A listener production.
Hello there, my beautiful listeners.
I hope you're feeling refreshed after the silly season.
I am busting to chat with you all
because you know how much I love to chat.
And what I do is that I sneak into your feed
in between my guest chats.
So every fortnight, here I am to talk about, you know,
things that I've been thinking about.
It might be something that's on my mind.
It might be something that's happened in my life.
It's something that I really want to share with you.
So my big question for you this week
is why does tuning out on holidays
let us tune in to our inner voice?
So like many of you,
I've had a bit of a break over these past few weeks.
And isn't it lovely to take a step away
from our busy, crazy lives,
to get away from the grind, the routine, and to exhale?
And why I want to talk to you about this
is that what I've found is when I'm away,
when I'm on holidays,
it's when I can tap into what my heart is telling me.
I like to call it my heart.
It might be your inner voice.
It could be your intuition, whatever it is you call it.
It's what you want to do.
It's what you need to do.
And I know for me,
I get caught up in the boringness sometimes
of everyday life, of moobering,
dropping the kids to school, picking them up,
thinking about what mincemeal am I gonna cook for dinner,
walking, daff our dog,
all those sorts of things that take up our time,
take up our head space.
And it doesn't often leave a lot of time to reflect
and also to think about where you're at in your life,
what you want to change,
what is it that is going to make you happy?
And I know the older I get,
the more I want to tap into that.
We know that life is short
and as we get older, it gets even shorter.
What we are running out of is time.
And I want to make the most of the time that I have left.
that is why I love to tune into my inner voice.
So I wanted to share with you something that happened to me.
It was four years ago when I was on holidays.
And at the time I was flat out.
I was busy doing Studio 10, a job that I loved.
It was the best job that I've ever had on telly.
And why I loved it so much was that I could be myself.
I could be silly, but I could also be serious
and debate the things that mattered to me.
I worked with a fabulous bunch of people.
I met my bestie, beautiful niece, Denise Drysdale.
So it was a really good time in my life.
But like everything, things do come to an end.
And you have to be aware of when it's right
to make that change.
And for me, I just kept going because I was busy.
I was on that treadmill, you know,
when you're running, running, running, running, running,
And it took me being on holidays when I was stopping
to actually listen to what my inner voice was telling me.
And that inner voice was saying to me, you're not happy.
And for someone who on the outside seems very happy,
that was quite confronting to hear that, to tune into that.
And I knew that that voice had been there for some time,
but my busyness through the year, I was pushing that away.
I was hiding it with being busy, with feeling capable,
with fronting up to work every day,
putting on my false eyelashes, collapsing in a heap,
drinking too much wine on the weekends
to sort of still that voice.
That's what I was doing.
And it took me stopping being on holidays
to actually realize that I wasn't happy.
And that can be scary, can't it?
It can be scary coming to a point and realizing,
oh, where am I at?
And I knew I had to listen to that.
And I remember listening more and more.
And don't you find listeners that you think,
you can overthink things,
but you know you're not overthinking
that you actually are realizing, you know what?
I need to make a change.
And then I put voice to my inner voice.
I spoke to Petey, my husband.
And I remember we were lucky enough to be overseas.
We were in Thailand and we were lying under our umbrellas,
smothered in some block of course,
but you know, we were lying there,
looking at the girls swimming in the water.
And I said to Petey, you know what?
I've got to make a change.
And he looked at me and he said,
oh, pussycat, what do you mean?
You know, he's used to me being a little more spontaneous
and sort of saying, let's do this, let's do that.
So I think initially he was thinking,
oh, what's this about?
But I said to him, no, I need to leave work.
And I remember he stopped and he was like, what?
Cause he knew how much I loved the job that I was doing.
He knew that I loved being on telly because you know,
if I'm really honest and I am, I love the attention.
Who doesn't love that attention?
But that was coming at a cost.
And I said to Petey, I need to take a step back
because I knew that I wasn't being present in my life.
I felt like I wasn't being present for my girls
and I wasn't being present for Petey.
And that inner voice was telling me I wasn't happy.
So I said to Petey, I need to make a change.
I need to leave my job.
Now you might be listening to that thinking,
no, I don't really want to leave my job
or make that dramatic a change.
Hey, it might be something else that you want to do.
And I'm not talking here about making resolutions
because I don't believe in that
and I don't think they last or work.
To me, it's about having that time away
from your usual life to think about
what you want to do next
or to make a bit of an inventory on your emotional life.
Do I want to do more for me?
Do I want to laugh more?
Do I want to dye my hair?
Do I want to cut it short?
Do I want to have more sex?
Do I want to have less sex?
Do I want to be honest about all of those things?
But it can be scary.
And because these very thoughts are scary,
we push them away.
We push them away as we go through our daily life.
So that is why I think it is so important
to tune out on your holiday.
So you can tune in to what it is that matters to you.
What it is that you want to do differently.
And as I said, it doesn't have to be as dramatic
as deciding I'm gonna leave my job.
But it's about taking time for you.
Because I know, beautiful listeners, like me,
you also don't take enough time for yourself.
You care for everyone around you.
You make sure everyone else is happy,
that they all have what they need,
and we forget about ourselves.
And that's why tuning out is important.
So you can tune in to what do I need?
What is going to make me happy?
Or what is going to bring me joy?
Or what is going to make my heart sing?
I might be afraid about what my heart is telling me,
but what I've learned is you can't ignore that.
Because if you keep ignoring that inner voice,
it's going to come back.
It's gonna come back and bite you in all sorts of ways.
It might be in destructive sorts of behaviour
in terms of either drinking too much,
not that, you know, the old glass of wine
or whatever it is that you wanna do,
Aperol spritz, no worries.
But you know those times when you realise
you're numbing yourself because you don't wanna face
what it is that you're really feeling.
Or it might be not going for that walk,
having the stretch, seeing your friends,
seeing the people that make you laugh,
that make you remember who it is you really are.
That's what you need to be doing more of
as we head into 2023.
My lovely listeners, what is it that your inner voice
is telling you now?
What is it telling you when you're on holidays?
And also remember, holidays doesn't have to be
heading to the fancy destination.
For many of us, we can't do that.
It's not about that.
It might be going camping.
It might be the caravan park.
I had great caravan park holidays when I was little.
It was such an exciting adventure.
I've gotta be honest though, camping isn't my thing.
My dad used to take me camping with my sisters
and my stepmom when we were little.
And although I love you Daddo, it scarred me for life.
But anyway, that's me.
You might like to go trekking, go trekking,
do whatever it is, but take a holiday
from your normal life.
And I think we all need that.
We all need to get out of that routine
of doing those boring, boring things.
And what I wanted also to share with you
is with my recent holiday, we actually headed back
for the first time in four years to Thailand
to that very same place where I made that decision
lying under a beautiful palm tree,
looking out into the beautiful warm ocean.
I imagined that there were mermaids out there
and looking into that big blue sky
and making that scary decision
to leave my full-time TV job to be more present.
And it was so life-affirming
to be under that same palm tree.
We went back and stayed at that same place
and realising or knowing that I was happy.
And being happy isn't, oh my God, I'm happy all the time,
but I was happier.
I was happier about where I am in my life.
I feel far more present.
And sure, there are times when making that big choice
and that decision was scary
when I wasn't getting a lot of work
and I was thinking, oh dear.
And then of course COVID hit and yeah, that was great.
But you know what it brought?
This amazing podcast that I'm doing
with my amazing producer, Nick McClure.
And for us, it is such a passion to do this,
to do a podcast that matters, not only to us,
but I know it matters to you, our beautiful listeners,
because we have the time to have these discussions
that I know I crave and that I love having,
even though my daughters,
I'll have discussions with them.
And yes, we had some amazing discussions on holidays,
but there would come a time when there'd be the IRL.
It's like, mum, you don't need to turn this into a lesson.
Doesn't need to be a life lesson.
We didn't want to have the discussion about sexuality
or consent or about the sort of bikinis we're wearing.
We just wanted to enjoy.
So I still, you know, I don't always pick the right moments
to have these big conversations,
but that's why when I'm having these chats with you,
I don't have anyone rolling their eyes.
I can just chat to you and tell you why this matters to me.
And I know that it matters to you too,
because I love hearing from you.
I love getting messages that slip into my DMs
from across the world from you saying,
yes, I heard you or I thought about this
and I thought about that.
And so what I want you to think about is that inner voice.
Tap into that for 2023.
Tune out on your holiday.
You might've come back from your holiday already,
but take a little bit of tune out time
and think what is my heart telling me?
Tune into what it is that matters to you
and make that matter this year.
And again, it's not about remaking your life necessarily,
but it's about making you matter,
putting yourself at the top of the list.
We always put ourselves at the bottom of the list.
No, put yourself at the top of the list.
I'm tuning in to my inner voice.
And you know what that inner voice is telling me?
Keep being brave and be bold this year.
Just because I was bold four years ago,
doesn't mean that's it for me.
Let's not creep back into our shells.
Jump out, be brave and be bold.
And I'll be back next week
with another beautiful big conversation
with one of my amazing guests.
Until then, listen to that inner voice.