Rediscovering Connection with Shelley Doyle
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Through soulful conversations, we explore new ways to connect, on-and-offline, to support our social and digital wellbeing.
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Rediscovering Connection with Shelley Doyle
#18 - Josephine Palermo - Rediscovering Connection with our Lover Energy (and Retreats!)
If you've ever dreamed of running your own retreat or simply want to peek behind the scenes, then this episode of Rediscovering Connection is made for you!
Join me as I dive deep into conversation with Josephine Palermo, an executive coach, consultant, and bestselling author of "Rising to Feminine Power: The Lasso of Truth."
Together, we explore the art of holding space for guests before, during, and after their retreat experiences, offering insights into navigating post-event blues and ways to transition from work mode to lover mode when we work from home.
Ever wondered about the dynamics of sharing a room during a retreat? Our conversation sparks reflections on communal experiences, drawing parallels to my own story of room-sharing during a six-month student exchange in Melbourne at the age of 20. It's a reminder of the connection that communal experiences can ignite, should we choose to embrace them.
Join us as we share the highs and lows of our personal transformations, offering practical tips for achieving balance and enjoying the ride of growth and self-discovery.
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Josephine Palermo is a seasoned leader, executive coach and consultant specialising in fostering collaboration within organisations. With a Ph.D. in Organisational Psychology, she has held leadership roles in both public and private sectors.
Notably, she led a $6 million program at Australia's largest telecommunications provider, enhancing technological capabilities for enterprise customers.
As a Director of Geared for Growth Consulting and Partner of 6 Team Conditions Australia, Josephine champions the purposeful shaping of leaders and business culture through signature experiences.
Her Amazon Best Seller book, "Rising to Feminine Power: The Lasso of Truth," and podcast, "Gears, Action, Growth," reflect her commitment to challenging traditional views on work and fostering a collective approach to leadership.
Explore more at www.risingtofemininepower.com and www.playpodca.st/gearsactiongrowth. You can also join Josephine on her next Bali Retreat on Rising to Feminine Power www.risingretreat.com.au
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I hope our conversation inspires you to rediscover connection in your personal or professional life.
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Love & sparkles,
✨Shelley
About Your Host
Hi, I'm Shelley Doyle, a Social Wealth Strategist and Connection Coach. I empower remote and nomadic founders and leaders who crave deeper connections to activate their social wealth, so they can feel trusted, supported, and truly connected—both online and offline—no matter where they are.
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I combine cutting-edge research on social wealth, social wellbeing and social capital with two decades in corporate communications to deliver mind-shifting talks, workshops, and programs around the world.
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I'm often in my queen energy. I'm in my work and even when I come home and I'm managing the affairs of my household, I'm very much in that queen energy. I've got to get things done. I'm competent, I'm confident, I need to, I know where I'm going, I'm driven, you know, I'm disciplined, I block out times, but that's queen energy. And then the little things that make a big difference to me is actually having a reminder for me in my day to turn that off and stepping to love energy. And so in my diary now I actually have a little reminder which says stop and so what that and so after stop, the next thing is how to is doing things that soften me down away from that queen energy and that bring me into a state of the day where I'm going to be a better companion to my partner.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to Rediscovering Connection, and today's guest is Josephine Palermo. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right. You did that's perfect. And we connected through something called Disrupt HR, which was an event that I attended in Victoria, BC, which was just phenomenal. It reminded me a little bit of like a TED talk. It was a HR industry event, but it was absolutely buzzing. It was sold out and I had a really cool connection there because I had a podcast with a lady named Amy Leah Tamborini a few weeks prior, who was then a speaker at Disrupt HR. So I got to see her on stage and meet her in person and it was just such an amazing event. I have plans to go out to Australia, so I was thinking I wonder who's doing Disrupt HR in Australia? So I found Josephine through that. Josephine has the Brisbane license for Disrupt HR. This is how we came into connection. And then I came on the Josephine's podcast in December and I'm delighted that she's here today to talk to me about her book retreats and all about rediscovering connection.
Speaker 1:So welcome, welcome, so great to see you Lovely to see you too, shelley, and isn't it amazing how something like Disrupt HR brought us together. I was keen to bring Disrupt HR to one of the states in Australia that didn't have it. Because of that very reason, I went to an event in Melbourne. I was actually a speaker at an event and I was blown away because it's five minutes per speaker with 20 slides on rotation, so you've got to really speak it rather than sort of read off notes, and it's very visual and very dynamic and the buzz in the room was amazing and I thought this is incredible. And there you go. We've made you and I have connected on so many levels because of that, and so it's already working. But yeah, I can't wait to do Disrupt HR. It'll be in the next few months in Brisbane, australia.
Speaker 2:Very exciting. So the theme of the show is rediscovering connection, and one of the things that we spoke about quite a lot is retreats and the connections that you can make on retreats, particularly when they're overnight retreats and you're coming together with people who might be very different, who come from a very different walk of life to you, but all paths have led you to this one space in time and the connections that you can make on retreats can really change things, hey.
Speaker 1:And I think a lot of more people are looking for that and retreats have become really popular. I think they were always popular, but right now it's becoming almost like a normal thing to do. I think it used to be a bit of a delicious luxury and now I think people, particularly women, are really planning for the retreat, or they get to a point where they think I really need this and where can I find it? Because retreats come in all forms. The yoga community do this really well and I think they've sort of started the industry, but they come in all forms. You can go on a yoga retreat or a detox retreat.
Speaker 1:The retreat that I run is based on themes in my book, which is really about rising to feminine power, being identifying with our feminine inner authenticity and amplifying that and really doing that with a group of women and supporting each other in that. So we go through the four elements, if you like, of femininity and I partner with my beautiful friend and hypnotherapist, petra Plankanova, and she's codified for archetypes for women and we go through that in the retreat and I'm particularly keen to raise women's energy around leading, and leading in a particular way that suits us women, that really suits our unique capabilities as women and our unique strengths, because we have superpowers which I think haven't been recognized, particularly in the world of work, but also just in terms of our institutions, family and all of the things that come at us in terms of who we are supposed to be as women in the world. I think that we don't often get very positive cues about being women, positive in our femininity. There's lots of cues about positive masculinity but not necessarily about positive femininity. So I'm making a claim for positive, powerful femininity. We can own it. We can lead in all walks of our life in a particular way that really suits us and the retreat is about that and it's a bit of a journey of connecting to that. So it's a transformative journey.
Speaker 1:We go on retreat for five nights, so it's a bit of a long retreat. It goes really quickly and there's lots of room for fun and we have lots of time for massage and wellness treatments and things like that. But every morning we wake up together, we do a movement and meditation session, we have breakfast and then we go into the program. And the program is based on some cognitive behavioral exercises to reframe the way we think, as well as some embodiment exercises to really create a shift in the way that we embody femininity. I've done now two retreats. The first one was a pilot, the second one was in October last year and I have one coming up in May 2024. And I'm really excited about it. It's become my passion project.
Speaker 2:Something that's coming up for me, just thinking about the length of time and the fact that people don't know each other, that team building idea of forming, norming, storming. I'm just wondering about that five days. I wonder how long it takes to really feel like you are a collective consciousness, one group together.
Speaker 1:I designed that in deliberately, my specialty in the consulting world. I'm a partner of a company called Six Team Conditions, so my whole specialty is on groups and how do we optimize people in groups and teams. So I designed that into the program Because, you're right, people I deliberately get people to start on the evening. So the first days entering into Bali airport transfers, we take care of everything. We go to Ubud, which is about 90 minutes from Dempasa Airport, so there's a bit of a car ride, people are feeling a little bit strange and people don't know each other, and we have dinner together in the villa, which is really important, and we usually do some kind of welcoming ceremony, which is it can involve music and dance or and it definitely is about setting intentions. So we start really quickly on that night with some introductions, but it's gentle because we don't, you know, it's just like this overwhelm that happens, I think, as well. So we start very gently. And then the next morning we particularly do an exercise where people share their life story with each other in a way that accesses it really quickly. So we do that in a way that goes deep very quickly. But we set up that psychological safety in the room so people feel like they can share. You know, to give you an idea, in the retreat I ran in October but we had tears the first morning and but it was. You know, my job as a facilitator is to really hold a space and so any emotion is going to be held really well and but, and those people feel like they can express themselves because when you go back, looking back at our lives can be an emotional journey if you're allowed that space and to share that with women. And what I do is an exercise where people repeat their story, because I want them to feel like to connect with the fact that it's a story, because we're going to change the story by the end of the retreat. We're going to, we're going to rewrite that script around the things that aren't working in particular. So the first morning is about really connecting in with who we have been coming in and so that we can we can sort of let that go. And then we do a beautiful meditation, which is a future meditation, looking at our future selves and who we want to be. So we're already setting the vision for the whole of the retreat and connecting in, and then, of course, we go and have some fun, because you know we want to laugh together, have some fun together.
Speaker 1:We go to some really great venues in Bali and, again, it's all taken care of, and a lot of it is in the evening. The activities are optional, but there's this care. So we stay in a beautiful retreat called Gaia Retreat Center in Ubud and there are staff there that, to me, feel like my family already. It's always the same staff. I've gotten to know them really well very caring and nurturing staff, and even the drivers that take us everywhere are just so caring and so nurturing.
Speaker 1:You feel like you're. You know there's nothing to worry about. You feel very taken care of, and I love that, particularly for women, because often we're the ones taking care of others in our daily life. So I want them to step into something where someone's taking care of stuff. There's nothing that. All you need to worry about is the change you want to make for yourself, the deeper connection you want to make to yourself and others. Everything else is taken care of, there's nothing to think about. So, but you're right, because I think connecting in with people is really important. We also have the villa has a twin share arrangement, you know. So you're in a room and you're sharing with someone, or if you've got your own room, you're sharing your bathroom. For some women, that can be maybe the first time they've done that with a stranger, and so again it's, you know, kind of easing ourselves into maybe a situation where we're really, in a way, forced to connect with someone maybe that we've never, you know, we've never met before, and and I particularly.
Speaker 1:We're talking about this before. Shelley, I particularly don't curate the audience, I don't. I don't design who comes to the retreat. I set the program and I set the intention for the program and then whoever comes is the right group to come, because I don't have an all seeing eye on which puzzles of that social map would fit together well. So so I couldn't tell you, shelley, for example 100 with 100% guarantee who I should put you in a room with so that you would get along with them and have a fantastic time. You know, I don't know that at the retreat in October, we had very young women, we had women in their middle ages, and the connections that were made were not ones that maybe I would have predicted on paper Exactly.
Speaker 1:Because it's not. It's not always like minded people that attract, it's not always people at the same life journey that attract this energy there that people are expressing at the time and a synergy that I can't predict, and so my job again is to hold the space.
Speaker 1:So I, you know, I'm there to make sure that that connection, that I can't make sure the connection happens. I'm there to make sure that there's a condition in the environment. All the conditions are in place to optimize for connection, make it easy to connect, but I'm never going to be able to predict exactly 100% around that. But having said that, the groups that I've had have really formed, you know to your point, where do they start forming within the second day?
Speaker 2:And I'm always amazed. How fast it feels like they're firm brands.
Speaker 1:Exactly Because I structure the design so that, for example, in the afternoons you can go off and do your own thing, because I figure there'd be some people who you know are a bit overwhelmed by being in the group all the time and they want to do their own thing and that's really really, you know, a good space for people who need that. You know just time on their own. But I'm always amazed at how people feel that time with other group activities they form a group and they go into town together. All they will go and have you know chai latte together or whatever. They'll go and have you know an afternoon and they so because they form those friendships really quickly. Beautiful, it's really lovely.
Speaker 2:What's coming up for me is that when I moved to Melbourne when I was I guess I was twenty and I went into the student exchange out there and I shared a room with an amazing American Girl woman now and there's time named Jen, and yeah, we shared a twin room.
Speaker 2:It was a decent size room and I think we had like a little divider in between. I remember every morning should wake up and should be so positive, like it's gonna be a good day and it was. And we had two other friends living in the same building as us who are also sharing a room and we only live together for six months in that student exchange and we've got this bond now like I've seen her very infrequently. We we've. We spoke a couple of times last year and when I come to Melbourne, like she'll be the first people that I don't want to see when we're there and that sharing a room thing. I think that that might put some people off, but I think just to say this is part of that journey of really rediscovering the connection not only with yourself but with another human being.
Speaker 1:Whether you see them again.
Speaker 2:It's just, you know, it's almost a petri dish to test, to test how friending can work in a really safe environment exactly, exactly, and you know when you think about it.
Speaker 1:when we were girls, we loved the sleepover you know that was exciting part of girl.
Speaker 1:And you know we wanna ignite that, that level of curiosity and openness and just just really being curious and excited about seeing someone else in all those stages of you know kind of life, because you know, when you think of a sleepover it's that, it's that never ending kind of Excitement about just having someone else in your space, in your intimate space. Really, you know they usually sleepover, you know you have people in your bedroom and it's something that you share with them. So it's actually about that. It's getting into stripping away all the layers, getting back to who we are really authentically, so that we can connect with someone else. And the really lovely thing about again being in Bali because the weather is beautiful. It's, you know, humid, I love humid weather, but it's humid, warm, and so you strip away a lot of the other necessities that maybe keep you a little bit more. Arm it, you know, create your armor for you in your daily life. So I find I wear less makeup when I'm in Bali, less clothing as well, because all loose clothing strip it all away.
Speaker 1:You don't want to wear shoes. You know, like I always bring my my high heels, I never wear them because I never travel without high. I never wear them in Bali, it's just in case it's a bit of a stripping away. And what we do actually is we encourage people to bring along flowing dress, at least one, because we'll we ignite some of that sort of femininity and feminine energy around how we Kind of present so weeks, for example, we have a meditation where we wear a long flowing down to that meditation and then we all go out to dinner and really strut our stuff. So there's you know, it's so.
Speaker 1:It's this beauty, really beautiful experiences along the way, and I just think that you, that, that that you know, igniting that sense of who we were when we were children around this is really important as well, because it really creates freedom, because you know, when you think about I wrote a book we haven't got to that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's about the book yes, I wrote a book.
Speaker 1:I've got it here. I wrote a book called rising to feminine power, available on Amazon, all good bookstores, also on my website. If you want to sign copy copy, go through my website. In the book I interviewed women about their experiences of power, disempowerment power, how they gain power, how they lose it, how they reignite it again. And I go through Different chapters around particularly you know that early stages of maybe how we we like we lose our confidence and then we regain it as women. But in the early stages of the book I interviewed a woman called Gwen and she tells a story about how you know when she was a child, that was when she was her most confident self and she says she actually says I peaked when I was four and I love I got back to particularly when I was that age.
Speaker 1:I was, you know, when you think about four year old girls and they know what they want. You know sometimes you know to the absolute shagrin of their mothers. But you know that sassiness, that you know determination and but also that open curiosity. You know that the world is is their oyster and kind of thinking back to what, what would I have done as a four year old around this. How would I have thought about it? And so we. It's lovely to ignite the level of curiosity around that because the four feminine feminine energies that we look at our girl energy, lover energy, mother energy and then queen energy, and really this book is about how to get to that queen energy, because we need the queen energy to lead In the world and to lead not just at work, lead our families, lead in our communities, lead around some of the problems that we need to solve for the planet. You know we need that.
Speaker 1:Lead like a queen. Yeah, exactly, exactly yeah.
Speaker 2:I love this.
Speaker 1:So I think the retreat is part of that and you know, in some ways I was in some ways shocked that I'm even doing retreats, to tell you the truth, because I wrote the book and the book was published, took me about 18 months, but I published this in the middle of the year, in 2023, and I always had this dream of doing retreats, but it all just happened. It all just fell in place around just before the book was published. Actually, I was telling friends about that goal and I think this is why sometimes you have a goal and it's good to keep goals close to your chest, because sometimes you tell too many people about your goal. That's, that's your brain rehearsing the fact that that goal is already happened sometimes, which can be great in terms of manifestation, but around that, but it can also trick you into, and your brain pathways into, believing you've already done that. So the effort required to do that is is you know you don't need to do, you don't need to do anything else, so so I think sometimes there's a balance. I think you've got to my. My kind of guidance is have a goal, tell your closest friends about your goal, but don't go wider than that around goals. I think you've got to keep them a little bit, you got to nurture them, and.
Speaker 1:But I was telling my closest friends about this goal around doing a retreat, and one of my other friends, who already does retreats and she's a fabulous confidence coach had booked a retreat center in Bali. Over covert or actually before covert, covert hit and they weren't able to take the booking. And the booking kept getting rescheduled, rescheduled, rescheduled. And it was at the final stages of rescheduling and she couldn't take it up and so she put it out on Facebook to say who wants to take this? You know, block from me, because I can't, I'm gonna lose money anyway. And she was really doing it, you know, kind of quite cheaply.
Speaker 1:And my friend tag, who knew my goal tags, and so that morning and we're going to do a retreat, and I thought I'll do a pilot because I want to test whether this program really works. But the date was, I think, two and a half weeks from that day and I thought, how am I going to make this work in two and a half weeks? Luckily I'm self-employed, so I don't need to ask for time off work, but how am I going to get that happening? And so what I did was I rang the person who had the booking, made the arrangement with her and thought right, and so I made that investment because it was a bit of an investment I had to make up front around that and then I decided I'm going to gift this to eight other women and particularly make it work by getting a group of women who can help me with feedback around a pilot program.
Speaker 1:And I basically sent out messages which said hi, how are you going? I've got this fantastic opportunity. Do you want to come to Bali with me for five nights, and it's my gift. One of my girlfriends interestingly I found out later thought that she'd been scanned. So she didn't answer the message because she thought this is too good to be true. And I remember afterwards saying to her I was trying to do this for you. She just thought I was, she was being scanned, but other women replied.
Speaker 1:And so I kind of cast out the net quite widely and again, to that point I wasn't thinking which group of women are going to get along and who do I need to bring. And it was more around it, because I advocate for women who are in their emerging stages of leadership, in their middle stages of leadership and in their later stages of leadership in life not just work but in life. And so I sort of cast the net widely and I had a friend of mine and her daughter come and her daughter was 19. She was the youngest of the group. And then I had another colleague of mine who's an organizational psychologist bring her friend, and her friend was the oldest member of the group, I think in her late 60s, and she was toying with. She'd had an amazing career in education and she was toying with will she retire? Because she wasn't sure she could retire. Her husband wanted her to retire, so she had that kind of.
Speaker 1:So this group of women came and the first thing, the first thing I hear at the airport transfer, particularly from the 19 year old, is well, there'd be people my age at this retreat and I thought, oh no, it's not going to work because there's no one you're.
Speaker 1:You know, she was the youngest, I'm not going to do you know what, by the end of the retreat that woman the nine to the youngest woman was because we do a bit of a circle out at the end and she said that she felt so supported by the other women. She thought she wasn't going to have a good time. She's had an amazing time and she's actually had some mental health challenges and during the retreat she really felt supported around those issues and she felt like she had a group of women who could continue to support her back home and she just felt that shift. And the mother and daughter felt the shift because they did this together. What a beautiful gift to do this with your daughter. And then, at the same time, the woman on the other end of my age spectrum was more prepared to go into that next stage of her life, which is, you know, to retire. And actually right now she's on a world tour holiday with her husband.
Speaker 1:That's the way to retire and she's sending us photos from Alaska. I mean it's just amazing. And so it was just an amazing experience to see these women from very different walks of life just bond.
Speaker 2:Yes, and then did you set something up for the group to continue the dialogue post retreat? Yeah, can you talk about what platforms you decided to use?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we. I decided to use WhatsApp just as an easy way of sharing between the group, and now I've also in the program design. I set up three group sessions after the retreat so the group sessions can include some group and their virtual, unless everyone's in the same place. In October we had two women from the UK, one woman from the US and then the rest were Australia, so virtual it has to be. So I set up three group sessions. They're they're self-directed sessions, so the women decide in some ways what those women circles are going to be like. But we come, we come back and support each other with our intentions in that first session. The next session is going to be something around a meditation and then the next session after that again will be self-directed by the group. They might bring something that they want to discuss or they might have an issue or a problem that they'd like support with. So it's continuing that in groups in a women's circle fashion.
Speaker 1:because I think you know you go on retreat and and I actually I did a little bit of a live on this when I got back from retreat too you can feel this. You know it's like post-retreat blues where you had this. It's like, you know, coming back from a great holiday too, you feel this sometimes too. Where you go it's a fantastic experience, but then you sort of sink back into your environment and it's a feeling of sinking back in. So you want to, you know you need support to maintain that elevation, to maintain the commitments you've made to yourself, to even maintain the time you'll spend on your own self-care, on your own development, on your own connection to yourself. So that accountability with others is important. And again, it's very gentle, it's optional. People don't have to come if they don't want to, but most people want to come to those first retreat sessions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I totally feel that, because I remember reading an article about someone coming back from a Burning man festival and how life-changing that festival had been for them. Yeah, but then they got back and they realized that nothing had changed.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it is that kind of come down. There's actually no support around you. So actually, rather than going to a really big festival like this, a retreat is kind of like one of those on a mini scale. That's right, yeah, where you know you're going to be with other people in a really safe container and that container can really continue on. That's beautiful, and I guess if the women wanted to continue on that, what's up chat would be would remain open for them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it does. It remains open and women have so women in the same location. Three of them have gone to a heels class together. They're enjoying that, the two women as I said A heels class. What's that Heels class is? I think it comes from the pole dance industry, but it's a class where you think of the dancing done by Rihanna's backup dancers.
Speaker 2:It's that kind of sexy gyrating dancing. This is why you've got to always pack your heels, just in case you have the opportunity for one of these classes.
Speaker 1:That's right. It's a dance class where you really get to strut that sassiness Again with other women in a really safe environment. It just unleashes that level of our own femininity that wants to be sassy.
Speaker 1:So some of the women went to that, which is interesting. I teach belly dance. I've continued that here and where I am and I bring that to the retreats too. So in the morning we do some gentle belly dance movements that really ignite a lot of base chakra energy and they're really fantastic. And also we do some movement and stretching to really get into our bodies. And then the two women in the UK have continued to hang out together. They formed a really lovely attachment as well in terms of a real friendship bond and again, they're very different women, so I don't think they would have met each other and connected in a different space and time.
Speaker 1:I think being on retreat is that common factor and that's the lovely thing about curating the space and this is the thing that I'm again, I'm an expert in. What are the conditions that we need to optimise that connection? Because that's what I've done in my work. You can put me in front of hundreds or thousands of people and I'll build connection in groups, group activities. It's kind of what I do.
Speaker 1:It's advanced facilitation, and when I bring that to the retreat space, I always have in mind what do people do when they go home, because that's an environment as well.
Speaker 1:And when you go home the environment is the same, so you're getting the same cues. You may have shifted something in yourself, but the environment is still the same. So you need those, that support, to help you maintain that shift in an environment that stays the same. And part of that shift might be learning how to change the script around your reactions to things, or change the script around your expectations about others, change your daily practice around something which, again, you might need support around, or even changing the way you pursue your own happiness and your goals, the commitment you make to yourself. It can be a range of things, because on the last day of the retreat we talk about what gets in our own way and often there's self-limiting beliefs that get in our own way, and so we do an immunity to change exercise, which again comes from my background in psychology, but it's really focusing in on what are the commitments we make to ourselves that perhaps served us before but that now are getting in the way of the new commitments we want to make.
Speaker 2:And so you need to address that and almost like thanking them as well because they've got to hear right, that's right, they're letting them go.
Speaker 1:That's right, but that takes practice because you've got to create new pathways in your brain around doing things differently. So it's creating those new habits, those small things that make a big difference, because it is those small things often in life that make a big difference. So we're talking about transformation that's very doable and, I hope, lasting.
Speaker 2:Yes. So, I'd love to delve into that, the small things that make a big difference. So what have you found off the back of retreats that maybe you've attended or ones that you've facilitated yourself, any small changes that have really made a difference to your everyday life?
Speaker 1:For me it's having a different way of thinking about situations. So, even so, the codification of, for example, expressing my feminine energy and having words around that so even it's a small change around how I think about things, and hopefully this is what we try to do at the retreat is offer this how do I think about where my girl energy is showing up, or even where my lover energy is showing up? So, for example, lover energy is that energy we feel when we are taking care of ourselves, but also in that beautiful, delicious, loving frame with others. And where does that turn up? Because I'm often in my queen energy. I'm in my work and even when I come home and I'm managing the affairs of my household, I'm very much in that queen energy. I've got to get things done. I'm competent, I'm confident, I need to. I know where I'm going, I'm driven, I'm disciplined.
Speaker 1:If you look at my diary, you can see how disciplined I am. I block out times, but that's queen energy. And then the little things that make a big difference to me is is actually having a reminder for me in my day to turn that off and stepping to love energy. And so in my diary now I actually have a little reminder which says stop and so what that? And so after stop, the next thing is how to?
Speaker 1:Is doing things that ignite that so I might cook you know, actually cook, I love cooking. Cooking brings out that softness in me, because that love energy is that softness. Or I might do some dancing, or I might do a little bit of, you know, sewing. It's those things that take me into a bit more mindfulness. Actually, I've got a puzzle that I've got on my coffee table at the moment. It's things like that that soften me down, away from that queen energy and that bring me into a state of the day where I'm going to be a better companion to my partner. Because for me, because I was going into that part of the day in the evening and feeling like I was missing out on that bit of our relationship that was, you know, we've been together for five years now and I still want to keep that, you know first year of you know, lustful romance in there.
Speaker 1:But I was feeling like it was waning a little bit and but that I can shift that energy, you know, because I know he's there, it's me. If I soften into that a little bit, I can make things happen.
Speaker 1:And that's been a really great change because it means that I'm still achieving the things I want to achieve, but that for me it's actually getting that balance in life. And particularly, I'm sure I'm like many others we're all working from home now, so you need to be able to have those reminders to switch and in labelling things can be useful. You know, I've got a shortcut way of reminding myself to soften into that, because I just remember love, energy. It's just a word, it doesn't mean anything, but I just remember that and I remember feeling around that and then I shift into that softness.
Speaker 1:So things like that, small things that make a big difference.
Speaker 2:And it's just bringing up for me that I have heard stories of people that when we did all go to remote working one of my friend's husband is very senior, he's like a president of a huge company and he would have always gone into the office and remote working.
Speaker 2:He would go from work and then he would start to treat his wife like an employee and she's like no we need to shift this but, it wasn't necessarily, it wasn't intentional and he had never done it before, but it's like we do need to make a conscious shift, like I have in my diary often at two o'clock to do some yoga before I go and pick my kids up, because I want to go from work mode to mum mode, and I just I had a couple of days of digital detox recently and then I'm like this felt really good, like I felt so much different after it. So I'm just thinking about what?
Speaker 1:what is it? Context or boundaries?
Speaker 2:So I'm going to think about what boundaries I'm going to put regularly, and I don't want to be someone who is always on my phone in front of my kids. So a boundary for me. When my children come home from school, they often do want to have a little bit of telly time. They've been with school on the go all day so, like, get them a snack, they can watch a bit of telly and I can finish off whatever it is I'm needing to do. But then, four o'clock till eight o'clock, I'm trialling. Now that's again. Device devices off.
Speaker 2:Intensive family time yeah, yeah, Because then I'm actually able to get my kids, like they have, the attention they need. That's right. I can get them ready into bed at a reasonable hour and then I then have my evening, exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's brilliant. So these are little structures in our lives. You know I'm I'm I'm the most, you know, impulsive, unstructured person at times. I love uncertainty. I'm really I'm great with that.
Speaker 1:But what I've learned is structure in the day in your own way. Everyone needs to come to it in their own way, but some level of structure does help you create the day you want, because I always think about. You know it's again, it's our story, it's our script. What day do I want to have? You know, that's really what manifesting is about what, what, what do I want to see happen? I have many choices. What choices do I want to make? You know what? What level of preparation do you know? Where does my head and my heart and my body need to be to be able to make that choice? Because you know it's also about health. You know we make choices about our health as well, and so so, absolutely you're.
Speaker 1:What you're doing is those deliberate things are creating the day for you and others around you, and and you know it's an experiment, like you're saying, I'm trialing. If it doesn't work, go back to something else. You know it doesn't have to be, you know, all in or nothing. You know, I think sometimes people think, oh, I can't do that all in, so I'm not even going to try. But you know, habits form from just doing something in small doses. So, for example, right now I'm getting back into a gym routine because my goal is to go to the gym and particularly work on my strength, because I feel, I feel like I'm a happier person and I can achieve more when I'm strong. And. But you know, going to the gym, particularly when you're going back into it, is really tough. You know, it feels like work and oh, it's like and. So what I'm doing is just going and not really thinking about what I need to do.
Speaker 1:When I get there, I'll just go and I trick myself, I'll just go for 10 minutes, that's all I need to do. It's 10 minutes. But once I'm there, of course I stay for at least half an hour. 40 minutes, and I get, I get something done, and and. But. But if I was to start with, I need to go to the gym for 40 minutes or 30 minutes every day and I need to do my program, and you know that that to me would be so off-putting. But so the habit is about getting there.
Speaker 1:You know, I always say and I say this to myself because, again, I don't like structure 80% of life is turning up, 20%, the rest of the 20% works itself out. So that's how I motivate myself to go, you know, or even to attend. You know, sometimes it's about a party or an event that you've been looking forward to and then suddenly, on the day you don't want to go, there's a feeling of, you know, effort required to go and then I remind myself 80% of life is just turning up, 20% of the rest is the rest, it'll work itself out. You know networking, for example. If you're in business, that can be daunting. You know networking, again going. How am I going to make a connection at a networking event?
Speaker 1:These are people I don't know. I don't know how to do small talk. Don't think about that, just go. 80% of life is turning up, 20% is the rest. If I go, I don't like it, I'll leave. But of course you don't leave, do you? Because, oh, you end up talking to someone, you end up maybe even making a connection that keeps you there for an hour. So we live life as if we can predict the future, and we can't. The thing we know for sure is that we do not know anything about the future, so Do you know what my spiritual mentor?
Speaker 2:I caught up with him before Christmas and something he said to me is that the majority of people live their life as if they are on a boat coming towards a giant iceberg. Oh, that's terrible, and to live a happy life, all we need to do is remember that it's an illusion. Yeah, yeah, and just enjoy the boat.
Speaker 1:Enjoy the boat ride. Enjoy the boat ride exactly. And you know what, shela. By the way, I love that you have a spiritual mentor. That's beautiful, I love that. That's fantastic. And, by the way, I remember as a child where I used to be in the backseat of the car and I used to really enjoy the ride. You just reminded me because often my mum would ferry me to, you know, she wouldn't necessarily tell me where I was going or we were going somewhere, and I wasn't that keen about the destination. So I just enjoy the ride. I remember being in an old-fashioned car back then. It was a Ford Fairlane orange Ford Fairlane, because it was in the 70s and I'd be in the backseat and I'd be looking at the people on the road and wondering what their life's like and what are they thinking about, and just enjoying the ride. So you're right. Well, you know it's great advice. It's really. You know, there's moments, you know, and I have a vivid memory of that because it was joyous.
Speaker 2:I wish my children could enjoy the ride. My brother lives in Utah and I am contemplating a road trip which would be about a 14-hour road trip. I think I'm like, could we do it? But like, even if you just go on a half-hour road trip, it can be challenging, but maybe this is the kind of thing that they need to learn how to enjoy the ride.
Speaker 1:Exactly, that's right. I think you'd have to add some activities, you'd have to facilitate that. It would be interesting, wouldn't it? But yeah, we used to do that a lot as kids. We used to be bored a lot as kids, I think and then it ignites your imagination. So, and that's the thing, there's a bit more of an intolerance for boredom, I think, at the moment, not just in children, in all of us. As soon as we feel bored, rather than maintaining just some thought, activity or imagination, we go to something, we look at something, we look at a screen, we listen to a podcast which is good, we want people to listen to podcasts but there is something for silence and just checking in and looking at things differently because we are bored. As I said, I don't have children, but I have nephews and nieces that I have a lot to do with their lives, and so I spend a lot of time with them, and my nephew in particular. I often say to him it's okay to be bored, because he hates it.
Speaker 2:And maybe we should even put in our calendar intentional silence.
Speaker 1:Intentional. Yeah, exactly, Exactly so.
Speaker 2:Sprinkle of silence throughout your day, just nothing. Should we just give a gift of silence now, yeah, yeah, we like have they gone? Josephine, it's been a gift. Thank you for your beautiful presence and I'm so inspired by all the conversations about retreats and just the beautiful connections that can be made on retreat.
Speaker 2:So thank you for sharing so openly about your journey of like crafting it from pilot to full retreat last year and then coming up again this year, and I'm speaking to my friend Kirsten about how can we make this happen. To come to Josephine's retreat yes, Thank you, shelly.
Speaker 1:It's been lovely to have a conversation. I think this is the first conversation I've had about that, about the process, so thank you for the opportunity. It was really fun to do that, and I think I'm going to listen back to this because there were some things I want to take and put into my structure as well. And isn't that beautiful. Every time we have a conversation, I learn so much from people like you as well. So thank you, thank you, absolute privilege to you my pleasure.
