Get Booked – Anne – Marie Wickham, From Fear To Love

Hello, I'm Hazel, and you're listening to Get Booked. We are aired here every day of the week, 5 AM and 5 PM, and throughout my shows we talk to bloggers and writers and inspirational people and about just opening discussions and supporting all you wonderful women out there, making sure we can be the best we can be. And joining us in the studio today, I'm not going to delay at all because we've been off air and we've been chatting so much that I've got a feeling that the whole hour is not going to be enough. We should probably schedule some sort of week at some point to have a chat. Anne-Marie Wickham, hello! Hello, good morning, Hazel. How are you? I'm very, very well. I got here early, which I'm really impressed with. You've been chatting to the kids? I have. I've been grilling them. Yeah, I was quite impressed you actually managed to get them to look up from their iPad. You must be some inspiration. I like that. Yeah, you like it? Yeah, yeah. They used to call me the Pied Piper when I was a nursery manager, 'cause I could get the kids to do anything. Oh really? Having the mind of a child really helps. I think so. Are you a kidult? Always. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I keep on, I was told that, you know, growing up is a trap, so I just decided not to avoid it. Yeah, absolutely. At all costs. I mean, to be honest, the only reason I really had kids is just 'cause I had someone to play with. Yeah. Do you know what? I had a, I was a, I was a single parent with my son until he was 11. And then at Christmas when you buy them those games like Kaplunk and Buckaroo and all those sort of things. Yeah. But then you realize it's only you that can play with them as a single parent. That was quite hard. So I did start finding solitaire and things like that that he could play. Play on his own. Sorry. You've got 3 kids, haven't you? I have, yeah. I, I had 2 together, so I had one, um, when I was 37, and then I thought, oh, he needs a present for Christmas, bit strapped for money, so I gave him a sister the following year. Can I just say that's a false economy? Is it? Do you think? Yeah, because kids are quite expensive, but they've got each other for presents every year. Yeah, but I think they cost a lot in between the Christmases. Well, yeah, I suppose, but I only ever took them out one at a time, so they wore the same clothes because they were pretty much the 25th of September, 23rd of September, so they could fit into each other's clothes and only ever take one out and the other one would be at home naked. Brilliant, yeah, that's, that's, yeah, I get that. That's a joke, by the way. I take it back. In case anybody wants to ring social services. No, we're fine, we're good, we're good. You're gonna end up giving me the giggles. I'm gonna have to watch out. Center, center. Center myself, center myself. What were we saying before that? About kid adulthood. Yeah, kid adulthood, right? Okay, yeah, so you're a kidult. Yeah, yeah. I like that version better 'cause the other one is one of those dark things about young people on the street who are lost their way. And that's what I do a lot of work with young children who have just lost their focus and really haven't taught how to understand themselves. And I think we all suffer from that a little bit. I think it's one of my mantras is to be you, but actually it's one of the hardest things, such 5 letters, but people find it so difficult. In fact, I was walking on the way to the station here thinking about what I'd sent you in terms of a bio. And I was thinking, why doesn't everybody have an elevator pitch? Why doesn't everyone have a bio? If everybody in the world knew who they were, wouldn't it be a better world? Because you would have that strong foundation of knowing who you were and how to present yourself to the world and not get so easily offended by trying to be the person that the rest of the world wants you to be. You'd know who you were. I think it should be mandatory in schools. It should. But do you not think that a lot of people who have Instagram and Twitter, their little section that they're allowed, that's their mini bio. It's kind of their way of saying who they are. Yeah, that is true. I haven't ventured to Instagram yet. I don't understand it. I know I get told off all the time. I've tried to bribe my daughter to do it. She's 14, but she's not quite got the same viewpoint as me. So if you've got a tablet now, one of the breaks, just check it out. I will do that. The kid will sort it out. Happy to do a seminar. Happy to do that. It will, it will take him seconds to just sort you out. Excellent. Thank you. So it's your bio, just so people know exactly who I'm talking to. Master clinical hypnotherapist, transformational NLP master, life coach, public speaker, parent and youth mentor, BAon's, uh, Dip Adv Hip Obviously, which everybody knows that what that means. Community speaker for Alzheimer's UK. I want to hear a lot more about that. Volunteer mentor for Castle Point Essex and Young People's Service. Founder of Flow Life Achievement Programs, which you've also written a book about, which we're also going to be talking about. It's here. Thank you. I'm going to be having a look at that. Um, and, uh, generally just who you are, what you believe in, uh, what gives you spark. And what you want to achieve in life? Always has been since my, since having any knowledge of being alive, it's always been people have been my passion. You know, for anybody that's a personal profiler who understands that we've all done them at work, Myers-Briggs, DISC, all these different ones. I am the high I, which is the innovator, influencer, independent, Although no, not independent, because I think the worst thing that could happen to me, my Achilles heel would be to be put in a room by myself for more than an hour. That would be the biggest punishment you could ever give me, because I just love being with people, talking with people, reflecting back to people the things that they don't see about themselves. I love to see the wow moment in people's eyes when they go, oh yeah, I never thought about it like that. I never thought about me like that. So that's my absolute inspiration. The latest venture that I'm actually doing is the Inspired Stage. It originally started in London, but I'm actually taking it to Brentwood. And this Inspired Stage is where we encourage people to bring their story. If they had 10 minutes to tell their— give their wisdom to the world, they come on a stage and do that. Yeah, I'm so excited about this. And this, I suppose, really brings together all the things that, You know, as you go through life, you think, I like that, and I like that, and I like that. How can I bring it all together? For me, the Inspired stage is just that. I get to host, I get to share with the public a little bit every month about, you know, what's been happening in my world. And then I get to introduce them to amazing people, to look at someone and then they get on the stage and then they start telling their story and you, you know, you go, wow, I never thought that was what that person was gonna say. I love the idea, the element of surprise, the element of inspiring people because they couldn't guess who you were or what you did. Yeah, and the variety. Yeah, which in turn makes people think, you know what, I could do that. If she could do that, I could do that. 'Cause she doesn't look, or he doesn't look like somebody that's capable of that. They're so nondescript or whatever, then that means I could do that too. So it just gives people possibility and opportunity. What I quite like about this is that what you do, you have 3 or 4 beats. 2 speakers at a time, but you have a wild card. So if there's someone listening right now going, there's some— I'd love to get into that, I don't know how to do it, there's something I want to talk about, there's something that I've been going through that I think I understand, I'd love to help other people understand, they should get in touch with you because you elect to have a wild card, an unknown. Give somebody a chance, give them a platform, and they just need to basically get in touch with you at annemariewickham.com. Easy. Uh, just type you in, you come up everywhere because you've done YouTube videos, a book, you do, uh, talks, everything. You're all over the place. I'm a busy lady. Yeah, you are very busy. Um, and you're always out and about. And I mean, that's part of to do with, uh, you, you were saying off air before that you have ADHD. I do have ADHD, uh, ADHD-A as it's, um, known now because I'm an adult kid. Kid, what was the word? Kidult. Kidult, that's what I am. They should call it ADHD-K. Anyway, yeah. Um, so I speak to my people. Yes, please do. Uh, so I, I haven't been diagnosed because I was too, uh, when I was young it wasn't a recognized, um, uh, a difference. I like to call it difference as opposed to disability because I don't see it as a disability in some ways, but it's definitely, it makes me different. You just need to use it in a way that's productive for you. Absolutely. And we were talking off here, and one of the things, again, I was coming from the station and I was thinking what is it that, um, it makes me so different? And I think I am a coach and I have ADHD, and ADHD and coach equals superpower, and I love it, it's amazing. But, you know, uh, ADHD and coaching and strategy equals you're able to change the world. And that's the bit that's missing with people with ADHD. We have amazing ideas, um, constantly. You know, I think it was Rory Bremner who has ADHD as well, he's a comedian. Very common, um, career for a person with ADHD. ADHD comedy, being up there, standing up there, being the center of attention, um, constant ongoing energy, energy, energy. That's what we like to do. However, it's the consistency of being able to, um, do that over a long period of time. So being a speaker is perfect for me because I get to have that whole experience at one go. And then, but, but this is again what we were saying off air, is about telling people that if you have something like ADHD, um, autism, Dyslexia, though it just means that you're better at something else. Find that. And you're saying the perfect combination is— yeah, perfect combination is Inspired because, um, I get to do all of that. And it's about having, um, a whole experience in a short amount of time. We don't do long term because it's, it's, it's very difficult to see beyond next month and doing yearly planning. I mean, as a life coach, 9 weeks is enough for me. I can't see beyond that. I can, but it's very, very difficult to project how that's going to end. So all the work that I do is very encapsulated experiences over a short amount of time. And I can do that brilliantly, even if I do toot my own trumpet, I can. And I've got lots of testimonials that would say that. However, if you gave me a year-long project, which is why I didn't excel in being employed in different— because I just couldn't keep up that momentum of being attached to something for such a long amount of time and never ever seeing an end result, you know? So that's what I found. It's kind of like, uh, you can kind of feel the tension just going, I just need to see something more. Yeah, okay, fine. I get that. It's just how the variety of life, the variety of people just makes life more enriching. How dull would life be if we were all the same? I said the other day on an interview that I believe the best way for everyone to show their individuality and to give each other an idea of what we are all capable of, I believe it should be passed by Boris Johnson, not Yeltsin. I said Yeltsin the other day. Maybe it's him, I don't know. But that we should all wear fancy dress because wearing fancy dress, number one, makes you look glamorous and beautiful and lovely. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And you would know, you would have an idea about what that type of person was about just by the fancy dress that they chose. Cowboys, Indians, pirates, Maharajah, you know, you'd know the people you want to go to a party with. The YMCA. That's basically what you're saying. But you know who you're dealing with, don't you? No, seriously, don't you know you're dealing with— that person's dressed as Hitler. Wide berth. You know, wow. Well, on that note, we're going to go off to a couple of ads and we'll be back in a couple of minutes. I've got so many questions for you. Welcome to Women's Radio Station. I'm Sarah Louise Ryan and welcome to Love Lessons Live on Women's Radio Station. Hello and welcome to Future Classic Women Awards with me, Stefania Passamonte, on Women's Radio Station. Hello and welcome to Julie May Is Listening. Hi, this is Anna Kennedy and we're at Women's Radio Station supporting women's well-being, and we're talking all things autism. Women, the possibilities are endless. That's what makes us different. Hi, I'm Lauren Mishkon. I'm a birth doula and mum of 3, and I'm passionate about supporting women to have empowering and positive birth experiences. Please join me for my brand new show, From Tummy to Mummy, here on Women's Radio Station. 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You're listening to Women's Radio Station, supporting women's well-being Women's Radio Station's creating a global network for the empowerment of women, and we want you to be involved. Join us on Instagram and Twitter at Women's Radio Station, that's Women's Radio STN, or Facebook Women's Radio Station to keep up to date with all our exciting programs. Hello and welcome back to our next section of Get Booked here at our wonderful and delicious and not rainy studio in Covent Garden. I have Anne-Marie Wickham in the studio with me today. We've been gassing away a little bit of everything. We probably covered a whole show's worth of of topics just in the last section. But what I want to focus on for this section is From Fear to Love: 14 Key Self-Mastery Principles to Living Your Best Life in Happy Flow. This is your book. Yes. Thank you. Yeah, this book was, it's, you know, in the last segment we talked about ADHD and probably thinking, well, hold on, you don't have those concentration skills. How did you get to be writing a book? Well, this book, the individual chapters, one of the ways that I've learned how to express myself is I constantly write articles. So if you went on my LinkedIn page, you'd see, you know, when I have something that I need to work through and think about, I write an article about it. And it's things that I've come up against that have made me think about my past, how I overcame it, what impact it's having on me now. And I just write an article about that so I can work my way through it. And I realized that these were like really good principles to be able to move past being stuck in situations. And so I just literally got quite a few of them and didn't realize how many there were. And it became this book. So it wasn't a labor of, I wanna write a book, I wanna, you know, I want to have something out there. It was a case of, I've written this program, FLOW, which will take you from being stuck, not knowing who you are, feeling that life is passing you by, feeling that there's more out there for you, that you could be more and do more. And I wrote this program and I thought, yeah, but what about when people go home? Because that's the bit, isn't it? When you're motivated to do something, it's all great when you're there and you're in the presence of somebody that's got great energy, but then you've got home and you can literally feel the motivation slipping off you as you get in your car and you go, oh God, I can't even remember what I was going to do. So I wrote this book so that you could dip back into it and, and catch the essence again of exactly what you need to do, because it does talk about letting go of the past. It talks about you know, social media and how you need to limit yourself and stay present in the world that you're in. You know, wear your best clothes every day. Don't wait for— or wait for that perfect time. I know women have got wardrobes of, oh, that's for my best. Nothing. I've never seen you wear it. What's the best you're waiting for? Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, it's just a— it's just a— it's not too heavy. It's very light. It's a bit jokey because life is fun. It should always be fun. And we don't want to be preached at either. No, no, no. You know, and some of the stories will make you— it's, I think they call it black humor, not as in the color black person, because I am, but I'm talking from the point of view— we're getting in trouble now by the producer. Sorry, sorry, please laugh a bit further away from the microphone. Sorry, sorry. Right, sent up. We like to call it dark humor. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, yeah, I'm upgrading, dark humor, darling, yeah. And just where, you know, if things get a little bit too tense and too dark, you just have to put a humorous spin on it. And it allows people to go, yeah, I felt that, but phew, you lifted me back up again. You know, that's what you need in order for you to be able to accept people's circumstances and feel empathy for them. You don't want to be dragged down to their level. You just want to go home and just never go out again. You want to go, you know what, I got what she said. She made me feel that. And it's going to make me feel differently about other people. But how do people hold on to that? Because the stuff that's happened to me, and I, when I'm feeling like literally distance away, like if I'm, if I'm abroad or if I've stayed away from certain toxic situations, and I have, I have the strength and I go, I'm better than that, I don't need to think about that anymore, I can get over it, you know, those perceptions are nonsense and whatever, and I can I feel fine, but then it just takes one thing to happen and you're back down again. So it's all very well going to these incredible motivational speaks, talks, sorry, and then all of a sudden all it takes is for 2 or 3 things, see something on social media, or to have a mean text, or to be excluded, or whatever, and then you're back down there again. So what, I mean, you do hypnotherapy as well. I do hypnotherapy. And is that something you would work with? That was one of the reasons why I did hypnotherapy, and I'm so glad you asked me that question because We all suffer from that. The best therapist, the best hypnotherapist, the best life coach, we all suffer from that. And any good coach that you go to will teach you the strategies of how you are able to deal with it, manage it, and let it go through you. You're going to ask me later about the 3 best books that I like, and one of them really helps you to do that. For me, what I teach my clients is, um, number 1, keep your gratitude journal. Make sure that you're writing down daily, if you possibly can, what have I achieved today, that you can just go back in and look and feel, actually, I'm a really good person. Most importantly, and this for me is everything, because I have had— I'm not even going to pretty this up— I've had a horrific childhood. But for me to be able to look back, and you were brought up in the social system, yeah, in social care, yeah, to be here today, to be sitting with you, to be in this wonderful studio, and, you know, doing something that not a lot of people are ever going to get the opportunity to do, I go, wow. Thank you for everything that happened to me in the past that brought me here today. And even though at the time I couldn't see why I should have to go through that, I realise now that that was building me to be here today, to be able to talk to everybody that's listening and impart some kind of wisdom to let you know that you can do it too. So I'm constantly looking, as soon as that situation happens, yeah, but there's a reason for this. What's the lesson I'm supposed to learn here? And when you, and that gives you a different focus. It takes you away from, that, you know, that inline train of thought where it's taking you in a spiral down. Yeah. And all of a sudden you're opening the doorway to a new line of thinking. You're going, yeah, well, okay, so what is the lesson here? Well, it could be that. And before you know it, you've moved away from that because your mind is in a solution-focused direction instead of a— Rather than a loop. Yes. See, what I quite often try to enlist is something called positive attribution, but I know that when you're depressed or down, sometimes your brain doesn't work, which is why people sometimes use drugs because it tries to boost you forward, drugs such as antidepressants and anti-anxieties. But you have, like, positive attribution to me is there's so many different ways that if you get dumped, it means that you have more time to finally learn that language, or you can spend a bit more time with your kids, or, you know, I'm sure people spend lots of time with their kids anyway. But when I also had, I had quite bad depression, I started reading a lot to to distract me because I needed to try and retrain my brain to, 'cause I was thinking about some of the things that happened for 8 hours a day. And I was like, this is a waste of my time. And it was making me feel even worse because I felt so angry that it was taking so much time away from me. But then I started reading and doing more and more reading. And then I decided to do this show because I love reading and the power of it. And because of that, I've not only met incredible authors we've helped people with our Mental Health Advocate series, we're helping new writers, emerging writers, get out there and tell their story. We are getting to chat to people and have all these different perspectives and I'm like, do you know what, if those people hadn't made me feel that way, I wouldn't have read the books, I wouldn't have gone this way. So in a way, I've attributed something positive out of all of it. There's certain things that have happened, like, you know, maybe life was a little bit harder when I split up from my ex-husband, but because it was harder, I worked harder because I had to. And then, you know, so many people kind of get into a lazy kind of way of life because life is a bit too easy. And I'd love life to be easy, but I don't think it's lazy. I think if they don't have the tools to do something different, because this society, particularly Western society, is so non-solution focused. It's so looking out there. Everybody looks outward to fix what's inside, and I can tell you now that everything that you need to fix you is within you. And as I said earlier, when people know who they are, then they know what they need. And most people don't know. Most people's idea of who they are is gathered from the interactions that they've had with the rest of the world. They actually— how many times I've asked this question in coaching, who are you? They're, oh, Uh, what do you mean? Well, it's a simple enough question. Who are you? And first of all, they'll always reel off the labels. I'm a, um, I'm a, um, managing director. I'm a global, I'm this and all that. And I go, yeah, but who really are you? And they haven't thought about how they feel about themselves. Mm-hmm. And you, you asked about the hypnotherapy. That, that's the reason why the program that I do, Flow, is hypnotherapy, life coaching, and energy alignment, because you need all three of those things. Me, ADHD, I can't do— I could, but I choose not to do long-term coaching because it doesn't work for me. I need something instant. And for me, hypnotherapy is kapow. It cuts through the BS, if I can say that. No, I'll take it back. It just cuts through. I've seen people, honestly, I've seen people sit in my chair, particularly young women, and they've come out of hypnotherapy and they have burst into to tears. I want to do it. I've never done it, and I think I need to do it because every now and again I just go, I get annoyed with myself that I can't refocus, reset. You just want to reset sometimes. Reset, yeah. Um, and it's something that I definitely want to try. Um, I might be a little bit nervous about it, but I just had a lady yesterday and she's been speaking to me now for 5 days. She'll send me a text every day. She's in a really high-powered job, and she keeps asking these tentative questions, tentative questions. She actually said the last question that she gave me yesterday was, um, will I be okay to park where you are? And, um, because I get nervous of going new places, and this was the crux of what she was trying to say. And also I get nervous about meeting new people. And I said, I think you've done amazingly well already. You're here talking to me, we've had conversations, I know so much about you already, almost feel like I know you. You're driving here on your own. I asked you if you wanted someone to drive you, you said you need to. So already you're empowered by your situation. And for you to meet me, I already know so much about you, but your journey's already begun just by the fact that we're having these conversations. And you just put it back to people to, to let them know, look how much you've actually already done to get where you need to get to. The easy— hardest bit's done. That's the loop we're talking about. People are so consumed with how they're failing that sometimes they don't— you don't realize how much they've already done. Yeah. You work with people's resources. You just told me that you're in a loop. The fact that you even know you're in a loop means that you're self-aware. Absolutely. It's just, we sometimes just need to kind of step out of ourselves, get out of our own way. Yeah, and see if I can squeeze this in before the ads. There was an excellent line I read in a book where there was this woman saying, when I go and watch live poetry, it sparks something in me. I go home and I write, and it just makes me feel alive. She says, but poetry isn't for everybody, but there's something for everybody. Absolutely. Whether it's music, whether it's whether it's cooking, whether it's Netflix or comedy or basically doing yoga, find your thing that gives you fire in your belly and just makes you feel happy about yourself. We're just gonna go over to the ads and we'll be back very soon and we'll carry on not even touching on our questions. Welcome to the Women's Radio Station, supporting women's well-being. Women's Radio Station is all about diversity, from opinions, career, ethnicity, education, and most importantly, women's well-being. We aim to celebrate the individuality of every woman everywhere, providing opportunities and the platform for your voice. Visit our website womensradiostation.com for more information. 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Women's Radio Station can give voice to your brand with a wide range of of sponsorship opportunities, including individual programs. We can tailor your experience for you. For more information on how you can sponsor a show, go to womensradiostation.com. Women's Radio Station, supporting women's well-being. Welcome back to the second half of today's show. We've been having a riot and yet at the same time discussing really sensible and serious topics. Aren't we multitasking? We are women here at Rawr. Amen. So we've been chatting about your book, From Fear to Love: 14 Key Mastery Principles to Living Your Best Life in Happy flow. We've been talking about the different therapies you offer and coaching practices. We've been talking about kids. We've been talking about ridiculousness. We've been talking about ADHD. We've been talking about how we should all dress in fancy dress. Yes. Yeah. I personally think we should all live on a beach and just wear bikinis. Fancy bikinis. Fancy bikinis, obviously. Although occasionally I do just go for a plain one. Just, you know, I don't know why. Variety. A skinny one so that you scare people who've got bad eyesight like me. Um, to be honest, I skinny dip most of the time anyway. Oh, check you out! It's— I just— it's quite freeing if you're in a really nice— not in the pool, generally not in a pool, but in the sea. I like it. It's liberating. And, you know, I'm like Higher. It's a bit like Dolly Parton, Islands in the Sea, when I'm lonely. Hee hee hee hee hee hee. I digress, I apologize. So what we're doing is a book show, isn't it? Should we talk about books? Yeah, we can talk about books. Cool, what are your favorite books? So again, it's quite difficult for me to read a full book. I do try very hard, and someone once said to me, the way that you read your books is the way that you live your life. Wow, that was profound because I have a lot of books that I have read 2 or 3 chapters of, not many that I've got to the end. However, there are some that stand out. "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho. I read that when I was very, very young. It was awesome. Really opened me up to a magical life. I could have a magical life. So many people have asked me to read that. And I said in a show last week that it's the one, I've got about 6 or 7 books. I've also got your book as well that I want to read. Nobody has ever said anything bad about it, and it's the one that everybody comes out with on the show. I think if you're a person that's searching for more than what you can see, that you believe that there is, you know, you believe in awe and wonder, if you believe in what you cannot see but the belief that is there, um, it's a lovely, very light introduction to spirituality. But more than that, it is a book that helps— it allows you to dream beyond your current circumstances and believe that that could be For You. It's awesome. It's not my favourite book, but it's one that I was able to read all the way through, so that must say something, actually. Wow, it says a lot. Is it something I could do? Oh, because all the books— Oh, you won't put it down, Hazel. You will not put the book down. But could I do it on Audible? Is it something that would work on Audible? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I'm trying to get, um, the busier I am, the more energy I get. I get from exercise, and so if it's something that I could do, if I could run and cycle and listen to it then, because all the books that get sent for this show, they're the hard copy. Yeah, not always huge, just the hard copy, which is good, and I kind of prefer that. But I think for something like The Alchemist, if I could get it on Audible, it means that I can multitask. And when I'm walking from here and there and just 10 minutes in between train stations and things like that— oh yeah, it's very easy to dip in and out of and pick up, bit like EastEnders. I don't watch Anyway, but love EastEnders. Phil's been hit over the head. Oh, do you know, I mean, when my life opened up, I just found there was so many more things that I wanted to do that it just— I don't know, just television didn't seem like a priority for me. And whereas before I would be that, get there every day, Sunday when it was on, on Sunday. And then all of a sudden, when you, when you start doing the inner work, I suppose, I just, I just found more things that I was more into. Reading was one of them, you know. Um, my, my, my— the book that I'm reading now was a recommendation. It's Gary Zukav, Gary Zukav, Seat of the Soul, forwarded by Oprah Winfrey and Maya Angelou. That says it all, right? Oh, let me have a look. Seat of the Soul. It is— it's in my bag actually. I carry it with me. Um, and it's just— it's, uh, some of the profoundness of it. It's been updated for 2019, and just getting into, um, chapter 1 is about the power that people try to exert over each other constantly, and that if we all knew our own individual power, we find the need to oppress and put down on other people to try and feel our own power. Do you see what I mean? Teachers with children, parents with children, you know, dictators with countries. It's everywhere. It's this desire to show that I am worthy because I am oppressing you. And it's just so sad. It just really makes you be able to step back and, you know, just find your own power. What's that good saying? People speak bad of you because they're jealous and they don't want other people to like you as much. And, and they, they kind of elevates themselves. Yeah, people that put other people down feel that in some way it's elevating themselves. But actually, I love it when someone says something bad about me because I say, well, I know what you think about me. What do you think that's saying about you? It says a lot more about the person who's saying it than it does about what they think about me, because I'm not interested. It's not my business what you think about me. My business what I think about me. Yeah, but, and also your self-worth isn't determined by what somebody else thinks of you. Absolutely. It's what you think about you. Yeah, how you define yourself is what matters. You've got to live with yourself, not some nasty little idiot down the road. And as you said earlier, let's go back to that when you said, what, you know, when I get to that point where that one comment will just get me in that vortex of a downward spiral, it's those kind of affirmations that you need to say to yourself because they're absolutely true. And I know it's hard sometimes, but just remembering that actually, who am I going home with? Who do I need to impress? Who do I need to respect? Who do I need to look up to? Who do I need to love? It's not that per— And once you start saying those questions, it kind of minimizes who they are and what they're saying. But you sometimes need to write it down and have it with you if you sometimes can't focus on it. 'Cause also if someone says something nasty or does something nasty, you should be like, do you actually wanna care about the opinion of someone who went out of their way to try and make you feel bad. Mm-hmm. And it's— sometimes we just need someone to remind us to think about these. But try and take the focus off of them and put the focus back on you. Who do I need to love? Who's important in my life? When you ask a simple question like that, who's actually the most important person in my life? Mm-hmm. Is it that person? Because if it is that person, you have really got a problem, and you know it's never that person. It has to be about you. Why am I the most important? This asking those kind of, which brings you back to who you are. And again, it's all about this knowing who you are, knowing your strengths, knowing your resources, knowing what makes you happy. Is this actually hurting or healing me? Is a really brilliant question because you're kind of— Wow. Yeah. Carry on talking. I'm gonna write that down because otherwise I'm gonna forget it. So, rustle of the papers. Sorry, Melissa. Is this is hurting or healing me? Yeah, and just asking those kind of questions. You— what I love about our brain is it is solution-focused. And even if you ask that question, you don't have time to answer it, then your mind will keep coming back to that. It will keep coming back to give you the answers that you need. And that's what hypnotherapy does. It will search for those answers in your subconscious. It will, and it will override what the original— where that memory started from. So it's really powerful asking those yourself, those kind of questions all the time. In fact, um, even more powerful is to write a couple of those questions down before you go to bed, because then your mind can do nothing but solve that problem. You'll wake up feeling amazing. Really? Yeah, I do it all the time. You think I didn't do that before I came for this interview today? Of course I did. I— what do I want this interview to look like? What do I want it to sound like? How do I want her to feel when I'm speaking with her? What's the impression that I'm going to go? What I want to walk away feeling like? I do all of that. That's why people say, well, how come you're so confident? Because I've already done it in my mind. Simple, isn't it? That's why I don't worry about, yeah, I've taken a few notes, but it's already there. Last night, all this work was already done, which sounds crazy, doesn't it? But it's absolutely true. And fake it until you make it. Yeah. I just, I don't, the other thing, I suppose the opposite side of that is because I do have ADHD, I'm a very much in the moment person. And, um, but I allow, I allow that to channel through me. I don't see it as a detriment. I allow it to channel through me. It's not always perfect, but it does allow me to be present, real, and authentic. And the times when I get nervous and not my best is when I'm trying to fit into the box of what's expected of me, you know. Do you know where I like shoving that box? Hehe. I don't like that box. No, we don't like boxes. We create our own shapes. I never ever, a show I was doing last week and I was saying about how I've, I'm sometimes thought of as being a little bit different to other people. Really? And it's caused me problems because I've not seen things the same way. I've always just assumed that we're all just individual people. I was never taught really because I was brought up by a single mum who basically just did all the jobs. My dad was about, but it was briefly for a bit, a couple of hours on a Sunday, but he wasn't, you know, he wasn't influencing me. But my mum was very, very strong and very independent. And she's the kind of person that I think at school once, they sent out a letter saying, we're gonna start bringing in uniforms, what color should they be? And mum sent back, 'pink with yellow spots, and that is the only thing I'll send my child in. Nobody makes my child dress like everybody else. I'm fed up of kids being told to behave the same way. How is that healthy?' And I remember thinking that that was quite funny, but actually that just epitomises the fact that she's always been, you know, she's always been quite different because she's had to be to get through things, and she's been strong. I kind of, when I moved to London, I remember thinking, so many issues that people would talk about. It's like, those have never been in my arena because no one ever told them, no, made me think that it was an issue, no, you know. And, and so sometimes I've possibly come off as naive, and, um, they're like, yeah, you just go ahead and do things, you don't even care that people seem to think you should behave in a different way. I'm like, I don't see why I should. I really— your mum's a brilliant role model. Your mum's a warrior, and that's most single parent women and men are warriors. The only thing I say, be mindful, is who's filling your cup? Because what you tend to find with single parents is they're not only single parents to their children, they're single parents to their friends, they're single parents to, um, the people they work with, they're single parents to everybody. They're the one that people go to, they're the go-to people. But actually, there's a certain sense of healing in that for a single person. Only this is only from experience, you're healing others because in the hope that somehow it will heal yourself, but it truly doesn't. It's never going to heal you. You have to do that work yourself. There is no avoidance. I'm sorry. I have been told, I was told at one point that I constantly was trying to help other people, didn't help myself, and I was using it as a distraction. Absolutely. Which is just, um, what so many people do sometimes. And we're trying to think, we think that the altruism is going to help us when in fact, yeah, um, you've got to look after yourself. But it's that whole thing, isn't it? Yeah, if the plane's going down, get your own mask on because you're going to be useless to everybody else. Um, we are still going to talk about books in a couple of minutes. Let's just go over to our last lot of ads. Welcome to Women's Radio Station. I'm Sarah Louise Ryan, and welcome to Love Lessons Live on Women's Radio Station. Hello and welcome to Future Classic Women Awards with me, Stefania Passamonte, on Women's Radio Station. Hello and welcome Julie May is listening. Hi, this is Anna Kennedy and we're at Women's Radio Station supporting women's well-being and we're talking all things autism. Women, the possibilities are endless. That's what makes us different. Hi, I'm Lauren Mishkon. I'm a birth doula and mum of 3 and I'm passionate about supporting women to have empowering and positive birth experiences. Please join me for my brand new show, From Tummy to Mummy, here on Women's Radio Station. Every week I'll be here with an expert guest talking about women's reproductive health, everything fertility, pregnancy, birth, and baby related, right through to the menopause and beyond. Please join us for an informative and fun hour. Hello, my name is Ingrid Marsh on Women's Radio Station, and coming soon is the Radical Wellbeing Show. To help support women's wellbeing, each show I share the airwaves with ordinary women like me and you doing extraordinary things. Women who've overcome huge obstacles in their lives who are now here with me to empower you. On the Radical Wellbeing Show, you'll be inspired to kick away the roadblocks and live your life to the fullest. If you're ready to get radical about your wellbeing, then this is the show for you. Hi, I'm Hazel Butterfield, a blogger, book lover, and mental health advocate. And you can listen to my show, Get Booked, here at Women's Radio Station daily at 5 AM and 5 PM. Throughout my shows, we'll talk about the books I've read, new releases, chat to authors, publishers, and book enthusiasts, all with the theme and aim of supporting women's emotional well-being. If you have a book to tell us about, get in touch at presenters@womensradiostation.com. Join me on my show and share my love of books and writing. Hi, I'm Valentina Barbacci, and I'm the Executive Director of Media Matters for Women. We're a registered charity operating in Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and we produce and share podcasts via Bluetooth on mobile phones, focusing specifically on women and girls excluded from information due to extreme poverty. We empower those living in rural areas with media that transforms how they access, own, and share information. To find out more and be part of this movement, come check out our website at MediaMattersForWomen.org. You're listening to Women's Radio Station, supporting women's well-being. Women's Radio Station's creating a global network for the empowerment of women, and we want you to be involved. Join us on Instagram and Twitter at Women's Radio Station, that's Women's Radio STN, or Facebook Women's Radio Station to keep up to date with all our exciting programs. Welcome back to our final section of today's Get Booked show with Anne-Marie Wickham. Now we've been gassing away so much, I've not touched any of my questions, and I'm going to have to put some structure to this last section so I can get the last few bits in. Now I just wanna quickly follow on from what we were talking about before about how the impression that other people can have on us and single parents and things like that. And I just wanted to point out that my mum did raise me a particular way to kind of feel like I could do anything and everything, but her own mother, who is now 94, who does actually have Alzheimer's, I know you do work with Alzheimer's UK, back when you would never even think it was normal. She had a couple of jobs. She was a magistrate. She had 4 kids. She worked all the way through. She was, she worked at the local mental health institute. Wow. And so this is, and she worked all the way through up until 10 years ago. She was still the founder and head of Concern for Mental Health, a mental health charity where she made sure that all these people on a Thursday would get a decent meal. She'd make sure that she'd arrange everybody to pick them all up up, and we'd have a day, a whole day in this church hall, and then she'd send them back with leftover food, with good meal, everybody's chatting to each other, nobody was lonely. But she's always done that, and she's been doing that since 25, 30, and so that is 70-odd years. Yes, yeah, that's commitment. And, and yeah, she, she actually rode in the Oxford Cambridge back in the days when it wasn't every year, but So I just, you just kind of think you lead by example. Absolutely. And yeah, you've got to be grateful for certain things and just appreciate that some things work and some things don't. Yeah. And the other part of the structure to this section is we've talked about two of the books, and typically throughout the rest, throughout the previous parts of this show, we would start on one section and within, we should have scheduled this show for a week. Let's be honest. So we talked about two of your favourite books, The Alchemist and Sea of Souls? Gary— Seat of the Soul, Gary Zukav. Yeah, right. And what was the third one? So this third book was, uh, life-changing for me, I have to say. Um, really, many, many women I meet, and men, really struggle with their emotional intelligence, trying to work out how to work through their feelings. And, you know, my mantra is be you. But that is a journey for everybody. So this particular book, and it's by David R. Hawkins, um, I was recommended this book. It's called Letting Go: The Pathway to Surrender. Now this book is recommended by so many life coaches, energy healers, because he was the one that coined the, um, the, the chart of emotional well-being. So you've got Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which talks about the things that you need to be able to Full and Whole Person, but this one is a scale of your emotions, and it talks about, um, every emotion resonates at a vibrancy level. So, um, and, and it's zero starts at, um, I think it's acceptance or neutrality. Zero is neutrality now, and below that you've got fear, shame, envy, guilt, all of those things that most people are dealing with on a daily basis. Most people are not even vibrating they're vibrating at a minus level. And then when you get to neutrality, you start looking at acceptance, love, um, uh, pride. No, pride to a degree is a lower one. You should get the book. It really helps you to work out how am I gonna move from shame. So something's happened to you, you feel bad about it, and then you, you feel guilt. Maybe I'm just trying to put this in the concept of the book. Um, something, something was done to you and you feel ashamed about it, and then, um, you don't want to have relations with your partner because something happened to you, and then you feel guilt because you can't. You can see how every single emotion builds on top of top, and it just puts your whole life in perspective, basically. It's an awesome book. I've got it in my— oh no, my bag was too heavy. I've got two books in already. David R. Hawkins, The Pathway to Surrender. And if you want to start working on yourself and building your— it's what I use with all of my clients I take them through the journey of being able to move from those lower level emotions to love and above, because love resonates at 500, and the whole world resonates with vibrancy, with vibrations. And when you start getting to that point, it, it, it— for me, it's the point of where people stopped calling me crazy and nuts, and now they say, 'Anne-Marie, you have amazing energy.' I hear that once a day at least. A guy I met City for the first time. Ross, he's a life coach. He said, you have an awesome energy. And I always smile to myself because I think, yeah, once upon a time that was madness and nuts, you know. But it's because I know who I am now and I know what I'm vibrating and I know what I'm radiating now. I translate it in the way that it needs to be used. So it's very important that, you know, you use the emotions that you have for positive good and work your way through them. And it, and it shows you how to, and it tells you how it impacts on you if you don't. And it's, it's just so powerful because you'll see your life in there. He doesn't need to tell you your specific life for you to read the emotions and understand how it's crippled you in yours. So it's the power of knowing who you are, and what is the power of understanding your emotions and how they've impacted on you and how you can move up and through your emotions. It basically teaches you to let those emotions go to you and through you. So now when I feel fear— that's why my is from Fear to Love. Some of it was based on what I read. When I feel fear, I allow that feeling because did you know any strong emotion, good or bad, if you just allow it to go through you, it can only last for 4 minutes. That's fear. If you just let that emotion go, okay, yeah, just feel it, just let it go, just feel it. But if you feed it, if you feed it, it exacerbates, it gets bigger, you see. And the other thing which is wonderful You cannot have a negative and a positive emotion reside in you at the same time. It's not physically possible. So if, as you said earlier, you want to take yourself out of that space of that vortex that goes down and spirals down to all those negative emotions, laugh as loud as you can. You can't help but laugh more because you're being silly. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. But even, and, and, and first of all, it might feel strained and ugly and awkward. And even just feeling that can make you feel funny. It's just like, what's this? This is crazy. You know, that's why you see sometimes when people don't know how to handle their emotions, my daughter does it. If I tell her off, she'll laugh because she can't translate that emotion properly. She's 14. But that's sometimes what we need to do is we just need to have that interrupt. That's what Tony Robbins does all the time. Have that interrupt. So it would take you from that negative to the positive straight away. And you, you can waver between the two, but to keep focusing on that positive emotion, you can't feel the negative one. It takes training. Life takes training. My strongest message to you today is everything that I'm telling you didn't just come to me over a fortnight. It didn't come to me in one book. It takes continual practice. Life is about learning and growing. It is not— people come to me for life coaching and they say, all right, I've done my 6 sessions now, I don't need it anymore. Oh, you did life 'Lovely.' Oh, great. 'In 6 sessions.' Yeah, yeah. And they go, 'Well, why would I need more?' I said, 'Do you want to carry on living? Do you want to carry on being happy? Do you want to carry on being successful and achieving? That's why you do life coaching.' It makes common sense. You don't do your job, your— the job that you do, we all do continuing professional development. We expect to do that. We expect to upgrade our knowledge, right? To do the best job that we can do. Isn't your life that precious that you would want to do the same. Why do people fight me to be happy? I don't know. I don't know many. Enough. And I just want to find out a little bit more about the hypnotherapy. Yeah. How many sessions would somebody need to say get over something, or can it be done in one? Well, that's, that's why I like to do the Flow Programme, because sometimes you might think it's one incident, sometimes you might even know what the incident is. I do lots of different sessions. So that I do the Leaving the Emotional Baggage Behind, which is really lovely. You go, you go into this house and you're able to sort out all— the house being your mind— you go in, you sort everything out, and then you pack a suitcase and you take it and you drop it over the edge of a cliff and it's gone. It's awesome. That is really— a couple of women I've worked with said that's been absolutely life-changing for them. And then there's ones when you can go back in time and you can redo or rehear what you should have heard at that time. Maybe you weren't nurtured and cared for in the way that you should have, could have wanted to have been. You can go back and you can change that. The most powerful session I ever had that changed my life was healing my inner child. I told you before, my childhood was gruesome and awesome, and I was able to go back in time to that little child, and I sat down on the bed next to her, and I put my arms around her, and I told her everything that she needed to know. I told her how beautiful she was and how powerful she was look where she was now, look what she achieved. And I healed her, and that is just so powerful. I've done that with quite a few. I, I, I worked with a lady who was an alcoholic. She'd been an alcoholic for 27 years. I did that powerful, powerful session with her. She gave up drinking within 6 weeks. She wasn't drinking at all. The saddest thing about that was— be careful— because it was her husband that approached me and asked her to do that session. However, when I saw him again 8 weeks later, he told Yeah, I've lost my drinking partner now. She don't drink at all. He just wanted her to stop drinking a little bit. Wow. Yeah. She went back to drinking. That's the sadness of some of these stories. You can't, you can't manage it all. Oh, I know we've only got a couple of minutes left. I kind of feel like throughout the whole of this interview, you've told me more than 3 key tips on mental wellbeing. But if you could just sum it up in like line for each of things that people can do to just be themselves? Right, the most powerful two words that I can say to you is start the journey to be you. I, and one of the phrases that I coined which really encapsulated it, be you to full, beautiful. Ah! Yep, trademark that. Oh, should I have said that out loud? Oh, it's still on my head. Get it out quick. But that's what I would encourage you to do. Don't be scared to find out who you really are. Yeah. Embrace who you really are and start that journey today. Knowledge is power. Yeah. Knowledge is journey, action is success. And also, I think some of the books that you've told us to go for as well, and people should go for the From Fear to Love because, you know, it's It's encapsulating everything that you've learned and everything that you've gone through and everything that you've read and all the different people that you've met. And everybody that's listening, I'm sure you're gonna wanna find out more. And you can go onto Annemarie Wickham and all your different videos are on there, the TED style talks where they can go to actually the live chats and the details for getting your book is on there as well. They can email you, right? Just email me. Yeah, that's the best way. Just have a bit of a chat with her, pick up the phone, although make sure you save an hour because it's not a short conversation, is it? You've got a lot to say, which is brilliant. I've loved you being here. Thank you. Please come back again sometime. I most definitely will. Brilliant. Thank you so much, and I'll be putting up some more information on my website as well, just so people can find out more about you. Thank you so much and have a fabulous day. Thank you very much. Bye everyone! Welcome to the Women's Radio Station, supporting women's well-being. Women's Radio Station is all about diversity, from opinions, career, ethnicity, education, and most importantly, women's well-being. We aim to celebrate the individuality of every woman everywhere, providing opportunities and the platform for your voice. Visit our women's radio station dot com for more information. I'm Tamina Zaman, founder of Empower and Enrich. When it comes to money, do you clam up or get confused? Do you wish you could save more money, or are you hoping you have enough for retirement? You are not alone. Many women want to be smarter with their cash but just don't know where to start. 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