hands they were like like just walked me through kind of deep breathing and even like for that minute it kind of changed how I kind of responding and the physiological response.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: So it's almost kind of like we always have our breath to tune into.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: So even if you start with like six deep breaths in and out and then, especially if you're having a stressful moment or you need to go and have a different conversation or you know husbands piss you off yeah sorry husbands, but you do um, or small humans piss you off or just like in general, you're having one of these days that everything's piling up, taking yourself away from the situation.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: Having like five deep breaths can have an impact.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: So it's kind of experimenting to find out what works for you and what doesn't.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: I, I just have a variety of things and you know, sometimes I can go a week without doing it and sometimes I've just come off like 60 days in a row of doing it every day.
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: So just kind of finding something works for you.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: And you know, some people meditate while they're anxious.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: You know, find exercise meditative.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: You know, I see, take your dog for a walk.
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: You know, take your children for a walk generally isn't very relaxing.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: I didn't find that one very relaxing everybody wants a snack and people are complaining and whatever, I've got a dog and he's relaxing to walk exactly.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: So you, like you know, use what you have.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: Um, and I always say start small, because what I find like right people are kind of right.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: I'm not gonna drink coffee, I'm not gonna drink wine, I'm gonna meditate every day, I'm gonna to get outside, I'm going to have a bedtime at nine o'clock and we try to do like we, we are like, we are overachievers, we want to do it all and like no start, small start, even if you don't do it every day, don't think, oh, there's no point.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: Because I say this to everybody 30 or 50 is better than zero percent.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: We're not going to 100 compliance, but something is better than nothing.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: And I say this when you're starting out um, half-assing your changes is better than no-assing.
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: You know, it's kind of like you've got to do, you've got to start somewhere.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: And I think I know for myself I wanted to be perfect, I wanted to.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: You know, I want to achieve it all, but that's going to set you stuff up for failure yes, there's somebody I follow on on LinkedIn and she sort of says slow down to do more and I think, um, what is it?
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: I read somewhere I can't remember some kind of namey steel thing.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: It was a bit like that.
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: It was gonna like slow down, um, and you'll go smoother, and when you go smoother, you go faster.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: I like that, oh, I you know, yeah, at least I did completely wrong, but it just so.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: It's kind of like yeah, something like that, yeah, what we actually and I remember somebody else saying this, somebody I follow on LinkedIn, and I was like, oh my god, yes, what we think is going to get in our way of being productive and working is actually a thing that's going to help us be more productive.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: So we think eating well, meditation and exercise you know all these health things we think they get in the way of us doing our jobs, but when we actually do them, we actually do our jobs and we do life way better than we do without it.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: So they are actually the things that support you to do the work you can do and to live the life you want.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: I like that.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: I feel like we should end it there, because that's such a good thing to say.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: If you want to do well, you know life and career, then actually you need to make time.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: I think, think that is it, isn't it?
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of women feel guilty that they don't have the time, but actually you have to make the time.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: Nobody's got time, like absolutely nobody's got time, and I could.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: This will be another conversation around the guilt and time things, because it's we won't go into it right now.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah if you want you know I think that's such a powerful thing to say is for a better life, for a richer life, then it's actually making time, investing that time in yourself with the exercise, the eating well, the meditation, whatever it is and I think that's the thing is viewed as an investment, viewed as a cost, because when you do an investment, you're always going to get something back out of it.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's the key thing, you there's no way if you are not that you won't get anything out of it, it's just, it's just impossible.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: And you I know we talked about future approving yourself as well, haven't you?
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: So you obviously get the benefits.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: Hopefully you're doing it today, but also the benefits you do it today in 20 years time yeah, exactly, absolutely like it's not just about right now I'm all for feeling and looking good right now but also in 20, 30, 40 years time or whatever it is is to it's a bit longevity as well.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: You don't want to get to that stage and be like, oh, I feel like shit.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: This has been such a powerful episode, I feel like shit.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: This has been such a powerful episode.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: I feel I've learned so much in this half an hour we've been chatting, so thank you so much, wilma.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: Where can people find you, connect with you and maybe talk through?
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: You know how you support people.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely so.
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: I'm on LinkedIn.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: That's Wilma McDonald, instagram it's underscore Maverick Motherhood and my website is maverickmotherhoodco, and it is all there.
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: I work one-to-one with clients for six months at a time.
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: I've got limited availability.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: I also do corporate workshops that can be bespoke to each individual client, and it will change your life.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: I think you've changed my life, you know.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: I always think why is she in my kitchen and I'm about to do something I'm like?
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: no, wilma would not like this so yeah, you definitely changed my life, so thank you so so much for joining us today.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to another episode of the Work it Like A Mum podcast.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review and subscribe, and don't forget to share the link with a friend.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: If you're on LinkedIn, please send me a connection request at Elizabeth Willett and let me know your thoughts on this week's episode.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: You can also follow my recruitment site, investing In Women on LinkedIn, facebook and Instagram.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: Until next time, keep on chasing your biggest dreams.