Judymay Is Listening – Hazel Butterfield: Books, Solving Problems, And Transforming Everything

Welcome to Judy Mayer's Listening. This is the show where you tell me what's happening in your life and I listen and together we transform everything. Hey, we are live. It is new noon on Monday and we are at women's radio station WRS supporting women's well being. And today we are going to be indeed transforming everything. You know, this idea that we have that somehow wherever we're at right now, that this is kind of it. Have you ever had that feeling, ever had that feeling of being stuck, of being stalled, of maybe only reaching 30% of your potential or maybe even less? Well, what we're going to do today is we're going to get you at least up to 90%. We're going to get you so, so, so excited about your life again. And maybe you've never been this excited about your life, but we're going to really unleash all those little glitchy bits of thinking that have you believing that maybe this is your lot and that you need to, you know, struggle to get over certain soft addictions or that you need to struggle in order to be able to pay the bills. And instead we're going to just bring you into a place where you are doing things on fire. And I'm not saying it's going to be easy all the time, but it can be a lot easier and a lot more fun. And this can be the life that you're design designing rather than just living the life that you've been given that's been handed to you. And joining me today I have a guest who is known to many of you because as you know, we are a massive fan here on Judy Mayer's listening of the show on WRS called Get Booked. And we have Hazel Butterfield herself joining us. And we're going to be talking about how is it that books can transform your life? What is it that books can do and not just the different choice of books. This isn't about, oh, read this self help book and then read this one. That's not what we're going to be doing here. We're going to be really digging deep about the transformative nature of it and the way that a lot of people in fact can read self help. This is just my opinion. A lot of people can read self help and not be inspired. It's gotten to a point where it's all got quite diluted, where there are some people who have taken information from someone else. They haven't really lived it themselves, they haven't really added anything to it. And it's got to a point where we can almost write our own fake self help book because we think we know what it's about. And that just breaks my heart because there's so much in really, really good books. Pen and paper at the ready please. Because we are going to be recommending a ton of books. We're also going to be talking about the different times that you can read and the different ways of reading. And just as I was preparing for this, I came across one of my the people I follow and who follows me on Twitter. I'm not going to say her name because she didn't sign up for this necessarily, but I thought it was very interesting that she just put up a post yesterday that said hate reading self help books my friends recommend because they liked them and other habits I could stand to break. And I just thought, wow, she's just such an open minded person. She's such a great reader. She's someone who lives a very transformative life. And if she is talking about these different ways that she, you know, is hate reading, she's just, you know, reading it dutifully. She's reading it almost to find fault with it. What's that about? And so what she's saying about that is that one of the reasons she says reason self help books often don't work for me. Author plagiarizes another often very old ideas and passes it off as their own. And she goes on to say, this author goes to Burning man, acts like it's strange, as if every other self help author is not also a Burning man aficionado. It is so interesting to me that we can get an idea about something and there might be an element of truth in it, but if we stick just to that element of the truth, we can miss out on a whole lot of stuff. So instantly I was reading it and I was thinking, oh my goodness, I wonder if she hasn't read Marcus Aurelius Meditations. I wonder if she hasn't read Epicurus. I wonder if because of this idea she hasn't read some more recent books. Like some of my favorites are Bessel van der Kolk's the Body Keeps the Score, all about how childhood trauma can be held in a cellular way in your body. This is a guy who really knows his stuff. He was one of the first people to work at a very high level with veter combat veterans, people who had ptsd. And also I wondered, was she missing out on Pete Walker's book Complex PTSD from Surviving to Thriving, which talks about how There's a form of PTSD which many of us have from having a really tough childhood and how can that be transformed? And so many books that have made such a difference to me and to my clients. And every single time that I sit down and do a VIP coaching day with a client, they come away with a reading list and they just immediately go off to the bookshop and they're able to know why I've got the time to sit down and say, this is why I'm recommending this book as a next step. And often we've kind of missed that. And if our friends are saying, oh, read this, it's great for me. You're sort of on trust. It's kind of like, you know, well, I need to trust that I'm the same as my friend in this regard. I need to trust that my friend has got good taste. I have people the time, particularly when I come off stage and people are taking photographs with me and they'll say, oh, have you read this book? Or they'll try and give me a gift of their book. And, you know, I love the fact that they've written a book, or I love the fact that they are connecting with a particular book. But then they don't yet know if they're. If they're new to self help. They don't know that it's diluted information. They don't know that it's actually not very good because this is the first time they're hearing any of these ideas. And that's okay. That's okay. We're not here to be snobby about self help. We're here to. Or books in general, like some people will do. They'll read a classic novel in school and they will hate it. We did Pride and Prejudice for the intermediate certificate in Ireland, so that's kind of the equivalent of O levels. And I hated it so badly because I couldn't keep track of who were all these women, who was Eliza and who was Lizzie and then who is Elizabeth and then who is Ms. Bennet, not realizing it was all the same person. I thought there was a cast of thousands in Pride and Prejudice when we did it in school, and then years later became a massive, massive fan of Jane Austen and lots of other writers from that period. So let's just have a look. Let's just wipe the slate clean and let's introduce Hazel and let's find out, Hazel, what is it that you think as an expert in this? What is it that you think books can do for us? And are we kind of shooting ourselves in the foot by thinking that we know what books can do? Do you know what. What I like about books is? It's escape. It's learning something. It is one thing that I talk about a lot on Get Booked is the fact that we can get so frustrated with being stuck in traffic and doing this and, you know, being. Being on the Tube and our brains are just all over the place. You read a book, you're not bothered about being stuck on the train. You can read some, find out about somebody else'. And I kind of feel like since I started Get Booked, I've always been a huge reader, but now I read about two, three books a week, and I'm feeling like I understand a little bit more. There's more people's lives that I understand. And sometimes we can get so consumed with what's going on and what's happening to us that we kind of feel quite isolated, but breathing's great and it's entertainment. So there's a couple of things that you said there that I think is just brilliant. So, first of all, the fact that we don't have to take the aspect of our reality that is frustrating or boring or monotonous, like just a long tube ride. We don't have to just sit in our own thoughts, that we can actually actively decide that we're going to allow somebody else to help bring us to a better place. And then also the. The fact that you said that you're able to sort of connect with these ideas that you otherwise wouldn't connect with, because I imagine that these days it looks like we have access to more because we have this constant stream on things like social media. And if we live in large cities, there's lots of people around, but in fact, we can sort of get quite isolated in our lives just because everybody's busy and it's a reason to not be as busy. When you get on a train, what do you see? Just people sitting there with their headphones on, or occasionally people just chatting. And it's very rare you'll see people chatting. And I just. I like the fact that I kind of have to read for the show that I do, which means that I can't be on my phone all the time. And it's a breakaway. It's kind of. It's a bit like control, alt, delete. When you read a book and you kind of come away off air before you were saying that you were gonna have a little bit of a couple of days off Twitter, and it's just. You need to just have something else to think about sometimes. And it's entertaining. It is, absolutely. And it's more. It's more active form of entertainment because usually when we are getting entertainment these days, it's quite passive. It's whatever shows up or whatever other people are watching. And with books we have to make a choice because we have to actually sel it. And there's not the same amount of information being bombarded. We don't have people barking at us. Read this book, read this book, Read this book. In the same way as they're just presuming we're going to watch this film. Watch this film, watch this film. Yeah. And it's. It's quite interesting because I've got quite, quite a book community on all the social media channels. And it's the amount of times that people say to me, oh, I don't read. And you know, people have their opportunity to do. Absolutely. Then the choice to do whatever they want. But you just think somebody who doesn't read that, you know, you're just living your own life. If people that read get to live so many other people's lives, do you think that it's because they. They believe that because it's an active form of rest and recuperation, that the active element makes it not rest and recuperation, that it has to be passive in order for us to be getting a break? Do you think that that could be it, or do you think it's just that they've fallen out of the habit? Or do you think it's something that you need to have picked up when you were really little? Not necessarily. I mean, if you just think about it, some people's way of relaxing is fishing. I could never imagine wanting to do that. So it's still the same concept. It's people just like different things. And some people have read books at school and hated it and have not fallen back in love with it. Quite true. But if you think about people like, who have gone for Lord of the Rings and things like that, that's made so many people fall back in love with reading and then they get made into films and, you know, it depends on the variety is out there. Before we go into break, I just want to ask you what is the book that you've read this year that's had the biggest impact on you and why? Oh, wow. I think the tattoos of Auschwitz. Mmm. And why was that? It was just, you're reading about something atrocious that happened and yet it was told in a way that just made you realize the people can find something incredible when they experience something horrific. And it was just, it was a beautiful, meaningfully written. If someone can find that kind of beauty in the absolute depths of horror, that maybe then you can find some beauty in your day. Yeah, absolutely. Wonderful. Well, after the break, we're going to be talking more about how books can absolutely transform your life. 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 Mae 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 Tracey Weeden of Brownhill Insurance Group. We are an award winning family run insurance broker covering a wide range of insurance products ranging from commercial lines to personal household, high net worth and fine art. You can contact us on 0208-658-4334 or visit our website www.brownhillgroup.co.uk for your free no obligation quotation at Brownhills. We've got you covered. Hi, I'm Lauren Mishkon. I'm a birth doula and mum of three 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. 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 5am and 5pm throughout my shows we'll talk about the books I've read, new releases, chat to authors, publishers and book enthusiasts, all with a theme and aim of supporting women's emotional well being. If you have a book to tell us about, get in touch@presentersomensradiostation.com join me on my show and share my love of books and writing. Hi, I'm Valentina Barbachi 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@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 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 to Judy Mayer's Listening. This is the show where you tell me what's happening in your life and I listen and together we transform everything. Welcome back. This is Judy Mae Murphy here on WRS and I'm ably joined today in studio by Hazel Butterfield from the show Get Booked. And also we have as usual, our wonderful associate producer Elspeth and our wonderful technical producer Melis. So just so you know who you're hanging out with and we feel you, it's all right if we don't know your name yet and it's alright if you haven't reached out to us yet. We know that you're a tribe, we know that we're all in this together. And the interesting thing is that the reason that I really love reading so much and knowing what is the right book for people, I feel like I'm sort of like a doctor dispensing pills, but my pills are books is because there's just so much in there that very often if I'm just meeting someone briefly, like if I've just come off stage or if somebody reaches out to me on social media and maybe they don't have the resources to come and get coached then I love being able to say, ah, just go and read this. It's all, it's all in there. And very often people are just walking past the thing that has exactly what it is that they need. And it's not always self help. Sometimes it could be something like, ah, you know, you really need to go and read this particular classic book by Thomas Hardy or by Steinbeck or whoever. But very often it is self help. And this is an area where we have to kind of be careful because it is a supersaturated market. Just as fiction always was. There was, there was always terrible fiction out there. But you normally could tell by the COVID Or you could tell by the fact that you hadn't heard of the author, you could tell that it wasn't going to be great. Or you could just open up the front page and have a read of it and you'd know the caliber of what you were getting or you'd know that because you hadn't heard of it, it was going to be not great. But with self help, sometimes things can be presented as very, very shiny that end up being just shiny. So how is it that we can know what's really good? And I think it's the things that stand the test of time, the things that are around a lot, and also the things that the people we trust are going to recommend. So when it comes to books, we definitely trust. Hazel Haz, what would you say was a self help book that you really felt was useful for everybody or one that was particularly useful for something that you were going through? There's quite a few out there at the moment that I'm absolutely loving. There's three Now. I used to really not be a fan of self help books. I thought it was just somebody preaching self love and I really couldn't handle it. And then I came across one. I thought, if I'm ever going to read a self help book, this is the one that's going to work for me. And since reading this one, I've then read quite a few. And they're not necessarily. I mean, calling. Most books can be self help because they are a distraction and they're entertainment. They can be used to make your life better in some form. Yeah, yeah, completely. And you know, sometimes if you're overthinking, read a book and you're thinking about something else and it stops you from overthinking about whatever it is that's causing you problems. But Mark Manson's the Subtle Art of Not Giving a. And I'm going to say flip in place of what the word should be. Well, in Ireland we say feck and that gets us out of all kinds of trouble. Well, there's a lot of not giving a feck. Yeah, it's brilliant. Everyone should have to read or listen to this one. Now I actually did it on audible because it was just the way that I kind of done a little bit of a sample and I thought this is exactly how I want to do it. So I was running around, you know, and actually doing exercise and listening to what he had to say. And it was brilliant because it just basically felt like somebody was shouting orders at me and he just Talks about, you know, stop. It's about how we constantly are wanting to compare ourselves to other people and yet we're comparing ourselves to people who, whose life we wouldn't want and we can't even relate to them. So why are we comparing ourselves to something that we couldn't? You know, like I'll often say if I've got a client and say she's very jealous of her sister because her sister's getting married. I say, well, do you want to marry that guy? And they'd be like, no, God no. And it's just like, well, then that's what she's doing. She's marrying that guy. And suddenly the jealousy just sort of disappears. So it sounds like a similar sort of thing, just getting in touch with, you want something else and you can go and get it. Well, this is the thing. It's about breaking down the fears as well. It's like he says, well, what is it that you know that you're after and what's giving you problems? Actually think about it. Is this something that you thought that you wanted 10 years ago? Because the chances are you're not going to want it now. So actually reassess your life constant so that, you know, sometimes we can be getting upset about something that somebody's done and we realize actually that thing doesn't really bother you. You've just been told it should bother you or you're in the habit of it bothering you. It is about breaking habits and it's a brilliant book, but it is funny and punchy language that just kind of makes you go, yeah, so maybe it's a good one for people who are saying, I'm not really into self help. Just give it to me straight. Yeah. Do you know what? I love the fact that you said that you did it on audible and you were running around. I'd completely forgotten that. This might be a good thing to mention. So many people say to me about so many things. I don't have the money, I don't have the time. They say it about learning languages, they say it about reading really good books. And so what I've done is just using YouTube and five minutes a day. I've taught myself to speak three different languages. I've taught myself to speak French, Spanish and Russian. Wow. For years. So Russian now I've been doing for about five years, Spanish for about 10 years, French for about 15. Plus I did French in school. So now my French is pretty fluent. My Spanish is very good. I can watch movies and chat away in Spanish. And my Russian is pretty terrible, but that's not my fault. That's the fault of Russian. And I'm sticking with it. But also, I'm now doing it with James Joyce's Ulysses, because I'd read it once and it takes about three days sitting there, plowing through and plowed through. The first time, enjoyed it the second time, said, you know, I'd like to do it a third time, but I'd also like to do it in a way that we can show other people that they don't need to have all this time. So I have been doing an audio version on YouTube, a really great presentation that was done with RTE, the National Station in Ireland, years ago. It's just the most incredible, incredible sort of radio play. And they say every single word in Ulysses. I've been doing it for about two and a half years now, two minutes a day. So for two minutes every single day, I listened to James Joyce's Ulysses just word by word by word. And I reckon by Christmas I'll be done with it. But if you did that, you could get, like 10 really big classic books under your belt in your lifetime. And having that language in my head every day, I think makes a really big difference. So do you find that people have a lot of excuses or justifications when it comes to not reading? Yeah. Completely too busy to do this, but yet they will probably watch two or three hours of TV a day. Two or three out. Really? Two or three hours? We were just talking about Stranger Things. Yes, but. And I was saying that Stranger Things and Shetland are the only shows I ever watch. And so that would add up to about, I guess, less than a day of television per year. Right, Okay. I mean, I think you're possibly the exception. There are a lot of people watch a lot of Netflix, and I think when a series comes out, it's quite common for people to binge watch. We know. We binge watch. I think if you think if you watch one series of something in a week, that's what, seven or eight hours, how much could you have done? How much would you have read? Or even. Yeah, as you say, done. How tidy would your house be? Exactly. Right. So there's the irony of, like, spending eight hours watching Marie Kondo's the Magic Art of Tidying, and your house becomes a mess because you've been watching the show. How ironic. And it's a choice. It's something that we do. You go and watch football. If you go to a football match, that's three or four hours out of Your day. And it's just. I suppose it's just. It's just a choice. But we quite often say we do not have time to do something. It's just we prefer to use our time. That is such a good point because Ellsworth was saying that she watched the tennis yesterday. Right. And the thing is that that is. That's a good choice because it's. It's the final and, you know, you didn't watch the whole thing, right? No. So it's the final and it's the thing that everybod, everybody in the nation comes together or everyone worldwide comes together, and it's a celebration, and so you're actually choosing it. But I think that people aren't seeing books as a valid choice anymore. They're seeing it as a more dutiful choice. I should. I saw a thing yesterday that I'd seen before that I love, and it was Woody Guthrie, the musician in 1942, when he was 30, he created this hilarious list of the things he wanted to start doing in his life. And one of them was, you know, to read more books. And so this is something that. It's not new, but these days, as you say, there are some people who just never read. But they say, you know, quite often when I say, oh, I read two or three books a week, they're like, I don't have time to read. As if it's an overindulgent pastime. But, you know, but we don't say, I don't have time to eat. But we prioritise it because we know we need to. But if you think about it, I commute for at least 30 minutes a day, going to work and then back. That's an hour a day that I could be reading. And I generally do. I love it. I love the escape. Otherwise, you know, I'm gonna be on Twitter now. I am on Twitter and Instagram a lot. I've got lots of different shows that I do, and I kind of need to. But I just need to level it out. Otherwise you can get more and more obsessed with it. Some people just don't enjoy reading, which is absolutely fine. And so they prioritize something else or dealing with their emails. But then let's look at that. I think that there's always a way to get. To get that better information, because that's really what we're about, is how do we get that better information. So not just saying, well, I don't like reading, and then therefore, I'm just going to go for the generic information that everybody's getting out there and I think that podcasts can be great for that. But if you find a really thoughtful podcast, maybe a podcast that's based on stoic philosophy and it's still a chat, it's still very accessible, you don't have to be very cerebral, you don't have to be very academic to access much, much better ideas. And I think that that's probably a way that it's going to go for a lot of people. The Audible stuff and the, and the podcast. Do you have a favourite podcast that you like to listen to? Oh, I did. Like my dad wrote a porno. My dad wrote a porno. Okay. Have you not. No, that's completely. We're obviously not doing life right else but we're completely drawing a blank on that. But the other, a quick point that I wanted to make is that people say that they don't read but yet they're constantly on their social media reading blogs. That's reading. That is reading. It's still telling a story, it's still self help bits and pieces. So we forget that it's less curated, it's less chosen, it's less prioritized. And then if we just start to say, right, I'm gonna design my reading, I'm not just gonna read whatever comes up on Twitter. I'm going to read or get access to these thoughts and these ideas in this way. So coming up after the break, we're just get even more inspiration from the wonderful Hazel Butterfield, the host of Get Booked. 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. 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. @empowerandenrich.com you will find a host of options to help you take charge of your finances and learn how to put your money to work for you in an easy, affordable way. Get in touch with me@empowerandenrich.org and let's change your future together. Hello, my name is Natasha Ann Kelleher. Welcome to you lovely lady listeners of your very own women's radio station. Over the coming months, I'll be doing a survey in big brand coffee shop, interviewing customers asking why they like to drink coffee and if they would like to give us a health tip. For our listeners, the most shared and liked post will be the winner of a prize. 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Women's Radio Station can give voice to your brand. With a wide range 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 stations supporting women's wellbeing. Welcome to Judy Mayer's Listening. This is the show where you tell me what's happening in your life and I listen and together we transform everything. I really love these shows where we end up in the breaks just chatting away and saying yes, and this and this. Oh, and we must talk about this. That there's just so much depth to it. There's just so much that is setting us on fire. And hopefully you can feel that passion that we have because we know that like everything that we do in life is based on the ideas that we have, the belief systems that we've got going on, the way that we're inspired, the pictures that are going on in our brains and these things can always be upgraded. No matter how great it is in your brain right now, as you know, it can always be upgraded. You can always learn new things and being a lifelong learner is really the best way to be Happy. The easiest way to be happy. So if you're feeling that you've been in a little bit of a rut or feeling the blahs lately, remember that at any stage, you can reach for a book or reach for words, reach for better ideas in some format. I'm Judy Mae Murphy. For those of you who haven't been hanging out for that long, you're really welcome. This is your space. This is a space where people are constantly sending me ideas. Send me your ideas. Send me what's going on with you and your life. I read everything that you send infoudymay tv. On some shows, we read out a lot of your questions and a lot of your statements. On this show, we're really trying to, in a very broad way, get everybody excited. This is a sort of a way that no matter what it is, no matter what ails you, we're hoping that we can at least direct you toward a magic pill for that, a way that you can start to heal, a way that you can start to grow, a way that you can really start to get inspired. And we were just talking about how self help can do this in a really good way. But, Hazel, you were saying that you came across a book that you really love that does that as fiction. Yeah, in a way. I mean, obviously we're a bit more aware now of mental wellness and mental health issues, that people are writing books, they're a little bit more clever. Self help used to be as soon as somebody said, I've got a self help book, you would hear, fine, no, not interested. But people are getting cleverer. They're offering more ideas and more entertaining as well, because life, no matter how crazy it can be, can be quite funny as well. Bryony Gordon, fantastic columnist. She wrote a book called Mad Girl and it's about herself. And it is. Can you just give us that name again? Briony. Bryony Gordon. Bryony Gordon. Mad Girl. And basically, I loved it. But it's about. She talks about her ocd, lifelong struggles with depression, anxiety, and it sounds like you should be sitting there going, oh, I'm just the poor thing. But you're not. You're in stitches. Some of the stuff she comes out with, and she's talking about how she has to deal with ocd, but because you're reading it and you're being. She's not making light of these situations, she's just kind of saying it's. She's normalizing it. And that's what we need to do. We need to be normalizing the issues that we're having so that people don't shy away from them or be embarrassed by them and therefore feel lonely. And the book is fantastic, hilarious. I've always felt that that is actually a gift that, that comedians bring. They, particularly the ones who are more self deprecating, they kind of go into that shame place and they say, oh, you think that I'm, you know, a bit odd? Let me tell you just how odd I am. Let me tell you about all the crazy, crazy things that I actually do. Let me tell you about the crazy things that go on in my mind. And then we all feel a little less alone in our own crazy. Right? But laughter helps as well. But this book is, I mean, she wrote another book as well actually called the Wrong Knickers and it was less self help and it was just about herself. It kind of feels like it's fiction, but then you realize she's just writing about her life and how she's picked up the wrong knickers on the way out. And she's brilliant. But it's just about how we do crazy stuff and sometimes we feel shame or whatever and it's just about people chatting through things, you know, opening discussions. And this is why I love books. Because a lot of the self help books that have been out recently of goes to the other end of the spectrum where it's sort of claiming perfection or it's claiming like over awesomeness. This idea that you have to be doing everything amazingly and you know, being someone who is a motivational speaker, that is my job. I travel the world and I speak from these big stages and beforehand we'll be in the green room and I'm there with a lot of household names, a lot of big speakers and it's just so hilarious that they will go on stage and present as one thing. And they kind of do. They don't completely live the opposite. It's not like they're sitting there swigging whiskey before they go on stage and eating a big raw steak and swearing themselves blind. But there is a sort of a humanness that they don't often present. So I love that people who are offering help now aren't pretending, aren't thinking that they have to come out with this front of perfection. Yeah, completely. Actually, another book that I read was by Jojo Fraser and it was about getting a mojo injection and she's talking about she's a mummy. So it's Mummy, Jojo and Kurt and she is talking about how all the mums are comparing each Other to each other. And then they're saying, oh, well, this one always looks pristine. And this one, I always feel like possibly I'm drinking too much. Or did you see the, you know, the amazing packed lunch that so and so sent in? And yet, you know, she's like, well, yeah, they may be great at making scones, but I'm really good at reading to my kids or, you know, and it's not like I'm better than that. It's just we all have our different things that we can offer and, you know, just to give ourselves a bit of a break. And she points out, you know, that the people that do make you feel bad, they're wasps. Stop it. And she brings it out that the people that you are worried about, the people you really shouldn't be worried about. And she's funny and she swears a bit and she's just kind of like, just give yourselves a break. And I kind of pointed out to her, I was like, you can buy a packet of Scone mix from Tesco's or whatever, and maybe that's what that other mummy is doing and just not claiming it. Well, exactly. We never know, right? There are ways to kind of cheat, pretend that you can do everything, but, you know, you're just gonna wear yourself down, be good at a couple of things or, you know, learn something new. And she's just like, just give yourselves a break. We're all just trying to get by. And her name again is Jojo Fraser. Jojo Fraser. Okay, great. And by the way, if anyone has teenagers, a few years ago I wrote four books for teenagers and they were novels, but in fact I wrote them so that in each chapter. It's actually a teaching. It's a coaching practice. There's a coaching thing. And if coaches read it, they'd be like, oh, right here you're teaching how to have an argument. All right here you're teaching well formed outcomes. All right, here you're teaching this. And they would know exactly what I was doing, but the kids never knew. And I would get the most amazing letters because readers will often write letters. And these girls would write letters into the publishers and it would say things like, just very simple things like, dear Judy May, I used to hang out in town on Saturdays and then I read Blue Lavender Girl and now I do dancing and it's just so unsophisticated. But you just know that, ah, she was just hanging out on a wall and now she's actually, you know, doing something that maybe is going to bring her forward and maybe is going to add to her life. And those books, they did well in English, but they did really, really well in the Scandinavian countries. They were translated into a whole bunch of different languages. Spanish and Norwegian and Finnish and Swedish. And the reason that they did so well there was because they really liked their teenagers to be outdoors doing things. And so if anyone does want to get those. So I write as Judy May, just like my first name is Judy Mae. And then I just split that in two for the teenage book books. And they're called Copper Girl, Blue Lavender Girl, Hazelwood Girl, and Diamond Star Girl. And they're available online with Faber. So do check those out. And I forget. I often forget that I'm an author because I'm such a reader and I'm such a coach that I forget that I have all these books out there all over the world, 28 different countries and loads of languages. I should get you on my shot. There you go. Right, you heard it here, people. We're gonna hold it up to that. But we're so thrilled to have you here on Judy Mays listening today because, as I say, we mention your show a lot on our show because it's just such a great crossover because it is about uplifting ideas and it is about becoming more. And during the break, our producer Ellsworth was saying that, you know, it's all very well us mentioning all these really great books, but what if you don't like reading? Ellsworth, you were saying that you. That you. You're not a big fan of reading. No. So personally, I've had dyslexia my whole life, of course, and I really struggled with reading throughout my whole childhood. The thought about even picking up a book frustrates me because I'd read one line and then I might skip another line or I didn't understand that line. I don't know what's going on in the book. Everybody's names are getting mixed up in my head. It's just. It's a disaster to me. But I want to know how I can fall in love back reading, because I don't want to be personally somebody whose vocab is low or, you know, I want to, because you're clearly someone who just, you know, really rocks out ideas. You're very connected with people and whatnot. So, Hazel, what would you. What would you say if you were to say to someone who hasn't been reading for whatever reason, either because they didn't like it in the past or they weren't good enough at it in the past or they've just fallen out of the habit. What would you say would be a good way to start getting back into it? Well, audible for sure. And they do a great service with Amazon where you can pay because they can be quite expensive. Audible. But if you pay a subscription, I think it's £7.99amonth. So you're not paying. You know, you sign up for that and then you can choose a book and you can share them as well and you can pick them up from the library completely free as well. Audible. And so you can read any, you can have any book without actually having to read a word. You can just listen to it. It's still the same thing. It's still exactly the same words. And that is, I mean, there's a great big book here in the studio. I mean, I'm sure the idea of seeing something like that just makes you go, even I would balk at that one. That's the kind of one that keeps doors open. But what I do find is, I mean, I have a variety. I do books on Kindle, Real Life Books and Audible because you have the chance, you know, it's the variety you can if you don't have the time. Or again, if you've got dyslexia again, the idea. A lot of my friends have dyslexia and they're just like, no, it's just the idea of absolute hell. But you'd be happy to listen. Yeah, she's a very good listener. And in fact, if you go onto YouTube, if you don't want to commit to Audible initially, if you go onto YouTube and you just type in audiobook, there's a thing called, I think called Librivox and people do readings like they volunteer and they do readings of books that are outside of copyright. So you know things like Vanity Fair or like the classics and what a great idea. And I in fact have on, on YouTube, if you type in Judy Mae, the Game of Life and How to Play it by Florence Scoville Shin, a really great self help book from the early 20s. We have, we. We're running out of time. We're gonna be right back after these. 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 Mae 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 Tracey Weeden of Brownhill Insurance Group. We are an award winning family run insurance broker covering a wide range of insurance products ranging from commercial lines to personal household, high net worth and fine art. You can contact us on 0208-658-4334 or visit our website www.brownhillgroup.co.uk for your free no obligation quotation at Brownhills. We've got you covered. Hi, I'm Lauren Mishkon. I'm a birth doula and mum of three 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. 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 5am and 5pm throughout my shows we'll talk about the book books I've read new releases, chat to authors, publishers and book enthusiasts, all with a theme and aim of supporting women's emotional well being. If you have a book to tell us about, get in touch@presentersomensradiostation.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@media mattersforwomen.org you're listening to Women's radio stations 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 womensradiostation, that's Women's Radio STN or Facebook Women's Radio Station to keep up to date with all our exciting programs. Welcome to Judy Mayer's Listening this is the show where you tell me what's happening in your life and I listen and together we transform everything. So I don't want to make you feel like you've been sitting outside the room for the last couple of minutes, but you sort of have because we've been having this really great conversation about, you know, kids being around different ideas. And Elspeth was sharing that, you know, when she was a kid your parents used to play David Sedaris. I don't even know if I ever say that right, because I need to just read his name. And one of his books that I really enjoyed was the book Me Talk Pretty one day. And what he writes is like really, really clever, funny essay style books. Kind of like David Foster Wallace, but like just really, really hilarious. And then Hazel was saying that she'll be playing audible in the car and her kids will be there kind of soaking that up. So Hazel, do you feel that there's like a big difference? Do you feel like you're able to influence your kids just by your own book habits, even if they're not directly paying attention? I don't know whether it's nature versus nurture because I was a big reader. Even like when I was about six, I used to get in the local papers for just, you know, my reading level. And I've just, I've always loved it. But my kids are exactly the same, my son, and I think it's just because I've always been around me. So I guess it is part of nature and nurture. But my eldest will read two or three books a week. When the David Walliams books come out, he has finished it by the end of the day. He never takes longer than 24 hours to read one of his books. And so my nine year old, yep, exactly the same. He's got hundreds of books and they just absolutely love it. And my. I was actually saying this to the producer a couple of weeks ago. When they do World Book Day, my son is the one that that's picking all the vouchers up off the floor that all the kids have just chucked because they can't be bothered reading. And then he goes into Waterstones and says, I've got 11 tokens, can I have 11 books please? And he loves it. He absolutely loves it. But you know, it becomes part of the lifestyle, doesn't it? It's not just sort of a thing outside that you dutifully do like an exam and then you come back in, it just becomes like, you know, I have this friend And I have this activity, I play this sport and I read these books. And it just becomes sort of effortless. And that's where the real value comes through it being consistent and being a part of your life. An interesting thing that I heard from a librarian once who was. She was the school librarian in a school that was very tough, very deprived part of Dublin. And I used to speak a lot in high school. And she said that that was the first time ever that an author had come in and the girls had taken the books afterwards and had asked for the books. And she said in most of their homes there would be the grand total of no books. She said she would be absolutely shocked and flabbergasted if she heard that there was even one book in one of those homes. And they say that it's not about even how much the books are read, but just the fact of a physical book in the home can make all the difference. And Elspeth, you were saying that, you know, that you just, by osmosis, even though you weren't physically picking up the books and going them in that way, that you sort of picked that up from your family when you were growing up. Yeah, my parents used to always play audiobooks, so David Sedaris and when I was much younger, Mallory Towers. What was the other one that? St. Clair. St. Clair's yes, absolutely. We love a bit of Enidon, all of those types. And I listened to audiobooks when I was younger in my bed and stuff, just like to go to sleep and, you know, they kind of pushed it in that way. But, yeah, both me and my sister are very dyslexic and found it hard to read books. And even if people aren't dyslexic, there are some people who are more visual and that would be more like myself and Hazel. And we actually find it easier to take things in through our eyes. And some people are more auditory and they find it easier to take things in through their ears. So give yourself a break if you're not into taking it in through reading off the page. And it's good to have the variety. I find what I do like. I do like to have a real book quite often, just because I love it when you're on public transport and you see somebody reading a book and you kind of feel like it's a bit of an insight into that person, as long as they're not just reading some comic inside it. And so sometimes it's kind of like a reciprocal thing. And, you know, I mean, I've had Some interesting books that I've been reading recently and I get sent them from publishers. So I tend to read books more than on Kindle just because that's how they get sent. But I was reading Georgia Varjas, how to Rule Breaker's Guide to Stand up and Be Heard, and it was brilliant. But it was so interesting watching the bloke kind of see me reading this book and I'm just like, hi. They were having their little reaction. Yeah, Rule Breakers Guide to Be a Woman and Be Strong. It's brilliant. Variety. That is so awesome. And yeah, just. I love the physicality of books in some ways. I mean, I actually. People expect that I'm only into the physical kind of books, but in fact, I'm a huge fan of Kindle because you can capture, you can take notes really, really well. And particularly with fiction, I just love, wow, that phrase. And you just want to go back and you want to have those magical phrases. Particularly when I read Steinbeck, I just want to be able to go back and say, ah, yes, that, that phrase there in Cannery Road, that phrase there in Grapes of Wrath, without having to go through the whole thing again. And where was that? And when I was in Tokyo one time, I went to the secondhand books stores and there's like a district there, went into all the stores and was just literally smelling the books. I don't speak a word of Japanese. I hadn't a clue, but just loved being around books. Just loved kind of the influence of that. So if you were to say, if you were to advise or encourage women to have one reading practice or one way of being that maybe they hadn't thought of before, what is it that you would like for them to do? What do you think would really bring value? Well, actually, when you said, you know, come up with a little bit of a homework for somebody, I really want to push libraries. It's free, so there's a lot of time that people are just saying, I just can't afford £20 quid for a book, or you don't have the time, in which case go to your library. It is free. If we do not use this facility, it will go, but you can get audiobooks there for free as well. So the homework is for a lot of people a find out where your local library is. Because a lot of people don't know that there's one just down the road. They're amazed when they find out, oh, my gosh, I pass it every day and I didn't even know. I didn't even look at it, it's free. And there'll be so many events that you find out about as well. And if you are a fan of reading, you'll know that it can get quite expensive. You know, I mean you can pick up the odd 1 for 99p on Amazon or wherever, but some of them are really expensive. So get in your library, have a look and you're going to be surrounded by tribe, you're going to be surrounded by people who are equally interested in great ideas and going higher. Because we sometimes think that if I go to a library it's going to be full of boring people. But no, it's full of people who really want to adventure. I think there's more adventurers in a library than there are in some kind of climbing shop or something. Do you know, I used to take my kids there sometimes. We'd go into a little coffee shop or something and they'd always want to go in afterwards and just kind of sit there and hang. And it would get to a stage where I'd feel terrible because I'd be like, we don't have time to go in the library today. Because I know that when they are in there, it's like a toy shop to them. They'll be be in 45 minutes. But it just, it normalizes books in a way that some people just, they don't have that. Like I'm terrible at cars. Why? I'm never around cars, but then I've got friends who grew up in the desert in California and there was just always these beat up cars that people are abandoning and they would go as a teenager, they'd be given a car when they were 16 and they're just around cars. So they're better at cars. They're more integrated with cars. It's the same with books. And this is why giving kids books as presents is a really good idea. Because even if they don't read them, at least books are now not an alien thing. Yeah, wasn't it a child was given a book and they tried to scroll. Have you heard of that before? And you just think, oh, that's not okay. Yes. Another little tip that I would like just to remind people about is that when you read a book on a Kindle, I mean we do not know there's not going to be anybody out there that knows every single word out there. But you can highlight a word and it'll tell you exactly what it means. Or sometimes maybe you've always used that word and you've not really used it. Correctly. It's a really good resource. Yeah, you just tap it. The dictionary comes up and it says, hey, this means this. And it takes seconds. Absolutely. So you can kind of be teaching yourself as well because you know, there's quite a few words I've come across and I'm like, ah, that's a brilliant word. Have no idea what it means. I don't want to ask anybody. Tap it. There we go. And I now know what it means and sometimes it's just to know it and sometimes as well. Whenever we want to prioritize something our brain needs to know and why am I doing this? Why am I reading these books? And so just knowing that you know what, this is going to make it easier for me to get sales or to climb the career ladder or to surround myself with other like minded people. Knowing that it's does bring us higher. Elspeth, what would you like to encourage people to do around books? Audiobook. I think if you really struggle with reading, taking in things visually, audiobook be very good. I mean there's as you mentioned there was free ways of doing it. You can go to your local library, you can YouTube it, you can go online. I'm sure there's pop up sort of starting up websites that would be quite discounted, counted at the moment. And yeah, I think there's just try and get involved in literature as much as possible in any way. Lovely. And will you keep us appraised as to how your journey goes with that? Yes. I did come in today thinking I wouldn't get into books. You know, that did not cross my mind at all. But yep, why not? Why not trying different things. And the tip that I would like to encourage you to try is to make everything beautiful around the book. So sometimes if we are sitting in a place that's not inspiring us or that's not comfortable and the surroundings are a bit dull, it can be hard to kind of dive into the ideas. But if you find, you know, a beautiful chair even, you know, if you're able to do it, you find and buy a gorgeous chair that is your reading chair. Move it into a place where you've got a lovely view, make sure that you are surrounded like the atmosphere, maybe some ambient music, maybe some, you know, a scented candle going, maybe the, you know, the lights down a little bit and just, and really make it a full experience. That's what we want for you. We want for you to really love this so that you can really tap into that very, very rich vein today on the show. And Judy May's listening. Our guest has been Hazel Butterfield. We will see you all next week. 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. 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. @empowerandenrich.org you will find a host of options to help you take charge of your finances and learn how to put your money to work for you in an easy, affordable way. Get in touch with me@empowerandenrich.org and let's change your future together. Hello, my name is Natasha Ann Kelleher. Welcome to you lovely lady listeners of your very own women's radio station. Over the coming months, I'll be doing a survey in big brand coffee shops, interviewing customers, asking why they like to drink coffee and if they would like to give us a health tip. For our listeners, the most shared and liked post will be the winner of a prize. 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