What 200 Episodes Taught Me About Real Change
Spam Filter For Your Brain - Episode 200
So 200 episodes. Quite wild to me. Welcome to the 200th episode of Spam Filter For Your Brain.
That probably doesn't mean anything to you, but it means a great deal to me.
I've been wondering how to mark this, because it's tempting with these anniversary episodes to make greatest hits things, like top five things that I know or things that I repeat often, some little summary that tells you all of the things that you hopefully have heard in some of the other episodes. But I'm not really sure that that's the most honest, most Anna version of the way that I would like to approach things.
What I wanted to do for this episode is kind of tell you a few things that are true that I've learnt from recording 200 episodes of a podcast that I never thought that I was gonna make in the first place.
Want to talk about what I know now that I didn't know then, what I got wrong, and what turned out to be more true than I expected.
And honestly, what being so public and so out there and available for people every week for nearly four years has changed and converted in my head. Because that's what this podcast has been about. Not trying to put out a polished version of things. Trying to do something which is consistent and available and accessible for the folk who need it. So here is what 200 episodes have taught me.
Firstly, I think episode one is actually one of my favorites. It's all about why I said that I should never start a podcast, how to get things wrong, and How you're allowed to change your mind. And this whole podcast, I feel, is about how to change your mind. It has gone from all of those first episodes, if I'm really honest with you, were recorded on my phone, tucked into my bra and now, I try and do the videos for you so you get to be able to see me talking. And at each stage it has tested my thoughts and my capacity to want to put myself out there, my vulnerability and questioning why I don't want to put myself out there. And this is something that I actually coach people on an awful lot, so I thought it was important to talk about this episode.
When I had things like wanting the idea of putting the podcast out there, I didn't want to expose myself that much. I didn't want to put myself in the public face that much, and I had to question why. Now, there's a whole load of stories that I had which are important and worth noting, and a whole load of stories that I had going on which were causing noise and distraction.
Now, the noise and distraction ones were, old stories like I don't think the world needs another long podcast, so I didn't make a long one. I don't think that I have interesting things that people want to hear, and I know that that's not true. And also, if you don't wanna hear it, you don't have to listen.
I'm actually giving people autonomy to be able to have the chance to hear what I say by putting this stuff out there. But nobody's obliged to do anything.
I have old stories about putting myself out there as someone who looks like this. There are many personal and societal issues why I don't want my face to be out there in public, and also my face is out there in public. And as with my TED Talk, when I persuaded myself to go and do that, I realised that if anyone is helped by the work that I'm putting out there, if just one single person needs a sentence that they need to hear, then I'm willing to create that space for me to be brave enough to be vulnerable in the hope that I can help someone.
I initially thought that this podcast was going to be about marketing. I thought that hope you would find www.SelfCareSchool.co.uk and realise that you could get loads more fine-tuned versions of this directly into your ears and eyes every week, and have all of the resources that I put together that I really carefully curate to support people throughout their lives, and that this could be a direct line where you find the things that you need and be able to open the doors to www.SelfCareSchool.co.uk
And I'm not always sure that that's what this podcast has done. I don't hear a lot back from people in the comments. , I see the listener stats, and I have to say that they're often quite low, and I don't mind that because it feels very personal. I quite often think that I'm talking to people on a one-to-one, and when I can see how few people listen to this stuff, it makes it easier for me to record them as if I'm talking to you personally and trying to support you personally, and that's honestly all I'm ever trying to do with any of my work.
And there was all the vulnerability about safety. As someone who has had their safety breached in the past, putting myself out there in public, for many reasons, felt like quite a dangerous thing to do. And with that, I looked at all of the options available in front of me. Was I willing to keep my life smaller, myself smaller, so that I could put myself into what effectively was a false sense of security?
I wouldn't be any more or less safe if I didn't do that. I just wouldn't know about it. All I would be doing would be shrinking myself in the hope that someone might not harm me further. And that isn't something that I want to do. I want to step into being able to make the choices that I want to, where I want to, within reason, that enable me to live the kind of life that I want to, and to be able to be expanding my work out in a way that supports as many people as possible. And I figured that a podcast was an essential way to do that.
My work is always about trying to find ways to make things more accessible to more people. And if choosing to go through people's ears every week, or on YouTube, or putting the videos out there, expanding what I'm willing to do in order for people to be able to access these tools, if it makes a difference, I'm willing to do it.
So as it of course, it always should have been, what I thought I was coming to was making a decision about marketing. But actually the reason why I do my marketing, the reason of why I do my work is so I can support people. And I believe, I hope, that this podcast is something that supports people.
I think over the journey of the last four years with this podcast, one of the things that I have said most often to other people, and on all of the coaching calls that I've done, that I have learned to embody within myself more than just saying it, is that I, you, we, are perfectly human. It used to be something that I liked as a soundbite. It used to be something that I found very grounding and took a lot of sharp edges off a lot of the critical things that we say to ourselves. And actually, I really believe it now, and maybe it is something in reciting this every week to you.
It's about reminding people that we're allowed to have mistakes. That I allow myself to have mistakes, and I allow myself to have mistakes in this podcast. This podcast is far from perfect. I would love the audio to be a lot cleaner and crisper, and to have, an entire editing team behind things, and everything to be beautiful and pretty and not have to spend hours every week editing my stutter out, which I do quite a lot. Not because of ableism, but just for easy listening, to ensure that my points get across more easily.
And I do wish that some of the points that I made were a lot more concise, and that's fine. I allow myself the fallibility of I would rather produce something which is regular, consistent, that you know that you can rely on every week for me to give you just a few tips in your ears that hopefully are gonna be able to remind you of a soothing path towards your own ease. And just have someone feel like they're on your side, and go, " Mate, it doesn't have to be this hard. I get it. You're probably going through an awful lot right now, and I promise that it isn't always gonna be this bad." That you deserve kindness, that you deserve care, all of these things. If I am the one person maybe this week who's reminded you of these things, then me putting all of the slightly jagged little scruffy edges of this podcast together feels like it's worth it to me. I hope it feels like it's worth it for you too.
one of the things this podcast has taught me about change is I think that I believed that change looked like a clear decision. You got the insight, you make the decisions, and then you're different.
But actually, you don't always have a brand-new chapter or a brand-new different behaviour or the problem that you were dealing with is solved. What I know now is that change is really irritatingly slow, and it's rarely linear, and mostly invisible until suddenly that day that it isn't.
Most of the people that I work with who look at change, and general sort of durable, sustainable change where they really notice what's gone on with them, I don't know that very many of them would've had a light bulb moment. They couldn't see it happening specifically in that sessions. They come in, we work on something, especially for the weekly group coaching calls at www.SelfCareSchool.co.uk, and then they leave, and then six months later maybe someone else in the group even says, "Oh, you don't do that thing anymore," or, "I notice that you've really grown in that way," or, "I haven't done that thing for ages."
And quite often people are like, "When did that happen? I didn't even notice myself letting go of that."
And I think that that's actually how change works or how sustainable change works. It's quiet, in the background, ongoing, repetitiveness that sometimes can be quite boring, and often while you're thinking it's not working.
And what I'd like to draw attention to with that, hopefully with these podcasts with you listening every week, is that maybe you don't see change happening from listening to any of this, and maybe you don't think that anything is working right now. But actually noticing things, questioning things, sitting with the discomfort rather than rushing for quick change is doing something.
And just 'cause you don't see the results yet, that doesn't mean that actually nothing's happening.
An important precursor to all of this, I guess, is also acknowledging that change doesn't require you to feel ready. I think quite often we think we need to be ready to implement that change, and that's just sneaky little perfectionism popping out of disguise. Readiness is a feeling, and feelings come from thoughts, and the thought, "I'm not ready," is always a protection strategy.
You don't need to wait until you're ready. You can act, and readiness can sometimes follow, and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes you're just in the thick of getting on with things, and ready is a job title that you never actually gave yourself.
You can choose to want to do something because you want the outcomes rather than feeling you have to have all of these prereq- prerequisites before you take action.
And the way that you take action is by focusing on the thought that you think that you're going to get when you've achieved that thing, and then working out what someone who'd done it already might already be thinking, and work on practicing that.
What I still notice a lot of the people that I coach stumbling on is that you can't bully yourself better. You can't bully yourself into changing.
I think this self-pressure that we put on ourself, especially around self-care, care work, is the least motivating thing that we can do for ourselves.
Most people think that their inner critic is hugely motivating. It is the reason that they do things. If they don't bully themselves, then they're not going to get stuff done, even if it's unkind. And I don't believe that. It's not. The bully keeps you exactly where you are. It mistakes self-attack for self-improvement, and every person that I've worked with on this, at some point, has chosen to stop treating their own growth like punishment, and start treating it like something they're doing because they deserve a better time.
This isn't a self-improvement project because you're wrong. This is something which is a gift and an endorsement of who you are, and a treat to future you.
The transition and the growth is the work.
It's finding and choosing that path for yourself and knowing that you're making a choice for your own wellbeing. That's the actual prize.
and I wanted to drop a little hat tip, I guess, at the end of this episode about what talking about the patriarchy week in, , week out and self-sabotage has done to my own relationship with both. I think that actually publicly talking about the patriarchy every single week has made me angrier, and not in a way that feels bad, in a way that feels more clarifying.
Doing this work publicly has made me angrier. When you spend years naming over and over the systems that, that teach us that, that our needs don't matter, that our anger isn't valid, That rest is only acceptable if we give more and stretch ourselves beyond our own capacities, you stop being able to unsee it.
We live in a culture that sells diet culture repackaged as wellness or health, and then calls it self-care and sells it back to us while systems that made us unwell in the first place stay exactly as they are.
I have a different relationship with "self-care" than I did when I first started this podcast. Would I still call it www.SelfCareSchool.co.uk? I don't know. Self-care feels like something which has been monopolised by capitalism and sold to us as a brand rather than an actual strategy.
I'm gonna have to do some work on reclaiming that because I think it's a cracking name, www.SelfCareSchool.co.uk. But, when I think of self-care now, I don't think of the kind of work we do here, which is deep systemic working on our own personal embodiment of the oppressions that we have internalised and we are regurgitating as our own. I don't think about undermining self-sabotage. I think of, like, cute bubble baths and people trying to sell you, a handbag because you deserve it, and that isn't what this is about here. So I don't know how I get around that one. I think that maybe I just need to put my own work into reclaiming it.
But I do find the anger that talking about all of this has brought up useful, and I haven't always. I have had a very difficult relationship with feeling comfortable with anger. There was definitely a period where I felt like there was too much to hold with the amount of work that I was doing and the amount of horror that I was hearing from people, and to make sure that I had a good structure and a system in place to be able to make sure that I was as supported as I need to be to be able to support people well.
But really once you see it, you can't un-know it, and that is exhausting. And I still have those days, especially with my wayward body and my ill health.
But the anger has come to be more like a compass. It points where it matters, and I notice it, and I listen to what it's trying to tell me rather than trying to quieten it down.
I definitely used to be someone who's like, "I don't want to be an angry person." And now I'm furious. I'm very comfortable with it.
The self-sabotage part of it is more personal. I think teaching these things, sometimes you worry that other people think that you've got it all sorted, and I, of course, I'm not immune to this by any means.
What I do know with teaching this stuff day in, day out, is that it makes me notice things faster. It makes me observant of the stories that I'm telling myself, and whether I am harming myself with random stories, and question where those stories came from. I notice my own patterns a lot more quickly now, and I try not to avoid them. I actually run into them and go, "Right, what the hell's going on here?"
And whether that is the people-pleasing or the inclination to give my work away for free when frankly I could do with a few more people actually paying me for my work. Or the moment that I say yes as a reflex, or I want to give something to someone as a reflex, rather than pausing and checking in with what I actually want.
One of the quotes that came up in one of the calls from www.SelfCareSchool.co.uk, and it's a thought that I've done an awful lot of work on over the last year, and really feel like I've embodied quite well, it quite often comes up in the comments from people, is I ask whether I want it before I ask if I'm being chosen. And that is a really good anchor to check in with myself about what I want before I give it all away.
This is what I'm constantly teaching people. There's no shame on myself for the gap between what I teach and what I live. I like to remind myself I'm just expanding my learning and creating more situations where I have more things to be able to relate to more people, to be able to teach in a better way, to be able to share this work in a way that people will be able to coach themselves through any situation.
So I'd like to say to you, thank you for being here. Thank you for listening to these episodes. Thank you for watching the videos. Thank you for the messages that you send me about them. If you haven't left a review, I'd be so grateful. Those reviews really are the way that this podcast gets spread. It gets into more people's ears. I promise I will continue to always speak as if I am talking just personally to you. That at least once a week you feel like, you've got someone on your side.
When I see the reviews or I get the emails about it or people pass comment or they share the episode on social media, those are the moments where I'm like, "Okay, this is worth it. There are people out there who really do appreciate the time and energy and effort that it takes to make this as a one-woman show."
So thank you for all the people who have done all of that. I'm really, really grateful.
If you have anything that you would like me to cover, if you have any questions that you would like to, , ask, anything that you're struggling with and the specificity of things that are coming up in your own life, always message me. I'm happy to do an episode on whatever it is you're struggling with.
You are always welcome to come inside www.SelfCareSchool.co.uk The group spaces are beautiful. The calls are really supportive, wonderful community spaces where people learn and share from each other.
As always, there are links in the show notes. I hope that this has been a fun little roundup this week, and I will speak to you for episode 201. Have a great week
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