Hello!! Hope you’re having a good start to your week!
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:
“Give yourself permission to imagine a life beyond what currently feels realistic or familiar. The beliefs that you hold about yourself influence everything: the opportunities you pursue, the risks you take, the boundaries you set. Your future self is not a stranger waiting in the distance; they are being shaped by every choice that you make now.”
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!
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.
Also, if you haven’t watched the full episode yet, I’ve dropped it below.
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,
