Shownotes
After Hours Bonus - with Anna Knight
Jenn wilson
Jenn Wilson is joined by our guest: Anna Knight (they/she) – Coach, Trainer, and Audacity Advocate
After Hours Bonus Episode Overview
“A pie chart is always 100%. It holds contradictions—and you are still whole.” — Anna Knight
In this bonus episode, Jenn Wilson and Anna Knight dive into a beautifully irregular model of self-love—pie charts. Anna shares how they use pie charts to help themselves and their clients reframe identity, self-worth, and healing. Instead of measuring value through flawed societal maths, Anna’s pie chart model embraces contradiction, nuance, and the power of “and.” They explore how trauma, shame, and societal coding can eclipse our sense of self—and how adding neutral and positive truths can restore balance. This episode is a gentle, powerful invitation to see yourself as whole, even in your messiest moments.
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Connect with Anna
Wesbite: https://theaudaciousand.com
Instagram: @theaudaciousand
About Anna:
Anna Knight is a coach, trainer, and audacity advocate for the stubbornly hopeful humans making the world a better place. They support helpers, healers, and change-bringers to build resilience, unlock their brilliance, and love the hell out of themselves - exactly as they are. Through practical tools and radical self-acceptance, Anna helps people deliver their missions and stay whole.
Episode Takeaway
You are never just your flaws or trauma. By embracing your contradictions and adding neutral truths, you can reclaim your wholeness—one slice at a time.
Further Resources: links to offers from Irregular that are relevant to the episode
More about this episode:
1. The Pie Chart Model of Self-Love
Anna introduces their unique approach to self-worth: a pie chart that always adds up to 100%, no matter what it contains.
2. Reframing Value Debt
They explain how traditional self-assessment leads to burnout and shame—and how pie charts offer a more compassionate alternative.
3. The Power of “And”
Jenn and Anna explore how shifting from “but” to “and” in self-talk can reverse spirals of negativity and open space for healing.
4. Eclipsing Identity & Trauma
Anna shares how trauma can dominate identity—and how the pie chart model helps reclaim space for joy, hobbies, and growth.
5. Neutral Truths as Healing Tools
Even when clients can’t name positives, Anna shows how neutral facts can begin the journey back to self-acceptance.
6. Fluidity & Growth
The episode closes with reflections on how new experiences, healing, and relationships expand the pie chart—and our sense of self.
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Season 1 Episode 11
Transcripts
Transcript
Start Time::End Time: 00:12:41.220
Jenn Wilson: So welcome to the after hours bonus section of the irregular humans podcast today with Anna Knight and today Anna, they are going to tell us about pie charts. Tell us.
Anna Knight: I realize this is a very irregular thing. To be talking about.
Anna Knight: Pie charts is my model of self-love.
Anna Knight: I believe we all do really really terrible maths on a daily basis. We look at ourselves as a sum of good bits and bad bits.
Anna Knight: strengths, and flaws. We go. I did these good things. But I am these bad things, because that's how it often is, is the good things are actions. I
Anna Knight: I did a good session. I was kind to my partner. I did this nice thing for a stranger. I held the door for someone good actions.
Anna Knight: but because the flaws are rooted, not just in the things we do in the moment that don't meet our values. But in our trauma, in society coding that tells us that we're wrong. We're flawed. We're terrible.
Anna Knight: their personality traits. They're who we are. They're all the shame we've learned about
Anna Knight: what it means to be neurodivergent. What it means to be. LGBT. What it means to be disabled, what it means to be. Whoever you are, you have sticks. You beat yourself up with.
Jenn Wilson: Huh!
Anna Knight: Lazy, disorganized, like, whatever it is
Anna Knight: when you do it like that you end up in value debt
Anna Knight: because you can never do enough good things to counteract all the negative messages you've been told about yourself.
Jenn Wilson: Hmm.
Anna Knight: Not humanly possible. If you try, you burn out, and you still are probably in value there. You still have that sneaky. I'm not good enough. I'm not doing enough voice in your head.
Jenn Wilson: Yes.
Anna Knight: I decided, throwing that out, not doing value debt anymore.
Anna Knight: But that left me with a gap of how do I represent to myself
Anna Knight: my value in those moments where I'm low when I'm going. Oh, my God, I'm this! I'm that I'm the other.
Anna Knight: and how I did! It is a pie chart.
Jenn Wilson: Okay.
Anna Knight: A circle. A pie chart is always a hundred percent.
Anna Knight: It is always complete and whole.
Anna Knight: but the more facets you put into your pie chart.
Anna Knight: good, bad, neutral. As long as they're factual. Stick them in your pie chart.
Jenn Wilson: 2 wonderful things happen.
Anna Knight: You see that your pie chart can hold a lot of contradictions and still be a hundred percent.
Anna Knight: So in my pie chart, I'm nerdy. I'm a book lover. I'm kind, I'm funny, but I'm also untidy. I can be a bit snappy. I don't always get the joke. I
Anna Knight: can, as you've probably guessed with the examples I've given. I haven't done the dishes like those things.
Jenn Wilson: Those dishes.
Anna Knight: All exist within my pie chart, and I am still 100% valuable.
Jenn Wilson: Yes.
Anna Knight: It holds the contradictions.
Jenn Wilson: Yes.
Anna Knight: The other great thing about a pie chart is that the more bits you put in, the more qualities you recognize, the less eclipsing certain things become. Yeah.
Anna Knight: So I mentioned that I started my personal development journey when I left my ex-husband.
Anna Knight: My identity for a good 2 years was domestic violence survivor.
Anna Knight: That was how I represented myself. That was what I saw. The trauma of that relationship eclipsed everything.
Anna Knight: It informed how I showed up who I showed up as like I was even judging. Am IA good enough trauma survivor? Am I doing it right? Am I like the other trauma survivors? Do I fit in in that group?
Anna Knight: It was eclipsing when I moved to a pie chart model. It just became one tiny sliver of the pie along with loving Star Wars and having enough books to technically have a library and loving my cats and being a good partner and like it.
Anna Knight: it's just a little bit of me. It balances out all those elements. So you don't hang your identity on one over eclipsing thing.
Jenn Wilson: Yes.
Anna Knight: You see yourself as this glorious, irregular contradiction of Anne's.
Jenn Wilson: Yes. Yeah.
Anna Knight: And it takes away the sting when you're in those Nope moments, as you described them. Where you're going. I'm a total failure of a human.
Anna Knight: You can talk yourself out of it with the simple word, and.
Jenn Wilson: Yes, oh, and is so powerful as part of the practice that I do, which is called up wording. I might well do a podcast guest from upwarding. At some point
Jenn Wilson: one of the shifts is from but to and.
Anna Knight: Oh!
Jenn Wilson: You know, because when we say a sentence, isn't it? I've done really well today, but I still haven't done the dishes, or really well today. But on balance I'm still not achieving the thing I want to achieve. So whereas and in that sentence is, I've done brilliantly well today, and I'm not achieving everything I want to.
Jenn Wilson: And I've done really well today, you know.
Anna Knight: It's just exactly.
Jenn Wilson: It's more, isn't it? Yeah.
Anna Knight: And it can. It can reverse the spiral of negative self-talk as well. I remember really clearly the 1st time I really got the power of, and I was at the Gretna Green Outlet Village as you do, and buying a new waterproof coat. My partner and I spent a lot of time
Anna Knight: outdoors. We're outdoorsy people, but we're also disabled plus size people.
Anna Knight: And I could not find a coat that fit me that I liked. There was one coat in a size 22, and it was boring and black, and if I am anything, I am not boring and black.
Anna Knight: And so I started to spiral. I went in the I'm too fat to have a coat. Fat is bad.
Jenn Wilson: Hmm.
Anna Knight: That was my societal coding. That was the voice of my mother, because she'd grown up in fat is bad, and so she'd raised me with a you've put on a bit of weight, haven't you? Kind of mentality?
Jenn Wilson: Yep.
Anna Knight: And I was nearly crying in Greta Green. Never a place you want to cry.
Anna Knight: and I saw a car number plate that said its number plate was, and at the end and I went. Oh, my God, universe
Anna Knight: really
Anna Knight: fine! I've just changed my branding to this. I will do the ants, and I went. Okay, I am too fat for a coat.
Anna Knight: and I'm allowed to be dry.
Jenn Wilson: Hmm.
Anna Knight: And I'm allowed to like walking, and
Anna Knight: my weight doesn't stop me walking, and
Anna Knight: I actually feel a lot better when I go out in nature.
Anna Knight: and I'm a really brightly coloured person, and
Anna Knight: I'll probably find a coat out there somewhere. There's just not one in this shop.
Anna Knight: and it might take a bit more work. But that's okay. And
Anna Knight: Mel's really good at Internet research. I'll ask him to find me a quote, and
Anna Knight: that means I'll have a coat, and we'll go out walking.
Anna Knight: and we could go to this place that I've wanted to go to for ages. And oh, maybe when we go there we could get lunches, and I talked myself out of the spiral just by keeping on adding ands.
Jenn Wilson: Yeah, brilliant, brilliant.
Anna Knight: Reversing that spiral into society, coded, ick.
Jenn Wilson: We just.
Anna Knight: A lot of them were neutral statements. They weren't even like that toxic positivity of like, yeah. Oh, no, just think yourself happy. It was just adding factual statement after factual statement to go.
Anna Knight: It's probably a more balanced situation. It sucks that they don't have any coats that I like.
Anna Knight: That sounds like a mountain warehouse problem, not an Anna problem in the end.
Jenn Wilson: Yeah.
Anna Knight: It might not have been mountain warehouse. I feel like I'm calling out Mountain Warehouse. Now.
Anna Knight: whoever it was. Yeah, one of the outdoorsy brands.
Jenn Wilson: Yeah.
Anna Knight: But
Anna Knight: but that I use it so often. Now I teach my clients. It's the 1st thing I do with my clients is pie charts, and and.
Jenn Wilson: Hmm.
Anna Knight: And gone.
Jenn Wilson: And I love the idea of the pie chart being something that's fluid like when you talked about your survivor, identity being quite all consuming.
Jenn Wilson: I can imagine coming to a pie chart from a place where you're in a process of healing or in a process of personal development and feeling like 3 quarters of the chart, is difficult stuff.
Jenn Wilson: and only tiny slices are positive stuff. But then, as you add.
Jenn Wilson: new experiences and healing moments because they are at the start, aren't they? You know. I've got a client, for example, who
Jenn Wilson: has been on quite a long journey with me, and was spiraling about the idea of going abroad because they associated going on abroad with a whole load of traumatic things that have happened to them in their past, and they were really scared to do this trip that they were going to do, and they did the trip last week, and on the way back on the trip there was a major major delay problem with their transport. That meant that they were stuck in A in A in a
Jenn Wilson: carriage of a train for hours on end with no food, and it was horrific.
Jenn Wilson: And they were okay. I mean, it was hard, but they didn't. You know they coped with it
Jenn Wilson: those, though that then becomes part of your story, and that becomes part of your pie chart, and I can go there, and I can be on this. Be in a crisis there and be all right. Wow! I've proved that to myself. And you can build out your chart.
Jenn Wilson: Those new experiences, new hobbies, new relationships as they come into your life.
Anna Knight: Yeah.
Anna Knight: I've had clients. When I introduce the pie chart, who who will point blank, say to me, I have nothing positive to add to this pie chart.
Jenn Wilson: Hmm.
Anna Knight: They're so they're so at Rock bottom in the hole that they cannot see a positive.
Jenn Wilson: Yeah.
Anna Knight: And so we add neutral, just value neutral statements. Of fact, I did one a couple of weeks ago where she had things like
Anna Knight: I like sled dogs.
Jenn Wilson: Hmm.
Anna Knight: On. It was a thing I like music.
Jenn Wilson: Yeah.
Anna Knight: Like neutral things again, it that shift of
Anna Knight: like taking the bad down in size, adding the neutral.
Anna Knight: By the end of the exercise she? She was adding things like, I'm stubborn, actually stubborn's a really good thing. I love being stubborn. Stubborns kept me safe. Yeah, she's like
Anna Knight: I find myself funny is one that I love. Because isn't this
Anna Knight: end of the day? You're really the only person who needs to find you funny as long as you're amusing yourself. Jobs are good and.
Jenn Wilson: Yeah.
Anna Knight: That it's such a powerful process to do, even if you're like. There's nothing positive to go on my pie chart.
Jenn Wilson: Hmm.
Anna Knight: Just by adding neutral things in itself is healing to see that the bad can't be a hundred percent of you, because there has to be some room for the neutral statements of fact.
Jenn Wilson: Yeah, and and those little what ifs? And I'm open to the possibility that maybe it's not always going to feel as bad as it does today.
Anna Knight: Dear.
Jenn Wilson: You know those ones. Just
Jenn Wilson: the this, too, shall pass. It's a cliche, but it's a really helpful one sometimes in them in those dark. Yeah.
Jenn Wilson: Yeah. Oh, Anna, thank you for the pie charts. I'm so glad you shared that with us. You're audacious, and they're wonderful. And you're wonderful. And and thank you so much for being our guest here on the irregular humans podcast.
Anna Knight: It's been a pleasure.
