Hello! Hope you’re having a good start to your week.
I made a brief return to work last week! Just for one day, but it was definitely strange being back in work mode after five weeks with Cecilia. It also sparked quite the conversation about being a working mum. I’ve already had quite a lot of opinions about what I should and shouldn’t be doing when it comes to juggling work and motherhood, and it’s made me realise just how impossible it seems to get the balance “right”. Literally, whatever you decide to do, someone will have a problem with it. I’m incredibly lucky to have the support I do, but I also have responsibilities that don’t disappear because I’m on maternity leave. Anyway, I ended up having a rather long rant about it on TikTok (recorded horizontally whilst breastfeeding, naturally). I think we’re all just figuring it out, and a little less judgement wouldn’t go amiss!!
I’ve also started very slowly getting back into exercise, which feels like quite a big milestone. I’m starting the SHREDDY postnatal plan, but taking things VERY carefully because I’ve got diastasis recti and am conscious that my body has quite literally just grown and delivered an entire human. As someone who’s always loved training, it’s definitely a lesson in patience and listening to my body rather than immediately trying to do everything I used to. Turns out I cannot simply schedule my recovery into a six-week plan and expect my body to cooperate. Rude.
Which brings me to this week’s Future Self episode with the brilliant Dr Megan Rossi, AKA The Gut Health Doctor. I’ve always believed that you can only be as good as you feel, and if we’re spending 12 weeks figuring out how to build our dream lives, we probably need to make sure we’re looking after the bodies that are going to get us there. Megan takes us through what actually matters for gut health, from fibre and plant diversity to fermented foods and all the things we’ve been told to buy that might not actually be doing very much. I love that her approach is so much more about what we can add to our diets rather than constantly finding new things to cut out. And she’s sent over some brilliant resources for this week’s homework, which I’ll share below!
So I know gut health might not be the first thing that springs to mind when you think about becoming your future self, but when you realise how closely it’s connected to your energy, mood, immunity, hormones and even how you think, it becomes a pretty important part of the conversation.
There was loads that I learnt from this episode, but the one thing that really stuck with me was:
“Your gut doesn’t just respond to what you take away from it. It responds to what you give it.”
And I want us all to properly commit to this week’s homework because Megan has put together a 10-step starter guide to good gut health, taking everything we’ve learnt in the episode and turning it into simple, practical things we can actually start doing in our everyday lives. Give it a read on your commute or over a morning cuppa!
Also, if you haven’t watched the full episode yet, I’ve dropped it below.
Something I’ve learnt is that you can’t rely on external recognition to be your only source of motivation. Of course we all want to feel appreciated, and rightly so, but if your sense of achievement is entirely dependent on whether someone else notices your hard work, you’re handing over quite a lot of control.
I’d really encourage you to come back to what you actually want from your career. What are you working towards? Is this job a chance to learn? And if so, what skills do you want to develop? What would make you feel proud of yourself?
And then I think you have to ask yourself a slightly uncomfortable question: is this an environment that’s going to allow you to become that person?
You can take responsibility for your own attitude, your boundaries and the quality of your work, but you cannot single-handedly fix a workplace culture. And sometimes the most productive thing you can do for your career is to recognise when you’ve outgrown the environment you’re in.
One thing I feel very strongly about is that we need to be having more conversations about money, particularly as women. Because financial freedom isn’t just about how much you earn or how much you’ve got sitting in your savings account.
So next week, I’m handing over to finance expert Bola Sol to help us get our money working towards our future selves too.
I hope you have a wonderful week & I’ll see you very soon,
