Words. We use them every single day. We use some of them to define ourselves, perhaps reflexively. How often do we question those definitions? Do we know where they’ve come from? Why we choose them, who gave them to us? How often do we let those definitions grow and change? How often do they still fit where we are and who we are today? Do we check in with those nearest and dearest to us to see how they define some of these words, to see if our definitions are the same? 

All of this is a large part of our conversation with guest Belle Lockerby, author of The Words the Caterpillar Ate currently available for presale. Belle Lockerby is a speaker, best selling author and founder of rise365 where she designed and delivered change programs for women that rebuilt their confidence and generated multiple 7 figures.  Holding a Post Grad in Change Management and as Australia's first Certified Clifton Strengthsfinder coach she is, primarily, a transformation expert.   Belle helps women find their self worth in their words so they can have hard conversations with ease and speak confidently (including with that voice inside their own heads that holds them back).  Having coached over 1000 humans and worked with small and large organizations, Belle has seen the positive impact that comes from people unlocking their innate talents to rebuild self belief and communicate effectively.  She knows words we speak to ourselves and each other are the key for confidently building value - in business and life.  In addition to a focus on mothers and women in leadership, Belle’s corporate list of clients includes Rio Tinto, City of Mandurah, Department of Fire and Emergency and Johnson & Johnson Medical.

She has a lot of wisdom to offer, but this is also an episode filled with laughter, vulnerability, and stories from life. Have you ever tried to talk underwater as practice to become a mermaid, or been confused by offside rules in soccer? Then this is a conversation you can connect to. Thank you for being part of our community.   

Her books: Awkward Is The New Brave https://amzn.to/3en7JYQ 

The Words the Caterpillar Ate https://bookshop.org/a/

Behaving Bravely Confidence Academy: https://bellelockerby.com/work-with-me 

Website: https://bellelockerby.com 

TedX Talk: Is Your Dictionary Dead? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gv6gJ5ieU0  www.instagram.com/bellelockerby 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX3uZinLnrKz2sAdpW-_1Yw  

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Belle Lockerby 0:00

Words. We use them every single day. We use some of them to define ourselves and to define others. But how often do we question those definitions? Where they come from? Why we chose them? How often do we let those definitions grow and change? How often do they still fit where we are and who we are today.

Shawna Rodrigues 0:26

Welcome to The Grit Show. Growth on purpose. I'm glad you found us. I'm Shawna Rodrigues, a fellow seeker who is honored to be leading you on today's journey as part of this community growing together learning and thriving. I hope you stick around to the end of today's show. We get to learn about who our winners are from the color of my summer giveaway. Now, before I get to tell you more about our wonderful guest, you may have noticed there's a little something different about my voice today. I have one of those fabulous summer colds, that along with exhaustion and congestion, brings to the obstructive laryngitis. It has lingered over a week now. And while I postponed recording more interviews, unfortunately, we are down to the 11th hour of finishing this episode, so here I am. Because of this, you all get to learn a few extra things about me and the making of a podcast.

Shawna Rodrigues 1:20

First, just like you, I am constantly evaluating priorities. So, well, I definitely will be resting when I get home after recording this, and will work from home as little as possible again tomorrow. Being consistent for you and these episodes meant that I'm doing this today. I still support self care and your self care, which is why I have not been recording all week. However, I am up to being able to be here today. Otherwise, we would not be having this episode tomorrow. So, I continue to support self care. I support you taking care of yourself. And I also recognize that priorities are such that you balance things. My priority was to be able to be here for you. And my health isn't a place that I could fall for that today and feel good about it. Secondly, the episodes don't get recorded all at once. Hopefully, at least one of you is surprised by this because I work very hard to make it sound like they are. So, if you were surprised, please send me a DM on Instagram, and tell me you were surprised because it'll make me feel better about how hard I work on editing if you did not realize that there are different recordings that are put together to make one episode. Today, the difference in my voice will make it very clear which parts are recorded on which days. So I'm very grateful for your patience. And I really hope that it doesn't distract too much from your experience.

Shawna Rodrigues 2:44

Belle Lockerby 3:42

Thank you. It's so awesome to be here. Thank you for having me, Shawna.

Shawna Rodrigues 3:45

Yes, I'm glad you made it and you are coming to us all the way from sunny, Australia.

Belle Lockerby 3:51

Correct. On the west coast in Perth.

Shawna Rodrigues 3:55

For Belle, it is first thing in the morning. For me, it is the next day, is the next day or the day before for me, I get confused.

Belle Lockerby 4:02

The day before. Yeah. So I'm Wednesday, you're Tuesday.

Shawna Rodrigues 4:06

You're living in the future, Belle.

Belle Lockerby 4:08

I am. I am.

Shawna Rodrigues 4:10

Is it going to be a good day?

Belle Lockerby 4:12

It's gonna be an awesome day. So, you have nothing to worry about.

Shawna Rodrigues 4:16

She's already got good things in store for us. We're gonna join you in tomorrow Belle, you've got beautiful things waiting for us. So I'm excited that there's a variety of things that Belle has to share with us today. And it's going to be hard to keep this episode to a reasonable length. Because there's a lot of things for us to chat about. Belle has actually written two books, The Words the Caterpillar Ate, which is coming out in November. And she also wrote another book,

Belle Lockerby 4:42

Awkward is the New Brave. It's really about when life does throw you curveballs that you kind of get back up anyway because we're gonna get knocked over every so often. So it's finding that courage to get up and not necessarily do the same thing again, but do it differently so that you can really find your joy in life, and to not be held back by your past.

Shawna Rodrigues 5:02

That is brilliant. And here on The Grit Show, that is definitely something we connect with. So tell us a little bit about, how you came to your path of writing these books.

Belle Lockerby 5:12

Yeah, sure. My very earliest memory it's, which is weird of receiving an award in school was for creative writing. And my dad, bless your socks, had this little marriage certificate firmly plastered inside our mission brown cabinet. In the kitchen, and it stayed there for years, right? So I just look at this every so often and think, Oh, I'm gonna be a writer. And I do all this kind of creative stuff. And then you get to like your senior years in high school, and the conversations from people become, oh, no, no, no, like, right? And don't make any money, don't pursue that. It's like, it's really not the thing, you should do computing man, like, you should do business and all these other things. And between wanting to write and to be a flight attendant, so I could travel and see the world, why become the flight attendant when you can be the pilot, and I don't like physics. That's why I like talking to people. And I love languages and diversity. But I don't want to look at instruments. When you're young and impressionable, you take those words from other people, and then you assume that they know better than you do. And you, you want to take on their advice and do the right things and follow, you know, a career path or whatever it is, that might give you a certain definition of security and success. So I set my writing dreams on hold for a while, and it was always kind of sitting there like you're on the back burner, it's around. I really want to write and see if I can do this as something and people would say to me, you should really write about what's happened in your life, you write beautifully. Blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, Oh, yeah. And then I actually decided, You know what, I'm gonna do it. I don't, I don't want to not write this book. So, bear, the name originally started out as, Four Credits and New Black and lean to my publishing consultant. I talked to her about that maybe five years before the book got written. So, I know Shawna, before we, we started the show you were sharing your story around how you had The Grit Show sitting there for a while. So sometimes those ideas can just be sitting there, I think is like this seed. They haven't quite germinated yet, but you've got them sitting there in the background, right? So eventually, when I figured out the title of what I wanted to write, I ringed Linda and what, this is what its gonna be, and I'll write it about all of the experiences that I've had in my life, and how to kind of, you know, overcome them. And she's gone, great. So then it became that permission to write like, my first draft was really shitty. If I'm being honest, I gave permission to write a shitty first draft. But that first draft was terrible. I had, I think, 26 pages of feedback from my editor, I really didn't know what things were going to look like first. So I think sometimes when you get that feedback, it can work out or do you take it all to heart and say, Oh, actually, I shouldn't have done this. I'm no good at it. Or do you take what someone has set on and go, Okay, well, let's look at how I can improve things now. So it took me another six months after that, to work through it and put everything that she had said into place, it was almost like writing a book again, the next time the structural edit came through, they were like two pages. Like, where's the rest? And she's like, You did a really good job. It's amazing. There's such many changes at all. You've done so well. There's only those little tweaks. And I'm like, are you sure? But yeah, it's awesome. Like you've, you've done great. So, I then implemented those changes in the book came to life, which was wonderful. And I think what happened after people started reading it is like, even if they were just from my local coffee shop, sometimes the questions would come up that, like, I had no idea that was the kind of life you had, you seem so happy all the time. Like, I would never have guessed that. And that's a really big lesson, I think, because sometimes we can assume that everything is all, you know, rainbows and sunshine for people, but we actually don't know about the storm sort of that, behind in their path, we actually don't see everything that someone has been through. So it was a really nice lesson in being conscious of asking people questions to see who they are, as opposed to assuming what they've got. So it was really good. And then the second book is more of a personal development book, this one and it's really focused on those lessons around the words that we do eat from people who give us advice over life and what we do and how you can start to reshape them to create a new definition and, you know, evolve your purpose if you need to, so that it suits who you are growing into as opposed to thinking that you have to be stuck in the past.

Shawna Rodrigues 9:53

Yes, and it sounds like a lot of your life has been being open to that next step. In that changing, that evolving and presented where at and what's in front of you, and becoming who you're meant to be in that place.

Yeah.

So from your new book, it sounds like you have a TEDx talk that's going to be available soon. Hopefully with that,

yeah.

And the book coming out in November, what are some of the highlights you feel from the book or takeaways from it?

The book is very connected to the TEDx. So there was like, part of the reason for doing this book. So when I told Linda, if you helped me with the technical setup side of the book, and everything she'd done, if you got accepted to do a TEDx, now you need to write that second book, and I'm like, Ah, okay. Which has been a pretty big process. But I think the big lesson is metallic port is a dictionary dead. And it really is around looking at, so imagine if you collected up a heap of labels that people had placed on you, whether it's around definitions of beauty, or success, or education, or even who you are based on where you live in the world, right? So what would happen if you collected up all of these things? And then started to lay them out and have a look at who you really are? Are these definitions accurate? Or have they just been placed on you by someone else? And you've chosen to kind of go well, they've said, it must be true. But, what if it's not? So what if you start to edit it and create a new definition? So, I went on this little journey of having a look at how even dictionaries were created, right? So, there's a guy called Samuel Johnson, who created one of the first dictionaries in the world called Johnson's dictionary. And it just goes to show when you read some really simple words in there that it's your view of the world that was kind of given to, this is what that word mean because I've decided what that mean. Whereas when the British branched out to the Americas, and they tried to sell this concept of this dictionary, right, which ended up I think, for in America, the Merriam Webster dictionary is one of the ones that's referred to most so yeah. And Webster had kind of reply to Johnson and said, No, no, we are, we have our own word now. Like, we're gonna run our own definitions of our own word. And they basically went on their own journey and formulated their own version of things. Now, you know, there's plenty of overlap for us, I think in terms of where we are, but there's still those little differences on what things mean to us. And I think that's a really important lesson to check in that, even if we have a shared value, your definition, for example of health may be very different to mine. And that's okay. So it's really around, you know, checking for understanding, and not so much assuming.

Yeah, that makes great sense. I think even people in our lives when we share a house with somebody, and we use certain words that we think we're saying something and it might be something totally different to them.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm part of a blended family now. And that was a big thing. For me, my husband, when we kind of came together, like his definition of funny, and my definition of funny are very different. Even when it comes down to Ruby, they'll like, look at it, you're like, how can you do this thing, it's just funny like, it's like Will Ferrell in Anchorman, or whatever, if I have to be that funny, it's funny. It's just like, I just think it's stupid.

Okay.

Yeah, right. It's just recognizing that word would look different for each other.

Yeah. And then applying that to ourselves. I love that. To be able to say we define ourselves. And we define how we see ourselves and what those words mean to us and how they changed our lives.

Yeah, that's right. And even I think in terms of communicating with other people, understanding what will land the right way, being more intentional with what we're saying, as opposed to, no, it's not to say that you don't want to be your authentic self. But it's more to like be conscious of, well, if I know that this person's definition means this or they're a little bit more geared this way, then how am I going to kind of tweak things so that communication doesn't break down? Because that's one thing I know, through my career, working with transformation and change, is communication is one of those big meaty keys that if we get it wrong, then generally whatever we're trying to bring forward, is going to struggle to get there.

Yes, and intention is not enough. Your impact and intention that you have for things you get to intend one thing and it can have a different impact. So you have to be able to understand that intention doesn't guarantee impact, unfortunately.

That's right. That's very true. That's very true. And

that's for yourself. So as we're looking at ourselves, and what we'd like to find us to understand that we can change the impact, if we change the intention on yourself, to you get it to your advantage.

Yeah. So facts may not always change or like the history, and what's happened or circumstances that have happened might not change. But our perspectives have definitely shaped that's, you know, 100%, we can change the impact of things.

Do you have some examples of ways that you apply that to yourself with The Words The Caterpillar Ate? The way it was transformed?

Yes, yes, I think, so, a big one, for me was how I defined success and my purpose. But if I use success in relationships, for me, it meant longevity. So I've met like a child of divorce, my mum and dad despised each other. There was never like any time there were an event where they were both required to be present, their hate was greater than their love for their child. So brought up huge amounts of anxiety. So I think what happened with that definition for me around success in a relationship, but I took it to mean, that means longevity, because they didn't really have this model of what a healthy successful relationship look like sunlight, right? It means longevity. So then, with my children, I so wanted them to have that longevity to have the two parents that stayed together. And it ended up being this little pendulum moving between, if I'm avoiding this, then I'm acquiring this other thing over here. So I kind of had to work out, do I want to teach them about longevity? Or do I want to teach them about love? And because our values were very differen, so we have a great co-parenting relationship, which I'm extremely proud of. But because we had different definitions around, say, socialization and family time, and quality time and everything, eventually, that relationship did not work, because someone was sacrificing the other person, basically. So I had to redefine that. And that was really hard to do, to kind of let go of that old definition and say, Actually, I don't want to teach my children about longevity, if it does not include love. So I wanted them to know what love looks like, I didn't want them to experience an environment where love just wasn't present. So things had to shift.

Yeah.

And that was, that was a really big thing. So that was probably the first word that I started redefining. And I remember lying on the edge of my bed and being in tears, and saying, What would Liz Gilbert do? Because I'd read Eat, Pray, Love and seeing her go through this thing. And then I had to kind of go, no, no, no. What are you like, what are you going to do? She didn't have children or anything like that, she's not Australian. Her life is so different to yours, like, what are you going to do? And I had to work through creating those new definitions and work out what co-parenting would look like, in a healthy way. Because I knew hand on heart, that my kids were going to have two parents turn up, who would be civil to each other, and the love for the kids would still be grayed out. So that's one way I started kind of redefining success. And then, I applied that to my career. And how did that look. And then eventually in business were like, I love helping women thrive and find their voice and their value. And I did group coaching for a very long time with the startup space. But I think sometimes when you get to the end of your own growth cycling something, it's about learning how to let that go. And go, okay, so what do I need this to look like now? Like, I still have a heart for women, I still want to help women with their own stories or their own purpose and their own voices. But it just needs to look different for this next stage of my life and that's okay,

yeah,

I think when you do create those identity shifts, some people aren't ready for your change, they still want you to be the caterpillar. No, no, don't go into the chrysalis. I don't want you to turn out like a butterfly because people are like, I won't know what you're saying anymore. Be prepared that not everyone can come with you as you evolve yourself. Cause sometimes that's hard.

That's very hard. I think that's one of the fears people have when doing that. Is you will lose it, that they'll lose along the way.

I have found that the people who stay with you will always stay with you. So you'll never lose anyone that you're not going to lose.

Very well said. Certain people fit in certain environments. And when you're ready to leave that environment, it's okay that they're still in that environment, because that's not where you're meant to be.

That's right. And there's nothing wrong with them. There's nothing wrong with you. It's just that you're growing at different rates. And that's okay.

Very positive.

Yeah. Yeah.

From your first book to this book, do you feel like you're writing and you've changed a lot between the two stages in the two books?

Yeah, definitely. So that the process that I went through for the first book and the second book, because the first book is a memoir, and the second book is personal development, saying how to write a slightly different style, which I think is amazing. I take my skills on the marketing side and anything from business and apply it to both books. So that part easy for me, right? In terms of how to do outreach and lift it up a little bit. The second book has been intense, it was written in, like six weeks compared to the 18 months.

Yeah,

but I like that. So I know that about myself, I love a deadline. I like that little bit of creative pressure to get things going. I love sitting there on a Wednesday morning in Australia and waiting for the email to come through from my edits. So, say, here's the feedback. It should probably speak to it, you know, child, we'd like looking for the results of things. Okay, how do I make it better? What else can I do? I get really excited about that. And it's awesome. And then I'll take a break so that this book gets time to have its own voice before I start working on the next one, and the next one, and then, it's you know, the, the little, the little dance between clients and children and why and making sure that there is joy there and that you get the opportunity to live.

Yes,

which is really important.

Yes, and our turn to live definitely connects back to your first book. And as much as it was a memoir, there's this really strong message that has come out of it. And for those of you that listened to that episode on bucket lists, there's this similarity that Belle and I were able to discuss earlier about this philosophy about seizing things and stepping into life and really living it. And she has a beautiful formula that has come out of her first book and her experience that came with that. Can you speak a little more to that formula? And how the book kind of leads into that?

Yeah, sure, as I wanted to, I guess redefine what brave meant to me, right? So I would say that I'm quite brave in business. So whether it was in my corporate life and speaking that where I was like, the only female leader in a room at a time when there were not many female leaders in a room at all, through to having challenging conversations. I'd always been what I would term like business brave. So, okay with taking risks financially, okay with launching it and selling at things and getting back up and knowing that it's part of the process. And I think part of that conditioning about being this strong woman meant that I was worried that I didn't know how to be vulnerable anymore. So I'd had this conversation with one of the girls I was mentoring connotes Manda, and she'd said, How am I supposed to be me, right? And I Brene Browned her. But in this conversation, I said, there's great strength in choosing vulnerability. And inside I conduct cringe, because it's like, well, actually, you're not doing that in all areas of your own life. Like you're so full of it right now. You've just cheat someone else on but if you're gonna say those things, you've got to own your truth.

Yeah,

so I called myself out. I don't really and it was like, Okay, well, now you've got to walk your talk, because I don't want to say things and not be those things. So the formula that I started going through with this mapping out a little bit on this year of being brave, right? So if I wanted to redefine it and look at it differently, what were all the things that I wanted to do? And one of them meant being vulnerable, and reaching out to a friend and asking them for help as I was working through a few things. And at that point in my life, it was venturing back out into date land, which was the last time I had been on a date, like Facebook and Google didn't exist. So it was a very long time ago. And the world was completely different. So it was scary to do. And that kind of came further down the list. But I had a list of, I guess, the fears that I wanted to start addressing and dealing with and overcoming and the big questions that I had, that I wanted to look at. So the way that I would kind of structure that is to start with, and I think with anything, right, so any skill that you're looking at, start with the easier thing first, and build your confidence up as you go along. So, attempt those things and you check off the easiest things that, so you might find your, your friend who you feel most comfortable in having a difficult conversation with and start with them and practice in that base first, and then move on to someone else you might want to have a conversation with, for example, or move on to that activity, where you may have felt a little bit body conscious for whatever reason, so that you start to build up and recognize that as you go through this, but anytime we go through growth, and this is probably where the two books start to have crossovers, it's gonna be this voice that crop up like, and I'd call it inner caterpillar, right? When I'm like, what are you doing? You don't have enough experience or you're too young or you're too old or you're too this or you're too that and people are gonna laugh at you or say things. So there's fear of judgment or fear of failure, that's, that's basically raising its head and say, You can't do that. So then how I would approach it is to kind of acknowledge it and say that, like, thanks for letting me know. I'm going to do it anyway. And embracing it. And eventually that voice sounds go away, because you do it so many times. So when I was learning to surf, for example, my board then begin all over, it's bright yellow, it's what's called a soft board. So it's less likely to do damage if it hits you in the face or something. More experienced surfers where I live, they have like fiberglass boards, and you know, they really look the part. They don't care that what anyone else doing, they just doing their own thing they don't care about, like have no woman who's carrying a few extra pounds and over 40, who's going out to learn, they could not care less, it was all my own internal chitchat. So the beautiful thing, I think that's happened from that is now, my husband surfed, the four children between us they have all learnt to surf. And, you know, there's been this beautiful transference of praise to now look like this, which is great. And it can look like courage for someone else. Because people get to kind of go, Oh, she learned how to do that. Therefore, I can do it too. Or they overcame this obstacle in their life and I relate to them. So therefore I can, you know, I can do that too. And I think that's a beautiful thing that comes out as you go through that process, as you become this beautiful beacon of hope for someone else.

And you show yourself that you can do hard things. You can try new things, and succeed. One of my thing that I wanted to do is I've never played soccer. And so mine was before I turned 30. So it's some time ago now, I wanted to play soccer. And so I went through all of these steps to make it safe for myself. I called up and down the team that it was a practice and explained thoroughly to the guy that I've never played. I have no clue what I'm doing. I'm ecletic like, I can run, like, be active. I can do this. I can try. And okay, we're good to go. So show up for the practice. The guy who I talked to wasn't at the practice. So I'm like, okay, I'll do my best. And then another team was there and they wanted to scrimmage and I got put with the other people so even more removed from the safe conversations I had. And so we're out there and I'm, I'm just running hard chasing the ball playing soccer. And so, if you're like me, you know nothing about soccer, you will understand how confused I was. But somebody kept yelling at me for being offsides.

Yeah. It's like a debit roll.

I was like, I, what, what does that mean? And like, very funny. You know what that means. Like, I don't know what that means. What does that mean? Like, stop playing. Like, you don't know what this means. I don't know what this means. What does this mean? I remember playing soccer, you wouldn't be here if you know how to play soccer. So it was hilarious. And I kept playing anyways, because again, I kept, I was being honest to being real. So that was my experience of me doing it and trying to make a save but didn't workout. So instead of going back to that practice to get I joined indoor league where that didn't matter. And I made my girlfriend time with me. So, so sometimes, even when you're there there are people with the fiberglass boards who will leave comments at you, because you don't know you're doing and they won't help you. But you just go join the indoor League, and it'll be okay.

Yeah, that's right. And I love the fact that you talked about having a friend, right, because that was something for me when I went on this brave journey, and it's really good point, one of the vulnerable things I did was I asked my friend to kind of come and do these things with me. And she was like, I'll come learn surf with you if you can learn how to do some stuff with me. So she decided she didn't like surfing in the end. And I also didn't like the stuff that I was doing with her. But I think that it'd be great to have that friend to ask to go with you while you start to get going and changing your environment and finding that safe space so that you can grow into it is really important. And the offside rule in soccer is really hard. Like my son plays soccer. I don't understand any of it. I really don't. He's only 11. So I'll just sit there and watch them run around. And if they score a goal, that's right. Most of the time, I have no idea what's going on in the game I just came on and that's all I can do.

Yeah, it was one of those things that luckily at that point in time, I'm not at a vulnerable point in my life. So I can handle somebody just like yell at me. And I'm like, I'm telling you, I don't know what this means. And you're not explaining it to me. So I'm gonna keep violating this rule at this scrimmage. It means nothing. But yeah,

but I love, I love that you persevered, right? You just remind me of the yelling part. I did hire someone to help me learn how to surf. His name's Dougie. And he would yell at me at certain points. He's like, oi, girly, what are you doing? You're flopping around on your board like a wet fish. Because I didn't know what I was doing. I mean, like, get back up. You can't be on the wave right now. But I would just end up in fits of laughter because of, what he's very, I would say very, very Australian. If you were to think of like, the like, the old movie from the 80s, Crocodile Dundee. And Mark Ruffalo kind of created someone together. This is what Dougie would be, just like salt of the earth. Amazing human being that I like, I would just take it on the chin and keep practicing and get there and I'm still not fantastic at it. But I have a great time. I'm not a big wave surfer or anything like that. I kind of go wastewater. So that's probably my version of the indoor league, right? I'll just surf the little waves where I'm like, where I feel confident and safe. I'd have no plans to go to Hawaii and try and do like a barrel or anything because I'll end up on the news around Australian woman towed out of HR or something. I don't know.

That's awesome. Yeah, I got up on a longboard in North Carolina. Where was I, off of Cape Hatteras. It's the one I go to with a surfboard. And it was and I was yeah, I was in my 20s, I think at the time when I did it, but I was like, Okay, I got up, done.

Yeah, tick that box. Yeah,

check that one off. Same thing with the attitude when you walk into it, and to have that realization that somebody's gonna yell that you're offsides, and you have no clue what they're talking about. Or you look like a flop and fish. You just gotta roll with it, laugh off, and if it's, if you don't want to go back and hear that, then it's okay to go find an indoor soccer team.

Yeah, absolutely. I think that permission part around being responsible for your own evolution is really important. And that is okay. It's totally okay. So, yeah, you try things, you figure it out. If it's not your thing, that's fine. But you don't know if you don't go.

Yes. And do the things you want to do. I have a dear friend of mine, who we, it was my brother's birthday, it's been 5, 10 years ago now. And we went to the lake with a bunch of people. And they were jumping off this really high bridge, then she really wanted to go and she was chiding me a little bit because I'm like, that address it. And I was like, you know, 10 years ago, that would have made me like, oh, I have to do it. Because I gotta prove to you that I gotta do it. But guess what, I'm to the point, I don't care.

That's right.

I don't have to do it just to prove I could have done it. So now I can be like, Yeah, I've noticed that you jump off a bridge,

that's very true. That's really important to realize that something that belonged in one period of your life, it doesn't have to stay there forever. That's that the permission to create something new, even if it is around your purpose, like if your purpose is to teach people how to cook on a budget, right? You might do that at one point in your life by running workshops, you might do it at another point in your life by writing a book, you might do it at another point by creating a blog, you don't have to just do it a certain way forever. Allowing yourself to evolve and look at you know, what are those threads through your life that you love, I would say kind of like those love values as opposed to like the truth side of things, so how they work together. And for me, adventure is one of those. I was like that kid who would climb trees and you know, check to see if the the edge of the lake was made of quicksand or not, and run over and stick my feet in and then freak out and run home. I was that kid. And Simon's like that things that I could do physically in my 20s, I'm noticing that I might still feel like I'm 26 on the inside someday. But my body goes like, girlfriend, you are, you are not 26 anymore. We need to, we need a definition that works now. You could do have adventure, just don't kill yourself in the process.

Yeah, exactly. And being able to embrace and stuff get as much out of where you're at right now and what that means to you right now.

Yeah, absolutely.

I've enjoyed this conversation very much.

Me too.

So one thing that we always chat with our guests about is self care. So what are some of the things that you do to take care of yourself Belle?

Oh, okay. Well, I do love writing in a very big way. I use a little app every day called 750 words. So for me, it's a nice way to almost do stream of conscious writing. It doesn't really have to make any sense to anyone. It doesn't publish your content anywhere. No one gets to see it. But what happens is it does give you feedback, right? So it analyzes your words that it will pick out like almost a word cloud and tell you whether you've been writing for introvert or extrovert, the types of feelings that have come out in your writing. So whether it's like anger, overwhelm, love, joy, and then the topics that you write about, right? So for me, that's one of my self care practices, because when I first started using it, I'd had a bit of a writ on things. And then as I scroll down to see the analytics, it's like, anger. And like a pretty, Oh, I don't want to start my day feeling like this. I'm like, I'm going to be more intentional now. So I've been being conscious of what I'm grateful for, which is how I tend to write a lot of the day, even if it's bucketing with rain because it's winter here right now. Finding the good things is one of those ways that I look after self care, probably from a mental perspective. And then physically, I would say, definitely getting out to go for a surf, I go for a hike when I can't go for a surf and spend time with my family and people who I can give into but there's, there's that also giving and receiving. So it's not just a one way street, right? I think that's, that's really important to look at the people that you have in your life. So there are some practical little things.

I like it.

I'm someone who has never really required an alarm clock, I'm always up at 5am. It just happen every day. It's just set itself that way, that's when I'm awake. So I love seeing the sunrise, it's something I try and do, you know, most days just to get out and see the sunrise. So little things like that I think can be really helpful. And then filling your spaces with things that give you the right kind of energy. So for me, it might be music or good food or even a candle or something like that, from a change perspective, we can experience almost like sensory overwhelm, if there's too much going on in our environment. So it's around calming that nervous center down and, and you know, there are certain spaces where I do want them to feel really energized and full of life and everything. And then there's others where I just want it to be super calm, wind down, go to sleep nice and easily, can't hear all the kids in the background. So it's important to you know, despite those little things, what about you? What do you love to do?

Whoa, you're the first person that asked to me that. That's very fun. So what do I like to do for self care? I love talking. Probably why have a podcast. So I love heavy like deep engaging conversations. My preference is to have them walking along a beach, or sitting around a campfire. So like environment is a place where I find within, might space where you can just kind of relax and breathe. And so to have people in my life that I really connect with and I can enjoy talking and just be with. So quality time is one of my love languages as well. Yeah, and all comes together. But a lot of times, when I get off work, my sweetheart often cooks dinner for me. And this time of year because it's summer out here on the West Coast of the US, and so we sit outside on our porch and we have dinner in the evenings. And so that is my quality time with him. I'm just visiting and looking out. We have the flowers and the bushes and just watching people walking by because we live in a quite street with some nice foot traffic. And just having that quiet time as my regular ritual of self care that I get most frequently. Yes, and then gratitude is something I'm very big on and so that's my little check in when I start to feel like I'm getting overwhelmed and stopping to take stock of things that I'm grateful for. And doing that and then taking walks. Those are probably like my big self care and then coloring which I finally did the other night. I took some time to color but that's one of the things at The Grit Show. What we have is, we have a series of coloring books, we have our first one done, which is Vintage Mermaid and Magnificent Ocean and we're working on our second one which is going to be You've Got This which is inspirational quotes. And you, as one of our guests, we actually get to send you a copy of them. So would you like the mermaid one or as soon as we get it done, would you like those quotes?

I do love a mermaid, I used to like, always convinced when I was little I could be a mermaid so I used to practice like talking underwater and everything that.

I love the talking underwater.

I did. I did. I would practice. No one could ever understand a single thing I said underwater so they finally got shell but love mermaids.

I never would have thought about that being the hallmark sign of being a mermaid is being able to talk underwater. I love it. So for our audience, it's a must that we'd like to give them some concrete next steps that they can take. So if we think about, The Words The Caterpillar Ate, and some of the next steps that they can take to examine some of the words and how they're defining them, do you have some specific steps you can take to do that?

I do. So, inside the book, there's like a little process that you can actually go through to really examine who fed them to you, I think is one of the things, whether they still hold meaning or whether you need to let them go. So this is almost like the Cliff Notes version of it. And then really starting to look at what do you want to take forward with you? So how do you want that life to look like and then looking at that, like the people and the places and the activities that you're doing, are they actually aligned to that definition of the word that you want for your future? So how do you start to make those little changes and bring them to life? And then setting a review date with yourself to kind of go okay, well, if this year, I've been really intentional and say, working on health, I'm going to set a date in the future to come back and have a look, is this still relevant for me? How am I actually going and you know, make those dates to check in on yourself, and see how you're going. And recognize that if you need to ask someone for help, ask for help. There is like, it's such an important thing to do. If you need to go and talk to a professional, go and talk to a counselor or a coach or something to help you with what you're working on. Find those people who can help you bring your definition to life.

That's wonderful. Do you recommend narrowing it to just one or two words that you're focusing on? Or do you recommend keeping it big? Or,

so the way that I have set the book up is just work on one at a time, but I know that people are very different. And there are some who like to be a bit of an overachiever go, Oh, I'm gonna do them all. So it's completely up to the individual really on how you want to approach it. I talked about there being five to tribes, but I feel all of humanity have in common, and then it would, and then on the flip side is picking out what those five that may resonate with you the most. So really checking in for resonance. So adventure in life is one of mine, there's been this running theme of it through my life. But for some people that they won't have that they may have creativity, which has been a big running theme through their lives, so it's around finding those words that resonate with you. And then when you want to choose one and work on one, that's fine. And if you want to choose more than one, that's fine, too. It's your life. It's just about working out within your capacity that grows you enough and doesn't burn you out.

Okay, so find the words, one, and five, somewhere in that realm.

Yeah.

And then figure out where they came from. How you define them, and how they fit your world right now and then checking to see how they're still serving you instead of making sure they haven't gone sideways, or you haven't lost track of them.

That's right. Yeah.

Wonderful.

And if you need to have, and if you need to have some conversations with people about them, like if there's a family word or a relationship word, then finding the courage to kind of go, you know, what, like, what does this actually mean, to you? Like, have a conversation about this. Do we need to create our own, like our own definition, bring this to the table, and you're bringing this to the table? So how do we find something that works for both of us?

It's very helpful. Thank you. That's great. And we can dig deeper into this by pre-ordering the book, as well as checking out Belle's TEDx talk, Is Your Dictionary Dead. Links to all this are in the show notes.

Beautiful.

Yes, it's been lovely. Thank you so much for your delight. I already really liked you but like you've been wiped out.

Good. Same, same. All right. Enjoy your summer.

Before I let all of you go, I have our exciting announcement. Congratulations to Holly, Jenny, Terry, Leora, and Lewis for winning copies of the first release in the Color of Grit adult coloring book series, Vintage Mermaid and Magnificent Ocean. Thank you to everyone who participated in our color my summer giveaway to celebrate the launch of this podcast. The grand prize winner of the $50 gift card is drumroll, Terry. She has selected Zulily as her merchant, where she will be getting herself care products. So we will be sending her that gift card when supporting her self care through whatever she might find there. We also learned that that drawing took place on her birthday, so she might have had a little extra birthday luck. We'll never know for sure. We posted a real spin on Instagram so you can jump on over there, @The.Grit.Show, and offer congrats as well as a birthday wish. If you are still hankering for some coloring pages, you can still join the mailing list and get your own free samples. Simple as that. More info is in the show notes or on our website, thegritshow.com. You can also always get your own copy of the coloring book, which is still at its introductory price of only 11.97. And on Amazon, you get free Prime shipping. For all of you out there, we value you as part of our community. I'm going to keep on reminding you, you are the only one of you that this world has got and that means something. Thanks for joining us today. I hope you got something valuable out of it.