← The JOY Broadcast
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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 a 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'm 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. Honestly, I cannot believe how chilly it is. It's June, practically the middle of June at recording this, and I'm frozen. I'm sat in my woolly socks. I've got my blanket on. I've got my scarf. I'm in my onesie. Who knows what's going on with the great British summer? Who knows? Anyway, we're not going to talk about the weather or although we could do, because it's such a British thing to do, I've got something on my mind. I've got something on my heart. I want to talk about emotions and I want to talk about the emotions, especially when it comes to empty nesting. This week has been an incredibly emotional week for me. I didn't think Well, I say I wasn't expecting it. I absolutely was. I knew I was going to be emotional. I'm aware of my emotions. I fully embrace my emotions every single day now, whereas perhaps once upon a time, I didn't. Tom, my eldest son, who's 18, finished his final A level on Tuesday this week. And with it, that becomes this completion, this ending of a complete chapter of his school life. And I do remember when he was just four and I took him to the local school uniform outfitters and we went into a little booth at the back of the room with a blue curtain. Tom was so proud of his new uniform and he popped it on St. Mary's and I literally started crying. It was a time where I probably wasn't as emotionally attuned to myself as I was back then. And it took me totally by surprise. And I said to the shop assistant, I said, I'm so sorry for all the tears. And she said, don't worry, it happens more often than you think. So I was almost expecting my emotions to unleash themselves on me. And I'm not feeling frightened of my emotions anymore. I was driving to pick up Tom because, you know, they're at boarding school, our sons are at boarding school. Which, before you judge me and think, how on earth did you send your children away to school? It was their choice. I loved being at boarding school when I was younger. My closest friends are still my friends from my days of being at boarding school in those formative years. They're still the people that I turn to. Ring, message, text, pour my heart out, to have the best of times with. And I wanted our sons to have the opportunity to feel the same way. And we were fortunate enough to be able to do that and that they wanted to. So I was driving the hour and a half, the 90 minutes to go and pick up Tom after his final A level. And I could feel the emotions bubbling within me and to the point where I had to pull over. I had to pull over on the side of the road because the tears were coming so thick and fast I couldn't see. And I thought, well, it's better to get them out of the way before I arrive and see him. I mean, the fact that they think I'm weird already because I'm so in tune with my emotions and I cry at most things. They know I don't hide my feelings. I thought, you know what? I'm not going to embarrass him in front of all of his mates by being a complete and emotional wreck. So I Pulled myself over, but it felt like such a full, full circle moment. I kept getting visuals of the first. Oh, I see. I can get emotional already just thinking about it, but I can still feel those emotions and see the images of Tom when he was first born in my mind. I can just close my eyes. It was quite a dramatic birth. Tom took a long time to be born. It was a natural birth, but he got his. He got stuck, basically. They call it shoulder dystocia, which is very rare, but he basically got stuck half in and half stuck in, half stuck out. His head was out, but his body was not following on the second contraction. The reason being he had one little hand up by his head, so he was almost too broad to come through my pelvis. And, I mean, I don't remember an awful lot of it. I just remember that there were a lot of people very, very suddenly in the birthing suite. And when I say a lot of people, there were a lot of people, and they knew that they had moments to get Tom out, otherwise he would be starved of oxygen, and they did that. And I remember it being deathly quiet. I remember just thinking, oh, no, you want to hear the signs of the baby crying? There were just a lot of people very quietly working on Tom around a little table. And then they started to move. And as they moved Tom, I said, is he okay? And they said, yes, he's okay. He's breathing. He's just exhausted. He needs some oxygen. We're gonna go and take him to the special care baby unit. And I said, can I see his face? Because I hadn't seen him. They literally got him out, and they put him straight on that, like, I don't know what you call it, the bring them back to life table. And they turned to show his face to me. And my first feeling was, well, of course he was gonna look like that. Of course he was. And I could still see that image of him. And then I remember James's face going next to him. What do I do? What do I do? And I said, stay with the b. With the baby. So James and Tom left me as they had to stitch me up and do what they have to do. But it felt like such a full circle moment from that moment of when he came to life. And now, I suppose as a parent, we've done what we were meant to do. Create an adult who's ready to fly, who's ready to live his own life and to go. And it feels like it's been a blink of an eye, a moment in Time, but at the same time, a long period of time. And as I was sat there in this lay by before I went to go and get Tom, I was playing all of these emotions of this roller coaster and a rush, just like this dam that had almost like burst of emotion of pride and love and overwhelming sadness that the childhood years are over and the baby years are done and, you know, him moving on, and the sense of excitement, but also this sense of fear because the world is so different to how it was when we started our lives and this huge opportunity, but also terribly frightening. Will they make it? What will they do? You know, will there be jobs? With the age of AI, there's so many more opportunities, but so many less opportunities. It was like this huge pendulum of emotions flinging around in my body. And I just thought, why do so many people that I see on the Internet keep talking about regulating emotions? I've written a whole blog post on this before, and I remember just thinking, why would you want to regulate emotion? Regulation is what James does to our radiator valves to make sure that we've got the right flow of temperature. And I just thought, why would you want to regulate? Why would you want to downplay this rush? I have never felt so alive in this moment of feeling all of these feelings bombarding me and like, being like fireworks and in my heart and in my soul, in my throat, all in one go. I've never felt so alive in feeling all of these feelings. Why would you want to regulate that feeling? As a mother, it was incredible. Why would I want to dull that? Why would I want to suppress that? Why would I want to just sit there and just allow myself, no, I can only feel this or do this at this point. It was overwhelming but beautiful at the same time. And it took me a few deep breaths to just go, yeah, I'm. I'm embracing this feeling, this feeling of aliveness. And do you know what it reminded me of? The roller coaster of life. And I've written that out because that day I had just reminded myself of a quote that I loved years ago. And I often quote to James, you know, when he says, you know, we've got to take it a bit easy and we've got to play it a little bit, a little bit safe, and we've got to get our ducks in a row. And I just remember thinking, james, you and I, James being my husband. For new listeners, it's like, I don't think we've ever really been hugely sensible. We've always been bold, risk, takers And I said to him, we're never going to be the people who go to the fairground and ride in the teacups. We're the people who are going to run and we're going to go for the roller coaster and we're going to go over and over and over again. Which makes me laugh as I say this because I've just remembered our first date was actually at Light Water Valley, which is Yorkshire's one. Well, it used to be Yorkshire's finest theme park, adventure playground, and it's now just, you know, a couple of miles up the road. And it had the longest roller coaster in Europe in it. And that was where we went on our first date. And I've never been so terrified in my whole life because I'm terrified of heights. And it was so fast. I was being flung this way and that way and up and down, but I was laughing, crying, holding his hand. And I remember taking Tom on the same roller coaster when he was about 10 or 11. And I. And he said, mommy, I want to go on that. And I said, are you absolutely sure you want to go on there, Tom? And he said, yes, I do. And we sit and watched it and he said, no, I don't. And then he said, yes, I do. And then eventually we got on it and I remember he just shut his eyes and it felt like he'd almost passed out as we were going rattling through this roller coaster. And we got to the end and I said, are you all right? And he goes, oh, my God, that was amazing. And it's like that with life, you know, Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving completely safe and preserved and pristine and polished and perfect. But you want to arrive and you want to. I've said to Joseph, said, we're going to be skidding up to those pearly gates, you know, sliding in, totally spent, totally exhausted, totally exhilarated by life and just looking at each other going, holy, what a ride. And. And I almost feel like that that's exactly how we're going to arrive at that point. And I also know that, you know, my. My gorgeous mum will be waiting there on the other side. And I know I'm going to run up to her and go and say, mum, did you see that? Did you see that? I know she's watching. I want her to know that we've had the most incredible ride. I think she would be so disappointed if she sat down, looking at me, safely sat in a teacup going, yes, let's just Watch everybody else have a great time while we're sat safely in a teacup. And my whole point of this is like, let life be the roller coaster. Let life be the emotional roller coaster of the super highs and the super lows. Make it be the exhilarating and the scary and the frightening and all at once and allow yourself to feel everything all at once. I remember once a client saying to me once, she's just said, I'm too frightened of all of my feelings. I'm frightened that I'm going to feel them all and I won't be able to stop. I won't be able to stop the overwhelm and the pain or the sadness. And I'd just be drowning in my own emotion. And I think that that's the danger of regulation. I think that's the danger of avoiding. I think that's the danger of suppressing, of ignoring, of numbing. I know from my own personal experience, when you put on a stiff upper lip and just get on with life without allowing yourself to feel those feelings, the dam will break. It's like you build a dam to protect yourself from all of these emotional parts of our lives and the emotions that we feel when somebody dies, or from loss or from shame or anything happen. But it's about turning and facing them. Because if you build the dam, you're going to be constantly worrying and fearing that that dam is going to burst and take you with it, or you're going to be constantly patching it up. Whereas really, it's just saying, let me feel the flow of these emotions while I'm living it. Let me have that very, very human experience that only can come from feeling, let myself feel it. If you, if you downplay all of this, you're just robbing yourself of the full human experience. Why would you want to downplay your joy? I wrote that down on my. On my notebook this week when I was thinking about this. Why would you downplay your joy? Why would you suppress your joy? Why would you hold back your passion, your wildness, which my year, my theme for the year, you know, why would you avoid fear? You know, I used to, I absolutely used to this whole acronym of the peach and the egg. I used to hold back my. You know, I used to fear fear until I recognize that sometimes fear is the very thing that can actually really bring you alive again. You know, so many times the boys have made me go and jump off cliffs and I know I'm frightened, but I do it anyway. And I have the most amazing time recall Last winter, when Willy said to me, he said, oh, Mummy, look at that bungee ski jump. We're going to go and do that. I'm going to do that. And immediately I said, don't be silly, Willy. I'm terrified of heights. I'm not going to do that. But by the time we got to the top and James looked at me, he said, ali, you know you're going to do it. You talk to people all the time about facing their fears and doing it. He said, I know you're going to do it. And in that moment, I started to feel the fear, because I knew I was going to do it. But the most beautiful thing about facing your fears and walking hand in hand with your fears, and even though I stood at the top of that ski slope, looking over the absolute precipice and worrying if the ropes were going to hold me and if I was going to hit my head on something or, you know, all of those fears that you have, because you don't know. It's an experience I've never, ever felt before. I just said, enjoy the moment. Enjoy the moment. It's going to be fine. It's just. You're going to shush in a plop. You're going to shush in a plop, and it's going to be amazing, and you're going to get to the end, and the boys are going to be cheering you, and it's going to be the most exhilarating experience of your life. And it was. I shushed, I plopped, I flew, I looked, my. I lost my tummy, I lost my mind. I got to the end, but all I could hear were the boys yelling at me, going, come on, Mum, do it. And I knew when I got to the bottom, they would be so proud of me. And I was so proud of myself. And again, I can feel the rush of emotion, of there's nothing like overcoming a fear, you know? Susan Jeffers book was one of my favorite books when I was starting my personal development journey. Feel the fear and do it anyway. Feel the fear and know you're alive. Don't be fearless. Don't want to be fearless, because it's actually brave. It's courage when you walk hand in hand with your fear. And I talked about this on a whole podcast just a few episodes ago. But all of these things, all of these human emotions, on that Hawkins scale of consciousness, it's bringing them to your feeling them so that you feel alive. Anger can also be one of the most powerful, beautiful human expressions we've we've had so much innovation through people being angry at something. Worlds, industries, schools, anything like that. When someone has felt angry that something is wrong is what is the catalyst. That's terrible English, isn't it? When anyone has felt anger, it's often a catalyst for change. You know, I think, again, don't fear your anger. I was talking to one of my clients today about shame. Shame is just another very, very human emotion of recognizing that I feel shame. Okay, why? Is it because I feel like I'm a victim? Is it really shame? I think Brene Brown describes the difference between shame and guilt so eloquently. Guilt is I did something wrong. Shame is I am wrong or I am bad. And is that really TR true? Is there really anything that you can be ashamed of? Again, all of these emotions are very much just information to tell us that we are living a very human experience. And that's okay. So if I bring the whole emotional roller coaster that I've been through this week, and it's so lovely having Tom home and seeing him relax and just having him hang out, and I quite like sending him on errands, like, please could you go and get me some hazelnut chocolate chip cookies for me this afternoon? I'm feeling like a cookie. You know, it is so lovely to have him at home. I know that so many of my listeners are of the era that I am in, arriving at this point where we have children who are in that huge transition, coming out of school life, wondering what is next, whether it's university, whether it's to go to do an apprenticeship, where maybe it's a gap year, maybe it's just to go to work again. If you've been listening for me for a long time, you know how I love to question certain phrases. Empty nest syndrome. Is this really going to be an empty nest? I really don't feel like it is. Empty nest sounds awful. The loneliness of, oh, my goodness, what am I going to do when I don't have children to look after? I think James and I have had a little bit of a dress rehearsal of this empty nesting, because obviously they have been at boarding school for a period of time. So there has been a time where we haven't had the children at home and we've had to amuse ourselves and find out who we are without children on some level. But I just don't believe that we will ever have an empty nest. I just don't believe in that. That's not what I see our future as. You know, while our boys Chose boarding school. It was their choice. As I said, I went to the best years of my life. My best friends of my life. When they went off to boarding school, we were left in this huge house that we finished renovating and looking at each other and going, well, what do we do now on a weekend when we don't have them? What do we do now when we have an evening? As I said, we've had this dress rehearsal peppered with sports fixtures and visits and school events. But the shape of what the next 10 years, I suppose is going to be like. We've had a hint of it. We've had a hint of it. Somebody said to me when I mentioned this on social media that I wasn't sure about the empty nesting. She said, why don't you sit? As she said, someone told her there as it is bird launching. And I absolutely much prefer that phrase. We've created a beautiful nest for our children to fly from. We've been preparing them for this stage of their life their whole lives. From the very moment that Tom was born and took his first breath to when he put on his school uniform, from when he went to school and now finishing school. We've done our utmost to make sure that he has had the best of everything we could possibly afford and the time we could afford to give him. We've help them live and love their lives. And I would like to coin the phrase joynesting. Joynesting because we have created a home with joy for all of us that I know that they're always going to come back to. Yes, they are going to launch from here, but they will also return to our joynest because this is where we all belong and this is where we all snuggle down and we. We tell stories that. That only our family can know about. I also want to call it joy nesting because it's ultimately a time for joy. Just on you. I keep educating you about that acronym. Just on you. Now that the boys are off and doing their own wonderful things for life and they're spending their life just on themselves, they're having their joy life. I know that this is our time to find out who we are again. We traveled the world when we were younger. We traveled the world. First thing that James and I did when we got together was go on our gap year in our. I think we were 20 and 21, I think at the time. And we went on our gap year. How fun is it going to be at 50 and 51 to go traveling again, but this time in luxury rather than 10p a night in a backpack, we're going to have a little bit more money. I would hope after that to go off and enjoy our lives just on us. And coming back here to our joy nest, our home, all of us coming back at the same time to come in and revel. And one day they're going to bring their babies back into the joynest. I don't ever want our children to feel like we are a burden to them, that they have left us with an empty nest and for them to have to check in on us because we might be unhappy. I want them to know that we are out there living our lives, having an adventure and living and traveling and dreaming our next phases. And when we all come back together, we've all got so many conversations and experiences to share. I know that already James and I have started to think about those next plans. I go back to our years in traveling. 29 years ago, we were lying on a beach in Fiji, casting the visions of the life that we have today. The beautiful home, the family, the house renovation projects we have done, the businesses, the dogs, all of it. The social life, that's what we painted the picture of and that is what we have created. So our job now is to say, okay, while we're helping our boys paint that vision of what they want to let their life to be, James and I need to do the same. What is it that we want to create in the next 10 years, in the next 30 years? How do we want to do that? What does that look like? And then we get to go and fly and create it. We've had a decade focusing on the children. Now the decade is about focusing on us. It's focusing on joy. It's living and loving our lives, is having that ability to go for it and maybe the joy nesting again. Just like we're launching our boys, we're launching ourselves. We're allowing ourselves to fly again, to go and do and be and live life in the way that we want to. And I know. Again, interesting. And a client again this week was saying she's frightened that she might not like life without her children. They've been such a big purpose. And what happens if she looks at her husband and she doesn't? Not sure if she likes him or likes spending time with him. I've written a blog post about this one as well, and I can share it in the show notes, but it's just saying, you know, some marriages are meant to come to a completion and some marriages get to go again. And we're the living proof of that. It's just saying you get to fall in love again with your partner, with your husband, you get to fall in love with your life again. Allow yourself to fall in love with yourself again. Go and find out who you are without your children at home. Go and find out what your marriage and relationship is like without them. This is, is an exciting time. And I think the empty nesting always puts the wrong lens over what can be the most exciting time. A little bit like regulating emotions. Who wants to be in control of your emotions? That moment I had on the side of the road was probably one of the most memorable moments of my entire life. Because it wasn't controlled, it was just let it rip, allow yourself to feel. And I was just like, oh, it didn't last forever. I was probably in the lay by for a few minutes because I allowed myself to feel, to feel those feelings. Whereas perhaps if I'd suppressed them and I would have seen Tom walking through the gates to me with a big beam on his face with all of his mates around him. If I'd cried in that moment, it wouldn't have been the right time. Instead, I was able to open my arms and he came and he gave me the biggest hug and he was like, oh, I'm done, mum. And I was like, I know. And this is the first day of the rest of your life. Let's go get them. Let's go and have some fun. This is all about you now. So if you're facing this period in your life and you're feeling emotions, please allow yourself to feel those emotions. If, like me, sometimes you can't feel, put on music. I was listening to music at the time. It was really emotional, allowing myself to bring forth those emotions or watch a movie and let those movies evoke the emotions in you so you don't feel so much pressure to feel. But just let the music or the movie allow those feelings to rise within you, to flow through you, to let them go. Because once they start to flow, they do end. Whereas if you're holding up a dam, it can feel scary because you know how many emotions are sat behind it. Allow yourself to feel in the moment and then move on. Feel in the moment and move on. Let feelings give you the information you need in order to find your next steps. And I think all of this just to say, remember the acronym. Joy. Just on you, just on you. Nesting. This is the time for ourselves, for themselves, for everybody to go out and find what happens next. We're all bird launching. We're all leaping out of a nest that we're all going to come back to and share more stories, and they're going to bring more little eggs back into the nest. Let your children fly. Let them go and find their joy, and you can find your joy as well. And I really feel that the joy acronym really comes into its own when we talk about it in this way. So I'm going to leave it there because I've got another packet of biscuits to eat with my son on the sofa under a blanket with the fire roaring in the middle of June. I feel so sorry for them. It should be gorgeously sunny and they should be outside, you know, sunbathing or playing cricket or golf or whatever. But now we're wrapped up. But maybe that's how it was meant to be. Go and enjoy this week. Remember, JOY stands for just on you. Give yourself yourself those joy moments, check in with yourself and give yourself a life of joy by choosing joy. And remember, life is the roller coaster, unless you're a teacup kind of person. But I hope you're a roller coaster type of person, because I know that you're here listening. Have fun. Buckle up, go and enjoy yourself. Lots of love. 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.