November 3, 2025 • 55 mins
What makes a life successful?
Is it the promotion, the postcode, the likes that light up your phone? That’s the story we’ve been sold, isn’t it?
Kemi Nekvapil is successful—but not in the way you might think. Yes, she’s one of Australia’s leading executive coaches and the author of the powerful book Grounded Success. But to Kemi—who was homeless at 13 and who now lives on a daffodil farm in regional Victoria—success is something deeper. Her success is that she’s built a life rich in purpose and peace.
In this conversation, she shares how to recognise a “full-body yes”—those moments when your entire being says this is right—and why keeping death close can actually lead to a more vibrant, meaningful life.
You can find Kemi's book Grounded Success here.
THE END BITS:
Mamamia wants to hear about your financial wellbeing and how you're feeling about the future. Complete our short survey here for a chance to win a $1,000 gift voucher in our quarterly draw!
Share your feedback! Send us a voice message or email us at podcast@mamamia.com.au
Follow us on Instagram @MidbyMamamia or sign up to the MID newsletter, dropping weekly here.
CREDITS:
Guest: Kemi Nekvapil
Host: Holly Wainwright
Senior Producer: Tahli Blackman
Executive Producer: Naima Brown
Audio Producer: Tina Matolov
Mamamia acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to a Mamma Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Mamma Mere acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on. Success is a swimming pool,
a ginormous car, a ring on your finger, a job
that makes people go oh cute, little children who follow
the rules, holidays somewhere hot when it's cold, and cold
(00:36):
when it's hot. Success is busy, with its full diaries
and constant questions. You can see it, touch it, smell it,
with its shiny trophies, deep plush carpet and signature scent.
I thought i'd feel successful when my name was in print,
when I'd climbed close to the top of the masthead
(00:56):
credits at the front of a magazine. I thought i'd
feel successful when I was no longer living on borrowed dollars,
when I wasn't afraid that the call on the screen
was from the bank again. I thought I'd feel successful
when I lost some kilos, and when I dated that
guy so hot that it hurt. But when did I
feel successful? Well, some of them were certainly about work.
(01:21):
When I wrote the last word of my first book.
When I work with people, I love making things that
people like when I have a conversation that changes my mind.
When someone says they were up all night turning the
pages of a story that didn't exist before I told it,
or that the words on our shows make them feel
less alone. When my elderly boyfriend calls me for our
(01:42):
daily check in, or takes my hand in the street,
when my daughter comes to tell me something she thinks
I won't like, or I make my son laugh when
my dog wants to sit with me, when my tomatoes
come in, when I realize my friends and I have
our own ancient language. When I'm home, Hello, I'm Holly Wainwright,
(02:06):
and I am mid midlife, mid family, mid success. Well
that last bit is only half true, but we'll get
to that. What makes a life successful? What makes a
person a success? At this point in your life? Do
you have markers that you thought you would have hit
to make you feel successful? A number, a job, title,
(02:28):
a house. Did they change all the time? Do the
goalpost still move? Do you wonder what in this next
bit of your life you might change to make success
feel more like it was a word that belonged to you.
Kemmy neck for pill is a success? Unquestionably so, You're
gonna love meeting Kemmy as I did. We've never met before,
(02:50):
even though we've got some mutual friends. So when we
sat down for this interview, what I knew about Kemy
was because she is one of Australia's leading credential coaches
for female executives and entrepreneurs. She even trained and got
certified by Brenne Brown for gosh Sake. As well as
studying at the Gross National Happiness Center in Bhutant, She's
worked for the Hunger Project Australia. She's written books, she speaks.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
All over the world.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
She is, in short, a big deal.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
But sitting down with Kemy, what radiates from her is
a relaxed, confident calm that comes not just from success,
but from grounded success, which is the name of her book.
And in this conversation we discuss everything from her complex
and traumatic childhood to turning her back on her acting career,
understanding what a full body yes is and why if
(03:40):
you want to lead a successful life, it's a good
idea to keep death close. Oh and one of my
favorites the difference between busy and full enjoy. Kemy, thank
you so much for being here. My pleasure, Holly, I
wanted to start by actually reading the introduction to Grounded Success.
(04:01):
May this book be a pause, like stepping outside to
feel the sun on your face and your feet on
the earth. Let it mind you of what you already
know but may have put aside. May it bring you
back to your values, your voice, and the people and
places that matter most. May these pages be a soft
(04:22):
place to land. What I particularly love about that intro
is that quite a lot of books in there. And
I don't know if you're going to be offended by
this term, but in the sort of self optimization.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Space, that's my offended noise. Oh such a great start.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
They feel Oh challenging, we're having up, We're getting in there,
and this feels welcoming.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Is that it was that your intention.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
My intention? That what you've just spoken about to me
is very much the bro hustle culture which a lot
of women fall into as well, that kind of goal
at all costs, push, push, push, don't be a loser,
come on, come on, optimize And as I talk about
in the book, what are we optimizing for? Where beings
of nature? What is there to optimize? There are seasons
and cycles, there's an inhal and there's an ex how
(05:13):
and our success can be guided through the fact that
we are beings of nature and not machines.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Tell me about the moment in your daffodil field that
realigned your idea of success.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Well, my husband and I bought a farm about five
years ago now, and I inherit And I say I
because he's not in there that often in the daffodil pattern.
But I inherited ten thousand daffodils and had already known
that I wanted to be a flower farmer, but didn't
kind of know that there were these ten thousand affodils
when we bought the farm, and I had been harvesting
(05:48):
them one particular season and that was fun and friends
came and we picked the daffodils. So I've been doing
it for a few weeks. It's like every Friday during September.
I was harvesting daffodils and putting them in buckets and
taking them back to the city when we still lived
in the city as well. Now we just live at
the farm, and the sun was shining. I was doing
this thing that I didn't know how to do. Really,
I was just fumbling getting daffodil sap all over my hands.
(06:12):
The neighbors, our packers, and sheep put in the paddock
next door. Kind of the out packers were giving me
death stairs, as they always do, and I'm always scared,
I don't know, do something to me, and you know,
the sheep were nonsalensely chewing. I just thought, this feels
like success to me. And as someone who is a
professional speaker whose success is measured by an external audience response,
(06:34):
which is, you know, applause, which is great. It's how
I know if I've done a good job or not,
and someone that has been raised in a western capitalist
culture very much the idea of success is that it's
external and that there should be eyes on it. So
it's kind of like, you know it's success because other
people are validating it for you. So for me to
be in that daffodil paddock, being surrounded by beauty, being
(06:56):
in nature, taking these free flowers back to friends and
service providers in where I lived, like the local cafes,
like just I was taking them everywhere had a lot
of daffodils. No one was watching me. There was no
applause whatsoever, and yet I had this sense of there's
an external success which most of us are raised in,
(07:17):
and then there's actually kind of an embodied form of success,
like this feels good to me on the inside, where
as somebody else walking pasts wouldn't necessarily go, oh, that
person picking duffo deals looks like they're a success.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Yes, you know.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
So it's the difference between and I think the external
forms of success can be exhilarating and they can be
fun that and we can work really hard for them.
It's just that when we only ground our success in
the external measures, which are fleeting and fragile and sometimes
in somebody else's hands, we miss all of the other
aspects of being human and the other areas in our
(07:52):
life and work that we want to be successful.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
I want to ask you about the chemi that gets
to that point, right, because you have done reading your book,
you have done a lot of different things. It's like
you've lived a lot of different lives in a way,
and to put in context for our listeners, how you
got to the daffodil field, and I mean metaphorically, and yes,
do you want to give us a little bit of
(08:15):
a picture of your background and what you've been doing?
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Yes, well, it's nice to be talking to another english person.
So I was born in the UK in nineteen seventy four.
I was one of the tens of thousands of middle
class children that were fostered to white families at that time.
So by the time I was thirteen, I had had
five different sets of foster parents, and I'd see my
birth mother in between that time as well, so I
(08:38):
have a great relayship with my birth mother now. And
by the time I was thirteen, I was homeless and
I wasn't on the streets, but I was sleeping in
the beds of my school friend's parents' houses kind of thing,
so no fixed abode, and then went into care when
I was fourteen years old, landed on my last foster
parents doorstep with two plastic bags of my belongings and
(09:01):
basically they're who my kids call grandma and grandpa now,
and my birth mother as well, but she's Nana. And
you know, one of the gifts of being fostered is
that you don't have one family telling you this is
who you need to be, this is what success looks like.
But also being a black child in a very white
environment in the seventies in the UK was not a
pleasant experience all the time, and yet my first foster
(09:25):
parents and my last foster parents were absolute bookends of love.
So it was not great in between, but the beginning
and the end they were kind of my points of
this is what love looks and feels like. And I'm
incredibly grateful for those things. But I think, you know,
when we look back on our lives, we can start
to see the patterns. And one of the reasons that
(09:46):
I can coach in the way that I do is
that I would land in these families and I would
have to see. I would hear what was being told
to me by my new mum and dad or whoever
it was, or what was being told to me, but
I also had to work out how do I fit
into this new environment, What is actually going on here?
What is not being said? And so even the way
that I coach, I'm outside of someone's situation and they're
(10:08):
telling me things, but I can hear tell me about
the way you just said that.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Because you're an expert at reading situation, because I expect.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Yeah, and also as well, being someone of color that
navigates a lot of Anglo spaces as well, for anyone
that's listening that identifies with me. We are always aware
of the spaces that we're in. We're always watching out
for what is not being said, but we can feel it.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
You know, that's thirteen year old you who has find
themselves homeless through no fault of yours. Obviously, I can't
imagine that success was necessarily what survive. Either society or
whatever would be expecting of you.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
No, no, no, no, whatever that might look like. Yeah, no,
there was nothing expected of me. There was very much
the narrative of first of all, you're black, and then
well and you're fostered. So the assumption was not that
my parents were middle class Nigerians who wanted their kids
to have the best education they could. Because of the
narrative of colonization. The assumption was that my parents had
(11:09):
drug issues or couldn't parent me, or whatever it was.
And it's you know, I'm always sort of reminding people
most parents are making the same decisions for their children
regard as of where they are. What is the best
opportunity I can give to my child, And for some
people within a colonized country, it's they need to have
a white English education. And I'm grateful I'm grateful for
(11:29):
my education one hundred percent, but even the English education
that I got was not the education to say some
of my peers Scott because of what was not expected
of me. The freedom that that gave me, though was
the ability to kind of chart my own path. The
shadow of that was always has anyone got my back?
So I learned to make sure that I have my
own back until that doesn't work, which is actually why
(11:51):
I wrote my second book, The Gift of Asking, because
I had to learn how to let people in and
ask for help and count on other people. That we
are human beings and we need communities around us, and
this kind of I'm on my own only I can
do it. No one's got my back, I've got me
just is very lonely and very isolating. So there's been
a lot of work that I have done for myself
to kind of then find myself in the daffodil paddock,
(12:13):
you know. Even because I grew up in Kent, I
grew up in England's country garden. I grew up around
paddocks and farms and nature, and funnily enough, both these
foster parents, the first and the last Avid Kitchen Gardeners,
avid kitchen gardeners, and so little did I know. But
when I look back, it's like, Wow, the places I
felt loved were also the places where nature was revered
(12:34):
and interacted with every single day.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Am I right that your foster mum that you ended
up with at that age was a careers advisor?
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Yes, Sue advice.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
So Sue then she was like, what do we do?
You know, we do have your back to a point, right,
what do you want to do? And you kind of
wanted to do a whole lot of things. I'd love
to know what that came E thoughts. Success was. There
is a story in your book that I found really
interesting where you talk about going to somebody's house and
(13:05):
seeing their guest bathroom.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Tell me about that it wasn't their guest part. I
don't even I was in the land of guessing.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
And probably not, but there were still in the land
of guests bathrooms came out.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
So yes, I'll answer your question. No, there was no.
I was not thinking about success. I did not grow
up thinking of wedding dresses. I did not grow up
thinking of being married or any of those things. I
just grew up trying to work out how to survive
either my internal experiences or my external experiences. So I
went to this friend's house and they just had a
(13:37):
bathroom that was so incredible, Like it was warm, it
had like a heated radiator. It was all the colors
all matched, and it was beautiful, and they had matching towels.
And through the variety of kind of the houses in
the middle of my childhood where I was sleeping in
(13:59):
beds with fleas and rooms with cockroaches and just dirtiness,
and you know, my mental health was very affected because
I just felt like I couldn't get clean at any point.
I just always felt like I had things crawling on me.
And so to go into this bathroom and to just
feel so clean and warm and held, and I remember thinking,
(14:24):
one day, I'm going to have matching towels.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Do you have matching towels? Can we bloody do?
Speaker 1 (14:33):
And one of the biggest arguments I have with my
youngest teenager was then they would just I'd like, match
all the towels and they just take whatever tow would be.
One would be in the bathroom, one would be in
the kitchen, one would be blah blah blah. And I
sort of said to them. Hey, for you, this is
just normal life. But for some of us this has
meaning to it. Pick up the bloody towel on the
kitchen floor and hang it up.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
One of the things about that story, as it's relevant
to success, is this idea that through your life, through
all the different things that bring you where they bring
you in, we have different views of what success is. Yes,
and a lot of the people you work with because
you've I mean, you were an actress, You've done lots
of things. But as a coach, you work with a
lot of very successful people. The book is called grounded
(15:18):
Success for a reason, because success in itself is not
can often be groundless.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Can you talk to me a little bit about that.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Yes, So for me, I consider myself to be an
ambitious person, and I work with ambitious people, and I
think ambition is great. So it's not about this idea
of not reaching for anything or creating or building. It
is that when we are creating and when we are building,
it needs to be grounded in what is important to us.
(15:47):
Otherwise we find ourselves with the external accolade, with the
external measure of success. And we all know the stories
and we may have had it ourselves where we get
the thing and then you're like, is this it? It
was meant to feel better than this, especially if that
form of success depending on the industry you work in.
And I want to live a diverse life, so have
(16:09):
a verse coaching practice. I work with diverse women in
all industries at all levels. We have to be willing
to kind of look at if we only focus on
work as the measure of success and we ignore everything
else in our life. When we get that work success,
the promotion, the raise, whatever it is, and we have
ignored all the other areas that human beings have to
be successful in, like our relationships, then that success doesn't matter.
(16:34):
It's all been for nothing. If then we go to
call the friend who you haven't actually spoken to for
six months because you got the thing, and they're like,
why are you calling me? Actually, something really horrible happened
and you weren't there, you know. So it's not that
we don't go for the external measures. And some industries
it's really important. That's kind of how you build your credibility.
As I said, some industries throw really great parties as
(16:54):
well if you reach that level of success. But then
we can leave the party and then we lay our
head on our pillow at night and it's like, really,
is this it? Yeah, So for me it's I wanted
to write the book. As a coach, I don't tell
people what to do. That's not coaching, you know. I'm
a credentialed coach. Telling people what to do is not coaching.
That is maybe consulting. It is maybe your mum, you know,
(17:18):
it is maybe some very opinionated friends. But my job
as a coach is to ask questions and give scenarios
and share stories so that people themselves can work out
oh my gosh, that was me, or that's where I
am right now, or I don't know the answer to
that question, which is in itself feedback, you know. So
for me, it's making sure that whatever we are using
(17:39):
our life energy on it is grounded in what actually
matters to us, which is why I talk so much
about values.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Knowing all this, and I know that you're a credential
coach and that you've got a lot of experience in this,
but jumping back a little bit to the towels, is
this something that you've learned through experience to that chasing
the wrong kind of success at times?
Speaker 1 (18:01):
No, I mean not the wrong sort, because I, as
you said, I am someone I think is it multi
hyphenated or something like that, I'm multi passionate. There are
things I just there's lots of things I love to do,
but I don't do all the things all the time.
It just kind of depends. I'm not kind of I
can't do all the things all the time, and I
don't have that capacity and I don't want that sort
of capacity. But when I was acting, and I sort
of talk about in the book that it was a
(18:22):
way that I got external validation within the school that
I was in. Suddenly, for a child that no one
had sort of deemed any kind of worth of, suddenly
I was getting a lot of praise for my acting
and singing abilities. So I was like, between ten and twelve,
let's just say. And so I did like my first
musical theater role and everyone loved it, and I was like,
oh my gosh, like, oh now I'm acceptable. I'll choose this.
(18:46):
I'll choose being accepted. And I acted for a long
time and I was successful in acting. I worked with
the Royal Shakespeare Company, I was on TV for a
few years. Like I was successful as an actor, but
listening to a fellow actor tell me when we're in
the Royal Shakespeare Company in Brooklyn in New York, and
she was saying, I've wanted it. I can't believe I'm
here with the Royal Shakespeare Company. I've wanted this all
my life. Since I was three, I wanted to be
(19:06):
an actor. And I just remember thinking, well, I never
thought I wanted this, Like I'm here and it's fun,
Like acting was fun and I had incredible opportunities. But
I also knew I'm not here to play Lady Macbeth
when I'm forty. And at that point, the chance of
me getting cast is Lady Macbeth when I'm forty is
(19:27):
rare because black actors weren't getting cast. She could have been,
so it was a real thing for her. But I
was like, well, that's not an option. So do I
want to keep traveling all the time for me as
a foster child, always being in different houses, different hotels
all the time, not grounding, like, actually success for me
is having a home. That's what's important. So that was
when I decided against everyone around me, including my foster parents,
(19:51):
who wanted me to be financially stable, which I really was,
but I just started to feel very, very sad all
the time, and I just realized, this doesn't feel good anymore.
And it wasn't that I gave up acting. I gave
up acting because I didn't want to have to play
characters all the time. I kind of I felt as a
person of color. Maybe actually the thing for me is
(20:12):
to learn how to be in the world as myself
and not shift shape characters to make other people happy.
And also I found the industry of acting I didn't
find it a healthy environment to be in, and found
as an introvert, it's quite easy for me to kind
of not go and do the pub and not do
the things. But there were just things going on that
I found quite challenging to be around all of the time,
(20:35):
because I do believe that you become who you spend
your time with. And I found myself complicit in things
that I didn't want to be complicit in. So I
got out of acting to go back to what I
did love, which was cheffing yeh Saturday night service in
a kitchen. Like even now, I still feel.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
It so interesting.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
It's a beautiful, but for me, it's still creativity. One
of my core values is connection and that Saturday night
service with a team when the stakes are high, I
mean they're artificially high, like it's just food, it's not
paramedic high. But that energy and that sense and that
success at the end of the night. Did everyone get
their meals? Was everyone happy? Was did everyone produce what
(21:10):
we try to produce as individuals and therefore for the
team to create a wonderful experience for a group of people, Yes,
we did. What a successful night.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
So that story one of the many amazing stories in
the book. It tells us and this might sound obvious,
but bear with me that other people's success isn't yours. Right,
So as you say in the act the other actress,
that was her deep dream and for lots of different reasons,
but that was not your dream.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
That was not what success looked like for you.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
And I imagine that you know, well, cultures often decide
on levels of success. You know, the big house is
a level of success, or marrying the rich guy as
a level of success, or having children.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
As a level of success.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
A lot of women who might be listening to this
might be looking at their what I would call their
second act right and sometimes feeling like I don't feel
that successful or deep down I've always really wanted to
do something else, but sometimes you don't quite know what
it is. Yeah, And one of the things I love
about your book, which obviously is part of your coaching,
(22:10):
is that there are lots of exercises in there that
kind of help you work that out, because I think
that's especially if you're a woman who's been putting your
needs at the end of the list for a long time,
Actually tapping into what is my version of success can
be hard. What do you think some of the first
steps to that to like working out what is it
(22:32):
that's going to make me feel like Keemi felt in that.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Kitchen or in the daffodil.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Field, Like where do how do you advise people to
start tapping into their selves in that way?
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Well, it's kind of like what you said, doing that first,
that first process in the book of just writing out
I believe successes. It's such an interest when we have
this kind of conscious journaling or I put I think
I put unconscious journaling, and my editor said, are you
sure you mean unconscious? Like how can you journal when
you're unconscious? You know? But that kind of tapping into
(23:04):
a deep consciousness and just writing out I believe successes.
I believe successes because the thing is we want to
be able to name the feelings. So if we get
to midlife or the second act and we're like, I
don't feel successful, it's really good to look at, well,
what did I think success was? Like? What I I?
And that's the questions I asked, what were you raised
to believe? The fourteen women in the book who share
their success stories, the questions that I gave them were,
(23:26):
what were you raised to believe a success growing up?
Did you reach that level of success? You know, how
did it feel, how did it look? Did it feel
how you thought it would? And some were like it
was amazing, got there, it was great. Some were like no,
Then it was has your definition of success changed? Why?
And how? And then what did your definition of success? Now?
The women at age twenty four to seventy five, so
(23:47):
it's a real mix of women, and I think we
have to work out what did we think success was?
So for me it would have been if I sort
of tie everything up, I would look back and think
success was being accepted by others, but at the expense
of me knowing and understanding myself, you know, in my
younger years, which was why for me leaving acting didn't
(24:07):
seem right to anybody, and it didn't seem right to me.
It's why it took me so long to leave. I
was like, who do you think you are? Like this
was never meant to happen for someone like you, and
here it is happening and you don't want it. Like
it took me a long time to actually go, But
this doesn't feel good in your bones. And I now
(24:29):
know it's because I was kind of moving around all
the time having somebody else tell me whether I could
pay the rent, you know, which is what happens casting.
You know, you either get your audition or you don't.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
You're so your success is kind of in the hands
of somebody else.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
And I wanted agency, Like I kind of wanted my
own agency. I could book in how many chef shifts
I was going to do that week, you know, like
I could do that for myself. So I think we
have to name what did we think success was first
and own up to that. You know, one woman talks
about success for me growing up was having a swimming pool. Yeah,
(25:01):
you know, like to just name it. We've all been.
We're all in the same Western soup. We've probably all
got a similar kind of thing, you know, so they're
naming it, and then so who am I now? And
that's why we go into the values work, So we
don't go into I want this, I want this, I
want this. It's what do I value? And if I'm
living through the lens of those values, then it would
make sense that I want that, and I want that
(25:21):
and I want that. You know, one of my core
values is well being. For me, that actually includes like
having my definition of beauty, like in my home and
in nature. That's part of me being a well being.
So then I was at like hence the flowers, hence
the flowers, hence beautiful stationery, hence writing handwritten letters like
to me. That forms my creativity and my communication. And
(25:44):
so once we know what our values are, it is
so much easier to then create our success from there.
And it's fine that our success changes in seasons. Certain
seasons require different forms of success, you know, this idea
that we have one that goes there, which is why
a lot of women in particular realize, especially those of
us that choose to have children or do have children,
(26:05):
that actually the success that we have wanted mainly to change. Now,
I decide to be at home with my children. I
live with my in laws, so we didn't have mortgage
and rent and that sort of thing. So that was
a privilege that we had. I live with my in
laws and my husband and I for three and a
half years, so we didn't have to sort of be
earning money to pay a mortgage. And I wanted to
be at home and I could be at home right
(26:25):
and I wanted to be at home because I didn't
have that for me. Yes, I want my children to
know that they have one primary care or two primary caress.
And because I have African heritage to grow up in community.
We had four generations in that house. It's not meant
to be done by a nuclear family. It's meant to
be done with generations. And that was success for me
in that time. Now, when I then started working as
(26:49):
a mum, for me to have my business, I wanted
it to be I think, as most of us do
in the early days, how do I have this work
around being a mum? And then my kids have left
home now at nineteen and twenty one, so now what
success looks like is different. Once again. Season, it's a
different season. But when I hear clients that are really
unkind to themselves because they are working full time jobs
(27:12):
and they have young children at home, I always want
to create space for them to be kinder. You know that, actually,
this new world where mums are working and being at
home with kids and as we know, still doing eighty
five percent of the domestic.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
Work, carrying all the load, carrying.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
The emotional load, the logistic load, all of those things,
there is space for kindness in there, and there is
space to let go of the patriarchal nowadays of what
success needs to look like for a woman. You know
that we're allowed to be a mess. My dearest friends,
we have seen each other in all fours. There's a
lot of that time, right, you know where you're chatting,
(27:49):
folding up the laundry with them, not for them, but
with them, like I'm in it too, Like who cares?
Like don't wipe up, don't clear up. I'd stay with
a friend I was overseas recently, a dear friend. She's
my son's godmother, and I just said to her, please,
I'm staying on the couch. You do not need to
do anything to the room changes, do anything. I'm on
the couch. She thanks. Yeah, it's like you don't need
(28:10):
to pre all up for me.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
That's a good friend, Kemy. That's what that is.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
After this break, how to use your head, heart and
gut to make the tough decisions in your life. Can
you talk to me a little bit about wisdom centers
because I'm sort of still in this idea of how
do we sometimes tune into ourselves and what we want
and the values work is. There's the book again what
(28:38):
we were talking about before is there. So there are
exercises throughout it, and there's a journaling one way you
right there, success to me is and there are also
you've also got places you can choose values. But I'd
love to hear you talk a bit about head, heart
and gut.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Yeah. Well, I share a story around what it is
to kind of move through the bush in this nature
Connection leadership program that I did for a year, and
what it is to kind of not have your verbal
communication and that you have to use your body to
sense things like where you are in space with trees,
walking through the bush barefoot. You have a team of
(29:15):
people and you're trying to get somewhere, but you don't
want to scare the birds, and you don't want to
scare the animals, and you're using your whole body, which
is a wisdom center. And that all of our ancestors,
regardless of where we came from, were all hunters, gatherers,
foragers and had to use our sensing bodies to understand
the world that we are in. So what I talk
about in the book, and it comes a little bit
(29:36):
from this form of coaching called ontological coaching, is that
we are our head. Our head is a brain, but
we also have our heart, which is well, our head
is a wisdom center, our heart is a wisdom center,
and our gut or our intuition as a wisdom center. Generally,
we will find or I have found working with certain
industries and I'm married to a barrister as well, certain industries, engineers, finance,
(29:58):
law head driven by the head, people in caring, nurses,
any sort of caring profession, frontline heart and then gut.
Now this isn't all people all the time. I'm just
saying just generally, that's where they're led from. So I
can work with people who are in their head often
and I will say to them because as a particular process,
I'll take people through and I talk people through it
(30:20):
in the audio and in the book, But it is
hard to do on your own. It kind of does.
If you are someone that has a lot of embodied
practices like yoga and maybe dance and somatic practices, maybe
they will find it easier to do. But a lot
of people find it hard. But I still want to
just give people an idea. Yeah, because I believe that
we feel things before we think things. Yes, very much,
(30:42):
so we feel it first. Someone says up, we feel it,
and then their head says, be a good girl.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
And that's to your story about the acting. You felt
that that job, that role, that vocation whatever was wrong
for you before you could two years it out loud,
two years.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Until I got out. Yeah, because my head was, who
do you think you are? This doesn't seem right? Yeah,
look at the privileged position that you're in. Everyone would
kill for this. None of your peers are working at
this level. Why would you give this up? Like my head,
my ego was telling me, why would you say no
to such a validated external form of love?
Speaker 3 (31:16):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Why would you say no to that? And then I'll
be like on certain days, Oh I won't, actually I
won't so low.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
So your heart that your heart is often in that
situation where you're like, your heart is telling you this
relationship isn't right, or the way that you're living your
life at the minute is not right. Or but sometimes
it takes a while for your head.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Takes a while.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
Yeah, and what about that gut? Can you trust it?
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Well? This is the thing. I believe a lot of
women have been told not to and this is the
thing most of us will lean towards one of the other.
So I'm generally a gut person. I feel it in
my gut first. Over the years, I've learned certain things.
My heart, I literally feel it open or i feel
it contract. So someone will say, I'm like, oh, kemye,
do you want to come to the thing. And I'm
an introvert, so I never want to go to the thing,
but sometimes I feel like my heart but sometimes if
(32:03):
I just feel the heart contract, or an invitation will
come through an email and I will feel my heart
close before my head goes. But you should but look
who's asking you? Yeah, you know, or look at the possibility.
And I'm just like, I'm old enough and wise enough
now to just go with what my body tells me,
not what my head tells me. And it's it's not
that one is better than the other. It's just that
(32:24):
we want to learn how to integrate them all. So
I know, I will feel it first, and then I
might be you know, I might feel a particular friend
I don't know, maybe something something, and I feel something about, oh,
this is the seventeenth time they've asked that thing whatever.
But then my head says, yeah, but remember how many
times they showed up for you blah blah blah. Yeah,
do you know what I mean. So it's not that
one is better than the other. Although I will say
(32:47):
that people that only operate in their head, that can
lead to a lot of overthinking and anxiety and stuckness. Yes,
whereas I find that people that can tap into their
heart or their gut as well give themselves some release
because the head is ah, it just never stops.
Speaker 3 (33:04):
Now, it never stopped.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
Unless you train it or have practices to habits.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Yes, hands in the dirt. For me, that's one of
the things that turns that the brain.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Turns it off. You're right, and that's when you're tapped
in you can sort of suddenly you feel the air
on you, and you can hear the bees buzzing, and
you can suddenly you're grounded on the earth, and all
of that other stuff just kind of falls away for
a time.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
You know, I've heard you talk about because back to
this idea of how you make decisions or you choose
a big leap. I've heard you talk about a full body.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
I've heard Elizabeth Gilbert talk about that too. She name
checks you in her latest book. You know, I interviewed
a while ago.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
I know she said she had told me that it
was very, very kind.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
Do you say that you felt a full body yes,
about this daffodil farm.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Tell me what that feels like, and how you don't
know that it's just like tapping into a fantasy or something,
and whether that matters.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Well, this is a thing, isn't it. I think that
there are two separate things there. So I think there's
the full body yes. And my favorite emails, our mutual
friend Lucy would have received one of these emails are
where I put into like seventy four font in green
and it just says one hundred percent hell yes. And
then I go back to like a size twelve details later,
you know, it's just like capture the moment, and I
(34:26):
want to live a life where I have a lot
of those. But also that means that I don't know
how necessarily, so it's not the head. So the head
isn't going, But how do you do it? But how you
buy that? You don't know how to flower farm? What
do you mean you don't like what? Yeah? Then that
would not the life I'm living. I would not be living.
It was more an absolute full body yes. And it
(34:47):
was happening during COVID when things were up and down
and my husband both have our own businesses, and there
was a point when we weren't actually going to put
in an offer for this place, and my husband sort
of turned to me and he said, I actually need
you to guarantee me this is the best thing for
us to do. Ooh, And there was no evidence it
was the best thing for us to do at all. Yeah,
(35:07):
And I did. I literally just said give me a
min and I just like tapped in just and I
was like one hundred percent yes, you know, And now
we're doing things we never thought we'd do, like fixing
fences that we don't know how to do either. Yes,
you know, but it is that and I think when
and a lot of clients do that, they're like the how,
And sometimes I have to say, this is a magic
(35:27):
one moment. So we're not going into how, we're not
going into details. So let's you say someone comes me
it's about a relationship, friendship, intimate, whatever it is, and
I say, first question, is this relationship important to you?
Sometimes it's oh no, not really, like I'm disreacting. They
said a things and I'm reacting and I want to
defend myself. But actually, in the scheme of my life energy,
(35:48):
in my capacity, it has been a good friendship. But
now it's not that important. So it's the first question
we have to work out. We have to name it. Yes,
it's important. And then the questions that I would then
ask around, you know, so what does success in this
relationship feel like? We'd be respectful, they'd be fun, and
we'd have open communication generally. I then ask, and are
you giving those things in the relationship? And I cannot
(36:09):
tell you how many times people go no. And we
do that though we want from other people what we're
not giving.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
That is so interesting.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
We want a successful relationship where it's respectful and generous
and kind whatever. But we're not being those things. And
that's because it's vulnerable, because we want them to do
it first, because we're testing the waters all of the things.
But I do believe, not that it's true, but I
believe that we cannot give to others what we cannot
sustainably give to ourselves.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
Right, Yeah, that's really interesting.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Not that it's true, it's just what I.
Speaker 3 (36:40):
Believe in a moment.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Can he tells me about how one of the ways
to help.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
You decide what you should be doing with.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Your life is to think about your death. There was
a bit in your book, Well, there were lots. The
book is underlined a lot, but there was a bit
in your book that I found quite confronting, which it
is about how one of the good, one of the
good ways to decide, you know, what's what's right for you?
I guess or because this is all around the idea
(37:08):
of what life you should be like?
Speaker 3 (37:12):
Not sure is the wrong word.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
That's right? Life aligns with you, yes, not the one
you have been told by society or your parents, or
your older sibling or anything else. Not what you should
be living. But what is the life you want to live.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
And one of the ways you suggest that we can
get some clarity on that is to think about death. Yes,
go straight to the heart, which is very confronting for
many of us. I cannot overstate how potent it is
to keep one's death close. You're right, and two of
the questions you say are very clarifying about when you're
(37:50):
making a decision. Would I regret not doing this on
my deathbed? And will this person be.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
At my funeral?
Speaker 2 (37:59):
Kemy, I went and looked at one of these posters
that you mentioned in here. That's yes, that's like how
many weeks you might have left on earth.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
That was a bit too for me.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
But tell me a bit about why thinking about death
is one of the ways to live, right.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
I find thinking about death incredibly empowering and inspiring and igniting.
And I don't have like scenarios of my death, like
the when and the wear of the how or anything
like that, but I do have things like I want
the people in my life to know that I love them,
so when my funeral happens, there is no question people
knew that I love them. That I was not with
them because I had to be out of duty, out
(38:39):
of responsibility because I intended to be with them and
spend time with them. That's incredibly important to me. I
think we live in a Western world where death is
kept very far. It doesn't serve anybody. It means that
people can't show up for people when people are dying,
or when people are in serious health crisis, or even
mental health issues. Because mental health is a form of death,
it's a form of identity, it's a form of the
(39:00):
way that we are in the world. People struggle to
be around people that are having mental health challenges. Come on, Charlie,
just me fine. Now, there's so much going on for people.
So for me, this idea of will that person be
at my funeral is when you get slighted, you know,
or it's when someone says something inappropriate and you're like,
I don't know, have to say anything or not, and
it's like, do you're not do you want that person
at your funeral? Probably just better to say the thing
(39:22):
that's not appropriate for you to say. Don't say those
things to me, you know. And by the way, don't
come to my funeral. You're not invited, and you're not invited.
I'm uninviting you. Now. While I'm still here, but just
this idea of staying in jobs and relationships, and one
thing I have to say, I know that, you know,
for the women that I work with, I'm except for
some of my pro boni clients, and within the demographic
(39:42):
of kind of the mum and mea, most of us
are very very privileged in our life. So I'm I'm
speaking very clearly to people that have ample food on
the table, more than you know, ample roof over their head,
maybe more than one roof, you know, and get to
make very privileged choices. And as I talk about in
my book, Power, being guilty about our privileges is incredibly
(40:04):
boring and not helpful. What's powerful is acknowledging that we
have them, you know, and they're privileges that I do
have and privileges that I don't have. So within the
privileged life that many of us are living, we can
be in jobs that we don't like, and then we
have to admit that we're in jobs that we don't
like and that that's the choice that we have made.
(40:24):
But there are people that have less than some of
us have who leave jobs they don't like all the time.
Speaker 3 (40:29):
Yeah, that's true, you.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
Know, because actually their work is not tied to their identity,
because they do have itinerant jobs where it's just about
putting food on the table. For some people's success is
putting food on the table, and their identity is not
tied to their work. If your identity is so tied
to your work that you are willing to risk your health,
your wellbeing, your mental health, your relationships, your delight, your fun,
(40:52):
your connection to self and others, that may be a
situation where knowing that you're going to die one day
may give you a bit more clarity.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
I love that because when you list it like that
about the things that often people will put a head
or rather put.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
Behind their job without even realizing that they're doing it
in a way that's right. But when you spell it
out like that and go, what are you doing?
Speaker 1 (41:18):
Yeah, and it's not. And this is a thing where
the kindness bit comes in. It is not the individual.
It is because of the systems that most of us
have been raised in that have said to us, this
is what will make you live a good life. Have
a job or a work or a role. Put everything
there and then one day you will then be able
(41:39):
to nurture your relationships, your well being, your mental health,
all those things. And we know that's not true, but
it doesn't mean that we're not called in the loop
because the head will always say stay, stay what people think,
don't fail, don't give up, don't risk it. And yet
there are so many women that will just say, do
you know what, my kids are watching me. I'm out
of that. This job is killing me and it's killing
(42:00):
my family. I'm out or the relationship. I share the
story in the book about the woman. You know, which
form of failure do you want to the failure of
a marriage or your children watching how you're being treated
and how they're being treated. So you can stay because
how it looks at the external world that you have
an intact marriage and then you feel like you're failing
(42:21):
because your children are watching this relationship play out every day,
or you can leave and have the failure of the marriage.
You're choosing a failure. It just depends which failure you want.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
Yeah, that's such a and that's all of those compromises
or all of those self sacrifices or whatever you want
to call them, are kind of in the name of
success of what we're imagining. Well, this job that's killing me,
is I'm very successful?
Speaker 1 (42:43):
Yeah, that's exactly.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
Or this relationship where we get we live in a
nice house and the neighbors think we're perfect.
Speaker 3 (42:49):
That's a version of success.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
Even if you're quietly or loudly dying inside. And it's
so easy when we listen to people that you know,
make the change or make the move or do the
scary thing, and well it's all right for her. I
hear that a lot in my work. I hear it
speaking to audiences, and I just hear it in just
kind of the general COmON it's all right for that
is such good feedback when we say it, well it's
(43:12):
all right for her, it's because we want it. Otherwise
we'd say good on her.
Speaker 3 (43:17):
Yeah, yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
So then we just get to tap in. It's like,
you know what Brene says, and I train with Brene Brown,
But what she says is that we never comment. We
never judge people in areas where we don't feel less
than right. So with women and bodies, for example, we
never judge other women's bodies unless we are not okay
and confident within our body, which is part of the
whole system as well. But yeah, that when we're go
(43:41):
but it's all right for her. That's a really good
way of deflecting. What would I need to do for
that to be me?
Speaker 3 (43:47):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (43:48):
And am I willing to have the conversation. It's not
always about throwing our whole lives in the air. Sometimes
it is, but it's not always about that. It's much.
Sometimes it's a bit smaller. It's sometimes it's a case
of saying, can I do flexible because I really want
to I don't know, spend time with my kids on
a Friday or whatever it is like that would feel
more balanced for me. And I have lots of clients
(44:09):
who love working within the corporate framework. They thrive in it,
they love it, they're great leaders, They're bringing other leaders
up through that. So for them, it's not about success.
Isn't giving up corporate success? Is how do I show
up as a human, value based leader within this organization
and company that I have committed some of my life
to in a way that serves me and serves the
people that I'm trying to serve. But for me, I
(44:31):
very much believe this idea of will I regret this
on my deathbed is a thing that will have us
say yes to many things. You know. So an example,
you know, a group of girlfriends says to you, you
know your sort of thought, I'm really missing my girlfriends.
There's not time, we don't see each other enough. We
should do it again. And then one of them says,
why don't we all just like go on a seven
day hike together? Right now? That is the sort of
(44:51):
thing you're not trained for it. You've never hiked in
your life, you're scared of spiders, blah blah blah. Yeah,
but that is the stuff you're going to remember, that bonding,
of that training, that bonding of getting the wrong shoes,
tripping over one of you will break your leg before
you go off. That always happens, someone will get COVID,
all the things. But that is the sort of thing
that you're a member on your deathbed. What you won't
remember is the week that you spend up work because
you said no to that experience.
Speaker 3 (45:14):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
I've got one more question about things that success cost
us before we will ground ourselves again before the end
of the conversation. But you have a bit in your
book that really spoke to me about the difference.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
Between busy and full. Right now, successful.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
People of all kinds of measures are busy, right, and
women are very busy, and we use it often as
a badge of honor or as a stick to beat
ourselves with.
Speaker 3 (45:38):
We're either like, how are you, I'm busy? Have you
been busy?
Speaker 1 (45:41):
Busy?
Speaker 3 (45:41):
Busy?
Speaker 2 (45:43):
Oh my god, I'm so busy from now till the
end of the year.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
I'm just busy.
Speaker 2 (45:47):
Like every we're busy, and it's stressful being busy. It's
I am terrible at this, like feeling overwhelmed by a busyness.
But then sometimes we also know that success comes with
a lot of right tell me about is busy versus
full a mindset? Or is it about what you're filling
(46:08):
your time?
Speaker 1 (46:10):
Oh? Great question. I think it's both, actually, and it
does always come down to the individual. So for some people,
using the word busy is igniting and it is exciting
and they want to be busy. And that's all great.
Women that I've worked with us I'm really really busy,
And I ask them, how do you feel? Nothing like
I'm exhausted, or I'm numb, or I'm burnt out or
(46:31):
I have rarely heard someone say I'm really busy, and
I am even I talk about the language like I'm
smashing it. Yeah, I'm going to kill it. So I
don't want to smash or kill anything. Right, I want
to create, I want to build, I want to connect,
But I don't want to smash anything. The idea of
busy and for once again it fits into the vernacular
of this capitalist society that we almost produce. We almost
be busy all the time. That our valuation comes from
(46:52):
our worth, and we know that we are worthy if
we are always doing something, and therefore we are always busy.
And yet going back actually to something that Liz said
when she was here in Australia, you know, actually the
most powerful person in the room is the quietest and
the stillest. Yes, you know, when you walk into a
paddock of horses, they are incredibly powerful beings and they
are very still. The most powerful horse is the stillest
(47:13):
one because it is just there, just knowing what's going on,
you know. And so the busy person remember that, what
was that thing? If you want something done, ask a
busy person. No, I would never do that. Now, I
think I did take that on. That's kind of I
think I heard that in the nineties. I would have
done that at the time. And also then the busy
woman or the capable woman will then take on when
(47:35):
everyone thinks I'm capable, that's great, slowly dying inside, but
everyone thinks I can never say no, that I can
never say no, And that's my book. The gift of
asking that thing. We create this dynamic of I'm good,
I've got it, I'll do it, don't worry, I'll do it,
and then we don't know how to ask for help,
and we don't know how to let other people in
to actually help us. So it becomes a shadow very quickly,
that sense of making sure that we are capable all
(47:57):
of the time, because it also stops other people contributing
to us. And to have successful relationships, they have to
be equal. People have to see us on our knees
and then they step in to help us, and then
we see them on their news and we step in
to help them. If we are always the one stepping
in to help people on their knees, we create a
really messy dynamic. It's actually self righteous, maybe arrogant to
(48:21):
think I'm the savior that saves all the people and
no one can save me. M yeah, because it becomes
very lonely and very isolating. Yeah. So the idea of.
Speaker 2 (48:32):
Full is more I'm full because I'm doing the things
I want to be doing, the things that are meaningful
to me. And this might be a time when I
am traveling a lot, my diaries a bit full, all
of these things.
Speaker 1 (48:46):
But I've chosen it, chosen it so because I live
by my values. So i have chosen it. So those
times in life when things are very intense, of which
there are, you know, it's like, oh, this is a
toughlye like, oh, I'm feeling it, but I've chosen it, yes,
as opposed to this is really hard and it's everyone
(49:06):
else's fault. And if only something's something, you know, because
that's when we can make other choices. But when we
just go, Okay, this is an intense period, life is
really full right now. But I've chosen this. This is
what little me dreamed of once, you know. But my
caveat to that, though, is if it's always intense all
the time, that's not great. You know. I married into
(49:28):
a Steiner family, and so you know, the Steiner sort
of curriculum and teaching is always about the children going
through in how and ex how in the day, so
lots of naps and this sorts of thing. So with
me raising children who went to Steiner schools, I started
to live my life with that idea of like the
in how is like, you know, I've just come back
from three weeks in New York. That is an in how,
you know, teaching to doing all things. It's like, okay,
(49:49):
like I'm in it, and I prepare myself because I'm
an introvert. I'm like, right, I'm in it. I'm going
to do it. And then I come back to Australia.
I'm back on the farm. It's like this is the
ex how, and no one hears from me for like
five days. Generally I'll tell people I'm coming back later
than I actually am, just to give me that time
to just just want to process where I've been, how
I'm feeling, what's happening, and then sly reach out because
(50:10):
for me, it's one of my core values is connection.
So even doing the New York I had lots of
friends that I connect with. It's not due to this
kind of like transactional work exchanges, because that would feel
very very groundless to me, right, very groundless, and actually
it would start to affect my mental health. If I
was like dipping from me, then yeah, yeah, I'd go
(50:32):
back to my hotel room. I think I'll just cry
at night, like what is this life? I don't want this?
Speaker 2 (50:36):
It makes so much sense because the grounded groundless thing,
because it explains to me why I can be in
one of those busy rooms where you're glad handling everybody
and you and feel so drained by it, or you
can be in a busy, creative environment with people and
working hard and feel enriched.
Speaker 1 (50:56):
That's exactly right, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:58):
And energy expended in theory is the same. Yeah, but
how it leaves you feeling is the difference I guess
between grounded and groundless.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
Yeah, exactly, And for me, busy falls into groundless, whereas
a full life is grounded in who we are. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:18):
I want to take you back to the Daftil farm
to close out our conversation, because, as you identify in
the book, is that that moment where you're cutting your
flowers and the sheep are judging you.
Speaker 1 (51:30):
I don't think I said that. You think they were.
They probably were. They are very snooty, they really are.
Speaker 2 (51:39):
They were judging you, but you were you had a
moment where you went, this is this is success to me.
Talk to me a little bit, whether it's the women
in your book or women you've worked with, other examples
of that kind of success that is grounded and ah
that people have got.
Speaker 1 (51:57):
To Yeah, there are so many examples in the book,
because there are women that have sort of set out
on a particular path and have continued on that path,
but have worked out how to bring in other parts
of themselves, whether it's their creative joy, whether it's delight,
whether it's hope, whether it's community. And then there are
women that have had either health diagnoses, or women that
(52:20):
have had a lot of deaths in their family, or
women that have changed roles have realized. You know, one
lovely client that I work with in her stories in
the book worked a lot for not for profit social
justice and started to feel the burnout of being in
the front line of that work, you know, but very
much the head was like, who do you think you
are to have burnout? Look at the people you're working with,
their worst off thing, And kind of went through three
(52:42):
to four rounds of burnout before she allowed herself to go,
I'm not okay, you know, and took a full break
out because she didn't have kids, because you know, she
didn't have responsibilities as she could not saying that's what
everyone needs to do. But there are so many different
ways for us to identify what success is for us.
But we do need to give ourselves the time to
work it out. Nature appaus a vacuum and capitalism appause
(53:05):
a vacuum too. So if we're not clear on where
our life energy is going, we will buy a lot
of trendy outfits online. Yep, a lot of skincare a lot,
right is your skincare? Yeah, that's right. And for me,
it's funny because if I do, if I do go
down a rabbit hole, it's always stationary for me. But
that is part of my you know, for me, stationary
and books like that is grounded within the world that
(53:27):
I love and that I live and that I share
with others. You know, I'm not against a little bit
of retail therapy, but that retail therapy when it's actually
grounded because we know who we are and what we
value and where we're spending our life energy is very
different when we don't know who we are, where our
energy is going, and we're exhausted and we're just pressing
bye bye, bye bye.
Speaker 3 (53:47):
It is morphing actually to buying seeds.
Speaker 1 (53:50):
Yes, and you just have packets of seeds.
Speaker 2 (53:52):
When we were on tour with mom being out loud
and we were really busy, I'd go back to the
hotel room and where once upon a time I might
have had a glass of shard name brought myself some skincare.
Speaker 1 (54:03):
Now I would be like, all those look at the
shape of those fuck's.
Speaker 2 (54:08):
Charlie, is that's interesting?
Speaker 1 (54:09):
See you?
Speaker 2 (54:09):
Then I wake up in the morning really tired. I
think I've brought a lot of seats last night.
Speaker 1 (54:13):
I'm growing a lot of things, which can lead to
another form of overwhelmed, you know, But that's good. Then
you share your harvest, and you know, you share it
out to others and it works that way.
Speaker 2 (54:24):
Mid friends, thank you so much for being with me
for another hopefully enriching conversation. I loved talking to kemmy
I was making notes throughout that conversation. They're now all
in an app on my phone. She really is one
of those people who changes the way that you think
about things and just has.
Speaker 3 (54:41):
Some really good tips.
Speaker 2 (54:43):
If you want to hear more about midlife success. I
want you to go scroll back in your phone and
listen to the episode with Eleanor Mills that we did
on mid about how she lost the big fancy job
that had defined her right about the age of fifty
and her whole life had to change. It's a really
good one about all this kind of stuff. I want
(55:05):
to thank you all for being with us. Of course
follow us on Instagram if you can. And I want
to thank our team. Our senior producer is Charlie Blackman,
our group executive producer is Niama Brown, and we've had
audio production from Tina Matchalov. I will talk to you
next week.
You're listening to a Mamma Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Mamma Mere acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on. Success is a swimming pool,
a ginormous car, a ring on your finger, a job
that makes people go oh cute, little children who follow
the rules, holidays somewhere hot when it's cold, and cold
(00:36):
when it's hot. Success is busy, with its full diaries
and constant questions. You can see it, touch it, smell it,
with its shiny trophies, deep plush carpet and signature scent.
I thought i'd feel successful when my name was in print,
when I'd climbed close to the top of the masthead
(00:56):
credits at the front of a magazine. I thought i'd
feel successful when I was no longer living on borrowed dollars,
when I wasn't afraid that the call on the screen
was from the bank again. I thought I'd feel successful
when I lost some kilos, and when I dated that
guy so hot that it hurt. But when did I
feel successful? Well, some of them were certainly about work.
(01:21):
When I wrote the last word of my first book.
When I work with people, I love making things that
people like when I have a conversation that changes my mind.
When someone says they were up all night turning the
pages of a story that didn't exist before I told it,
or that the words on our shows make them feel
less alone. When my elderly boyfriend calls me for our
(01:42):
daily check in, or takes my hand in the street,
when my daughter comes to tell me something she thinks
I won't like, or I make my son laugh when
my dog wants to sit with me, when my tomatoes
come in, when I realize my friends and I have
our own ancient language. When I'm home, Hello, I'm Holly Wainwright,
(02:06):
and I am mid midlife, mid family, mid success. Well
that last bit is only half true, but we'll get
to that. What makes a life successful? What makes a
person a success? At this point in your life? Do
you have markers that you thought you would have hit
to make you feel successful? A number, a job, title,
(02:28):
a house. Did they change all the time? Do the
goalpost still move? Do you wonder what in this next
bit of your life you might change to make success
feel more like it was a word that belonged to you.
Kemmy neck for pill is a success? Unquestionably so, You're
gonna love meeting Kemmy as I did. We've never met before,
(02:50):
even though we've got some mutual friends. So when we
sat down for this interview, what I knew about Kemy
was because she is one of Australia's leading credential coaches
for female executives and entrepreneurs. She even trained and got
certified by Brenne Brown for gosh Sake. As well as
studying at the Gross National Happiness Center in Bhutant, She's
worked for the Hunger Project Australia. She's written books, she speaks.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
All over the world.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
She is, in short, a big deal.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
But sitting down with Kemy, what radiates from her is
a relaxed, confident calm that comes not just from success,
but from grounded success, which is the name of her book.
And in this conversation we discuss everything from her complex
and traumatic childhood to turning her back on her acting career,
understanding what a full body yes is and why if
(03:40):
you want to lead a successful life, it's a good
idea to keep death close. Oh and one of my
favorites the difference between busy and full enjoy. Kemy, thank
you so much for being here. My pleasure, Holly, I
wanted to start by actually reading the introduction to Grounded Success.
(04:01):
May this book be a pause, like stepping outside to
feel the sun on your face and your feet on
the earth. Let it mind you of what you already
know but may have put aside. May it bring you
back to your values, your voice, and the people and
places that matter most. May these pages be a soft
(04:22):
place to land. What I particularly love about that intro
is that quite a lot of books in there. And
I don't know if you're going to be offended by
this term, but in the sort of self optimization.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Space, that's my offended noise. Oh such a great start.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
They feel Oh challenging, we're having up, We're getting in there,
and this feels welcoming.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Is that it was that your intention.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
My intention? That what you've just spoken about to me
is very much the bro hustle culture which a lot
of women fall into as well, that kind of goal
at all costs, push, push, push, don't be a loser,
come on, come on, optimize And as I talk about
in the book, what are we optimizing for? Where beings
of nature? What is there to optimize? There are seasons
and cycles, there's an inhal and there's an ex how
(05:13):
and our success can be guided through the fact that
we are beings of nature and not machines.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Tell me about the moment in your daffodil field that
realigned your idea of success.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Well, my husband and I bought a farm about five
years ago now, and I inherit And I say I
because he's not in there that often in the daffodil pattern.
But I inherited ten thousand daffodils and had already known
that I wanted to be a flower farmer, but didn't
kind of know that there were these ten thousand affodils
when we bought the farm, and I had been harvesting
(05:48):
them one particular season and that was fun and friends
came and we picked the daffodils. So I've been doing
it for a few weeks. It's like every Friday during September.
I was harvesting daffodils and putting them in buckets and
taking them back to the city when we still lived
in the city as well. Now we just live at
the farm, and the sun was shining. I was doing
this thing that I didn't know how to do. Really,
I was just fumbling getting daffodil sap all over my hands.
(06:12):
The neighbors, our packers, and sheep put in the paddock
next door. Kind of the out packers were giving me
death stairs, as they always do, and I'm always scared,
I don't know, do something to me, and you know,
the sheep were nonsalensely chewing. I just thought, this feels
like success to me. And as someone who is a
professional speaker whose success is measured by an external audience response,
(06:34):
which is, you know, applause, which is great. It's how
I know if I've done a good job or not,
and someone that has been raised in a western capitalist
culture very much the idea of success is that it's
external and that there should be eyes on it. So
it's kind of like, you know it's success because other
people are validating it for you. So for me to
be in that daffodil paddock, being surrounded by beauty, being
(06:56):
in nature, taking these free flowers back to friends and
service providers in where I lived, like the local cafes,
like just I was taking them everywhere had a lot
of daffodils. No one was watching me. There was no
applause whatsoever, and yet I had this sense of there's
an external success which most of us are raised in,
(07:17):
and then there's actually kind of an embodied form of success,
like this feels good to me on the inside, where
as somebody else walking pasts wouldn't necessarily go, oh, that
person picking duffo deals looks like they're a success.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Yes, you know.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
So it's the difference between and I think the external
forms of success can be exhilarating and they can be
fun that and we can work really hard for them.
It's just that when we only ground our success in
the external measures, which are fleeting and fragile and sometimes
in somebody else's hands, we miss all of the other
aspects of being human and the other areas in our
(07:52):
life and work that we want to be successful.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
I want to ask you about the chemi that gets
to that point, right, because you have done reading your book,
you have done a lot of different things. It's like
you've lived a lot of different lives in a way,
and to put in context for our listeners, how you
got to the daffodil field, and I mean metaphorically, and yes,
do you want to give us a little bit of
(08:15):
a picture of your background and what you've been doing?
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Yes, well, it's nice to be talking to another english person.
So I was born in the UK in nineteen seventy four.
I was one of the tens of thousands of middle
class children that were fostered to white families at that time.
So by the time I was thirteen, I had had
five different sets of foster parents, and I'd see my
birth mother in between that time as well, so I
(08:38):
have a great relayship with my birth mother now. And
by the time I was thirteen, I was homeless and
I wasn't on the streets, but I was sleeping in
the beds of my school friend's parents' houses kind of thing,
so no fixed abode, and then went into care when
I was fourteen years old, landed on my last foster
parents doorstep with two plastic bags of my belongings and
(09:01):
basically they're who my kids call grandma and grandpa now,
and my birth mother as well, but she's Nana. And
you know, one of the gifts of being fostered is
that you don't have one family telling you this is
who you need to be, this is what success looks like.
But also being a black child in a very white
environment in the seventies in the UK was not a
pleasant experience all the time, and yet my first foster
(09:25):
parents and my last foster parents were absolute bookends of love.
So it was not great in between, but the beginning
and the end they were kind of my points of
this is what love looks and feels like. And I'm
incredibly grateful for those things. But I think, you know,
when we look back on our lives, we can start
to see the patterns. And one of the reasons that
(09:46):
I can coach in the way that I do is
that I would land in these families and I would
have to see. I would hear what was being told
to me by my new mum and dad or whoever
it was, or what was being told to me, but
I also had to work out how do I fit
into this new environment, What is actually going on here?
What is not being said? And so even the way
that I coach, I'm outside of someone's situation and they're
(10:08):
telling me things, but I can hear tell me about
the way you just said that.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Because you're an expert at reading situation, because I expect.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Yeah, and also as well, being someone of color that
navigates a lot of Anglo spaces as well, for anyone
that's listening that identifies with me. We are always aware
of the spaces that we're in. We're always watching out
for what is not being said, but we can feel it.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
You know, that's thirteen year old you who has find
themselves homeless through no fault of yours. Obviously, I can't
imagine that success was necessarily what survive. Either society or
whatever would be expecting of you.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
No, no, no, no, whatever that might look like. Yeah, no,
there was nothing expected of me. There was very much
the narrative of first of all, you're black, and then
well and you're fostered. So the assumption was not that
my parents were middle class Nigerians who wanted their kids
to have the best education they could. Because of the
narrative of colonization. The assumption was that my parents had
(11:09):
drug issues or couldn't parent me, or whatever it was.
And it's you know, I'm always sort of reminding people
most parents are making the same decisions for their children
regard as of where they are. What is the best
opportunity I can give to my child, And for some
people within a colonized country, it's they need to have
a white English education. And I'm grateful I'm grateful for
(11:29):
my education one hundred percent, but even the English education
that I got was not the education to say some
of my peers Scott because of what was not expected
of me. The freedom that that gave me, though was
the ability to kind of chart my own path. The
shadow of that was always has anyone got my back?
So I learned to make sure that I have my
own back until that doesn't work, which is actually why
(11:51):
I wrote my second book, The Gift of Asking, because
I had to learn how to let people in and
ask for help and count on other people. That we
are human beings and we need communities around us, and
this kind of I'm on my own only I can
do it. No one's got my back, I've got me
just is very lonely and very isolating. So there's been
a lot of work that I have done for myself
to kind of then find myself in the daffodil paddock,
(12:13):
you know. Even because I grew up in Kent, I
grew up in England's country garden. I grew up around
paddocks and farms and nature, and funnily enough, both these
foster parents, the first and the last Avid Kitchen Gardeners,
avid kitchen gardeners, and so little did I know. But
when I look back, it's like, Wow, the places I
felt loved were also the places where nature was revered
(12:34):
and interacted with every single day.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Am I right that your foster mum that you ended
up with at that age was a careers advisor?
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Yes, Sue advice.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
So Sue then she was like, what do we do?
You know, we do have your back to a point, right,
what do you want to do? And you kind of
wanted to do a whole lot of things. I'd love
to know what that came E thoughts. Success was. There
is a story in your book that I found really
interesting where you talk about going to somebody's house and
(13:05):
seeing their guest bathroom.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Tell me about that it wasn't their guest part. I
don't even I was in the land of guessing.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
And probably not, but there were still in the land
of guests bathrooms came out.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
So yes, I'll answer your question. No, there was no.
I was not thinking about success. I did not grow
up thinking of wedding dresses. I did not grow up
thinking of being married or any of those things. I
just grew up trying to work out how to survive
either my internal experiences or my external experiences. So I
went to this friend's house and they just had a
(13:37):
bathroom that was so incredible, Like it was warm, it
had like a heated radiator. It was all the colors
all matched, and it was beautiful, and they had matching towels.
And through the variety of kind of the houses in
the middle of my childhood where I was sleeping in
(13:59):
beds with fleas and rooms with cockroaches and just dirtiness,
and you know, my mental health was very affected because
I just felt like I couldn't get clean at any point.
I just always felt like I had things crawling on me.
And so to go into this bathroom and to just
feel so clean and warm and held, and I remember thinking,
(14:24):
one day, I'm going to have matching towels.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Do you have matching towels? Can we bloody do?
Speaker 1 (14:33):
And one of the biggest arguments I have with my
youngest teenager was then they would just I'd like, match
all the towels and they just take whatever tow would be.
One would be in the bathroom, one would be in
the kitchen, one would be blah blah blah. And I
sort of said to them. Hey, for you, this is
just normal life. But for some of us this has
meaning to it. Pick up the bloody towel on the
kitchen floor and hang it up.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
One of the things about that story, as it's relevant
to success, is this idea that through your life, through
all the different things that bring you where they bring
you in, we have different views of what success is. Yes,
and a lot of the people you work with because
you've I mean, you were an actress, You've done lots
of things. But as a coach, you work with a
lot of very successful people. The book is called grounded
(15:18):
Success for a reason, because success in itself is not
can often be groundless.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Can you talk to me a little bit about that.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Yes, So for me, I consider myself to be an
ambitious person, and I work with ambitious people, and I
think ambition is great. So it's not about this idea
of not reaching for anything or creating or building. It
is that when we are creating and when we are building,
it needs to be grounded in what is important to us.
(15:47):
Otherwise we find ourselves with the external accolade, with the
external measure of success. And we all know the stories
and we may have had it ourselves where we get
the thing and then you're like, is this it? It
was meant to feel better than this, especially if that
form of success depending on the industry you work in.
And I want to live a diverse life, so have
(16:09):
a verse coaching practice. I work with diverse women in
all industries at all levels. We have to be willing
to kind of look at if we only focus on
work as the measure of success and we ignore everything
else in our life. When we get that work success,
the promotion, the raise, whatever it is, and we have
ignored all the other areas that human beings have to
be successful in, like our relationships, then that success doesn't matter.
(16:34):
It's all been for nothing. If then we go to
call the friend who you haven't actually spoken to for
six months because you got the thing, and they're like,
why are you calling me? Actually, something really horrible happened
and you weren't there, you know. So it's not that
we don't go for the external measures. And some industries
it's really important. That's kind of how you build your credibility.
As I said, some industries throw really great parties as
(16:54):
well if you reach that level of success. But then
we can leave the party and then we lay our
head on our pillow at night and it's like, really,
is this it? Yeah, So for me it's I wanted
to write the book. As a coach, I don't tell
people what to do. That's not coaching, you know. I'm
a credentialed coach. Telling people what to do is not coaching.
That is maybe consulting. It is maybe your mum, you know,
(17:18):
it is maybe some very opinionated friends. But my job
as a coach is to ask questions and give scenarios
and share stories so that people themselves can work out
oh my gosh, that was me, or that's where I
am right now, or I don't know the answer to
that question, which is in itself feedback, you know. So
for me, it's making sure that whatever we are using
(17:39):
our life energy on it is grounded in what actually
matters to us, which is why I talk so much
about values.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Knowing all this, and I know that you're a credential
coach and that you've got a lot of experience in this,
but jumping back a little bit to the towels, is
this something that you've learned through experience to that chasing
the wrong kind of success at times?
Speaker 1 (18:01):
No, I mean not the wrong sort, because I, as
you said, I am someone I think is it multi
hyphenated or something like that, I'm multi passionate. There are
things I just there's lots of things I love to do,
but I don't do all the things all the time.
It just kind of depends. I'm not kind of I
can't do all the things all the time, and I
don't have that capacity and I don't want that sort
of capacity. But when I was acting, and I sort
of talk about in the book that it was a
(18:22):
way that I got external validation within the school that
I was in. Suddenly, for a child that no one
had sort of deemed any kind of worth of, suddenly
I was getting a lot of praise for my acting
and singing abilities. So I was like, between ten and twelve,
let's just say. And so I did like my first
musical theater role and everyone loved it, and I was like,
oh my gosh, like, oh now I'm acceptable. I'll choose this.
(18:46):
I'll choose being accepted. And I acted for a long
time and I was successful in acting. I worked with
the Royal Shakespeare Company, I was on TV for a
few years. Like I was successful as an actor, but
listening to a fellow actor tell me when we're in
the Royal Shakespeare Company in Brooklyn in New York, and
she was saying, I've wanted it. I can't believe I'm
here with the Royal Shakespeare Company. I've wanted this all
my life. Since I was three, I wanted to be
(19:06):
an actor. And I just remember thinking, well, I never
thought I wanted this, Like I'm here and it's fun,
Like acting was fun and I had incredible opportunities. But
I also knew I'm not here to play Lady Macbeth
when I'm forty. And at that point, the chance of
me getting cast is Lady Macbeth when I'm forty is
(19:27):
rare because black actors weren't getting cast. She could have been,
so it was a real thing for her. But I
was like, well, that's not an option. So do I
want to keep traveling all the time for me as
a foster child, always being in different houses, different hotels
all the time, not grounding, like, actually success for me
is having a home. That's what's important. So that was
when I decided against everyone around me, including my foster parents,
(19:51):
who wanted me to be financially stable, which I really was,
but I just started to feel very, very sad all
the time, and I just realized, this doesn't feel good anymore.
And it wasn't that I gave up acting. I gave
up acting because I didn't want to have to play
characters all the time. I kind of I felt as a
person of color. Maybe actually the thing for me is
(20:12):
to learn how to be in the world as myself
and not shift shape characters to make other people happy.
And also I found the industry of acting I didn't
find it a healthy environment to be in, and found
as an introvert, it's quite easy for me to kind
of not go and do the pub and not do
the things. But there were just things going on that
I found quite challenging to be around all of the time,
(20:35):
because I do believe that you become who you spend
your time with. And I found myself complicit in things
that I didn't want to be complicit in. So I
got out of acting to go back to what I
did love, which was cheffing yeh Saturday night service in
a kitchen. Like even now, I still feel.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
It so interesting.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
It's a beautiful, but for me, it's still creativity. One
of my core values is connection and that Saturday night
service with a team when the stakes are high, I
mean they're artificially high, like it's just food, it's not
paramedic high. But that energy and that sense and that
success at the end of the night. Did everyone get
their meals? Was everyone happy? Was did everyone produce what
(21:10):
we try to produce as individuals and therefore for the
team to create a wonderful experience for a group of people, Yes,
we did. What a successful night.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
So that story one of the many amazing stories in
the book. It tells us and this might sound obvious,
but bear with me that other people's success isn't yours. Right,
So as you say in the act the other actress,
that was her deep dream and for lots of different reasons,
but that was not your dream.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
That was not what success looked like for you.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
And I imagine that you know, well, cultures often decide
on levels of success. You know, the big house is
a level of success, or marrying the rich guy as
a level of success, or having children.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
As a level of success.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
A lot of women who might be listening to this
might be looking at their what I would call their
second act right and sometimes feeling like I don't feel
that successful or deep down I've always really wanted to
do something else, but sometimes you don't quite know what
it is. Yeah, And one of the things I love
about your book, which obviously is part of your coaching,
(22:10):
is that there are lots of exercises in there that
kind of help you work that out, because I think
that's especially if you're a woman who's been putting your
needs at the end of the list for a long time,
Actually tapping into what is my version of success can
be hard. What do you think some of the first
steps to that to like working out what is it
(22:32):
that's going to make me feel like Keemi felt in that.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Kitchen or in the daffodil.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Field, Like where do how do you advise people to
start tapping into their selves in that way?
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Well, it's kind of like what you said, doing that first,
that first process in the book of just writing out
I believe successes. It's such an interest when we have
this kind of conscious journaling or I put I think
I put unconscious journaling, and my editor said, are you
sure you mean unconscious? Like how can you journal when
you're unconscious? You know? But that kind of tapping into
(23:04):
a deep consciousness and just writing out I believe successes.
I believe successes because the thing is we want to
be able to name the feelings. So if we get
to midlife or the second act and we're like, I
don't feel successful, it's really good to look at, well,
what did I think success was? Like? What I I?
And that's the questions I asked, what were you raised
to believe? The fourteen women in the book who share
their success stories, the questions that I gave them were,
(23:26):
what were you raised to believe a success growing up?
Did you reach that level of success? You know, how
did it feel, how did it look? Did it feel
how you thought it would? And some were like it
was amazing, got there, it was great. Some were like no,
Then it was has your definition of success changed? Why?
And how? And then what did your definition of success? Now?
The women at age twenty four to seventy five, so
(23:47):
it's a real mix of women, and I think we
have to work out what did we think success was?
So for me it would have been if I sort
of tie everything up, I would look back and think
success was being accepted by others, but at the expense
of me knowing and understanding myself, you know, in my
younger years, which was why for me leaving acting didn't
(24:07):
seem right to anybody, and it didn't seem right to me.
It's why it took me so long to leave. I
was like, who do you think you are? Like this
was never meant to happen for someone like you, and
here it is happening and you don't want it. Like
it took me a long time to actually go, But
this doesn't feel good in your bones. And I now
(24:29):
know it's because I was kind of moving around all
the time having somebody else tell me whether I could
pay the rent, you know, which is what happens casting.
You know, you either get your audition or you don't.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
You're so your success is kind of in the hands
of somebody else.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
And I wanted agency, Like I kind of wanted my
own agency. I could book in how many chef shifts
I was going to do that week, you know, like
I could do that for myself. So I think we
have to name what did we think success was first
and own up to that. You know, one woman talks
about success for me growing up was having a swimming pool. Yeah,
(25:01):
you know, like to just name it. We've all been.
We're all in the same Western soup. We've probably all
got a similar kind of thing, you know, so they're
naming it, and then so who am I now? And
that's why we go into the values work, So we
don't go into I want this, I want this, I
want this. It's what do I value? And if I'm
living through the lens of those values, then it would
make sense that I want that, and I want that
(25:21):
and I want that. You know, one of my core
values is well being. For me, that actually includes like
having my definition of beauty, like in my home and
in nature. That's part of me being a well being.
So then I was at like hence the flowers, hence
the flowers, hence beautiful stationery, hence writing handwritten letters like
to me. That forms my creativity and my communication. And
(25:44):
so once we know what our values are, it is
so much easier to then create our success from there.
And it's fine that our success changes in seasons. Certain
seasons require different forms of success, you know, this idea
that we have one that goes there, which is why
a lot of women in particular realize, especially those of
us that choose to have children or do have children,
(26:05):
that actually the success that we have wanted mainly to change. Now,
I decide to be at home with my children. I
live with my in laws, so we didn't have mortgage
and rent and that sort of thing. So that was
a privilege that we had. I live with my in
laws and my husband and I for three and a
half years, so we didn't have to sort of be
earning money to pay a mortgage. And I wanted to
be at home and I could be at home right
(26:25):
and I wanted to be at home because I didn't
have that for me. Yes, I want my children to
know that they have one primary care or two primary caress.
And because I have African heritage to grow up in community.
We had four generations in that house. It's not meant
to be done by a nuclear family. It's meant to
be done with generations. And that was success for me
in that time. Now, when I then started working as
(26:49):
a mum, for me to have my business, I wanted
it to be I think, as most of us do
in the early days, how do I have this work
around being a mum? And then my kids have left
home now at nineteen and twenty one, so now what
success looks like is different. Once again. Season, it's a
different season. But when I hear clients that are really
unkind to themselves because they are working full time jobs
(27:12):
and they have young children at home, I always want
to create space for them to be kinder. You know that, actually,
this new world where mums are working and being at
home with kids and as we know, still doing eighty
five percent of the domestic.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
Work, carrying all the load, carrying.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
The emotional load, the logistic load, all of those things,
there is space for kindness in there, and there is
space to let go of the patriarchal nowadays of what
success needs to look like for a woman. You know
that we're allowed to be a mess. My dearest friends,
we have seen each other in all fours. There's a
lot of that time, right, you know where you're chatting,
(27:49):
folding up the laundry with them, not for them, but
with them, like I'm in it too, Like who cares?
Like don't wipe up, don't clear up. I'd stay with
a friend I was overseas recently, a dear friend. She's
my son's godmother, and I just said to her, please,
I'm staying on the couch. You do not need to
do anything to the room changes, do anything. I'm on
the couch. She thanks. Yeah, it's like you don't need
(28:10):
to pre all up for me.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
That's a good friend, Kemy. That's what that is.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
After this break, how to use your head, heart and
gut to make the tough decisions in your life. Can
you talk to me a little bit about wisdom centers
because I'm sort of still in this idea of how
do we sometimes tune into ourselves and what we want
and the values work is. There's the book again what
(28:38):
we were talking about before is there. So there are
exercises throughout it, and there's a journaling one way you
right there, success to me is and there are also
you've also got places you can choose values. But I'd
love to hear you talk a bit about head, heart
and gut.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Yeah. Well, I share a story around what it is
to kind of move through the bush in this nature
Connection leadership program that I did for a year, and
what it is to kind of not have your verbal
communication and that you have to use your body to
sense things like where you are in space with trees,
walking through the bush barefoot. You have a team of
(29:15):
people and you're trying to get somewhere, but you don't
want to scare the birds, and you don't want to
scare the animals, and you're using your whole body, which
is a wisdom center. And that all of our ancestors,
regardless of where we came from, were all hunters, gatherers,
foragers and had to use our sensing bodies to understand
the world that we are in. So what I talk
about in the book, and it comes a little bit
(29:36):
from this form of coaching called ontological coaching, is that
we are our head. Our head is a brain, but
we also have our heart, which is well, our head
is a wisdom center, our heart is a wisdom center,
and our gut or our intuition as a wisdom center. Generally,
we will find or I have found working with certain
industries and I'm married to a barrister as well, certain industries, engineers, finance,
(29:58):
law head driven by the head, people in caring, nurses,
any sort of caring profession, frontline heart and then gut.
Now this isn't all people all the time. I'm just
saying just generally, that's where they're led from. So I
can work with people who are in their head often
and I will say to them because as a particular process,
I'll take people through and I talk people through it
(30:20):
in the audio and in the book, But it is
hard to do on your own. It kind of does.
If you are someone that has a lot of embodied
practices like yoga and maybe dance and somatic practices, maybe
they will find it easier to do. But a lot
of people find it hard. But I still want to
just give people an idea. Yeah, because I believe that
we feel things before we think things. Yes, very much,
(30:42):
so we feel it first. Someone says up, we feel it,
and then their head says, be a good girl.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
And that's to your story about the acting. You felt
that that job, that role, that vocation whatever was wrong
for you before you could two years it out loud,
two years.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Until I got out. Yeah, because my head was, who
do you think you are? This doesn't seem right? Yeah,
look at the privileged position that you're in. Everyone would
kill for this. None of your peers are working at
this level. Why would you give this up? Like my head,
my ego was telling me, why would you say no
to such a validated external form of love?
Speaker 3 (31:16):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Why would you say no to that? And then I'll
be like on certain days, Oh I won't, actually I
won't so low.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
So your heart that your heart is often in that
situation where you're like, your heart is telling you this
relationship isn't right, or the way that you're living your
life at the minute is not right. Or but sometimes
it takes a while for your head.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Takes a while.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
Yeah, and what about that gut? Can you trust it?
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Well? This is the thing. I believe a lot of
women have been told not to and this is the
thing most of us will lean towards one of the other.
So I'm generally a gut person. I feel it in
my gut first. Over the years, I've learned certain things.
My heart, I literally feel it open or i feel
it contract. So someone will say, I'm like, oh, kemye,
do you want to come to the thing. And I'm
an introvert, so I never want to go to the thing,
but sometimes I feel like my heart but sometimes if
(32:03):
I just feel the heart contract, or an invitation will
come through an email and I will feel my heart
close before my head goes. But you should but look
who's asking you? Yeah, you know, or look at the possibility.
And I'm just like, I'm old enough and wise enough
now to just go with what my body tells me,
not what my head tells me. And it's it's not
that one is better than the other. It's just that
(32:24):
we want to learn how to integrate them all. So
I know, I will feel it first, and then I
might be you know, I might feel a particular friend
I don't know, maybe something something, and I feel something about, oh,
this is the seventeenth time they've asked that thing whatever.
But then my head says, yeah, but remember how many
times they showed up for you blah blah blah. Yeah,
do you know what I mean. So it's not that
one is better than the other. Although I will say
(32:47):
that people that only operate in their head, that can
lead to a lot of overthinking and anxiety and stuckness. Yes,
whereas I find that people that can tap into their
heart or their gut as well give themselves some release
because the head is ah, it just never stops.
Speaker 3 (33:04):
Now, it never stopped.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
Unless you train it or have practices to habits.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Yes, hands in the dirt. For me, that's one of
the things that turns that the brain.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Turns it off. You're right, and that's when you're tapped
in you can sort of suddenly you feel the air
on you, and you can hear the bees buzzing, and
you can suddenly you're grounded on the earth, and all
of that other stuff just kind of falls away for
a time.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
You know, I've heard you talk about because back to
this idea of how you make decisions or you choose
a big leap. I've heard you talk about a full body.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
I've heard Elizabeth Gilbert talk about that too. She name
checks you in her latest book. You know, I interviewed
a while ago.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
I know she said she had told me that it
was very, very kind.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
Do you say that you felt a full body yes,
about this daffodil farm.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Tell me what that feels like, and how you don't
know that it's just like tapping into a fantasy or something,
and whether that matters.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Well, this is a thing, isn't it. I think that
there are two separate things there. So I think there's
the full body yes. And my favorite emails, our mutual
friend Lucy would have received one of these emails are
where I put into like seventy four font in green
and it just says one hundred percent hell yes. And
then I go back to like a size twelve details later,
you know, it's just like capture the moment, and I
(34:26):
want to live a life where I have a lot
of those. But also that means that I don't know
how necessarily, so it's not the head. So the head
isn't going, But how do you do it? But how you
buy that? You don't know how to flower farm? What
do you mean you don't like what? Yeah? Then that
would not the life I'm living. I would not be living.
It was more an absolute full body yes. And it
(34:47):
was happening during COVID when things were up and down
and my husband both have our own businesses, and there
was a point when we weren't actually going to put
in an offer for this place, and my husband sort
of turned to me and he said, I actually need
you to guarantee me this is the best thing for
us to do. Ooh, And there was no evidence it
was the best thing for us to do at all. Yeah,
(35:07):
And I did. I literally just said give me a
min and I just like tapped in just and I
was like one hundred percent yes, you know, And now
we're doing things we never thought we'd do, like fixing
fences that we don't know how to do either. Yes,
you know, but it is that and I think when
and a lot of clients do that, they're like the how,
And sometimes I have to say, this is a magic
(35:27):
one moment. So we're not going into how, we're not
going into details. So let's you say someone comes me
it's about a relationship, friendship, intimate, whatever it is, and
I say, first question, is this relationship important to you?
Sometimes it's oh no, not really, like I'm disreacting. They
said a things and I'm reacting and I want to
defend myself. But actually, in the scheme of my life energy,
(35:48):
in my capacity, it has been a good friendship. But
now it's not that important. So it's the first question
we have to work out. We have to name it. Yes,
it's important. And then the questions that I would then
ask around, you know, so what does success in this
relationship feel like? We'd be respectful, they'd be fun, and
we'd have open communication generally. I then ask, and are
you giving those things in the relationship? And I cannot
(36:09):
tell you how many times people go no. And we
do that though we want from other people what we're
not giving.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
That is so interesting.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
We want a successful relationship where it's respectful and generous
and kind whatever. But we're not being those things. And
that's because it's vulnerable, because we want them to do
it first, because we're testing the waters all of the things.
But I do believe, not that it's true, but I
believe that we cannot give to others what we cannot
sustainably give to ourselves.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
Right, Yeah, that's really interesting.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Not that it's true, it's just what I.
Speaker 3 (36:40):
Believe in a moment.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Can he tells me about how one of the ways
to help.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
You decide what you should be doing with.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Your life is to think about your death. There was
a bit in your book, Well, there were lots. The
book is underlined a lot, but there was a bit
in your book that I found quite confronting, which it
is about how one of the good, one of the
good ways to decide, you know, what's what's right for you?
I guess or because this is all around the idea
(37:08):
of what life you should be like?
Speaker 3 (37:12):
Not sure is the wrong word.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
That's right? Life aligns with you, yes, not the one
you have been told by society or your parents, or
your older sibling or anything else. Not what you should
be living. But what is the life you want to live.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
And one of the ways you suggest that we can
get some clarity on that is to think about death. Yes,
go straight to the heart, which is very confronting for
many of us. I cannot overstate how potent it is
to keep one's death close. You're right, and two of
the questions you say are very clarifying about when you're
(37:50):
making a decision. Would I regret not doing this on
my deathbed? And will this person be.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
At my funeral?
Speaker 2 (37:59):
Kemy, I went and looked at one of these posters
that you mentioned in here. That's yes, that's like how
many weeks you might have left on earth.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
That was a bit too for me.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
But tell me a bit about why thinking about death
is one of the ways to live, right.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
I find thinking about death incredibly empowering and inspiring and igniting.
And I don't have like scenarios of my death, like
the when and the wear of the how or anything
like that, but I do have things like I want
the people in my life to know that I love them,
so when my funeral happens, there is no question people
knew that I love them. That I was not with
them because I had to be out of duty, out
(38:39):
of responsibility because I intended to be with them and
spend time with them. That's incredibly important to me. I
think we live in a Western world where death is
kept very far. It doesn't serve anybody. It means that
people can't show up for people when people are dying,
or when people are in serious health crisis, or even
mental health issues. Because mental health is a form of death,
it's a form of identity, it's a form of the
(39:00):
way that we are in the world. People struggle to
be around people that are having mental health challenges. Come on, Charlie,
just me fine. Now, there's so much going on for people.
So for me, this idea of will that person be
at my funeral is when you get slighted, you know,
or it's when someone says something inappropriate and you're like,
I don't know, have to say anything or not, and
it's like, do you're not do you want that person
at your funeral? Probably just better to say the thing
(39:22):
that's not appropriate for you to say. Don't say those
things to me, you know. And by the way, don't
come to my funeral. You're not invited, and you're not invited.
I'm uninviting you. Now. While I'm still here, but just
this idea of staying in jobs and relationships, and one
thing I have to say, I know that, you know,
for the women that I work with, I'm except for
some of my pro boni clients, and within the demographic
(39:42):
of kind of the mum and mea, most of us
are very very privileged in our life. So I'm I'm
speaking very clearly to people that have ample food on
the table, more than you know, ample roof over their head,
maybe more than one roof, you know, and get to
make very privileged choices. And as I talk about in
my book, Power, being guilty about our privileges is incredibly
(40:04):
boring and not helpful. What's powerful is acknowledging that we
have them, you know, and they're privileges that I do
have and privileges that I don't have. So within the
privileged life that many of us are living, we can
be in jobs that we don't like, and then we
have to admit that we're in jobs that we don't
like and that that's the choice that we have made.
(40:24):
But there are people that have less than some of
us have who leave jobs they don't like all the time.
Speaker 3 (40:29):
Yeah, that's true, you.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
Know, because actually their work is not tied to their identity,
because they do have itinerant jobs where it's just about
putting food on the table. For some people's success is
putting food on the table, and their identity is not
tied to their work. If your identity is so tied
to your work that you are willing to risk your health,
your wellbeing, your mental health, your relationships, your delight, your fun,
(40:52):
your connection to self and others, that may be a
situation where knowing that you're going to die one day
may give you a bit more clarity.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
I love that because when you list it like that
about the things that often people will put a head
or rather put.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
Behind their job without even realizing that they're doing it
in a way that's right. But when you spell it
out like that and go, what are you doing?
Speaker 1 (41:18):
Yeah, and it's not. And this is a thing where
the kindness bit comes in. It is not the individual.
It is because of the systems that most of us
have been raised in that have said to us, this
is what will make you live a good life. Have
a job or a work or a role. Put everything
there and then one day you will then be able
(41:39):
to nurture your relationships, your well being, your mental health,
all those things. And we know that's not true, but
it doesn't mean that we're not called in the loop
because the head will always say stay, stay what people think,
don't fail, don't give up, don't risk it. And yet
there are so many women that will just say, do
you know what, my kids are watching me. I'm out
of that. This job is killing me and it's killing
(42:00):
my family. I'm out or the relationship. I share the
story in the book about the woman. You know, which
form of failure do you want to the failure of
a marriage or your children watching how you're being treated
and how they're being treated. So you can stay because
how it looks at the external world that you have
an intact marriage and then you feel like you're failing
(42:21):
because your children are watching this relationship play out every day,
or you can leave and have the failure of the marriage.
You're choosing a failure. It just depends which failure you want.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
Yeah, that's such a and that's all of those compromises
or all of those self sacrifices or whatever you want
to call them, are kind of in the name of
success of what we're imagining. Well, this job that's killing me,
is I'm very successful?
Speaker 1 (42:43):
Yeah, that's exactly.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
Or this relationship where we get we live in a
nice house and the neighbors think we're perfect.
Speaker 3 (42:49):
That's a version of success.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
Even if you're quietly or loudly dying inside. And it's
so easy when we listen to people that you know,
make the change or make the move or do the
scary thing, and well it's all right for her. I
hear that a lot in my work. I hear it
speaking to audiences, and I just hear it in just
kind of the general COmON it's all right for that
is such good feedback when we say it, well it's
(43:12):
all right for her, it's because we want it. Otherwise
we'd say good on her.
Speaker 3 (43:17):
Yeah, yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
So then we just get to tap in. It's like,
you know what Brene says, and I train with Brene Brown,
But what she says is that we never comment. We
never judge people in areas where we don't feel less
than right. So with women and bodies, for example, we
never judge other women's bodies unless we are not okay
and confident within our body, which is part of the
whole system as well. But yeah, that when we're go
(43:41):
but it's all right for her. That's a really good
way of deflecting. What would I need to do for
that to be me?
Speaker 3 (43:47):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (43:48):
And am I willing to have the conversation. It's not
always about throwing our whole lives in the air. Sometimes
it is, but it's not always about that. It's much.
Sometimes it's a bit smaller. It's sometimes it's a case
of saying, can I do flexible because I really want
to I don't know, spend time with my kids on
a Friday or whatever it is like that would feel
more balanced for me. And I have lots of clients
(44:09):
who love working within the corporate framework. They thrive in it,
they love it, they're great leaders, They're bringing other leaders
up through that. So for them, it's not about success.
Isn't giving up corporate success? Is how do I show
up as a human, value based leader within this organization
and company that I have committed some of my life
to in a way that serves me and serves the
people that I'm trying to serve. But for me, I
(44:31):
very much believe this idea of will I regret this
on my deathbed is a thing that will have us
say yes to many things. You know. So an example,
you know, a group of girlfriends says to you, you
know your sort of thought, I'm really missing my girlfriends.
There's not time, we don't see each other enough. We
should do it again. And then one of them says,
why don't we all just like go on a seven
day hike together? Right now? That is the sort of
(44:51):
thing you're not trained for it. You've never hiked in
your life, you're scared of spiders, blah blah blah. Yeah,
but that is the stuff you're going to remember, that bonding,
of that training, that bonding of getting the wrong shoes,
tripping over one of you will break your leg before
you go off. That always happens, someone will get COVID,
all the things. But that is the sort of thing
that you're a member on your deathbed. What you won't
remember is the week that you spend up work because
you said no to that experience.
Speaker 3 (45:14):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
I've got one more question about things that success cost
us before we will ground ourselves again before the end
of the conversation. But you have a bit in your
book that really spoke to me about the difference.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
Between busy and full. Right now, successful.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
People of all kinds of measures are busy, right, and
women are very busy, and we use it often as
a badge of honor or as a stick to beat
ourselves with.
Speaker 3 (45:38):
We're either like, how are you, I'm busy? Have you
been busy?
Speaker 1 (45:41):
Busy?
Speaker 3 (45:41):
Busy?
Speaker 2 (45:43):
Oh my god, I'm so busy from now till the
end of the year.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
I'm just busy.
Speaker 2 (45:47):
Like every we're busy, and it's stressful being busy. It's
I am terrible at this, like feeling overwhelmed by a busyness.
But then sometimes we also know that success comes with
a lot of right tell me about is busy versus
full a mindset? Or is it about what you're filling
(46:08):
your time?
Speaker 1 (46:10):
Oh? Great question. I think it's both, actually, and it
does always come down to the individual. So for some people,
using the word busy is igniting and it is exciting
and they want to be busy. And that's all great.
Women that I've worked with us I'm really really busy,
And I ask them, how do you feel? Nothing like
I'm exhausted, or I'm numb, or I'm burnt out or
(46:31):
I have rarely heard someone say I'm really busy, and
I am even I talk about the language like I'm
smashing it. Yeah, I'm going to kill it. So I
don't want to smash or kill anything. Right, I want
to create, I want to build, I want to connect,
But I don't want to smash anything. The idea of
busy and for once again it fits into the vernacular
of this capitalist society that we almost produce. We almost
be busy all the time. That our valuation comes from
(46:52):
our worth, and we know that we are worthy if
we are always doing something, and therefore we are always busy.
And yet going back actually to something that Liz said
when she was here in Australia, you know, actually the
most powerful person in the room is the quietest and
the stillest. Yes, you know, when you walk into a
paddock of horses, they are incredibly powerful beings and they
are very still. The most powerful horse is the stillest
(47:13):
one because it is just there, just knowing what's going on,
you know. And so the busy person remember that, what
was that thing? If you want something done, ask a
busy person. No, I would never do that. Now, I
think I did take that on. That's kind of I
think I heard that in the nineties. I would have
done that at the time. And also then the busy
woman or the capable woman will then take on when
(47:35):
everyone thinks I'm capable, that's great, slowly dying inside, but
everyone thinks I can never say no, that I can
never say no, And that's my book. The gift of
asking that thing. We create this dynamic of I'm good,
I've got it, I'll do it, don't worry, I'll do it,
and then we don't know how to ask for help,
and we don't know how to let other people in
to actually help us. So it becomes a shadow very quickly,
that sense of making sure that we are capable all
(47:57):
of the time, because it also stops other people contributing
to us. And to have successful relationships, they have to
be equal. People have to see us on our knees
and then they step in to help us, and then
we see them on their news and we step in
to help them. If we are always the one stepping
in to help people on their knees, we create a
really messy dynamic. It's actually self righteous, maybe arrogant to
(48:21):
think I'm the savior that saves all the people and
no one can save me. M yeah, because it becomes
very lonely and very isolating. Yeah. So the idea of.
Speaker 2 (48:32):
Full is more I'm full because I'm doing the things
I want to be doing, the things that are meaningful
to me. And this might be a time when I
am traveling a lot, my diaries a bit full, all
of these things.
Speaker 1 (48:46):
But I've chosen it, chosen it so because I live
by my values. So i have chosen it. So those
times in life when things are very intense, of which
there are, you know, it's like, oh, this is a
toughlye like, oh, I'm feeling it, but I've chosen it, yes,
as opposed to this is really hard and it's everyone
(49:06):
else's fault. And if only something's something, you know, because
that's when we can make other choices. But when we
just go, Okay, this is an intense period, life is
really full right now. But I've chosen this. This is
what little me dreamed of once, you know. But my
caveat to that, though, is if it's always intense all
the time, that's not great. You know. I married into
(49:28):
a Steiner family, and so you know, the Steiner sort
of curriculum and teaching is always about the children going
through in how and ex how in the day, so
lots of naps and this sorts of thing. So with
me raising children who went to Steiner schools, I started
to live my life with that idea of like the
in how is like, you know, I've just come back
from three weeks in New York. That is an in how,
you know, teaching to doing all things. It's like, okay,
(49:49):
like I'm in it, and I prepare myself because I'm
an introvert. I'm like, right, I'm in it. I'm going
to do it. And then I come back to Australia.
I'm back on the farm. It's like this is the
ex how, and no one hears from me for like
five days. Generally I'll tell people I'm coming back later
than I actually am, just to give me that time
to just just want to process where I've been, how
I'm feeling, what's happening, and then sly reach out because
(50:10):
for me, it's one of my core values is connection.
So even doing the New York I had lots of
friends that I connect with. It's not due to this
kind of like transactional work exchanges, because that would feel
very very groundless to me, right, very groundless, and actually
it would start to affect my mental health. If I
was like dipping from me, then yeah, yeah, I'd go
(50:32):
back to my hotel room. I think I'll just cry
at night, like what is this life? I don't want this?
Speaker 2 (50:36):
It makes so much sense because the grounded groundless thing,
because it explains to me why I can be in
one of those busy rooms where you're glad handling everybody
and you and feel so drained by it, or you
can be in a busy, creative environment with people and
working hard and feel enriched.
Speaker 1 (50:56):
That's exactly right, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:58):
And energy expended in theory is the same. Yeah, but
how it leaves you feeling is the difference I guess
between grounded and groundless.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
Yeah, exactly, And for me, busy falls into groundless, whereas
a full life is grounded in who we are. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:18):
I want to take you back to the Daftil farm
to close out our conversation, because, as you identify in
the book, is that that moment where you're cutting your
flowers and the sheep are judging you.
Speaker 1 (51:30):
I don't think I said that. You think they were.
They probably were. They are very snooty, they really are.
Speaker 2 (51:39):
They were judging you, but you were you had a
moment where you went, this is this is success to me.
Talk to me a little bit, whether it's the women
in your book or women you've worked with, other examples
of that kind of success that is grounded and ah
that people have got.
Speaker 1 (51:57):
To Yeah, there are so many examples in the book,
because there are women that have sort of set out
on a particular path and have continued on that path,
but have worked out how to bring in other parts
of themselves, whether it's their creative joy, whether it's delight,
whether it's hope, whether it's community. And then there are
women that have had either health diagnoses, or women that
(52:20):
have had a lot of deaths in their family, or
women that have changed roles have realized. You know, one
lovely client that I work with in her stories in
the book worked a lot for not for profit social
justice and started to feel the burnout of being in
the front line of that work, you know, but very
much the head was like, who do you think you
are to have burnout? Look at the people you're working with,
their worst off thing, And kind of went through three
(52:42):
to four rounds of burnout before she allowed herself to go,
I'm not okay, you know, and took a full break
out because she didn't have kids, because you know, she
didn't have responsibilities as she could not saying that's what
everyone needs to do. But there are so many different
ways for us to identify what success is for us.
But we do need to give ourselves the time to
work it out. Nature appaus a vacuum and capitalism appause
(53:05):
a vacuum too. So if we're not clear on where
our life energy is going, we will buy a lot
of trendy outfits online. Yep, a lot of skincare a lot,
right is your skincare? Yeah, that's right. And for me,
it's funny because if I do, if I do go
down a rabbit hole, it's always stationary for me. But
that is part of my you know, for me, stationary
and books like that is grounded within the world that
(53:27):
I love and that I live and that I share
with others. You know, I'm not against a little bit
of retail therapy, but that retail therapy when it's actually
grounded because we know who we are and what we
value and where we're spending our life energy is very
different when we don't know who we are, where our
energy is going, and we're exhausted and we're just pressing
bye bye, bye bye.
Speaker 3 (53:47):
It is morphing actually to buying seeds.
Speaker 1 (53:50):
Yes, and you just have packets of seeds.
Speaker 2 (53:52):
When we were on tour with mom being out loud
and we were really busy, I'd go back to the
hotel room and where once upon a time I might
have had a glass of shard name brought myself some skincare.
Speaker 1 (54:03):
Now I would be like, all those look at the
shape of those fuck's.
Speaker 2 (54:08):
Charlie, is that's interesting?
Speaker 1 (54:09):
See you?
Speaker 2 (54:09):
Then I wake up in the morning really tired. I
think I've brought a lot of seats last night.
Speaker 1 (54:13):
I'm growing a lot of things, which can lead to
another form of overwhelmed, you know, But that's good. Then
you share your harvest, and you know, you share it
out to others and it works that way.
Speaker 2 (54:24):
Mid friends, thank you so much for being with me
for another hopefully enriching conversation. I loved talking to kemmy
I was making notes throughout that conversation. They're now all
in an app on my phone. She really is one
of those people who changes the way that you think
about things and just has.
Speaker 3 (54:41):
Some really good tips.
Speaker 2 (54:43):
If you want to hear more about midlife success. I
want you to go scroll back in your phone and
listen to the episode with Eleanor Mills that we did
on mid about how she lost the big fancy job
that had defined her right about the age of fifty
and her whole life had to change. It's a really
good one about all this kind of stuff. I want
(55:05):
to thank you all for being with us. Of course
follow us on Instagram if you can. And I want
to thank our team. Our senior producer is Charlie Blackman,
our group executive producer is Niama Brown, and we've had
audio production from Tina Matchalov. I will talk to you
next week.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!