Make Time For You

Welcome to the first episode of the Make Time For you podcast. I am super excited to be getting going on this project and that's because I have become hugely passionate about the message of making time for you. And the reason that I've become hugely passionate about the message of making time for you and the reason that I've become hugely passionate about it is through my own journey into finding out how important it was. And I've called this episode from burnout to chill out, and that is because, in a very short, succinct way, it sums up my own journey. And whilst a lot of the people in my life might not agree that I am completely chilled out, it is all very relative and I do.
01:55
I am somebody that has a lot of energy for things. It's a big part of what makes me happy and what drives me to keep going. Every day I get a lot of joy from having a purpose and overcoming a challenge and problem solving, exploring what I'm capable of. But I found that through my own journey, I had to find ways to manage that, to allow me to continue being able to do that without it becoming detrimental to my health or my happiness or even my performance in doing that, and that's really what this episode is all about. So I'm going to start off with where I was when I kind of started realising that I needed to be paying more attention. So my background is that I was a physiotherapist in the NHS and I specialised in working with people who had had a stroke and our team would go out to see them at home and we would help in their rehabilitation, and I was doing that full time and I'd been doing it for a few years and felt relatively comfortable in my role. You know, I'd got to a point where I knew what I was doing and so I felt like I needed a bit more of a challenge and I decided that I wanted to take up triathlon.
03:04
I was doing, and so I felt like I needed a bit more of a challenge and I decided that I wanted to take up triathlon. I was already a runner I'd recently got into cycling, so it kind of seemed to make sense that, you know, the triathlon was something that I wanted to have a go at and, to cut a long story short, I trained to do that, to do my first sprint triathlon, and I actually had to learn to swim front crawl as part of that. I'd learned as a kid to swim, but I was a gasping heap at the end of the pool after just doing one length, and so I had to learn to swim properly. And so I did that over the winter and I had my first race, my first sprint triathlon, in the spring of the following year. So I turned up and I did the race and I absolutely loved it. I was buzzing the whole way around, but I also came second lady in that race and so I kind of thought, well, I have something here. So I went on to continue competing that year and eventually got to the point where I ended up competing for GB in my age group in both triathlon and something called duathlon, which is where you run bike run.
04:05
So that became a huge part of my life. It took a lot of training and there was not just the kind of three disciplines of triathlon and swim, bike run, but there was also lots of things around it. There was strength training, thinking about my nutrition, cleaning up and setting, getting ready for the day ahead, and so I was doing that alongside my full-time NHS job, and in my wisdom I decided that I would also set up my own private physio practice to help extend some of the services within within Shropshire where I lived and worked, to be able to offer more to the kind of the neuro patients within Shropshire. But also it meant that if I dropped my hours in the NHS then I'd be able to work a bit more flexibly and to be able to fit in some training around it as well. So I did that, but I didn't drop my hours to start off with, because I didn't know how it was going to go.
04:59
And so life became a bit of a conveyor belt of just one thing after another, and the days would be extremely long. And some days I felt like I was great, I was doing great and I felt like I'd got this. I could just keep on going with it. But then other days I would feel exhausted and like I was having to drag myself through the day, and it got to be that my sleep was pretty rubbish. I would wake up in the early hours of the morning and I would just be unable to switch my head off, and so I'd kind of lie there trying to get back to sleep but thinking this is ridiculous. I may as well just get up and go and do the things that I'm thinking about, rather than lying here thinking about it.
05:41
And so life continued like that for a little while, and and it was after a few years of training and competing quite, you know, high levels that I just sort of realized that it wasn't quite working for me. And it was actually when somebody I knew who I, who I'd actually been training with passed away in quite a short space of time and it just gave me a sense of perspective. They were only a year older than I was and it just made me think I've got my priorities here completely out of whack. And so I had a big race coming up. But after that race I decided that I was, I just needed a break from it and I decided to step away from from training at that time. Alongside that, things had not been been too great in my relationship for a while and I decided to step away from training at that time. Alongside that, things had not been too great in my relationship for a while, and I'd been with my husband at the time for a very long time. We'd got together when we were really young and we just weren't quite making each other happy, and so we decided to go our separate ways, which was a mutual decision and something that we decided to do together, and we're still friends now.
06:47
But it all kind of took its toll at this time when I was feeling sort of like exhausted by the things that were going on in my life. However, me being me, I couldn't be without a goal and I continued to push myself and I actually signed up for a marathon. So that was. I came away from training for triathlon, but the next step down was to decide to sign up for a marathon instead. So I did that and I trained for the marathon. And then after that, I needed another goal, and so I signed up for a fitness photo shoot, which was some of my friends were doing at the place where we trained at, and so I decided I'd do that instead. And again, the volume where we trained at. And so I decided I'd do that instead. And again, the volume of training was less.
07:27
But I'd also gone into it thinking that I'd always had problems with my body image and how I saw myself, and so it was kind of a way of trying to approach that and think if I got to the point of doing this photo shoot and I was in the best shape of my life and I still wasn't really happy with how I looked and with myself. There was probably something that I needed to be doing differently, and that's really exactly what happened. So I did this fitness photo shoot. I worked through the kind of prep phase of it and I looked the absolute epitome of health and fitness. But actually, even though that's how it appeared on the outside, my body had really stopped functioning on many different ways and my periods had stopped, my digestion was really terrible and just wasn't very good at all, and my skin would regularly flare up. But most importantly for me was that I still didn't even really like myself. I would be poking and prodding at myself while I was looking in the mirror and I just felt this sense of that I wasn't really happy with, with who I was.
08:36
And so that's when I kind of the real kind of turning point in terms of I thought there's got to be a better way than this and, as I say, I kind of knew that already going into it. But I'm quite a stubborn person and I have to find these things out for myself rather than ever being told it. So you know, I'd gone through that process and I was at this point where I'd come to that realisation. So I was researching just how I could help myself feel better, and particularly with regards to my sleep. That was still really awful and had been for many years, and I would only get a few hours sleep a night and was really struggling as a result of that, often feeling like I was walking around through the day like a zombie. So as I researched and kind of found out the things that I needed to do to help myself feel better, to try and help improve my sleep, I was really shocked by what I found. And I wasn't shocked because of the information itself. I was shocked because I didn't already know it and I'd been working or I'd been training and working in healthcare for 15 years by this point, and this wasn't the things that I knew and that I was doing and that I was telling to my patients, and so that's what really surprised me and shocked me, and it was what sort of fuelled me then to think this I know so many people who are struggling with similar things and I need to get this message out there further and wider.
09:59
But at this point I was still working in my NHS job and things were getting worse and it's a hard thing to talk about because I have a lot of respect for the people working in the NHS. They were my colleagues and my friends and they do absolutely incredible work every single day. But the system has changed over the years and the values of the NHS have changed over the years or at least that was my experience of it and it became that I was being employed to do a particular job to look after and to care for my patients and to provide them with services that I had the skills and the ability to do. But it felt to me like it was the very people who were employing me that were also putting obstacles in my way that stopped me from being able to do that job and care sufficiently for my patients. And I had the skills to do it, but I just wasn't almost allowed to do it because of the nature of the system and the things that were there and getting in the way, and I found that really difficult place to be and I'd spent many years trying to fight to preserve the service that we offered and to be able to do the best job that I could do for my patients. So it got to this point where I'd been fighting that and I was just exhausted myself.
11:27
I had a lot of things going on in my personal life that had been, you know, taken this toll on me over the years of working in those circumstances. So it was a really difficult decision to come away from my job in the NHS. So I remember that I had been sat in this meeting at work where they were going to be introducing some more changes that were directly going to affect our team, and I found that really upsetting, and not so much the changes themselves, although they were upsetting, but the thing that upset me the most was that I just didn't feel like I had the energy to fight it anymore, and so I went around to my mum and dad's, actually after work, and I remember sitting and talking to my dad and, having left my husband six months earlier, I was sat on the sofa talking to my dad and saying I'm not even sure I want to be a physio anymore, and the words midlife crisis were definitely uttered at that point. But it all worked out fine. But at that time I think he was a bit concerned about me.
12:30
So, again, to cut a long story short, I decided to come away from my job and it was a really difficult decision for me to make, but I decided to come away and I retrained as a health and life coach and then I've also trained in something called neuro linguistic programming or NLP, and timeline therapy and hypnosis. So these are all kind of qualifications and tools that I put in my toolbox, alongside everything that I learned about the brain and body through my career as a physio and then my own experiences in kind of performance and sort of my athletic career, and so all of that sort of goes into my toolbox when I work with the clients. But what I found is that, as I was retraining to do these things, it was also a huge part of my own healing journey as well as kind of learning about sort of me and sort of generally the human being and how our brain and body work. So it helped me to identify my own patterns and what I didn't want to be experiencing anymore didn't want to be experiencing anymore. Now, if you're listening to this, you are probably also a very busy person and have lots of things going on in your life and you'll know how hard it is to simply do less when you are a busy person. So I knew that I didn't want to feel exhausted anymore. But when I tried to stop and rest, I just felt agitated and restless and I couldn't sit still and again I would just be kind of thinking I've got better things to do. I need to be getting all that done. I haven't got time to be sitting here. If you'd have said to me to go and meditate, I would have said not a chance, I cannot sit still for that long. And I did try and, as I say, it was just felt really uncomfortable to be able to sit still and try and do it. But I kept on trying, bit by bit, and I found ways to try and implement things that would be helpful to me, and so I would go through. I'm quite a self-reflective person, so I would go through periods where I would try and understand what was happening for me, what the patterns were that were coming up, and I would recognise that. I would question it, I would adjust things and try and make it a little bit better, bit by bit. So I used things like journaling, which is basically just a fancy name for writing stuff down, but it helped me to explore what it was that I needed and what was going on for me, what was coming up for me. I also had coaching myself, so I knew the value of coaching because I was doing it, I was training in it, but actually that coach for me was a really vital part of my own journey as well. I did become able to meditate, and I'll talk more about that in future episodes.
15:29
In terms of how we can bring in that practice of meditation Maybe not in the way that it is typically thought of, but ways of introducing it without feeling like you know, you're struggling to sit still, and I also used walking a lot. That was a huge thing. That was part of my headspace in terms of being able to regroup and refocus and get perspective and clarity. I find that being out, and particularly out in nature by myself, just gives me the time and space to get what it is that I need. But in all of these practices there was a central theme to it, and that was that I was allowing myself the time and space that I needed to be able to focus on me, and when you are somebody that cares about other people and you are wanting to help everyone else around you, it is very difficult to also then focus on yourself. You know you're absorbing everybody else's energy and problems and thoughts and the things that they're doing and saying. You kind of take it all on as well, and so the sort of common theme was that actually I personally needed time away from all of that. I needed time to myself to be able to work out where I ended and everyone else began and what it was that I needed, and so that is sort of how I came to realise the importance of making time for you.
16:53
But that term making time for you is very broad. It's very much an umbrella term. My way, the way that I do it will not necessarily be your way. We are all very individual and unique, and so really what the message there is in that make time for you is about exploring and discovering what works for you, and there are lots and lots of different ways that you can do that ways that you can do that but it starts with firstly recognising what's not working for you and what it is that you would like to be different, and then working out how that you can take that forwards. So that is really the message that I want to be spreading now, and helping people to do more and more of that and be able to feel like they can make time for themselves. And so the podcast is going to be a huge part of doing that, and so I'm going to be bringing sort of addressing various different topics over the course of the weeks.
17:51
But we all know that it's very easy for me to sit here and say make more time for yourself and take. You know, take that time for yourself and, to be honest, you probably tell other people in your life to do that all the time. You probably tell them they need to prioritise their own health and their own wellbeing. But actually to do it for yourself is much, much harder, and that is because so many challenges come up and get in the way of that. There are so many different things, and those things might be external things. They might be your family commitments or looking after your children or your work. All of those things might stop you from feeling like you can actually take that time for yourself.
18:42
Sense of feeling guilty that you're going to let somebody down by taking time for you instead of being there doing something for them. It could be that you struggle to say no because of that and actually, even though you know you haven't got the time to do something and that actually you will, it'll be to your detriment. By putting that extra thing into your schedule and squeezing it in there where there isn't really space for it, you struggle with that guilt of letting them down in there where there isn't really space for it. You struggle with that guilt of letting them down. Or you feel like there isn't enough time to get everything into the day, and so you know that you want to do something for yourself, and it's planned in there, but you'll do it after you've done those things that need to happen first. But the problem is, those things maybe take longer than you thought they would, or they grow and you never really quite get round to it, or by the time that you do get round to it, you just feel exhausted and like you haven't got the time to actually give yourself the energy to give yourself what it is that you need.
19:31
And so the way I look at this is to look at how we can bring those things in throughout your day without feeling like you have to take big chunks of time out so that you can prioritise your own needs, without feeling like you have to take big chunks of time out so that you can prioritise your own needs without feeling like you're going to be neglecting anyone else, and so that will be a big part of what we talk about in the podcast as we go through the weeks.
19:53
But also I want to take that message out there into the workplace or into community groups and to use those forums to explore what's happening for you in whatever setting. That is what maybe keeps you in cycles where you feel like you're unable to make time for yourself, but how you can find ways to support your own needs and get all those benefits without neglecting anyone else. So on the next episode of the Make Time For you podcast, which will be in a fortnight's time, I will be exploring whether you feel stuck in chronic cycles of boom and bust, and this is where I introduced a framework called the Boom Bust Rollercoaster that I really use to explore how these cycles get set up and what it is that is keeping you from making time for yourself. So make sure to join me in a fortnight's time where we'll be exploring that much more and can delve into the things that you need to do in order to be able to make time for yourself.