Your Authentic Journey, Healing, Reflection, and Breaking the Burnout Cycle

Transcript

0:00:01
Hello, hello. Welcome back to Her Power, the podcast, with me, your host, Zoe Fox. I know it has been a minute. Please forgive me, but I needed to take some time away. There’s been a lot going on. What can I say? But I’m gonna get back into the swing of things now because I have missed you. Oh, how I have missed, missed you. It’s been when was it? March, I think that I recorded a last episode, and it’s going to take me a minute to get back into the swing of things.

0:00:33
But let me give you a little bit of insider information as to what’s been going on the last few months. So I don’t know about you, but the first six months of 2023 has been a little bit intense, energetically, and there’s lots of planetary stuff that’s been going on to support that. But also, just on a very human level, there has been a lot going on. Managing my disability, being a mother, trying to build something from scratch again, post injury, it’s taken a lot of energy.

0:01:07
So I had to make a decision to put a few things on hold because I’ve got limited capacity, really, to focus. So some of the things that have been going on this year, 2023, so, as you know, or if you’re a regular listener to the show, you’ll know that I had a mentorship with Hay House Publishing, which I got last year, started in September. So there’s eight months of mentorship underneath an established Hay House author. So it’s having monthly meetings or monthly workshops with different authors, as well as having our own monthly meeting with our specific mentor.

0:01:55
My mentor was the incredible Sophie Bashford, and it’s been an incredible program. So the aim of that program was to help me to create a book proposal that I can submit to a publisher in the hope that I will get published. So that’s what I’ve been working on. And it’s taken. Honestly, I can’t actually believe how much it took from me. But I think that’s because it means so much, I had to really dig deep to produce something that I felt mattered and could help other people.

0:02:31
Because that’s my biggest motivation, really, with everything that I’m doing, is doing what I can to try and help to alleviate a tiny little bit of suffering. A lot of suffering. Help to bring more clarity, help to bring some tools, some skills that women can use to implement in their lives, to basically create a better experience. So I dug deep in this book, which really took me back into my own story, which in itself was, like, takes a lot of energy when you’re going through your old traumas and stuff like that.

0:03:06
And it’s quite a juicy document. There’s quite a lot of pages to it. So I gave it my all because it means a lot. So that was a huge focus for me. And then another thing, which I submitted, by the way, at the end of June. So let’s hope they like it. And if they don’t, then I will be looking for another publisher. So if you know anybody out there who’s interested in stories from diverse voices to help elevate and uplift the womanhood of humanity, then holler at me.

0:03:41
So that was a massive achievement for me. I felt so accomplished once I’d done it, because this has been like my own baby, my own project. And even though it’s only the proposal, it really is quite a lot like giving birth, to be honest. Especially, it’s like an eight month mentorship. You’re incubating this idea, you’re testing it out, you’re really thinking about it’s not only about you telling your story, it’s about how it can help others.

0:04:11
And this is just the intention with the podcast, really. So the book will be an extension of that. So, yeah, I’m feeling very accomplished with having completed that. But just like giving birth, it takes a lot of your energy as you bring this thing into fruition. Yeah. So that was that. And then in June, I had the privilege of attending the Cannes Festival of Creativity, which was the opportunity of a lifetime. So absolutely shout out to Maria, the founder of Lollipop Mentoring, who I was selected by to attend this prestigious Festival of Creativity, which has been typically known as being very exclusive, very much lacking in representation.

0:05:04
So it was a huge deal, really, to be out there, but not only just to have been selected to be out there, but also it’s my first time traveling abroad as a person with a disability. So it brought up a lot of anxiety for me. So many of the unknowns, so much of the uncertainty. It’s really consuming when you have to fill in so many of the blanks. Your mind tends to go into overdrive as you’re trying to think about, what’s the distance from this place to that place? Is the bathroom going to be accessible? How am I going to manage my personal care? How am I going to be able to get from here to there?
0:05:45
There’s so many things that take up your headspace. That in itself is exhausting. But we had an absolutely incredible experience. I traveled out there with a whole cohort under the name can for all. So in in the Lollipop group, I traveled with three other amazing women who were all out there just crushing it in their own right. So shout out to Rita, Anna, Marie and Stephanie. It was a pleasure to get to spend some time with them and yeah, to do the festival with them, having some real beautiful experiences that I’ll just never forget.
0:06:21
So what is canned? Festival of creativity. It’s essentially a prestigious festival, if I haven’t already said prestigious, where it’s all the leaders in advertising and communication and marketing, sharing ideas. There’s panels, there’s talks, there’s discussions. I’m getting excited now. So I forgot to mention I got my first experience on a yacht, which, as a person with a disability, navigating the little plank that you’ve got to get onto the yacht was an experience in itself.
0:06:54
But I was determined I was going to have my breakfast on that yacht. So, yeah, we did that, which was pretty cool. And I also had the opportunity to be filmed with the Can Lion team to talk about my journey into creativity and my experience. So that was exciting to share. And then my little film got emailed out to over 16,000 people that were registered with the festival. So that was epic. And up and down, sort of like the promenade at Cannes. There’s all these different installations, these brand activations.
0:07:28
So you’ve got companies such as Meta, Pinterest. Pinterest had the most amazing activation called the Pinterest Manifesto, where you were able to go and be creative. There were places where you could make these design your tote bags, get your hair done, you could get a piercing or you could get a micro tattoo. And as I am coming up to my 40th birthday, I thought, why not get my first ever tattoo? So that’s what I did. I got myself a little micro tattoo on my wedding ring finger, just as a little symbol of love to my beloved husband.
0:08:05
Because since having my daughter and having my spinal cord injury, for some reason my wedding rings seem to have shrunk in the wash. It’s got nothing to do with the fact that I’ve put on weight, it’s just the rings that shrunk. So, yeah, it’s nice for me to look down and see a little mark on my finger as a celebration of love. So that was pretty epic. There was just so much stuff to see and do and people to meet and network.
0:08:35

But it also highlighted a lot for me around what it’s like as a person with a disability experiencing the world. And the truth is, if you don’t have decision makers at these events that are people with disabilities, so much stuff gets overlooked. So there’s lots of ways that people could make things more accessible if they just engage with voices of people with disabilities in the planning, just to make it a little bit more comfortable.
0:09:06

So, for example, the Festival Hall, where it’s like a conference centre where most of the big talks went on. And you got people like Will I am giving talks. Spike Lee gary Vee. I think Halle Berry was out there, eva Longoria, just to name a few of the celebrities that most people will know, just to give an example of the caliber of the event. So the Accessibility tour was a tour that was on foot, which in itself was really demanding, having to walk all the way around the festival center.
0:09:43

So, in hindsight, what would have been helpful for me was to have access to a wheelchair in there so I could get around a little bit more easily. And then also given the fact that a lot of the activations continue for like it’s got to be like over a mile down this seafront away from the conference hall, there’s quite a lot of distance to cover, especially when you’re thinking about getting out of your accommodation, making your way down to the front where everything’s going on. And taxes are not necessarily that easy to get hold of because of the demand.
0:10:33

So it was very physically taxing, so it pushed me to real deep places, but it was like this amazing contrast of physical challenge and pain and just the most incredible sort of elevation of having this most empowering experience of being a part of this incredible opportunity. Yeah, so there’s been quite a lot of stuff going on, really, in the first six months of the year, so I suppose it’s been making me reflect a lot.
0:11:06

It took a lot for me to have to put the podcast on hold because I’ve been really kind of committed to it, really, since I started the podcast after my injury. And I feel like a sense of responsibility for you, the listener. There’s like a love in my heart for you, even though we probably haven’t met face to face, but this commitment that I was making on a weekly basis wasn’t something that I took lightly.
0:11:32

But it made me reflect on society, how we feel in society, especially in a world that feels like it’s on the go. Twenty four seven. I grew up in a time where the shops were closed on a Sunday. You could get a newspaper at the most. The pace of life was much slower. We didn’t have this constant 24 hours news or TV. I remember like, at a certain time, Channel Four would switch off and it would be that little girl with the easel. Was it an easel and just was it like white noise or something? Or was there even background music? I can’t remember. But there was a time when things switched off which allowed us to switch off.
0:12:19

I remember Sundays would always be nice and leisurely and go for walks in nature or go out for adventures on our bikes. And now it’s like everything feels like it’s constantly go, go. Everyone I speak to at the moment is exhausted. And is it any wonder? There’s no switching off, is there? There’s no switching off and there’s this sense that if we switch off, then we miss out. So we’ve got this massive FOMO thing going on as well.
0:12:46

And I had the thoughts around, well, if this podcast is growing, it’s increasing in its listenership globally. Oh, and shout out to the United States, who over the last couple of months while I’ve been away, have now become the biggest listenership of the podcast. So big love to all our listeners in the United States. I appreciate you and just big love to all of the listeners. Anyway, wherever you are in the world, I find it amazing that I can sit in my living room in West London and reach all these different parts of the world. I saw that we’ve even got listeners in Ethiopia, Singapore.
0:13:21

So, yeah, man, that’s a beautiful thing. So I’m building the listenership. We’re having this conversation. I’m taking you on this journey with me. I am not this finished product that’s preaching to you from a mountaintop. I’m speaking to you from the trenches as someone who’s learning, evolving, tweaking, going again. I’m not trying to be here like some preachy preachy. I’ve made it and this is what everyone must do.
0:13:51

This is what I feel like is lacking a little bit in society at the moment, is this level of transparency and authenticity and conversations. You look out, it’s like everybody’s already made it. Where’s the vulnerability? Where are people struggling? People aren’t as keen to share their struggles, are they? It’s always how well everything’s going and all of their successes. But actually, I think it’s in the struggle, it’s in the working it out, it’s in our real humanness that allows us to connect more deeply.
0:14:23

So some of the things that I was faced with over the last few months was, oh, if I stop now, then I’m going to decline my listenership. And I’m supposed to be trying to build this platform and increase the metrics so that if I can try and get a publishing deal for this book, then it looks more appealing. But at what cost is that? So throughout all of this, wanting to spread this message, wanting to help other women to connect to their potential, I’ve got to do it in a way that is authentic.
0:14:54

I can’t just pretend that everything is okay all of the time. I can’t just push through my limitations, physical limitations, to the point where I’m reaching burnout, because what is that teaching you? What I’m not trying to do is tell you to just keep going into burnout. It’s like, know yourself enough to know when you do need to just put everything aside and take a deep breath and take a few deep breaths, have a lie down, have a sleep, gather your thoughts and then go again.
0:15:27

Because if you keep pushing, you’re good for nothing, in my experience, anyway. So it would have been inauthentic of me to have kept going. It’s. Like what? I got to a point where I was like, I don’t even know what I’ve got to talk about. I’m so burnt out at the moment. I haven’t really got anything to say. So I had to retreat a little bit and think, okay, so what is my priority for this season? And in that particular season, it was to get this book done.
0:15:54
A
Well, I say the book to get the proposal done, and it’s thinking of different ways that I can extend the reach of what it is that I’m trying to share without totally burning myself out in the process. So yeah, it’s been a lot because it’s like if you move away from the public eye or if you’re not outwardly seen to be having an output and doing something and putting out content and doing this, then it’s like there’s this perception that you’re not about anything.
0:16:28
A
But that’s okay because what I’ve come to realize is that what I’m doing is not for outside validation. It’s deeper than that. This is a real soul led mission and it’s not supposed to happen overnight. I’ve been on this journey of healing and wanting to help others heal for over a decade now. They say it takes ten years to become an overnight success. I’m still waiting. I’m still waiting to connect with more women and to make more meaningful points of contact and it’s not going to happen overnight. So I’m kind of surrendering to that now.
0:17:13
A
I think there’s like if you think about it, there’s the outside world and how it measures success through vanity metrics and material success. And if you’re going for that, then I can see why you need to keep going. But if there’s a more heart led mission that needs to be fulfilled and it’s a long term thing for me, I need to be able to pace myself. And I think we should all be willing to pace ourselves and not be too concerned in getting swept up with this myth that’s constantly being projected on social media.
0:17:50
A
And that’s another thing, is like how many of us are actually addicted to social media? Even if we’re not posting, how frequently are we finding ourselves automatically going to our phone, picking it up and getting consumed into that social world? And if there wasn’t enough for us to contend with, instagram have just launched their new app threads. So I was all excited when that came about at first because I was like, oh amazing, it’s a written platform and I love written communication.
0:18:26
A
So I joined and I was all excited and then I was like, it feels like it’s a bit of a land grab at the moment. So I started noting this resistance within me to that. And again, it’s this feeling as though you’ve always got to be on, you’ve always got to have something to say, you’ve always got to be heard, when actually I think there’s a lot of value in just listening. But again, it’s this thing about being seen and perception and managing that within yourself and recognizing that how we become part of other people’s agendas.
0:19:01
A
So it’s in the social media app’s best interests for us to be constantly using their app. We are not being paid to use their apps, which means that we are effectively helping them to generate their income because through our attention they generate their revenue. So it’s about being mindful of that as well, isn’t it. It’s like, whose agenda is this? Is this Mark Zuckerberg’s agenda to make himself nice and wealthy?
0:19:29
A
Or is it serving my best interest to be spending all of this time on these apps? Consuming, consuming, consuming? So I found a lot of yeah, I’ve been finding that I need to bring a lot of balance into my life. I’m not here to serve Zuckerberg, I’m here to serve the community. And if I’m just mindlessly scrolling through his platform, I don’t think it’s necessarily the best way to do that. So these are just some of the thoughts that have been coming up for me over the last few months.
0:20:02
A
This episode hasn’t been planned, it hasn’t been thought about. I thought, let me just switch the mic on and see what comes up and comes out. I’m thinking weekly episodes is great, but I’ve noticed now over the last couple of years of having done this, that in reality I need to have some time. For me personally, I like time to think and integrate and learn and then feed back. So I think what I’m going to have to do is do these in more like in series.

0:20:41
So I’m not just saying I’m going to keep going every week and keep pushing myself to burn out and then there’s no value in the content because I’m exhausted and I’m just pushing myself. And it’s just a reminder to all of us that none of us can just keep going. We have to take that time to reconnect with ourselves, take some time out. Because if you’re constantly consuming, where’s the time to integrate what you’re consuming?

0:21:04
Where’s the time to connect with your own creativity so that you can come from a place of authenticity and bring what your soul wants to bring into the world? Otherwise you’re constantly looking at everybody else and being influenced by what everyone else is doing. But it’s about taking that time to really connect in with yourself. And that was one of the most valuable lessons for me that came from my injury and from the pandemic, was having that enforced time to do nothing but just sit.

0:21:34
In fact, my phone broke at one point after my injury, so I literally had nothing but me, the nature outside my window and my little window seat. And it was actually in taking that time to sit there and connect with the trees, connect with my breath, that I learned more about myself than I ever had in my entire life. So how easy is it for you to plug yourself out of the matrix and take that time to really connect with what’s trying to stir within?

0:22:05
Because we’ve all got our own unique thing to bring to life. But how easily are we giving it the time to marinade, to build, to flourish, for us to then be able to consciously bring it out into the world? Are we just a nation or a world of zombies? Now that are just plugged into this social media matrix consistently and what can we do to find more time to step out of it and mindfully connect with ourselves?

0:22:41
Anyway, those are just the thoughts from the top of the dome. I’m sure I have something more constructive. I know I’ve got more. Oh gosh, there’s so much to say, really. I’ve been working on so much and having so many thoughts to share, so I’m going to leave it as this for now. Just a quick episode to get back into the swing of things. One thing that I am going to be doing in the autumn, because we’ve got the six weeks holidays coming up now as well, so I’m going to have the little one.

0:23:11
So I’m hesitant to make any commitments at this point. And that’s another thing as well. It’s like I live my life in a way that I know some people want to get everything perfect before they put it out there, but I’m like giving a running commentary as I go. And sometimes that means that you’ll say things and they don’t necessarily manifest sometimes. Like I said a few months ago, I’m going to start a women’s circle.

0:23:42
Has it happened? No, it hasn’t. And you know what? It’s all right. It’s all right to say stuff and it not manifest. I think we get too concerned with what things look like on the outside, but how does it feel within it’s having to fit all of these societal standards, burning you out and pushing you to your wits end. It’s okay to implement boundaries to protect yourself and your needs in that moment, and you don’t necessarily owe anyone an explanation.

0:24:12
And I think the more of us that absorb that and think, yeah, you know what, we haven’t just got to be these performing monkeys all the time. It’s okay to go within. And I think if we normalize that, I think it’s going to give a lot more people the permission to think, yeah, you know what, we haven’t got to be on all the time. It is okay to just zone out and connect in with our real needs. There was something else I was going to say then and I’ve got totally sidetracked, so I’ll save that for another day.

0:24:43
But yeah, guests in the autumn, I want to get back into conversations again. I’ve met so many incredible people the last few months that I think have got a lot of value to give and I’d love for you to be able to hear from them as well. So, yeah, once my little one has started school because she’s leaving nursery tomorrow. Oh my gosh, she’s leaving nursery tomorrow. I can’t believe it’s like 1 minute you think you’re never going to have a child because of infertility, and then the next thing she’s like starting school in September, which is huge. And they say time flies and doesn’t it just so, yeah, I will be looking forward to getting into conversation in the autumn.

0:25:29
And what else? I’m speaking tomorrow at Wildflowers of London, which I’m really looking forward to. I’m going to be speaking about flourishing through challenges, the road to resilience, and I’m going to be sharing my Inner World Alchemy framework, which is something that has been a few years in the making, but it’s really got into its stride this year, so I’m looking forward to sharing more about that with you.

0:25:55
Yeah, there’s a lot we’ve got a lot of catching up to do, my SIS. So anyway, with that said, I’m going to leave it there and send you nothing but love. It’s great to reconnect. Thank you for your grace allowing me the space to dip out when I need to. And let’s just honor and respect each other’s humanness. Let’s honor and respect our need to unplug and reconnect with ourselves so that we can ultimately serve from a place of authenticity and from having our own cup filled first, because when you’re trying to pour from an empty pot, there’s not much to give.

0:26:33
So, on that note oh, look, see all the thoughts coming to me now. I’ve got a couple of things on the website. I’ve got the manifest, your perfect Day planner, which was there from before, so you might already know about that. But it’s a free downloadable PDF that you can grab that is going to help you to reflect on your day so that you can connect to a more intentional day ahead, just to help you manifest your best day possible.

0:26:59
And I’ve got something else on the website which is really powerful, and it’s something that I’ve been developing along with my inner world Alchemy framework. And it’s a life assessment, an empowered life assessment. And there’s twelve questions there that are going to help you to really get to know yourself in a more intimate way so that you can make sure that you’re moving towards that best possible version of yourself in as mindful a way as possible, so you can grab that. It’s on my website at the moment.

0:27:33
Have a look in the menu. The website is Zoefox co UK. Come and find me on Instagram at zoe e fox and I will come back next week and we’ll continue the conversation and it will be a bit less randomly, just spouting at the top of my head, whatever’s coming through. Anyway, big love, peace out and I’ll catch you next week. Bye.