Basically, before I had my baby, so much of what I saw online about the newborn stage was negative. It was all “say goodbye to sleep,” horror stories, and people warning you that your life is basically over. I’m not pretending it isn’t very hard (and that’s as someone with a supportive partner and financial stability). But I found that when I was preparing for our baby to arrive, what I actually needed wasn’t more fear. I needed the practical stuff no one tells you and positivity, delivered by someone who isn’t trying to scare you.

So for full context: I’m a first-time mum, and prior to getting pregnant I did not speak baby. I don’t have loads of friends with babies either, so there was no big group chat of mums to ask, just a few (very amazing and patient) friends. Most of what I knew came from them, NCT classes, books and the internet.

So this is the list I wish someone had handed me before Cecilia arrived of the things I learned in the first 24 to 48 hours. Even though I did a full course of NCT classes and obviously did a lot of research, these still took me by surprise. I kept thinking, “Hmm, I feel like I should know this.” If you’re about to have your first baby and you also feel like you don’t know babies at all, hopefully this helps!

(And because it’s not all hard bits, I’ve also added my pleasant surprises from the newborn trenches at the end.)

1. Newborns eat every two to three hours (even if you have to wake them)

Newborns need to eat every two to three hours, whether that’s breast milk, formula or a combination. And even if they sleep through it, they should still be eating every two to three hours. Until they’ve regained their birth weight, their stomachs are teeny tiny. What can happen is that their blood sugar drops too low for them to give themselves the signal to wake up and say, “I’m hungry, please give me some milk.” So you actually have to wake them up.

We were very lucky that at the beginning, we got a baby who literally just slept and did nothing else. Most people who met her in the first week didn’t even know her eyes could open. I was like, “Oh my God, amazing. This is ideal.” But I’m so glad someone told me I could wake her up, otherwise I wouldn’t have!

Also, at the beginning, if your body is producing colostrum, it actually keeps them fuller for longer (more on that in the pleasant surprises bit below). But even so, once I knew this new fact, I didn’t want to risk it.

2. Go over safe sleep again (and again)

We learned this in NCT, and I kind of forgot about it until I was actually doing it in practice. Right after she was born, I went back over the safe sleep guidelines to make sure we were always following them. There’s so much you see online, and not all of it is actually safe sleep.

The Lullaby Trust has some really clear guidelines. These are the ones I wrote down for me to remember:

• On their back, always.

• Nothing else in the cot. No toys, no loose sheets, no loose blankets.

• A firm, flat surface with a fitted sheet, so nothing super soft.

• Feet to foot. Their feet should be at the base of the cot. This matters most if there are any blankets in there, but I put her feet to foot anyway, just in case a blanket fell from the high heavens and decided to come for my child.

• Check the back of their neck if you need to check their temperature. I’ve also got a little printout that shows how much they should be wearing at different room temperatures.

There are loads of pillows and cot bumpers out there. Even our interior designers put a cot bumper in the nursery design, and I would never have known it wasn’t a thing if I hadn’t looked at the guidelines.

3. Zip-up swaddles are a lifesaver

This totally depends on whether your baby likes them, but mine has absolutely loved the zip-up Love to Dream swaddles. We didn’t take them to the hospital, and I really wish we had.

I found them so much less overwhelming. It just zips all the way up, rather than having to learn how to swaddle properly and then worrying something’s going to come loose.

4. They are SO noisy when they sleep

Nobody warned me about this. You’ll look at them like, “Are you awake? What is wrong with you?” They grunt, squeak and wheeze. They basically turn into little goats, especially if they’re in their own bassinet, which is where ours has slept from the start.

So before you pick them up to settle them, have a proper look and check they’re actually awake, a lot of the time, they’re fast asleep, just making ridiculous noises.

5. Nappies tell you if they’re getting enough milk

Back to feeding. Newborns feed roughly 8 to 12 times a day, and at the beginning I was really stressed about whether she was getting enough.

But it turns out the best way to know whether they’re getting enough is simply the number of wet and dirty nappies.

Here’s what we were told:

1. First 24 hours: they should do their first poo.

2. The first few days: the number of poos roughly matches how many days old they are. So one on day one, two on day two, three on day three.

3. After that: around four to five a day, at least for a breastfed baby early on.

Disclaimer: Your midwife will tell you what to look out for with your own baby, so always go by what they say.

Also, I always thought nappy rash came from the nappy rubbing. It’s actually the poo itself that can literally burn their skin. That’s why they get nappy rash, and why they cry when they’ve got a dirty nappy.

For the first few days, we didn’t always know when she had a dirty nappy, because she just wouldn’t cry. She wasn’t a crier (God bless). So I would say check regularly, even if they seem perfectly happy.

And now, the pleasant surprises

I feel like the internet needs a lot more positivity about going into motherhood, and this is my contribution to that!!

They’re incredibly boring (in the best way)

Newborns are gorgeous, and I love my child so much, but newborns really do not do much. Their wake windows are so short at the beginning, particularly in the first few days. Unless you have a baby who cries all the time (which almost no one in my NCT group had), they sleep the vast majority of the time. Literally all they do is feed, sleep, poo, repeat.

For the first week or so she’d stare at me, I’d stare at her, for her entire 15-minute wake window. There were more than a few moments where we just sat there like, “What do we do now?”

That means that, in theory, you can catch up on more sleep than you’d think. That’s if you’re not too anxious, and especially if you have a support person (husband, boyfriend, girlfriend, wife, whoever). I know it’s very easy to just want to stare at them instead, but use that time for whatever you need. I really didn’t expect to get it and was pleasantly surprised about it.

Their wake windows get slightly longer every week, and that’s the part we found harder. Around three weeks, she got fussier and fussier, and at first you think something’s wrong. It’s just that they’re awake for longer, can’t really do anything with that time, and don’t know how to put themselves to sleep yet. So I’ve been told that more crying when they’re overtired is completely normal.

Colostrum keeps them fuller for longer

This was such a pleasant surprise, because to me it meant more time to catch up on sleep, which I really needed after a middle-of-the-night C-section.

I was still feeding her at least every three to four hours, because I was scared. What if the last feed had just transitioned to milk and she was suddenly really hungry? But even my baby book said that while your colostrum is in, it’s the perfect time to catch up on a bit more sleep, because it keeps them full for a lot longer. I remember being in hospital, telling the staff I needed to feed her because it had been three hours, and them saying, “She’s on colostrum at the moment, she can actually go significantly longer than that.” (But obviously, feed her!)

That book, by the way, is Your Baby Week by Week, and I’d recommend everyone get it. It’s so good to read each week and think, “Okay, this is what’s about to happen, and it’s normal.”

Life on a timer is great for my ADHD

I thought I’d really struggle with days that are just one long stretch and get absolutely nothing done. But due to feeding, my whole life is on a timer now, and timers are great for ADHD brains. Every time I finish a feed, I’m running around doing what I need to do, because I know the clock is ticking until the next one.

The only catch is that it’s not a reliable timer. Sometimes she needs a feed earlier than I expect. You win some, you lose some.

Pumping is way less faff than I expected

I was weirdly worried about pumping. I thought I’d need loads of pump parts and bottles, and that I’d be terrible at the whole system of washing, sterilising and drying, over and over, plus pumping after every feed.

I didn’t start pumping until week three, because I didn’t want to mess with my supply or with establishing breastfeeding. Since then, I’ve been building up a supply so I can go out for an appointment or a meeting, which I’ll need when I go back to work in a few weeks.

Two things made it so much easier:

1. Put your partner on pump parts duty. Honestly, one of the best things I can tell you. If you can, especially while they’re off work, you should just be feeding the baby. That is a full-time job, and they should be doing everything else, including the pump parts. Just because something goes on your boobs doesn’t mean it’s only yours to deal with. The baby goes on your boobs too, and they’re not just yours to deal with either!

2. You can sterilise with boiling water. I thought every single sterilise would mean running the steriliser for an hour, then stressing if things weren’t ready for the next feed. But you can just wash everything, then boil it in a pan. The NHS says to boil for at least 10 minutes. You can also use Milton sterilising tablets, which is a lot simpler. Now I only use the steriliser about once every 24 hours.

Anyway, those are all my new fun facts! I hope they help if you’re about to have a baby and, like me, feel a little clueless.

Important to say, this is just my experience and not medical advice. Always check with your own doctor, midwife or health visitor! I’ll see you on Tuesday for less baby poo & pumping chat.

Well, the timing of this week’s podcast episode is very apt because while I’ve been off in the newborn bubble, the internet has decided to start debating personal brands, and genuinely coincidentally, we pre-recorded an episode on exactly that for this week.

You might have seen Emma Grede talking about this recently. Her take, essentially, is that we’ve become far too focused on building a personal brand before we’ve actually built anything worth having a personal brand around. That the women we admire got really good at something, built brilliant careers and businesses, and then people wanted to hear what they had to say.

I agree with a lot of what Emma is saying (I’m also a massive fan of hers and we had her on the podcast last year). I don’t think a personal brand should ever become a replacement for doing the actual work. I think it takes extraordinary effort to get extraordinary outputs and you cannot manufacture expertise with a good content strategy.

BUT, and you knew there was one coming, I also feel very strongly about the other side of this.

Being intentional about my personal brand has been one of the biggest multipliers of my career. My personal brand was essentially a marketing grant for my businesses when I founded them. It’s allowed me to co-own companies and start a podcast. I would never have had a fraction of the opportunities I’ve had if I’d done all of the same work quietly and just hoped somebody eventually noticed. And, importantly, there was strategy behind that. I’ve been very intentional about what I want to be known for, what I put out into the world and making sure the work I’m doing is visible to the right people.

I’ve been thinking it over a lot this week, and I think both things can be true.

Do brilliant work. Get really fucking good at something. But I also don’t think we should be afraid of making sure people know about it and strategising around that at the same time.

Which brings us VERY conveniently to this week’s Future Self episode with Grace Andrews.

I planned this episode as part of the series months ago because I genuinely believe your personal brand can be one of the biggest multipliers for getting you closer to the career and life you’re reverse engineering towards. And crucially, this isn’t an episode about becoming a content creator or getting more followers. It’s about becoming known for the things you actually want to be known for, so the right opportunities can find you.

So consider this our very conveniently timed contribution to the personal brand discourse.

p.s | If you’ve been loving all the personal brand chat, I may have been putting together something to help you build your own (homework may be involved). It’s been in the works for a while now, and I’m VERY excited to share more with you soon. That’s all you’re getting out of me for now, but watch this space for more info!!

 As you can tell from that very long introduction, building a personal brand is something I could talk about for hours, so I was always going to be very picky about who I handed this one over to. Grace Andrews worked her way up to Brand Director at Diary of A CEO, and has since built opportunities and a career for herself, using a very specific personal branding strategy, so she knows her stuff when it comes to reverse engineering your reputation.

There were so many gems packed into this episode, but the one thing that really stuck with me was:

For this week’s homework, Grace has given us six questions to work through, taking us from what we actually want to achieve to what we need to be putting out there to make it happen.

how to build an online personal brand that actually works

222KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Also, if you haven’t watched the full episode yet, I’ve dropped it below.

Cookie Recipe

Read the article

Watch the essay

I’m with you because I also get stressed by my wardrobe most days and somehow forget every outfit I’ve ever worn the second I’m standing in front of it.

One thing I’ve started doing which genuinely helps is taking a full-length mirror selfie, shoes included, whenever I put an outfit together that I actually really like. I save them all into a dedicated album on my phone, so I basically have my own little look book to scroll through.

Then on the mornings where my brain is simply not interested in making another decision, I can just pick an outfit I know works and recreate it rather than trying on four different things and ending up hating all of them.

I also think having a few go-to outfit formulas helps SO much. Like trousers + fitted top + blazer, or jeans + shirt + loafers. You can switch up the individual pieces without having to reinvent the wheel every morning.

I saw a TikTok from Farron Clark the other day where she said she lays out all her outfits for the week on hangers on a Sunday so she doesn’t need to make a decision every morning. That’s something I aspire to do, but at the moment I’m rotating my flares & trackies between feeds.

The TLDR is: anything that removes a decision at 6am gets my vote!!

If you've been following the series so far, you'll know that I’ve been trying, along with the help of some amazing experts, to build out a pretty complete picture of what it actually takes to become your future self - the mindset, the mental fitness, the habits, the long-term plan. And next week Dr Megan Rossi will be taking us somewhere a little rogue, but stick with me: we're talking about your gut.

I hope you have a wonderful week & I’ll see you very soon,

Every result that pops up when someone googles your name, every conversation you have, everything you do publicly is already shaping how people see you. The real question is whether you're in control of it, or just looking into the void and hoping for the best.

It's something I've thought about a lot recently, so to break down what an actual personal brand strategy looks like, I've brought in Grace Andrews (yes, the other Grace), who was a founding member of the team that took The Diary of a CEO from 8,000 YouTube subscribers to over nine million. She's now building her own thing from scratch and documenting every step, which is basically reverse engineering her dream life in real time.

I really hope you enjoy!

+

SIGN UP TO THE WORKING HARD NEWSLETTER FOR GRACE'S RECOMMENDATIONS: https://www.workinghard.co.uk/welcome

+

GRACE ANDREWS

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/graceandrewsss/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@graceandrewsss

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@graceandrews7

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grace-andrews1/

Her substack, Community Service: https://communityservice.substack.com/

+

FOLLOW THE PODCAST

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workinghardpod/?hl=en

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@workinghardpodcast

+

DILEMMA SUBMISSION

If you'd like to submit any dilemmas to the podcast to be answered in the bonus episodes, please send them to podcast@grace-beverley.com with the subject beginning DILEMMAS or DM us @workinghardpod on instagram!

+

MY LINKS: https://gracebeverley.komi.io/

+

RETROGRADE, SHREDDY, TALA and THE PRODUCTIVITY METHOD are my own businesses, therefore any mention of them - whilst not being a sponsorship - is monetarily endorsed. As usual, sponsorships do not change my opinions nor my honesty, but I will always disclaim to make sure motives are clear 😊

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I avoided basically all birth stories before I had my baby, because I was so worried they’d be negative ones. So, full disclosure, this is a positive C-section experience. I’m going to go into as much detail as possible and be completely honest and transparent for anyone considering a C-section who’s looking for more information. Please just bear in mind that this is my experience, and I’m not a doctor, just someone trying to help other new mums.

Why I chose a planned C-section

I had a number of reasons for choosing a planned C-section, and to be really frank, I’m not interested in anyone’s judgement on any of them. I think all women should be able to make choices based on their own preferences.

So much of the birth narrative glamorises women’s suffering, as if a woman’s ability to endure pain is equal to her ability to be a mother, or her worthiness as one, I completely reject that.

When I posted about how I was preparing for my C-section, so many people (with zero medical knowledge of why I’d made the decision) were like, “Ah, why not a natural birth?” Honestly, even if I’d chosen it just because I wanted to, that would be enough.

That said, here were my reasons:

• She was always tracking big. I’m significantly smaller than my husband. He was a 9.5lb baby, and I was a 9lb baby at about 37 weeks. We just knew she was probably going to be big, and I am quite small.

• I really struggle with uncertainty. Uncontrollable situations are the one thing that makes me panic, and that’s when my OCD really flares. I kept thinking that atching the baby’s heart rate go up and down on a monitor during labour and not knowing how it would end up would have stressed me out so much, and stress is the opposite of what you need in labour.

• Friends had amazing planned C-sections. I kept hearing stories from friends who had positive planned C-section experiences.

I was still worried about everything I’d heard about C-section recovery: that it’s so hard, that it’s a horrible, horrible operation. I think that absolutely can be true, particularly for a true emergency C-section, where you’ve been pushing for ages and the baby has to come out in a really stressful situation.

So from about March or April, I was obsessively listening to podcasts, reading articles, doing as much research as physically possible and I came to the conclusion that the control factor (and a few other things) meant I wanted a planned C-section. I said I’d confirm it towards the end of my pregnancy, and the closer I got, the more certain I was.

How it actually went

So I was booked in for a planned C-section, then went into early labour. So it was moved forward to the day before it was planned, as an emergency C-section, but the type known as a category 3, because there was no immediate risk to me or the baby. (The full birth story is in this tiktok here.)

Overall, I was very happy with my experience. It is objectively strange to have an operation while you’re awake and then be handed a baby. But there’s so much out there about how horrible C-sections are, and I want to add to that conversation by saying: for me, personally, I think I enjoyed it more than I would have enjoyed a vaginal birth.

One of the main reasons I felt fine about it all? After the operation, the OB/GYN told me there was no way I would have got that baby out vaginally. So I’d probably have ended up with a C-section anyway, which made me feel pretty relaxed about whatever the recovery was going to look like.

The first 24 hours

After the post-op room, I went up to the postnatal ward in the early hours. I didn’t actually get into my bed until about 4am.

My catheter stayed in until midday the next day. They often take it out first thing in the morning, but I was sleeping on and off until midday, just waking up to feed the baby.

I was really worried about the catheter. I thought I’d hate the sensation, but you don’t really get much sensation at all. So that was fine.

Let’s talk about poo (I told you I’d be honest)

One thing I was warned about from the off was stool softeners and preparing your gut. In the weeks leading up to my C-section, I was really paying attention to how much fibre I was eating

I also had one friend tell me the post-C-section gas, the trapped wind, was worse than any other part of the experience. So I got simethicone in advance (it’s Gas-X in the US; here I think it’s Wind-eze). I was already having pregnancy-related trapped wind (sorry, TMI) and it was really painful. I was literally cat-cowing my way through life. So I asked my midwives and started taking it before the operation. Obviously this isn’t advice: talk to your own doctor and midwives!!

They’ll also give you a stool softener in hospital. I’ve always been terrified of them. I thought they’d make me dehydrated and then constipated afterwards, and as an IBS girl I don’t usually need them. But I was told to take them, and I was glad I did.

I also had some ready at home, and I’m so glad I did. After my first poo, I thought, “That was fine, I don’t need them.” But even now there are days when I do, because your body is still getting used to things again. Your organs aren’t all back in the right place yet! I’m very glad I took that advice.

Keep everything warm

I really recommend bringing a heat pack to hospital. I used mine multiple times and it helped keep things moving.

I also haven’t had any iced drinks or cold food since the birth. The only exception was some sushi in hospital, because I really, really wanted sushi. Other than that, it’s been warm food and warm drinks only. No iced coffee, nothing straight from the fridge without boiling water added. I’m trying to keep that up for the full six weeks, as lots of different cultures recommend, and I’ve found it genuinely helps keep things moving.

Yes, you still bleed

A lot of people assume you don’t bleed after a C-section. But you do! You’ve built a home for that child for nine months, and it still needs to leave; you can bleed for up to six weeks.

I took two things to hospital and used both every single day:

• Frida Mom disposable underwear. I wore these for about a week. Things can get messy, and once you’re home you’re mostly slobbing around the house, so they were super useful. They’re high-waisted too, so they don’t press on your incision.

• TOTM organic cotton maternity pads.

Highly recommend both.

Walk as soon as you can

One of the main recovery recommendations I came across was to walk as soon as you can. Obviously, not a lot. On the first full day I literally walked up the corridor and back, no more than a few minutes, and never more than about five minutes standing or walking at a time. I kept to that pretty religiously: walking around the room, trying not to stay still. (I was still in the hospital bed most of the day, obviously.)

Very anecdotal, small sample size (aka just me), but I also stayed as active as possible right up to the end of my pregnancy. I was still getting around 6,000 steps a day. I stopped Pilates at about 37 weeks because it didn’t feel good anymore. I didn’t want to put myself into labour, and she’d flipped from head-down to breech a few weeks earlier, so I didn’t fancy being upside down. I’m sure staying active beforehand made it easier to be active afterwards.

Here’s roughly how it’s gone:

1. Week one: 5–10 minutes a day.

2. Week two: 10–20 minutes.

3. Since then: slowly working my way up and listening to my body.

I’m not pushing things at all (that’s one thing I’m very good at), and I’m not lifting anything heavier than the baby. I’m definitely not running anywhere, and I won’t be working out for a while yet. But I’ve found walking very possible, and I’m getting some steps in every day to help my recovery.

Scar care

I did a lot of prep here: Reddit threads, some studies, general recommendations on both scar recovery and tummy recovery. Not in an “I want to snap back immediately” way, but after the baby comes out, everything feels quite loose. So here’s what I did. (Again, if it’s not for you, it’s not for you!)

First: I didn’t touch it until it healed. No baths, no soap on the incision (I showered, obviously), and high-waisted underwear so nothing pressed on it. Once the community midwife told me it was fully closed and not infected, I started on scar care.

Silicone by day. From my research, silicone is the one properly proven scar treatment, and I get keloid scarring, so I wanted to be on it from the very beginning. I ordered a purple silicone scar strip, it’s around £70 for one strip, meant to last six weeks. Full disclosure: mine lasted about four weeks before it started coming apart. I think that’s my fault, though. You wash it with a cleanser every day, and I left it drying in a bit of a puddle, which I think ruined the adhesive. I’m still glad I got it though as I wore it for 12 hours during the day.

Alhydran by night. At night, I used Alhydran to keep the scar as hydrated as possible.

This probably depends so much on who you get and your situation, but the incision was so much better than I expected. It’s literally below my bikini line and it’s tiny. I have no idea how a baby came out of it. I do have a bit of an overhang, but interestingly it’s not above the scar like I expected. It’s where the bottom of my bump was, and I don’t think that’ll go back in for a while.

Compression shorts

The last thing I’ve been doing is wearing compression shorts. I didn’t start until well after my scar had healed and felt much less sensitive, basically once I was feeling pretty fine.

After a lot of research and reading other people’s experiences, I went with the SRC recovery shorts. I wear them under my clothes every day, and on days when I don’t, I can really tell the difference the next day in how much my stomach is hanging out.

I know that sounds vain. I would love my stomach to go back in as soon as possible. There are lots of layered reasons for that, some of which I probably should fight against, but that’s the truth. Second, I’d also like my organs to go back into place as soon as possible, for all the reasons you can imagine.

A few tips:

• Get the mini version. They don’t go all the way down your leg. It’s summer and I’d have boiled alive otherwise.

• Don’t start too early. I tried them a bit early, stopped because they made my incision sore, then started again a few days later and was fine.

• Size carefully. I was a large in most things during pregnancy and a small to medium before. I bought a large, squeezed into them at first, and pretty quickly had to buy a medium. I’d go somewhere in between and maybe start a little later. Hopefully that means they’re working (and also, you lose so much fluid after pregnancy).

So that’s everything! I hope it was helpful. Please ask me for any other info you want, as you can probably tell, I can’t stop myself from oversharing.

Important to say, this is just my experience and not medical advice. Always check with your own doctor, midwife or health visitor!

October is here, and I am VERY happily entering roast dinner season (arguably my favourite season of the year), and Cecilia has already been dragged along for a cosy pub roast because I have important traditions to pass down. Although I have to say, Q4 feels SO weird this year. Normally, October arriving means I’m gearing up for the busiest few months across the businesses, whereas this year my weekly KPIs are considerably more milk-based.

I am still getting my little fix from the sidelines, though, because this week is the launch of our Camp TALA outerwear campaign, which includes our viral storm & polar puffer jackets. It’s very surreal watching one of our biggest campaigns of the year happen without being right in the middle of it. I have already messaged the team asking for one of the branded air fresheners.

And my last update is that episode 5 of the Future Self Series is live! Maya Raichoora is back to teach us all how to actually train your self-talk, emotions and self-image (apparently simply owning a Nintendo Brain Training game in 2008 was not enough). She also takes us through the exact visualisation she does herself to practise becoming her future self, and I genuinely think it’s some of the most important homework in the whole series.

I’ve always loved Maya’s approach to mental fitness as something we can actually train. We’re very used to the idea of keeping our bodies fit, but when was the last time we gave our brains the same attention?

I also loved what Maya said about dealing with difficult emotions, because I think we can get quite caught up in the idea that being mentally strong means nothing ever gets to you:

Maya always comes with so much practical stuff alongside the theory so we can actually do the thing, and this episode was no different!! She took us through a guided visualisation to help us meet our future selves, which I’ll pop below so you can give it a go when you have a few minutes.

And for this week’s homework, Maya’s shared the five-minute ‘batman effect’ exercise from her book that she swears by. You’ll pick someone who inspires you, or your own 2.0, and practise imagining how they’d think, act and handle the things you find difficult. A little rehearsal for being the person we keep saying we want to become.

I honestly think this is one of the most important bits of homework in the whole series.

The Batman Effect Worksheet

222KB ∙ PDF file

Download

A 5-Minute Visualisation Worksheet

Download

Also, if you haven’t watched the full episode yet, I’ve dropped it below.

GET THE RECIPE

READ THE ARTICLE

WATCH THE ESSAY

Ooh this is a good one. I’d say start by taking the pressure off yourself to love this time of year just because everyone else seems to! You can struggle with the darker days and still find little bits of them you enjoy.

Sometimes it helps to notice how you’re feeling without immediately trying to fix it. Even just thinking, “my mood feels a bit lower today”, and giving yourself space to feel that, without judging yourself for it.

I’d try giving yourself a few things you specifically look forward to on grey days. Light a candle that smells amazing, make a proper hot chocolate, or get under a blanket with your partner and watch something you’ve both been saving (I’m locking into Celebrity Traitors).

If staying inside makes you feel worse, cosy doesn’t have to mean being at home all day. A walk followed by a café stop, a bookshop browse or having someone over for dinner might give you more of what you need. I hope this helps, but most importantly, remember, don’t shame yourself!

Building a personal brand is something I could talk about for hours, so I was always going to be very picky about who I handed this one over to. Let’s just say you’ll be in very good hands.

I hope you have a wonderful week & I’ll see you very soon,

+

SIGN UP TO THE WORKING HARD NEWSLETTER FOR MAYA'S RECOMMENDATIONS: https://www.workinghard.co.uk/welcome

+

MAYA RAICHOORA

Website: https://mayaraichoora.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maya.mental.fitness/

LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/maya-raichoora

X: https://x.com/maya_raichoora

Book – Visualise: https://mayaraichoora.com/visualise/

+

FOLLOW THE PODCAST

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workinghardpod/?hl=en

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@workinghardpodcast

+

DILEMMA SUBMISSION

If you'd like to submit any dilemmas to the podcast to be answered in the bonus episodes, please send them to podcast@grace-beverley.com with the subject beginning DILEMMAS or DM us @workinghardpod on instagram!

+

MY LINKS: https://gracebeverley.komi.io/

+

RETROGRADE, SHREDDY, TALA and THE PRODUCTIVITY METHOD are my own businesses, therefore any mention of them - whilst not being a sponsorship - is monetarily endorsed. As usual, sponsorships do not change my opinions nor my honesty, but I will always disclaim to make sure motives are clear 😊

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Whilst I was finding new baby-friendly hobbies, the team were launching Farron Clark’s new outerwear collection at TALA. They smashed it with the campaign, and I’m so glad everyone loved it (I did my first LinkedIn scroll of mat leave to look through all the posts about it, allow me.)

Anyway, this week is episode 4 of the Future Self Series we’re running throughout my mat leave, and we had the amazing Dr Faye Bate in the office for an episode all about women’s health. By women’s health, I don’t just mean periods or hormones (although she did cover that in depth), Faye went into it all- bones, sleep, brain health. The brief was everything we need to know now that our future selves will thank us for, and she really smashed it.

I really wanted this episode to be for anyone who’s got BIG plans but is slightly relying on their body to just keep up (which I think a lot of us feel). Dr Faye DELIVERED. There’s so much in this episode that I wish we’d been taught earlier, but this really sums up why I wanted her on the series:

Of course, I couldn’t let Faye cover this much without asking for the research to go with it. So if anything in her episode made you think “how did I not know this already?” (quite a lot of it for me), I’ve rounded up the research she mentioned below for a bit of further reading.

SLEEP

• Exercise and sleep: Research shows that regular movement can improve sleep, with the benefits building the longer you keep it up. Probably less exciting than a new sleep supplement, but considerably more useful.

• Kiwis before bed: Small studies suggest that two kiwis before bed could help with sleep quality. Faye did say the evidence is still limited, but I certainly wasn’t expecting a fruit recommendation in this part of the episode.

• Alcohol and sleep quality: Research looked at the difference between falling asleep faster and actually sleeping well, and unfortunately, just because you might nod off quicker after a glass of wine, you’re just not getting the same sleep quality.

BONES

• Muscle mass and bone density: Studies link more muscle mass with stronger bones, and low muscle mass with a greater likelihood of osteoporosis. A good reason to think about strength beyond what it does for how we look.

HORMONES

• Iron and thyroid function: Research links iron deficiency with lower thyroid hormone levels.

• Gut health and oestrogen: There’s emerging research into the estrobolome (the gut bacteria involved in processing oestrogen) and its possible role in conditions associated with hormonal changes.

BRAIN HEALTH

• Omega-3 and brain health: Research involving over 100,000 participants links dietary omega-3 intake with a lower risk of dementia or cognitive decline.

• Puzzles, games and brain health: A study of adults over 70 links activities like crosswords, cards and chess with a lower risk of dementia (some encouragement for anyone like me who takes their daily crossword very seriously).

• Hearing and dementia: Research links hearing loss with a higher risk of dementia, and hearing aid use with a lower risk.

• Connection and mental health: Studies link loneliness, social isolation and depression with a higher risk of early death. This is where Faye’s point about making room for people and things you love really comes in.

Faye has gone with a different approach for her episode homework this week and created us a quiz!!! Think of a teen magazine style quiz that you’d go through and see your result at the end!

Let us know what result you get at the end; we’re so curious!

Future Self Health Habits Audit

Also, if you haven’t watched the full episode yet, I’ve dropped it below.

M&S SNACKS

READ THE ARTICLE

WATCH THE ESSAY

Firstly, I do not meal prep every week, so I might not be the person to answer this question. There’s a reason I’m a co-owner of a ready meals company because I have only very recently entered my cooking mama era.

From my post-partum food prep, I think my best advice is to make a bit of an event of it!! Put your favourite music on, get yourself a nice drink, call a friend while you’re chopping. If you’re going to spend a couple of hours in the kitchen, you might as well make it enjoyable.

I’d start by making fewer different meals. Pick two dinners you’re happy to eat a few times and make extra portions, then keep breakfast and lunch really simple. You don’t need a different menu every day (you are feeding yourself, not running a Pret).

And take breaks!! Get something in the oven, sit down, have your drink, then do the next bit. You can also split the prep across two days so the shopping, chopping, cooking and washing up aren’t all happening in one mammoth session. Basically, give yourself permission to make the whole thing a bit less intense. It’s supposed to make your life easier!!

There is no way I could do a future self series and not have the queen of visualisation come back to give us her methods and advice on how to achieve our best selves.

I hope you have a wonderful week & I’ll see you very soon,

I wanted this episode to be specifically designed for ambitious women, and Faye has absolutely delivered. She gets into eating enough to fuel everything you’re doing, understanding your hormones, why you can be exhausted all day and then wide awake in bed, and how to deregulate your nervous system on your busiest days. All with the research to back it up, because you know we like our sources over here.

+

SIGN UP TO THE WORKING HARD NEWSLETTER FOR FAYE'S RECOMMENDATIONS: https://www.workinghard.co.uk/welcome

+

DR FAYE BATE

Website: https://www.fayebate.online/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drfayebate/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@drfayebate

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drfayebate

Her Discussions podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/her-discussions-by-dr-faye/id1835829612

Her Discussions Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/herdiscussionspod/

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/fayebate

+

FOLLOW THE PODCAST

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workinghardpod/?hl=en

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@workinghardpodcast

+

DILEMMA SUBMISSION

If you'd like to submit any dilemmas to the podcast to be answered in the bonus episodes, please send them to podcast@grace-beverley.com with the subject beginning DILEMMAS or DM us @workinghardpod on instagram!

+

MY LINKS: https://gracebeverley.komi.io/

+

RETROGRADE, SHREDDY, TALA and THE PRODUCTIVITY METHOD are my own businesses, therefore any mention of them - whilst not being a sponsorship - is monetarily endorsed. As usual, sponsorships do not change my opinions nor my honesty, but I will always disclaim to make sure motives are clear 😊

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I should say upfront that I’m an unashamed snob about writing style. I’ll forgive a slow plot, but if the writing makes me wince, I’m out. I’ll usually only pick up a book if it’s got over a four-star average on Goodreads, which is a rule that has saved me from a lot of disappointment.

Some of these I ripped through in a couple of days, and some I carried around for weeks. I love recommending books to my friends and actually keep a note on my phone of every book I’ve read, and I star my favourites.

I’ve also added all of these to my giant book/tv/movie/podcast recs spreadsheet that I made for my maternity leave, which was crowdsourced from over a million people. If you’re ever stuck on what to read next, it’s the best place to start. I’ve linked it at the bottom of this post.

Anyway, here they are, in no particular order.

Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall
Genre: romance, crime, and mystery

This was definitely one of my favourite books I’ve ever read. It’s set in rural Dorset in the 1950s and 60s. It jumps between timelines, and there’s a trial running through the middle of it all. I really lost myself in the world, and it felt like a classic just because of how well written it was. It had a very unpredictable plot and was really heart-wrenching. I bawled my eyes out, so it’s probably not for the faint of heart (and maybe I shouldn’t have read it whilst pregnant).

I really ripped through this one. I always have this preconception that the things I read the fastest are going to be thrillers, but this proved me wrong.

If you loved Heart the Lover or In Memoriam and you’re a big fan of unpredictable plots, then you will love this one!

Beartown by Fredrik Backman
Genre: psychological thriller

I had this on my reading list for a really long time before I opened it. It’s a small town story set in Sweden, with an ice hockey plotline. It doesn’t really fit into one of my favourite genres (romance, thriller, or historical fiction) and the premise didn’t really grip me on first look, so I just didn’t pick it up. Anyway, I’m SO glad I finally did. It was incredibly well written.

I thought it would almost be kind of like a coming-of-age drama, but it really surprised me. The plot wasn’t predictable at all. That’s all I’ll say for now!

It almost feels like the prequel to Off Campus. In fact I actually looked up to see if one was based on the other because I was so astounded. So if you’ve read those books, you’ll love this.

In Memoriam by Alice Winn
Genre: historical fiction

In Memoriam is set in England during World War I and it’s very “The History Boys”, so private-school-goes-off-to-war type thing.

It’s very, very well written and felt gripping purely because the plot was just great. It has so much depth; you kind of don’t know where things are going, and it was absolutely heartbreaking (and comes with a you-will-cry warning), but I’m so glad I read it, and it’s definitely up there with my favourite books of the year.

If you’ve read Broken Country and loved it, and you’ve had an itch to read something emotional and gripping, I would highly recommend this one.

The Housemaid’s Secret by Freida McFadden
Genre: thriller

I was so surprised by how much I enjoyed this. I read The Housemaid years ago and thought The Housemaid’s Secret was going to be a continuation of that, so I was pleasantly surprised that it had a whole new setting, storyline and hook, it felt really fresh and wasn’t predictable.

I’ve found that once every few months, I just need to read a thriller, something really easy, to get through to stop me getting into a reading rut, and this fit the brief perfectly. I wish there were more of these types of thrillers that are well written (or at least not so badly written that they make you cringe, sorry, Colleen Hoover).

If you’ve already read this one, I’d also recommend One of the Girls. I read it about four years ago, but it’s another really good thriller if you want something that reads like a drama series. It’s set on a hen do on a Greek island, which is about as holiday-read as it gets.

The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett
Genre: historical fiction

This was 100% one of my top three books of the year. The plot was so intricate and unexpected. I would really recommend going into the book blind so I’m not going to tell you much. It’s set in Mississippi during the Great Depression, and that’s about as much as I want to give away.

It has some of the best character development I have read in a very long time. It is a 600-page book, so when I picked it up, I was like, “Mm, is just before I give birth the right time to be reading a 600-pager?” But I got so into it that I gobbled it down during my night feeds. It was absolutely amazing and I highly, highly recommend it.

If you like historical fiction, such as Kristin Hannah’s books, you will love this. It’s written by the author who wrote The Help (which is another classic everyone should read in my opinion).

London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe
Genre: non-fiction

I feel like everyone was talking about London Falling this summer, and with good reason!

I was a little apprehensive because I knew it was nonfiction, which I don’t usually find that relaxing or gripping (I tend to listen to nonfiction as an audiobook instead). But I kept hearing about this one and someone said it read like a novel, so I decided to give it a go.

It follows the true story of a teenager who gets embroiled in London’s murky, ultra wealthy underworld, and it really is like watching a true crime doc or podcast. This was 100% one of those books I really got hooked on.

I’ve heard a lot about his other book, Empire of Pain. It’s about the Sackler family and their roles in the Opioid crisis, it’s gone straight to the top of my reading list.

So that’s my summer in books! If I had to pick a top one it would probably be Broken Country, but I’d happily argue for The Calamity Club on a different day.

I’d love to know what you’ve been reading, especially anything I can get through with one hand at 3am. My list for autumn is looking a bit thin, so please leave your recs in the comments and I’ll report back on whichever ones I pick up.

And as promised, I’ve linked my giant recs library below, you just need to subscribe for free (and make sure you’re logged into substack) to get the link.

All you need to do to get access to the spreadsheet is subscribe for free below, and the link will appear in this article!

Subscribe now

Have a lovely week!

Big news because my “mat cover” has officially arrived at TALA! Farron Clark is taking over for two weeks to cover our first outerwear collection of the year. It’s been so fun pulling the plans for this campaign together over the last few months. It means my current management responsibilities can remain firmly focused on one tiny employee who has absolutely no respect for working hours.

Outside of that, I’m getting used to some kind of routine in this new postpartum world. Last week we even managed a trip to M&S for sweet treats because, of course, I’m introducing her to the important cultural institutions early. I would highly recommend the new chocolate and cinnamon tortilla chips. I don’t really understand why they work, but they do.

Dr Rangan is officially episode three of the Future Self Series, which also means we’ve somehow already reached the end of Part one of the curriculum!! We’ve spent the last three weeks figuring out what we actually want, getting clearer on the decisions that will get us there and now, with Rangan, turning all of that into an actual plan.

If you’ve missed any of the homework/studies/exercises along the way, you can go back through the previous Substacks and catch up whenever you fancy. No detention for being behind, promise x

Rangan called me out slightly this week for my lifelong commitment to making a plan for absolutely everything. But this was a perspective that I found super interesting!

Of course, I asked Rangan to send over his recommendations for the newsletter, so we can all become happier versions of ourselves. I’ll drop it below.

10 simple steps to feeling great

Dr Rangan also sent me an exercise for you to try this week called The Two Day Rule. The idea is simple: you’re allowed to miss a day of a habit; you just try not to miss two in a row. Because missing one workout is life, but letting it become “I’ll start again on Monday” for six consecutive Mondays is where things get slightly less helpful.

The worksheet below will help you plan how to get back to it when life inevitably gets in the way. You can download, print off and fill it in yourself!

The Two Day Rule Worksheet

222KB ∙ PDF file

Download

how to make sure one bad day never turns into a habit you used to have

Download

Also, if you haven’t watched the full episode yet, I’ve dropped it below.

GET THE RECIPE

READ THE ARTICLE

WATCH THE ESSAY

Oh my god, I’m so sorry, that is such a huge amount to be dealing with all at once. Firstly, please give yourself permission not to turn this into something positive immediately; you’re allowed to just focus on getting through it and listening to your doctors.

In terms of content, you absolutely do not need a big following to begin. I’d document what’s happening without putting pressure on yourself to perform or have the whole journey mapped out. Sharing what you’re learning, the reality of recovery, and how you’re rebuilding your identity outside of rugby could genuinely help so many people.

Also, on a logistical point, the TikTok algorithm is much more geared towards discovery than Instagram, so if you’re growing from scratch, I’d make sure you’re posting there as a priority.

Sending you so much love and really hoping you get some positive news soon!

Next week I’ll be leaving you in the very capable hands of Dr Faye Bate to take you through the foundations of health most of us are still getting wrong, and how to advocate for ourselves and for our future.

When I watched the preview of this episode, I was so excited to put it live. Faye really demystifies the more complicated women’s health topics into actionable steps to actually take away and do something with. I just know you’ll really love this one!

I hope you have a wonderful week & I’ll see you very soon,

Today's cover teacher Dr Rangan Chatterjee, one of the UK's most influential doctors, a practising GP for over 20 years, host of Feel Better Live More, and a four-time Sunday Times bestselling author. He walks us through why most five-year plans don't work, the traps people fall into, and how to reverse engineer your vision all the way back to what you do this week, in a way that's actually maintainable.

Rangan's also shared his top planning frameworks in this week's Working Hard newsletter, the link to sign up is below!

+

DR CHATTERJEE

Website: https://drchatterjee.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drchatterjee/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DrChatterjeeRangan

Feel Better, Live More podcast: https://drchatterjee.com/podcast/

Friday Five newsletter: https://drchatterjee.com/newsletter/

Books: https://drchatterjee.com/books/

+

SIGN UP TO THE WORKING HARD NEWSLETTER FOR JEMMA'S RECOMMENDATIONS: https://www.workinghard.co.uk/welcome

+

FOLLOW THE PODCAST

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workinghardpod/?hl=en

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@workinghardpodcast

+

DILEMMA SUBMISSION

If you'd like to submit any dilemmas to the podcast to be answered in the bonus episodes, please send them to podcast@grace-beverley.com with the subject beginning DILEMMAS or DM us @workinghardpod on instagram!

+

MY LINKS: https://gracebeverley.komi.io/

+

RETROGRADE, SHREDDY, TALA and THE PRODUCTIVITY METHOD are my own businesses, therefore any mention of them - whilst not being a sponsorship - is monetarily endorsed. As usual, sponsorships do not change my opinions nor my honesty, but I will always disclaim to make sure motives are clear 😊

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I’ve spent the last week very happily tucked away in our little newborn bubble with Cecilia, and I genuinely don’t think I’ve ever stared at another human this much in my life.

Her facial expressions absolutely kill me because why does someone who has been alive for approximately five minutes already have so many opinions? I’m very much soaking it all up and still cannot quite believe she’s actually here.

Also, thank you so much for all the lovely messages about the Future Self Series. Roxie kicked us off last week, and I’m so happy you’re loving it because we have some very exciting substitute teachers lined up over the next 12 weeks. This week, Jemma Sbeg is back (!!) and we’re getting into how the decisions we make in our 20s can end up shaping our 30s, 40s and beyond, but without the shame that normally comes with that whole conversation. Despite just giving birth to a literal child, I’m very against the idea that you need to have somehow “completed life” by 30 (whatever that means), so this is much more about working out what actually matters to you and how you make decisions your future self will thank you for.

And, as always, Jemma came armed with studies upon studies to back everything up. I’ll link them all and extra bits below so you can go down the rabbit hole yourself.

So, as I said, this week’s episode with Jemma covered how to make the big decisions that can shape your future, and how to actually trust yourself enough to make them. This was one of my favourite quotes from the episode:

Jemma bought studies to back up everything, so if you’re interested in reading them, I’ve pulled together all the research she references below, plus the exercises she recommends for actually working out what your next move should be and following through with it.

Value building exercise

Paradox of choice study

Self belief study

Rollercoaster of change graph

What we regret most study

Read the Alchemist

Jemma also sent me an exercise for you to try this week called The Rule of Three. The idea is that when a big decision suddenly creates an enormous list of things you need to do, you only let yourself focus on three tasks at a time. You don’t add another three until those are done, which basically stops the whole thing from becoming so overwhelming that you end up doing none of it.

I’ve put Jemma’s full exercise into a worksheet for you here, which you can download, print off and fill in yourself!

Rule Of Three Worksheet

222KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Turn a big, overwhelming decision into doable progress.

Download

Also, if you haven’t watched the full episode yet, I’ve dropped it below.

GET THE RECIPE

READ THE ARTICLE

WATCH THE ESSAY

I think the biggest thing here is realising that loving your family and being constantly available to them are not the same thing. As you get older and build a life of your own, your priorities naturally change, and that doesn’t mean you suddenly care about your parents any less.

I’d also really question some of those “rules”. Do your parents call their parents every 2-3 days? Do they see them every few weeks? Sometimes these expectations have existed for so long that nobody actually stops to ask whether they’re reasonable anymore.

I think you probably do need to have a slightly uncomfortable conversation and say, “I love you, but I need to be able to call and visit because I want to, not because I’m scared of upsetting you if I don’t.” They might not love the boundary initially, but that doesn’t mean it’s the wrong boundary. You’re allowed to build a relationship with your family that works for your adult life too.

Completely unintentionally, I’ve managed to create an entire Future Self Series and invite only ONE man onto it. I’ll leave a clue below for you to work out who it could be!!

I hope you have a wonderful week & I’ll see you very soon,

Today we're zooming in on the decades that, looking at our data, most of you are in right now: your twenties and thirties. I think your twenties are the most formative decade of your life, and the choices you make now compound harder than they ever will again. So this episode is all about how to learn to take risks without sabotaging your future.

I'm handing the mic to Jemma Sbeg, creator of The Psychology of Your 20s, one of the biggest psychology podcasts in the world. She brings the same research-obsessed energy she's known for (some of her episodes take 10+ hours to write), so you're in great hands.

Jemma's also put together a follow-up exercise and her personal recommendations in this week's Working Hard newsletter, so you can actually do something with what you hear today.

+

JEMMA SBEG

Listen to The Psychology of Your 20s: https://www.psychologyofyour20s.com/

Follow TPOY20s: https://www.instagram.com/thatpsychologypodcast/?hl=en

+

SIGN UP TO THE WORKING HARD NEWSLETTER FOR JEMMA'S RECOMMENDATIONS: https://www.workinghard.co.uk/welcome

+

FOLLOW THE PODCAST

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workinghardpod/?hl=en

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@workinghardpodcast

+

DILEMMA SUBMISSION

If you'd like to submit any dilemmas to the podcast to be answered in the bonus episodes, please send them to podcast@grace-beverley.com with the subject beginning DILEMMAS or DM us @workinghardpod on instagram!

+

MY LINKS: https://gracebeverley.komi.io/

+

RETROGRADE, SHREDDY, TALA and THE PRODUCTIVITY METHOD are my own businesses, therefore any mention of them - whilst not being a sponsorship - is monetarily endorsed. As usual, sponsorships do not change my opinions nor my honesty, but I will always disclaim to make sure motives are clear 😊

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you read my baby prep spreadsheet post, you’ll know that nesting fully took over my brain and body these last few weeks. We’ll be back to business BTS and productivity soon, but if there’s one thing every single parent friend has told me, it’s that you will not want to cook in the fourth trimester; instead, you will want to feed yourself and your baby and possibly cry a little, and that’s about the extent of your bandwidth.

So a few weeks ago, my incredible friend Steph suggested we actually do something about it. She turned up with her Thermomix (which I’ve immediately added to my wishlist), and she'd even got us matching mummy chef hats. We spent an entire afternoon just cooking until the freezer was basically a postpartum pharmacy. It was one of my favourite days of my whole pregnancy, and it meant that instead of one overwhelmed woman trying to chop a butternut squash, it became a really special memory.

@gracebeverleyI am actually the luckiest girlie to have @Steph

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

I did a lot of research into the best foods for healing postpartum: mostly foods that are warming, iron-rich, protein-heavy, anti-inflammatory, gut-supporting etc etc.

So consider this my “everything I’ve prepped for postpartum” list. I’d genuinely recommend doing some version of this even if you’re not pregnant, because a freezer full of soup is just a good way to live.

All you have to do to get all the recipes is subscribe for free below and sign into substack, the full list will then appear in this post!

Subscribe now

I’ll keep adding to this post as I find more things worth freezing. If you’ve got your own postpartum freezer stash favourites, send them my way (even though my freezer is full to the brim).

I’ll see you on Tuesday,

I can’t believe our little girl is here! Thank you so much for all the love; we are very much in our newborn bubble at the moment, soaking up all the cuddles and figuring out this whole new world as we go. My breastfeeding tracker is looking like my g-cal did a month ago, and it still feels slightly surreal that she’s actually here.

In very related news, her arrival also means the maternity leave plan we’ve been working on for the last nine months is officially in action!!

When I found out I was pregnant, I knew I wanted to take a few months of proper maternity leave, but I also knew I didn’t want the Working Hard podcast to just disappear (or for me getting knocked up to impact the tiny in-house team I’ve built). So, we had a fairly big podcast-shaped problem to solve.

Our solution: building the most overqualified maternity cover imaginable.

For the last six months, we’ve been secretly building The Future Self Series: 12 weeks, 12 incredible experts and 12 areas of your life, from mindset and relationships to career, money and health, all designed to help you reverse engineer what your version of success actually looks like. Basically, a free course disguised as a podcast.

The first episode officially launched yesterday with Roxie Nafousi, who I know is already a firm Working Hard favourite, and I couldn’t think of anyone better to kick off the series. Then every Monday for the next 12 weeks, we’ll tackle a different area of your life, taking us right up to December. So while I’m off figuring out how to use a breast pump, they’ll be helping you figure out everything else. I genuinely cannot wait for you to hear every episode.

So this week’s episode with Roxie covered what reverse engineering actually is, and how to start visualising your life from that perspective. This was one of my favourite quotes from the episode:

I’ve asked every guest in the series for their best recommendations and exercises so you can get more from the episode and actually make it actionable. I’ll drop everything Roxie sent over below!

MANIFEST BOOK

Roxie also sent me an exercise for you to do this week to keep yourself accountable and actually act on what’s in the episode. Here’s your step-by-step:

Step 1: Write the letter from your future self

Picture yourself already living at the future point in time (I like to do a year, but you could do on a big birthday or another milestone). Write a letter from that vantage point, looking back, as if this future life is your current reality. Include three things:

• What you’re celebrating — What’s happened? What have you created, completed, changed, or experienced? Get specific.

• What you’re grateful your current self started — Which decision, conversation, habit, boundary, risk, or small action set the first shift in motion? What did you begin before you felt ready?

• How you feel now — What’s it like living as this version of you? How do you feel waking up, in your relationships, your work, your own mind? What’s changed inside you, not just around you?

Step 2: Read it back slowly

Once it’s written, don’t rush past it and put it away forever. Read the whole letter again, slower this time.

Step 3: Look for clues

As you reread, ask yourself the following questions:

• What did my future self thank me for beginning?

• What choices did they make consistently?

• What did they stop tolerating?

• What did they have to believe about themselves to get there?

Write down your answers below your letter.

Step 4: Identify one action for this week

From those clues, pick one concrete action you can take this week that moves you toward that future.

Step 5: Repeat!!

Remember the letter doesn’t become real through positive thinking alone, it becomes possible through belief, aligned choices, and consistent action, one step at a time. So come back to it whenever you feel like you need to get back on your path.

I’ve put Roxie’s full exercise into a worksheet here for you (I said there would be homework!) which you can download, print off, and fill in yourself.

Your Episode 1 Worksheet

306KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Also, if you haven’t watched the full episode yet, I’ve dropped it below.

GET THE RECIPE

WATCH THE ESSAY

If a salary was discussed during the interview process and the offer came in significantly lower, you are completely within your rights to ask about it. You explained what you’d been expecting and made it clear you were still really grateful for the offer. As someone who has hired a lot of people over the years, that is a very normal conversation for HR to have!

I also think it’s soo easy to interpret an awkward conversation as a bad conversation, especially when it’s your first time negotiating and you really want the job. Salary conversations are just inherently a bit uncomfortable, and unfortunately the only way to get better at them is to have them.

And please don’t let being out of work for two months make you feel like you should just be grateful for whatever you’re offered. You can be incredibly grateful and excited about an opportunity while still advocating for yourself. I’d try not to replay the call 400 times in your head. Whatever they come back with, you’ve proven to yourself that you can have these conversations and that you have the self-respect to ask for what you want.

Next week on The Future Self Series, we’re passing the mic over to the wonderful Jemma Sbeg to unpack  how to stop your 20s from sabotaging your 30s and 40s.

I hope you have a wonderful week & I’ll see you very soon,

So this episode is the first of a twelve-part series - one that’s completely free, and designed to help you reverse engineer the life you want whilst I'm on my mat leave.

While I’m gone, I’ll be passing the mic to some incredible experts who’ll take you through episodes we’ve worked really hard to build together. These are people I love, who've genuinely shaped how I think about mindset, identity, money, health, relationships, social media. ​They’re at the top in their fields, and I’ve hand-picked every single one of them (because I don’t share this mic with just anyone).

I’ve invited them all to the office to break down their own versions of formulas that they’ve used to design specific parts of their own lives.

And of course if you know me, you’ll know there has to be a structure to all this.

So this first episode is the start of part 1 - the first of 3 parts:

- Part 1 will help you figure out WHAT your plan actually looks like

- Part 2 will look at how you can execute it

- Part 3, looks at how you can perfect the systems around you to help your plan run as smoothly as possible

So for this first episode, there is genuinely no one I would rather open this entire series with than Roxie Nafousi.

If you’ve been living under a rock, Roxie is the author of Manifest, a Sunday Times Bestseller, which became an absolute phenomenon and has sold over 1 million copies in 37 languages.

If part of you doesn't quite believe your ideal life is possible right now, I promise you'll leave this episode feeling motivated, convinced, and genuinely deserving of every bit of it.

+

ROXIE NAFOUSI

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/roxienafousi/?hl=en

Website: https://roxienafousi.com/

Manifest App: https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/the-manifest-app/id6759167090

+

SIGN UP TO THE WORKING HARD NEWSLETTER FOR ROXIE'S RECOMMENDATIONS: https://www.workinghard.co.uk/welcome

+

FOLLOW THE PODCAST

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workinghardpod/?hl=en

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@workinghardpodcast

+

DILEMMA SUBMISSION

If you'd like to submit any dilemmas to the podcast to be answered in the bonus episodes, please send them to podcast@grace-beverley.com with the subject beginning DILEMMAS or DM us @workinghardpod on instagram!

+

MY LINKS: https://gracebeverley.komi.io/

+

RETROGRADE, SHREDDY, TALA and THE PRODUCTIVITY METHOD are my own businesses, therefore any mention of them - whilst not being a sponsorship - is monetarily endorsed. As usual, sponsorships do not change my opinions nor my honesty, but I will always disclaim to make sure motives are clear 😊

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I also hope you’ve all been loving the spreadsheets!! I’ve had quite a few messages telling me to please put my feet up and enjoy maternity leave, which I promise I am doing. I’ve just discovered that I can, in fact, lie down AND make a spreadsheet at the same time, so everyone wins.

And of course, happy 1st of September!! I absolutely love this time of year because September still gives me that back-to-school feeling where I want to get really organised. Except this year I’m channelling all of that energy into baby prep. I’m currently very invested in perfecting my caddies and working out what needs to live where, which is basically my version of stationery shopping at this point.

And I have to say I am SO ready for autumn. I love summer, but I think being heavily pregnant has made me more excited than ever for the temperature to drop a few degrees. I’m ready for cosy evenings, autumn clothes, Sunday roasts, and not checking the weather forecast with genuine fear.

I saw a post about frictionmaxxing a few months ago and immediately went down a rabbit hole on it. And what better time to unpack it than September 1st, when we’re all suddenly pretending we’re going back to school and getting our lives together. I’ve always been someone who thinks most things worth having require some effort, so it got me thinking about what happens when we get so obsessed with making life easier that we start removing all the bits that might actually be good for us.

Also, if you haven’t watched the full episode yet, I’ve dropped it below.

GET THE RECIPE

READ THE ARTICLE

BOOK A TICKET

I can completely see why this has all added up and left you feeling so hurt. Like, yes, plans change, and people have their own lives, but if you’re constantly coming away from situations feeling like an afterthought, I don’t think you should just keep telling yourself you’re expecting too much. There is a very big difference between expecting someone to prioritise you all the time and just wanting the people you love to consider you.

Also, and I say this as someone who definitely has a tendency to do too much, I think sometimes you have to stop giving people the version of you that goes above and beyond when they’re not meeting you anywhere near there. Not in a petty, “well you didn’t text me so I’m not texting you” way, but just stop bending over backwards. You can be a really generous friend and also say no, not lend the money, not rearrange your entire week, not always be the one making the plan.

And I honestly think I’d use this as a bit of a reset. Don’t cut everyone off tomorrow, but pay attention to who actually shows up when you stop doing all the work. I think you’ll probably learn quite a lot from that. And then put your energy into those people, because being caring doesn’t mean everyone is automatically entitled to the same amount of you. x

Next week we’re kicking off something for the podcast I’ve been working on since January, I am so excited to release it. First person to guess correctly in the @WorkingHardPod DMs gets a £20 TALA voucher.

I hope you have a wonderful week & I’ll see you very soon,

Katherine's article in The Cut: https://www.thecut.com/article/brooding-friction-maxxing-new-years-2026-resolution.html

The catch-up friends bonus episode: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2t3hom9tw1TYmCalzFO2Si

+

SIGN UP TO THE WORKING HARD NEWSLETTER: https://www.workinghard.co.uk/welcome

+

FOLLOW THE PODCAST

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workinghard...

TikTok: / workinghardpodcast

+

DILEMMA SUBMISSION

If you'd like to submit any dilemmas to the podcast to be answered in the bonus episodes, please send them to podcast@grace-beverley.com with the subject beginning DILEMMAS or DM us @workinghardpod on instagram!

+

MY LINKS: https://gracebeverley.komi.io/

+

RETROGRADE, SHREDDY, TALA and THE PRODUCTIVITY METHOD are my own businesses, therefore any mention of them - whilst not being a sponsorship - is monetarily endorsed. As usual, sponsorships do not change my opinions nor my honesty, but I will always disclaim to make sure motives are clear 😊

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I’ve been on maternity leave for three weeks now, and I think if there was an award for the most nesting ever nested, I would be in contention for first place. For some context, I have the delightful combination of ADHD and OCD, which means I permanently need to be organised but also move through this earth as a tornado. So over the years I’ve found lists, systems and preparation are my best friends. Which means that when it comes to baby prep, I’ve gone all in.

I’ve asked every parent friend I have for their advice and lists, and watched pretty much every nesting YouTube video and TikTok under the sun.

I started putting everything in one big baby prep spreadsheet, with the links for what I need in every room, links for what I need to put in every caddy, and a full baby prep to-do list. Over the last few weeks, it’s grown and grown into what might be my proudest piece of work (it’s close between this spreadsheet and the dayflex flares).

And after so many of you have used the recs spreadsheet I popped on here last week, I thought the least I can do is add this one to the list for any other expecting parents!

So, without further ado, you can find the spreadsheet below. I’d reccomend duplicating it for yourself and moving through the tabs in order, following the to-dos and then ticking everything off once it’s ordered and packed.

All you have to do to get the spreadsheet is subscribe for free below and sign into substack, the link will then appear in this article!

Subscribe now

I hope you find it useful! And for anyone not expecting, I’ll be back to normal service next week.

I’ll see you on Tuesday!

Firstly, thank you SO much for all the love since I became an official Substack girlie. I’m genuinely so excited to have you all here. As you’ll know from last week, I’m a few weeks into maternity leave, and apparently giving me this much time to think was a dangerous decision because I have gone slightly wild with ideas for this newsletter.

I really wanted to make this somewhere you get more from than just one email a week. Somewhere I can keep all the useful things I find, share more of the recommendations I’m constantly forcing on people, build resources you can actually come back to and generally give us a bit more room to play around with things.

Which brings me to the giant recommendations list. I hope you’re all loving it!! What started as me selfishly crowdsourcing enough entertainment to get myself through the newborn bubble has become a slightly ridiculous library of all your favourite films, series, podcasts and books. And I’m absolutely not finished with it. I’ll keep adding to it as I find things and you recommend them, so hopefully it just gets better and better.

I have approximately 400 more ideas for what we can do over here, so I’ll try to pace myself. Otherwise I’m just very happy you’re here x

This week’s podcast was the release of our live episode with Jemma Sbeg, which we recorded back in June (in a skyscraper, on the hottest day of the year 🥵). Here are some of my favourite quotes Jemma mentioned during our conversation that have really stuck with me.

Also, if you haven’t watched the full episode yet, I’ve dropped it below.

BOARD GAMES TO PLAY

READ THE ARTICLE

GET THE RECIPE

You have to stop thinking that trusting yourself means knowing you’re making the right decision. Because I literally don’t think anyone knows that. You make the best decision you can with the information you have at the time, and sometimes you’ll get it wrong. But the trust bit is actually knowing that if you do get it wrong, you’ll figure it out. Very, very few decisions are this one irreversible fork in the road that determines the entire rest of your life.

And I also don’t think you need to suddenly stop asking your friends for advice. I ask people what they think all the time. But there’s a massive difference between getting someone’s perspective and basically asking them to make the decision for you. Take everyone’s opinions, sit with them, and then actually ask yourself, okay, but what do I think? What would I choose if no one else was going to know about it? Because you only really learn to trust your judgement by making decisions and seeing what happens.

And also, you’re 20!! Of course you don’t have enough life experience to know exactly what you’re doing yet, because this is the bit where you get the life experience. You’re going to make choices you’d make differently five years later, but that doesn’t mean you messed up your life. It means you know something now that you didn’t know then. I think you have to give yourself permission to make the best choice available to you now, rather than trying to somehow make decisions with the wisdom of a future version of you that doesn’t exist yet.

Next week on the pod, we’re doing a deep dive on why feeling uncomfortable is actually good for you.

I hope you have a wonderful week & I’ll see you very soon,