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Welcome to the Joy Broadcast. I'm Ali Mortimer, joy coach, mentor, and life confidant, and I'm here to tell you something that might surprise you. Joy is not fluffy. Joy isn't frivolous. Joy is not the reward you get after you've ticked all the boxes. Joy is the only strategy you will ever need. It's your competitive edge, your antidote, and your super attractor. It's the power that creates miracles and makes life feel like magic. In my life, joy is the acronym for just on you. Because you matter. Your joy matters, your life matters, and it's time to act like it. Whether you're in the dark with nothing or at the top with everything, and it's feeling so overwhelming, joy is always the answer. Joy is a strategy for every era of your life. And this podcast is the space for women in the boardroom, in business, and those women who are running the show at home. This is your reminder to choose Joy not as a reward, but the strategy that gives you your competitive edge, the energy that will expand to give you the capacity to hold everyone and everything. Now, before we begin today's broadcast, I have an invitation for you. If you would like to go deeper to prioritize your joy, come and join me in the Joy Rebellion. It's my membership where I invite you to align to Joy every single week and where I support you in clearing the path when it's hard. Or work with me in Brilliance, my mentorship for women who want to bring brilliance to the boardroom because they feel fabulous in the bedroom and in their body. But right now and every week on this podcast, I going to be bringing you the ideas, the stories, and the strategies to make Joy your lifestyle, your strategy, your North Star. This is the Joy Broadcast. Let's go. Welcome back to the Joy Broadcast. I hope you really enjoyed the wonderful guests that we had on over the Easter break. I certainly had a wonderful time with my family, but there was also undercurrents of real trickiness that we were navigating at the same time. And that brings me to a couple of concepts that I have used and been using personally and also been sharing with many of my private clients on my Brilliance one to one package. And I wanted to share them and bring them here so that if you're going through something difficult, then I hope that one of these two tools were going to help you. So I've shared the same message over the course of the last few weeks with some of my clients and. And if I say it many times, I kind of feel like, right, well this needs to be broadcast because more people need to hear it. And while I've been sharing that there's been some undercurrents going on in my life, there's also been some incredible celebrations and big wins in my professional, in my career, I've been hitting some incredible milestones that I really set my, my eye on and my heart on and my soul was leading me towards. And on the other hand, I've also been navigating some really trick situations in my home life with my children, my two sons, I've got an 18 year old son and 16, almost 17 year old, they're in sixth form, they're both going through important exams at the moment. At the same time my husband is doing a big merger at the moment and that has been very stressful and there's been a lot of stress and tension in the house and it was definitely causing some big impacts and it was really quite hard and quite worrying at one point. And it seems to be reflected in quite a few of my clients lives. Going in one area everything is absolutely excellent, absolutely wonderful. And then in another area, not so great. Whether that's professionally wonderful or professionally shit or personally wonderful and personally shit, it was almost like this complete opposite ends happening in two different areas of their life. And I wanted to share the concept of how I have been navigating and how I've been leading my clients through this as well. And it's understanding, a very simple concept that when they are focusing on an emotional issue, it's understanding that it is the feminine within you, it's the woman in you, in me, in them, that sits and holds those emotions, doesn't suppress them, spends time with them. I have a beautiful chair in my study. When I was like, right, and now I'm stepping into what needs to be felt, what needs to be said, what I need to work through. I pick up the phone to my mentor and I talk about how I'm feeling and how can I process this. I write in my journals, I speak out loud into my voice notes, I share everything that I feel like I need to process and move through. It's not about stopping it or blocking it, it's about moving through it. And sometimes that's painful and there are tears and it's allowing that process, that feminine process of moving through these emotions that need to flow. And I call that I'm stepping into being my woman. And then there's also this concept of I am also a CEO. We're all CEOs of our lives. We're all CEOs of our homes, we're CEOs of our businesses, our careers. And that's when we. We lead with clarity and certainty and confidence and conviction. And it's about moving forward and creating those strategic plans and almost like directing and saying, and then this, and then this, and then this. We're orchestrating our lives and it's about not mixing the. And the way in which it came through to me. As I was speaking on a voice note to one of my clients, I was like, it's like you've got a pile of shit in one hand and you've got a bag of diamonds in the other. And it's about looking at the. And being with the. And pricing the. And dropping the shit and not merging it with the diamonds. You don't want to clap your hands together because you don't want the shit all over the diamonds. You just don't want to mix the two. So it's about keeping those two hands separately and treating them very differently. No matter whether the shit is in your career or in your personal life, or whether the diamonds are in your personal life or in your career, you treat them incredibly separately. And the woman deals with the shit and the CEO deals with the diamonds. And it's about owning them. It's about recognizing that they're two different entities and you can focus on either one or the other. This goes back to a lot of the teachings that I talk about in terms of the Hawkins scale, before I even knew about energetics, before I even knew about processing my emotions. I mean, one of my earliest times in recognizing where I merge my shit and my diamonds and where the woman and the CEO merge was I just lost a baby and it was an unexpected pregnancy. I was married at the time, but we were having a big move and I'd forgotten to take my birth control. And we got pregnant very quickly and it was a real surprise. We'd always wanted children, but maybe we just needed a few more months to settle in Yorkshire. And at 13 weeks we went for a scan and it was very obvious that the baby had just died. And there was no heartbeat, but it was fully formed, just nestled in my womb. And it was such a shock for me. I never thought that that was possible at the time. And we're going back 20, 21, 22 years ago now, and people really didn't talk about that very much. And not many of my friends had been going through pregnancy or grief or loss or miscar carriages. It is spoken about so much more today. But I didn't know quite what to do with that grief. And I went back to work pretty much. I had a DNC and I went back to work a week later and I was not at home. We lived in Yorkshire by this time and I was sent back down to where I was working in Milton Keynes and I was on my own in a hotel room and we were doing a big project. Actually, side note, it was a really exciting time, actually. I was working on a project in Argos and it was where Home delivery was almost first founded, like, yeah, 20 years ago. It was when Argos started delivering to homes rather than just to stores and different outlets. Anyway, that's a completely different story. But it was an exciting project and I was leading a project which was talking about complex items. So if you think about Argos, we wanted to make sure that the cupboards, along with all the drawers and all the shelving that went with it, got put on the same delivery together. And I know it's quite complicated, but I had to go in and explain how we were going to do that on a system and how we were going to get all the systems to speak together. My team had done a wonderful job and I was there to present it to a big board. And just before I was going in to talk about how this was going to work from a systematic point of view, one of the ladies on the client side came and said to me, she said, oh, look, this is so exciting, I'm pregnant. Here's my 12 week scan. And then I had to go in and present. And I don't really remember very much of that time. I do remember that the partner, as I was speaking, I started to cry, didn't realise I was crying. And the partner on the project came over to me and just took me by the shoulder and he said, ali, let's go. And he took me out. Oh, it makes me feel quite emotional at the time. He said, let's go. And he said, I think you really need to go home and I'm going to get you all the support. And the HR team at Accenture were amazing and I had a lot of grief counseling and a lot of time off. But that was when I did not understand the difference between looking after my emotions and being a CEO. I'd merge my shit in my diamonds and everything kind of like fell apart. And it was about how I learned how not to suppress my emotions. I had an amazing grief counselor at the time. She started to help me with a lot of. With the grief and the loss and an incredible time. But that was when I recognized it was so important not to suppress emotions because that volcano is just going to come back up. It was about understanding that there's a time and a place to deal with your emotions and do it with absolute intention so that you can bring back that clarity. Create more diamonds in other areas of your life. So whatever you remember from this conversation, remember if you. It's okay. And it's quite often that you've got one area of your life that's absolutely singing and dancing and full of diamonds and delight. And then in the other area, you've got a bag of shit going on. And it's about recognizing that you can have both at the same time and you're capable of carrying both. But just don't smother your diamonds with your shit. Keep them separate. Go and work on your emotions and then focus with clarity on your diamonds. So that, that was a conversation I've been having with myself and with quite a few of my clients. And now we're laughing. It's like we talk about what's going on in one area and what's going on in the other, and we don't mix the two. We recognize that two are really, really important. So that was one, one exercise I wanted to just really, or anecdote, I suppose I wanted to bring to you today to, to, to help you and I'd love to hear your stories if, if that helps. So please do contact me. Get in touch. I love to respond to all my emails. I love to respond to all my Messages and, and DMs on social media. I don't have a big team chatbots. I don't have manychat. It is actually me who comes in and replies to all of your emails. So do come in and let me know how that helped. Now, there's something else that I've been working on. There's a concept that I've been sharing with many of my clients for many years. It's something that I've been working on myself. But there's also something a little bit more, a little bit newer that I've been working on very, very recently. And I wanted to share that with you as well. And I call it the Russian Doll effect or the Russian Doll tool. Now you're probably hearing that I love to use a lot of analogies and paint pictures because that really helps me understand what I'm doing. Just teaching you the theory. It's almost like, oh yeah, shit and diamond. So now I'm going to talk to you about the Russian dolls. And you'll know exactly what I mean in a minute. But my. I inherited from my mum a beautiful set of Russian dolls. And to me, what they really represent, that's the word I'm looking for, what they really represent is me is you. And really the core philosophy behind this is a concept that I don't really believe in rediscovery of self. I don't really resonate with going on a journey to find yourself. I don't believe in becoming her, becoming the next version of you. I believe in, in knowing who you are. It's goes back to that joy concept. Just on you is when you allow yourself to focus just on you, you know who you are. You don't need to become anything else. You don't need to go on a journey to find anything else. You don't have to go on a disc. More of a remembering. It's just about a being yourself. It is just that remembering. What I do believe is in evolution. I do believe we change every time we go around the sun. We're going to evolve because we've gathered a whole load of experiences. The good, the bad, the shit and the diamonds, right? You've been through everything and you're almost like expanding into or amplifying parts of yourself into kind of like the next layer, the next Russian doll version of you. It's not about going out. Finding anything outside of yourself is expanding yourself into that next edge, that next door and building from within, really. That's how I see it, Adding layers, adding more of who you already are and recognizing that every single version of you and every single layer really, really counts. It's knowing that you started as that little nugget, you know, when you, you get to the Russian doll middle, it's just that kind of like, like tiny, tiny, like little seed of yourself and then you're growing that tiny nugget. The original is your essence, your soul, your first elements of yourself. It's knowing that there's the child version of you, that inner child that so many people refer to in so much personal development work and healing work. It's knowing that that inner child of you is always going to be there. And sometimes she's going to raise her voice because she's frightened or she hasn't quite healed. But she needs to be heard and she's so, so valid. She has such incredible wisdom for you. I often talk about the next layer almost like the dickhead version, the teenager, the one who's just being a dickhead, you know, It. It's just like your prefrontal cortex hasn't quite merged yet. You're making silly choices, but you're still so valid. That dickhead version of you. And if you can name it, it's just like, oh, don't be a dickhead, Ali. You know, it's just like, oh, come on, let's rise to this occasion. There's a student version of me that was so relevant for me. It was where I learned so much. It was just a joyful time and a lot of innocence and play. And it was. I often talk about that time as the poor alley version of me. If you remember, as a student, we never really used to have so much money, and it was just about knowing that every time I went to the hole in the wall to get some money out, I would say, wish and a prayer. I hope I can get my fiver out so I can have a good night tonight. And it gave me such an innocence and trust in money, but also made me understand the value of money. There's the corporate layer of me. It was like the leadership version of me. There's the new mum of me, the one who learned really well what true unconditional love was. There's the leader me. There's every single expansion, every single evolution of me creates this beautiful layer of this Russian doll that makes me whole. Change is always going to happen. We're always going to evolve. We're just going to get big fat Russian dolls. That's what's just come into my mind. But it's about just not about building yourself again. It's about allowing yourself to recognize whatever you've learned in that evolution is totally valid. And then adding more and adding you. Now, that's something that I've always explained to my clients, that this evolution of the Russian doll and recognizing every part of you is totally valid. Now, this is something that came up in a conversation with my mentor just this week, and I'm going to share it while it's still raw, because it helps me solidify this. But I hope that if there's somebody listening who needs this, then I hope it helps you, too. What I recognized through a conversation, recognize that some of my Russian dolls got left behind in a traumatic event. And I've had quite a lot of traumatic events. But there were two key ones that came through for me this morning when I was doing this work. It was like, which of my Russian dolls have I left behind? Which ones have I not put back together? And there's one that was my innocent and Trusting self. I left that version of me after a really personal betrayal. I can't afford to be that trusting, innocent version of me. I can't be gullible. I don't want to be seen as gullible. I need the critic. I needed the cynic. I needed the one who just said, I'm not open for trusting anyone anymore. I'm not going to trust. I took that version of me out that Russian doll and I left it back in 2016. There's another version of myself I recognized while I was doing this work, deep meditative and journaling work, was that there was also a very corporate professional self that I left behind in 2014 because I'd been through some experiences with unkind, incredibly backstabbing women and men who I had complete and utter disrespect for in their choices. And I was just like that corporate professional version of me gets to say in 2014, I do not want anything to do with that. I do not want. And the association with the whole kind of like corporate professional, highly paid, financially independent version of me got left behind. I don't want any version of that. And I left those abandoned versions of my Russian dolls behind. And through my conversation and the work this morning, I recognized that they've created big gaps. I fractured myself. The Russian doll was missing parts of myself. And so this morning, and the conversation I had with my mentor was very much about this reclamation of those two versions of my Russian doll that I recognized I'd left behind. And I had to go back and retrieve them. I went back to 2014 and I said to my previous self and I had that conversation with her and I said, you're welcome back in that financially independent, strong woman is now ready because she knows that she'll take no shit from anybody. You know, backstabbers, let them. I know who I am. I know what I'm doing. I've been there, I've done it. Financially independent, yes, please let me take that. I'm ready to be that. I'm ready to own that. I went back to 2016 to the self that I found lying in the bottom of the shower. I put my arms around her and I said, you're welcome back. I need your innocence. I need your trust. I need your belief in faith, in God, in the universe, in the co creation. I believe that everything happens for a reason. And you're welcome back within me to fully trust, to feel fully free to not leave that door shut. And putting those Russian dolls back inside my body makes me feel emotional. Quite right now is just the relief and the whole and the anchoring and the strength I feel for bringing those Russian dolls back within me has been beautiful. I feel so calm today. And yeah, I just wanted to share that in the moment for me, for you, to help you understand the idea of the Russian dolls, which I know has been so useful for many of my private clients and using that for them. But also this reclamation of the versions of myself that I'd left behind. Every version of you is valid. It's remembering, it's expanding. It's about bringing yourself and reclaiming all of you and the relief that comes when you fill in those gaps between your dolls. I hope you've enjoyed today's Joy broadcast. I hope it brings you some joy in the sense of it's just on you. It's not a joy hack or tip, but it is a really joyful practice in the way it's filling up and being yourself, spending time with yourself to look at your shit, to look at your diamonds and celebrate that. The incredible, beautiful things that you have in your life, but then also recognizing that there's also some hard and there's also some heavy and. And to separate the two and prioritize the two. To have a look at yourself and recognize that you are the many, many layers of who you are and perhaps even looking at some of the past versions of yourself that you've left behind that you're ready to welcome back in. This is deep work today. So this is an invitation. If this is something you want to talk through with me, then come and join me in the Joy Rebellion. The Joy Rebellion is where we lock in every single week. Your Joy, you get to focus just on you. And I invite you to come in and do that every single week. And if there are challenges, if there are blocks, then I invite you to come in and be coached or mentored through that with me. There's also time for celebration and connection with some wonderful people in the community. So if that's something that interests you, then I will leave everything in the show notes. My doors are always open for the Joy Rebellion that's expanding and expanding and growing all the time. If you want to work with me on a more private and one to one level because you're going through something that is incredibly shitty. Excuse my French today. Been using that word a lot. But then I would invite you to come and take a look at brilliance. And again, I'll leave everything in the show notes. Come in and have a conversation with me and let's see where you fit based on where you are in your life. But I hope that the tools that I've shared with you today are ones that you will find useful whether you use them today or whether you remember them sometime in the I hope you have a most wonderful week. It's so good to be back on the JOY broadcast, and I will look forward to seeing you next week. My mission is to spread love, joy, peace, and abundance to as much of the world as I possibly can so that every person knows that they don't have to walk alone in their darkness. So if you've enjoyed today's podcast and this episode, I would be so honored and happy if you would support my mission and share this with your network, your friends, and your family. Please feel free to leave me an honest review on Apple or Spotify. And until next time, remember, the ripple of joy starts with you.