Hello and welcome back to the podcast. Today I really want to lean into the importance of mindset, but also the importance of having a community and surrounding yourself with people that are there to support you in what form that looks like.

Now, I have been doing this business. I've had it for three years, but for a couple of those years, I was also working part time. And prior to that, I worked in the NHS for 16, 17 years.

In the NHS, there is a certain mindset in terms of treating patients — that we've got so many on the waiting list that you just do the bare minimum just to get people as good as they need to be and then you can discharge them.

And also, you can only treat one part of the body. They are referred, well, for me, it would be pelvic floor issues. Might be incontinence, might be prolapse, or it might be that they are pregnant and they had bad back or pelvic girdle pain, but you weren't allowed to look at the rest of them. So in terms of pelvic floor, that isn't just about the pelvic floor. That is about the whole body — the back, the hips.

Generally, I would assess those as well because it might have an element of the back that's causing pelvic floor issues. So those things I assessed and I dealt with, but I wasn't able to delve into anything other than the physical problems. So I wasn't able to look at their stress management or their overall well-being or perimenopause or menopause symptoms. I wasn't able to go into those things.

So that set me kind of thinking on that mindset that you see people once every four to six weeks and you can only do that bare minimum. So moving into private practice, I did change that to a certain degree in terms of thinking, there's a lot more that I can do with women.

But I still thought, actually, you probably don't need to see me that often because I don't have enough to give them or I'm not valuable to them. And so that is completely wrong. But at the time I was thinking, okay, they probably don't want to come see me that often. And I can only give them so much because they don't want to come very often.

But that then got to a point when I stopped working part time elsewhere and I was relying solely on just my clinic and any income from my business. And people started to cancel because after you've not been for four to six weeks, it just wasn't their priority. They weren't getting anywhere — quite rightly, the fact that I wasn't giving them everything because I was still in that NHS mindset. But people were cancelling. Then lots of people were messing me around in my Pilates classes.

Unfortunately, I take things quite personally. So if loads of people drop out, and then I'm thinking, I'm not gonna have any money, and then maybe I shouldn't be doing this business. Maybe I'm not cut out for this — even though that's completely wrong. I will come to that in a minute.

But I got to a point where I was just like really down thinking that I'm never going to make this work. And people aren't getting better. And I was just really down and I was almost thinking, well, maybe I should just pack up and get a job. I was even thinking, well, maybe I just get a job down in a shop somewhere just to make up some money.

And this was going on for ages that I kind of just felt like this. But then I started listening to this business coach online who specifically helps people run their clinics, and things started to click — the fact that the reason that people weren't coming back is because I wasn't doing everything I could for them. Even though I've got all this knowledge and all these skills that I could now bring, I was still stuck in that NHS mindset that I can only see people every six to eight weeks and we can only do the bare minimum for them.

And I was just like, why? Why am I doing this? And then suddenly I think, okay, fine — I really need to offer what's best for the patient, not what I've done for like 16 years. It's really hard to get out of that habit of 16, 17 years in the NHS to change up.

So now that I have the ability to offer everything — so mindset as well as physio and hypnosis and menopause and everything I could put together to help people — I started to change my mindset, working on this, some journaling, just talking to my own subconscious, doing some self-hypnosis.

But one of the things that made the biggest change was I actually wrote an email out to my client list and explained how I was feeling. I was so frustrated with all these people messing me around, dropping out, not getting back to me or just thinking that it's just that system — dropping out and it doesn't matter — when you had like 10 people dropping out of my classes, which was a big chunk of income, all last minute. They weren't abiding by my terms and conditions or they were taking the mickey about what they could do.

It just got on top of me. So I thought, right, I'm just going to send an email out to my current clients, just letting them know how I was feeling.

It also made kind of a nice email for people, explaining how I've changed my mindset and things. But I sent it out, and it’s the time I’ve had the most responses from an email. And it’s amazing thinking that no one actually reads my emails, there’s no point — but actually, I had so many responses saying, “No, we love your classes,” or “No, you’re really good. Don’t give up.”

Lots of supportive messages coming through, which was a nice boost. I’d already started to come out the other side of this “Oh, what am I going to do?” But it was just nice to have that little bolster up.

I also had two ladies come in that evening for Pilates with a bunch of flowers and chocolates and a plant to say that they appreciated me and they love the classes. I just thought that was lovely — that all of these people either sent me an email or commented in class, saying, “No, you are good, you can do it, keep going,” and just all of this support.

Knowing that everything I’d put out there — I love to support people, obviously I’d helped them, I try and make the classes the best that they can be, giving everyone that community that they can rely on as well — to have that then come back to me was lovely. To think that they all cared about me, they all loved the classes.

It was mostly the classes because they’re the ones that I see every week and get to know really well. But even people that had come to me one-to-one said that it made a big difference to their lives.

So I decided that I needed to change that mindset of “can’t do it.” I changed it to thinking, right, what is the best way that I can serve these women? And then putting that across to them.

And then they were all keen to come and see me regularly because I was putting out a different energy. Whereas before, I was like, “Oh, we probably don’t need to see you for six to eight weeks,” and they were all agreeing and didn’t want to come see me more often.

But it’s about that energy that I was putting out there that then they got back, and they saw the benefit — they wanted to invest in their own health, they wanted to improve.

So not only financially was that great for me, but actually they were then more investing in their own life and well-being as well. So I was making more of a difference to them and their wellbeing.

So I just wanted to relate that to how you might be feeling at the minute. If you’re thinking, “I’ve got all these symptoms, I feel terrible. What is the point? Why would I bother going to exercise or changing the food that I’m eating?” I get it. It can be really overwhelming.

And I feel that with my own health sometimes as well, when I have done too much and my chronic fatigue has wiped me out. I’m like, whatever — I don’t want to do anything, I just want to sit and eat chocolate in bed. But it is knowing that it can get better the other side, and there are things that you can do that will help.

And one of those is very much looking at your mindset. Now there’s various ways that you can do this. Journaling is a really, really nice way to identify how you’re feeling, because sometimes we actually don’t express it or realise what’s going on under the surface.

This is our subconscious mind that has got all these thoughts and patterns — but actually getting it out, so me writing that email, actually acknowledging how I felt and what had been going on. Whereas everyone may have thought that everything was going swimmingly, I was like, actually, no, I need some help. I need support.

I need people to come and use my service and not mess me around. It might be that you just need to write it down: what are all those underlying thoughts? And then what you can do is challenge them.

So it might be that you give advice as you would to a friend — or thinking about me getting those replies from the email, think, okay, if I wrote this out to all of my friends or my family, what reply would I get?

It might be that actually it needs to be a different group of people — maybe it would be strangers that would be giving you advice — or how would you give advice to a friend?

We can often argue against how our subconscious is thinking. It might be saying, “You’re not worth making that effort. You’re not worth investing in.” It might be as harsh as, “You’re stupid” or “You’re ugly” or “You’re getting old” or whatever.

You may be arguing that these are all the case, but actually if you were to say that to a friend or somebody, that wouldn’t go down well. But we are so much harsher to ourselves than we are to other people.

So if you felt that way — or your friend felt that they weren’t worth it, they weren’t valuable, or they were looking terrible, or they’re just getting old — it’s like, how would you advise them?

It’s like, we all age. It just shows all the experience that you’ve had in your life. We can age gracefully, we can actually put in the effort to make sure that as we age, we stay fit and healthy. You are valuable enough — everybody is valuable enough — to put in that effort.

So it’s just all of the thoughts and worries that you’re having, then write the counterarguments, or just even identify and then say, actually, how can we change that?

It might be that you do something like a positive affirmation, say, “I am valuable. I am beautiful. I am worth making that investment of time or money.”

So if we put it into positive terms, then our subconscious picks up on that. So things that we repeat, it then thinks that is the truth.

Then looking at how you can get support from other people — just having that bit of community support really helped me get back to feeling, actually, I am worth it. And the business is worth working on.

Okay, how can I fix this? What are the plans? What are the goals? How can I make some steps forward in order to get where I want to be, just by having that little bit of community support?

Now, you may find that friends and family actually aren’t that supportive. It might be that you need to look elsewhere. Maybe there’s a support group. Maybe it’s just going to an exercise class and then getting to know the members in there.

Maybe it is actually going to see a professional — so coming to see somebody like myself that can help support you through the changes that you need to make, and telling you how to make them and keeping you accountable.

And just remember that actually asking for help or telling others or talking to people about your struggles isn’t a sign of weakness. It’s actually a sign of strength — admitting that you maybe aren’t completely okay.

And then once you have made that step, knowing that you have that support, you have the strength and the resilience that you can make some changes that will help you feel better. Whether that’s physically, emotionally, mentally, actually asking for support and help to make those changes to your mindset can make a massive difference.

Remember that you are not alone. Even this podcast is here to support you.

Just take a minute this week to think how are you feeling? Maybe write it down. If everything is perfectly fine — great, fantastic, keep it up.

If there is something that is getting you down or that you need more support with, then think where can you find that support and go out and seek it.

Until next time, take care.