How Stress Responses & Emotional Triggers Block Your Potential & How to Break Free With Maisie Hill

Krati: I want to start with your book, powerful. What you have covered in your book,  it is a concept that I believe we should be taught in school. But we are not. And I think very few people are even aware of how this works.   It is a very compassionate book. It is a book that I think can really change the game for all of us if we are, you know, fully conversant with the concept. So tell us about this book. Tell us about the core concept here.

Maisie: Yeah. Well, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with this is the kind of stuff that we should all be taught in school because I certainly wasn’t taught this stuff in school. And you know, all of my books in their various ways have been about the stuff that is going on with our bodies, with our physiology, day to day and across our lifetime, that really impacts how we feel about ourselves and how we go about doing things in the world, whether it’s our personal life, our professional life.

And so I always just really, because I’m such a geek, right? And I just love understanding how the body works. And I know what a difference it makes to my life when I understand how my body, how my hormones, how my stress responses are impacting my behaviour and my mood and like my mindset. So, you know, period power and perimenopause power were all about the hormones of the cycle and the hormones going through perimenopause.

But, so many of my clients were coming to me and saying, well, you know, I love that I understand my menstrual cycle and the ebb and flow of behaviour there, but you know, I’m really finding people would usually say, I’m really finding that premenstrual phase stressful and you know, I just, I’m so irritable and filled with rage or I just get so overwhelmed and I shut down. And, you know, it’s amazing when you get to hear from so many people and you have like a large number of people responding to what you’re putting out in the world because you start to hear the commonalities, right? The themes that people are coming with and as I’m hearing people describing their situation, I’m like, oh, but that’s like the fight response and that’s the flight response, and like, that’s the freeze response, and it, like, I’m autistic, so I’m really good at pattern recognition, so you know, I could just like really spot things going on.

And I thought, this needs to be a book in and of itself, like just breaking down the stress responses. So Powerful, the latest book, is really about everyday situations, like each chapter takes a different aspect of life, whether it’s making a decision, having a challenging conversation, working with improving your boundaries, etc, and then really applying the physiology of what’s going on with stress responses so that you can understand what’s going on.

So let’s say that you have a family member, perhaps, that you would like to have some more boundaries with, but you notice that when they’re kind of intruding on you a bit and you want to set that boundary that actually you find it hard to speak up and you just kind of don’t do anything and then afterwards you like berate yourself like, Oh, that was my moment to say something. Why didn’t I say something? And, you know, usually we just heap on a load of internal criticism and we just put ourselves down and feel a lot of shame for not doing what we wanted to do. Whereas what I want everyone to understand is like, no, that’s just a normal stress response. Like it was a heightened situation to be in, maybe you’re not practiced at setting boundaries and talking in this way with people. So, you know, in that moment, your body thought, you know what? The wisest thing to do here is just go into protect mode, which is what all stress responses are. So instead of speaking up, which feels a bit scary, we’ll just be quiet and we’ll be still because then like no predator is gonna get us, which is what our physiology is still geared towards, even though most of us, touch wood, aren’t dealing with actual predators.

But you know, as far as the body’s concerned, predators are everywhere and we’ve got to be on the lookout for them. So, you know, it’s just like you said, what I hope is a practical read that helps people to understand their bodies and their responses to things. But, really helps to remove that criticism and shame and instead offer yourself a more compassionate attitude.

Krati: Yeah, this is the most amazing thing about your book, how you’ve taken very ordinary incidents that are super relatable for everyone, that we are experiencing on a daily basis and used them to connect the physiology with so that everyone can relate and everyone can get this really clear picture of what is really going on. Because I will say this as much as we hate all the period jokes that our guy friends crack during your period you realise just how much power your physiology has on your outward actions your expression. I’m a fairly healthy person and my periods are not that bad. They’re pretty healthy.

But even so I cry so much. I’m barely able to focus. I’m so unproductive, it’s insane. I have nightmares during that time. It’s amazing how little control I have. So for me, it’s those period days that bring to my attention how much influence my hormones and my internal functioning has on my external life.

Maisie: And the same goes for the 24 hour cycle as well. And I think, you know, we have no problem in our societies to, you know, consider that, well, when we wake up in the morning, some people feel really alert immediately. Other people take a while to wake up and they’re not ready to talk until they’ve had some caffeine in them.

I’m definitely in that category these days, by the way. And then, you know, once we’ve got going with our day, we have maybe some hours where we feel quite productive and up focusing and do getting stuff done. And then, you know, it’s lunchtime and we want to be social for a bit and not do some work. And then we might be in a bit of a slump afterwards, but then, you know, we pick up towards the end of the day, we get things done.

Then we want to switch off and eventually we get sleepy. We all accept that as like, yeah, of course that’s what happens across the course of a day. And it’s the same for the menstrual cycle, except it’s a longer period of time. So instead of it being like an hour where you feel a bit, you know, you’re trying to wake up in the mornings, maybe it’s two days at the start of your period, but because the menstrual cycle is something unique to those of us with ovaries and wombs, and because it involves menstruation, bleeding, suddenly that’s an unacceptable thing but it’s totally fine in the 24 hour day and night cycle.

Krati: This is so true. This is what I want to understand. I want to know what your objective with the book was? What was going on in your mind? Because when I read it, I was like, this makes so much sense. This is such a compassionate book. It will help people not indulge in pointless self-blame. But then I also wondered how many people are now going to use this book and everything they learn in it to excuse themselves.

Maisie: I think it’s one of the chapters towards the end that is all about self responsibility and how, you know, being aware of, because often, especially if you’ve been, you know, raised as a female and that’s been your socialisation, then the tendency there is for us to be over responsible for other people.

You know, to be over caring, to be taking on all these things. And, you know, that happens in people’s offices, not just in their homes but then, if you’re going to decide, right, I’m going to stop being so over responsible for everyone and everything, then that also means you have to stop being under responsible.

So, because we all have places where we’re over responsible and we also have places where we’re under responsible, where we are more likely to blame other people, situations, circumstances of life and say, well, you know, yeah, I was late to work this morning because there was traffic or my bus didn’t show up. And those things can be true, but it’s still your responsibility to get to work on time.

So it requires a level of self awareness and honesty with yourself, but when you’ve done the work in all the previous chapters to reduce that tendency to blame yourself and to put yourself down and make yourself feel like shit, ultimately, when you stop doing that, then taking responsibility is a whole lot easier.

Because there’s a big difference between being accountable and being responsible for yourself and blaming yourself for things. So I find that in all my work that I’ve done on myself and with all of my clients, that when they’re able to take responsibility without that blame and shame cycle, then it’s so much easier.

It really changes things. So my hope with the book is that, with the inclusion of that in the overall approach, it will reduce the likelihood of that. But, you know, I think also, I have a lot of clients who have chronic health issues, chronic pain issues and things, and often there are really significant things going on with their bodies and that’s true for many of us. And I think on the whole we can be reluctant to actually take the time off that we need in order to get better. And sometimes we can make other people ill in the process. And so there’s definitely something there for me about really honouring our bodies and actually being like, you know what? I am sick. It is pointless.

I literally coached someone on this yesterday, one of my clients. And she was like, you know what? I was just feeling awful. And I spent eight hours at my laptop and I wrote a paragraph and so then it’s like looking at, okay, well, why were you doing that? Why, if it was a day for you to be taking care of yourself and really accepting where you’re at, then what was getting in the way of you just stopping and giving yourself some time and then maybe coming back to work if you were able to. So, you know, we have these internal narratives and we hear them all the time, but it’s not acceptable to be unproductive, right? We really value productivity and anything that threatens that is therefore something that we have to attack.

Krati: Yeah. It’s beautiful how amazingly you’ve nailed the balance between accountability and self compassion, not just in the answer that you just shared with us, but also in your book. I did notice that with every chapter really, I mean there is a dedicated chapter to it, but in pretty much every time you’ve given us an explanation that hey, here’s what could be going on with you, have some compassion for yourself, I did notice that you also were very quick to give the agency back that but, you know, you still got the power to fix things. You have the control.

Maisie: That’s very reflective of my coaching style. When I’m coaching people, you know, I am just very compassionate and things, but I also do hold the line of, come on, that’s yours to manage. It’s not someone else’s and it’s unfair to put that on someone else, right?

Krati: I struggle to bring that forward in my content. I’m a massive advocate of self accountability. I’ve been around too many people who really give in to that victim narrative. And I am more of a tough love person. And sometimes I get carried away with that. So I really admire you for how you’ve done this.

It’s not an easy line to walk. And if you could bottle this up, your attitude, I would give good money to do that and we’ll sell it on the market. We’ll start with the politicians. The world will be completely changed. I’m not joking, man. I love this quality of yours. And it comes across in the book which is why it’s such a must read.

Here’s something else that I want to understand, another dimension to this concept. As we understand just how much of an impact our physiology has on our actions, our reactions, what would you say where should our attention be? What is coming first? Let me clarify that a little because I told you, I’m also reading Gabor Maté’s, The Myth of Normal, and he shares all of these studies that show you that childhood traumas are leading to adulthood disorders and diseases.

Breast cancer patients, when they were studied and there was research and surveys done, they found out that a majority, I think it was 85 percent of these women, I’m going to share that study just in case I’m getting the numbers wrong, all had similar personalities. They’re all women who repress their emotions, who don’t do confrontations, who prioritise other people.

It is insane that that is happening there, similarly with other issues. So here’s what I want to understand. What comes first? Do you think it’s the environment then, physiological issues leading to outward dysfunctional expression and actions, or could it also be other way around? As in, you are making certain choices in life that are then creating issues with your physiology.

Maisie: I think it’s multi-directional. If I was to get my whiteboard out and think about like who we are when we arrive in this world, in terms of the genes that we’ve inherited. And that’s before they begin to be expressed, but just like, you know, the genes that we have in utero, and like what our pregnancy is like in utero, the birth, the postpartum, you know, environmental factors. The list goes on and on. And that’s before we kind of even get into our everyday experiences, our habits and routines and rhythms, as well as, you know, things that happen to us, particularly things that are significant and intense and maybe even traumatic as well. So all of these things are impacting them, but then of course, Everything we do in our day to day is having an impact on our, on our genes and on our physiology.

So, you know, I think people can get quite overwhelmed by that and feel like, Oh my gosh, so I need to do this and I need to do this. And there’s this to think about as well. And like, I mean, I don’t feel motivated to do those things when I think about it that way. So, I think it’s really important to just cherry pick. Like, if you’re picking cherries off a tree, what are the cherries you’re going to pick off here?

And most importantly, where can you make a start with things? Like, what feels accessible and doable to you in this moment? And when my clients get overwhelmed thinking about all the things to take care of and work on, I just say like, it doesn’t matter where you start and you don’t have to do all of it. If you work on one thing, it will impact all the others, for sure.

And I know that from my previous career working as an acupuncturist. When I was doing my acupuncture degree, our professor said, you know, when you have someone come in and they have a long list of ailments, it’s like 20 things wrong with them. If poor sleep is on that list, help them to sleep better because anything else you work on is going to have limited improvement unless they’re sleeping, and sleep really is, you know, the kind of magic bullet that improves everything else.

It’s a bit like that. I’m just like, okay, if you have all these things going on and, you know, different things to consider, pick one thing. What do you feel drawn to? What can you do? And then see where that gets you. And that’s like far more interesting. It sparks some curiosity and like motivation. And then before you know it, we’re doing those things. Whereas if you’ve got like a really complicated health and life strategy plan, you know, there’s a time and a place for that.

But, I think, for most people it’s demotivating and we can end up being quite perfectionist about those things. And then, you know, even those things that you’re doing that would be good aren’t actually so good for you because there’s this perfectionist approach to it.

Krati: Yeah. That was the worst thing about the concept of manifestation as it was popularised. I believe in manifestation. I believe in, you know, the general definition of it that your thoughts create your reality. But the worst thing about it was now everybody was like, Oh my God, now we can never think negative thoughts. You must always stay in control.

That was like, Oh my God! Now you are in constant battle with yourself. You are just making the situation way worse.

Maisie: Yeah. I love the way that you describe that because it’s not possible for us to manage our thoughts to that degree, all day, every day, and, you know, do we always want to have, like, super positive, happy thoughts? Like, to me, that’s just not reflective of the human experience.

And that’s why, you know, like with the chapter on emotions in the book, for example, you know, we talk a lot in conversation about positive emotions and negative emotions. And I get that it’s kind of a shortcut in conversation, right? We all know what we’re talking about when we say that, but is it useful when most of us are, uh, learning to be emotional, let’s say, or cut off from our emotions, to label them as positive and negative? Because actually, all emotions are appropriate. And we’re capable of experiencing them and, you know, feeling excited and enthusiastic and motivated are great to feel. I love feeling that way.

But also, it’s really appropriate for me to feel grief and anger and frustration. And as long as we have the skills to embody those feelings and to work our way through them and to learn the message that comes with that emotion, right? Like when I feel that snap of anger, what is it I’m angry about?

Well, anger’s here to show us that something needs to change, right? It’s trying to get us to take action. So you know, when you have those skills, then actually all emotions are okay and they will serve their purpose.

Krati: Yeah. Emotions are very, very powerful, but I, as someone who had massive anger issues and created a lot of chaos, not just in my own life, in a lot of other people’s lives as well, there is something about just taking that pause and that pause allows you to think and focus and understand what is actually going on here and how pointless a lot of the chaos is and it need not be brought out.

This is the thing about the book. It’s giving you that permission to pause, not just with anger, with everything in life, with your, you know, when you get up in the morning and you really, really don’t want to do anything, you take a moment and think about what is really going on here and use that knowledge and that information to create a different day.

You know, today will be the day with this information and this understanding that you don’t spend an entire morning in bed or barely work out or barely do anything. Today you get to be productive because you have that power and be productive in whatever form seems the healthiest to you. That is the loveliest thing about the book and this knowledge

I want to go deeper into some of the concepts. I want to talk about Interoception. It’s so interesting.

Maisie: So, you know most people, I was certainly educated this way that we have five senses, right? But actually we have additional senses, but they’re just not commonly spoken about.

And one of them is interoception which is your ability to detect what’s going on with you internally. So when you notice that you’re thirsty, when you notice that you’re hungry, when you notice that you need to go to the bathroom, when you notice that you are feeling really happy. That’s all interoception at play, like your ability to detect what’s going on inside you.

And some people, well, all of us, we’re all on a scale of, like, how able are we to pick up on these cues from our bodies and some people are very sensitive to it and some people kind of miss those cues. They just don’t come through at all. So that could be people who are Autistic, people who’ve had traumatic brain injury, certain mood disorders, for example, can really affect that. So when we’re talking about emotional awareness and the ability to notice that you’re feeling a certain way, to be able to like name that emotion, and to be able to kind of work with the presence of that emotion, that all relies on your interoception.

So people who have less interoception might be really angry, but not know that they’re really angry. And it might kind of be a case of rather than a scale that goes from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4, all the way up to 10, that the signal needs to be at a 10 for them to figure out that they’re actually feeling a certain way.

Right? Whereas other people, they can just have like a little glimmer of anger and be like, Oh, what’s that about? And be able to work with it. Or, someone who has less interoception, it might be that, the anger, for example, comes out in their behaviour. And then they use like, Oh, I noticed that I’m behaving this way.

Maybe that means I’m feeling something. So, you know, there are different approaches but it’s a really cool way to connect with our sensory organs and just that ability to like discern what’s going on with us. And it can be to the point where people can, you know, it’s one of the kind of classic ways of measuring it and, and assessing differences is, can you sense your own heartbeat, right? If you just inquire, if you just tune into yourself, can you count your heartbeats? So, everyone, you know, head off and go and tune into your heartbeat.

Krati: I am trying to do that right now.

Maisie: Ha ha ha!

Krati: The most important question here is, and I think this is something, you know, we’re talking about all of this power that is at your disposal. But the most important question that must be asked is, can we cultivate the awareness? Can we cultivate this ability to read our bodies? If there is a way to, you know, really wield this power and be more self aware, but not just aware of our external reality, but also all of the internal processes?

Maisie: I would say that’s right, I would say yes, but I always give people the caveat of – if you are someone who has less interoception, because often I’ll have clients in my membership, they’ll say things like, well, I want to work on, being more aware of my emotions and being able to work through them.

And I’m like, Oh, that’s an amazing goal to set. I love that. And can we just check in and make sure that you’re not criticising yourself in the setting of that goal? Because they might be thinking, well, actually I’m less aware of those things and in that they make themselves wrong for it. So like, Oh, someone who can do that is better and because I struggle with that, I am less than that person. And therefore they’re kind of setting a goal that sounds good on paper and I’m all for it, but actually when we check it with their experience and their view of themselves, they’re thinking that they should be “better”. So, I think, sometimes it’s like, yes, these things can be improved. Like those measurements can be adjusted, but don’t make yourself a problem. That’s one of my favourite phrases. Don’t make yourself a problem.

If you’re someone who let’s say is neurodiverse, has a mood disorder, is on medication that makes you less aware of those things, we’ve got to kind of work with who you are and your, as you said, the internal and the external environment that’s going on for you.

Krati: This is so huge. You know, I have known people who have gone from one extreme to the other. I myself, you know, as I shared, I had massive anger issues but from that, I went to this person who rarely gets angry. Like, you would have to go do something really drastic to get me to get angry. I noticed that, but I am still the same person.

The anger is gone, but everything else is essentially the same. My character is still the same. I’m still the same person. You know, considering all the clients that you’ve worked with, all the research you’ve done, what sort of extreme changes have you seen in people? Knowing all of this, learning, having all of this knowledge, what sort of extreme changes have people been able to create within themselves?

Just so, you know, our listeners understand how far they can go with this.

Maisie: What I’ll do is I’ll just frame it with some of the science so that everyone knows what this is about. So we all, like to feel kind of pretty, what I would call, regulated and connected where we feel connected with ourselves, with other people, the world around us. And we feel like we can cope with what life is throwing at us just across the course of the day.

So that’s kind of the place where we all like to be, but then we have these stress responses like fight, flight, and freeze that take us out of that because actually what’s more important than connection when we perceive a threat in our world is, protection. So we sacrifice that connection for protection by going into a stress response, fight, flight, or freeze.

Now we all have our tendencies of which stress response we feel more at home in. As a stress response, and it sounds like, correct me if I’m wrong, if anger was like your go-to place, that perhaps fight was your kind of most natural stress response to be in, right? Whereas mine would be historically freeze of just kind of shutting down, removing myself from the scenario.

And it’s not to say that you wouldn’t experience freeze or that I wouldn’t go into the fight response. We would, but we just have our kind of most comfortable place to go to. So that would often be the case for my clients where let’s say, you know, they’re with their kids and they’ve been parenting all day.

They’d be making lots of decisions, you know, caring for their kids, perhaps skipping meals and not taking care of themselves enough, you know, and we’ve kind of got a prime situation here for there being a stress response of some kind. And then, you know, maybe the kids are making all this noise and then something just in office, just like they were already like at a limit, right?

They kind of feel like, okay, I’m coping, but I am kind of at my limit here. And then there’s just that one thing that tips us all over the edge into yelling at someone, blaming them, accusing them, or it could also be like running away and hiding in the bathroom because you just need to get away. So, you know, there’s all sorts of situations there, but I’ve really seen so many of my clients completely change their parenting approach and just who they are as parents.

I’ve seen people get promotions at work and get paid more at work because suddenly they have the inner resources, the skills to have a challenging conversation that maybe they would usually shy away from. So, you know, if they’re thinking, well, you know, I want to talk to my boss about getting paid more or, you know, going for a certain role in the company, but when they feel the activation, that bit of like, Oh, I don’t know, I really want to do this, but is it a good idea? Like, Oh no, what if it goes wrong? What if I get fired, and so the brain just gets a bit carried away with things. And so, you know, that’s kind of more like the flight response kicking in that urges us to just like, Oh, there’s a challenging situation. Let me get out of here. That’s the best scenario, so I’ll just leave, right?

So instead, they know that that’s what’s going on. It doesn’t have to mean anything and it doesn’t have to be something that you do. And instead they’re able to just say, you know, I’ve seen that this role is up, this position’s available.

I think I’m a really good candidate for it. Let me tell you why. Da, da, da, da, da, and they go through it. And you know, this is the kind of financial compensation I would be looking for a role like this. And it just becomes so much more matter of fact and that is where our power is.

Just all these situations personally and professionally where we want to make a change. We want something to be different. Well, now you have the tools to be able to do that. And, you know, I will say, initially, when you start flexing these muscles for the first time, you know, it might come out a bit weird.

So, you know, if you are going to have a conversation with your boss, maybe you want to practice it a bit with a friend. First, just so that you get used to hearing those words coming out of you because otherwise like it can come out a bit weird. The volume’s a bit weird, you know, or it’s like we rush through and we’ve got to say everything because actually we’re quite stressed inside and okay, how about we just take a breath and you know, just talk like this.

So, but again, when we’re stepping up like that and we’re doing something differently and we’re speaking up for ourselves, we have to give ourselves that compassion for doing so. Like, you know what? That really didn’t go according to plan. Like maybe that could have been done a bit better or, you know, whatever it is, but you know what? I did it. That was my first time doing it and I did it. So I’m going to give myself a big pat on the back and be like, bloody well done. And then you do it enough and it does come out very matter of fact, and it’s just becomes your new way of doing things.

Krati: I have met women who I once upon a time counseled  in a center for abused women. They are now my friends and they are unrecognisable. If I met them today, I would not be able to ever even imagine that these women were once upon a time abused, but because I know their journey that I know what I know. A lot of these women the first time they stood up for themselves, they threw up. Some of them practically went into a coma, couldn’t get out of bed for the next three days. The first time they stood up for themselves, the first time they pushed back, the first time they called the police, the first time they, you know, refused to let someone else take charge of their child.

It was beautiful to watch. It was also very painful. I mean, I know this is an extreme example. I’m using the example of abused women. It’s fairly extreme, but that is how even normal life works. It may not be you not being able to get out physically, being unable to get out of bed, but it could be something Similar, like you said, it could be something like having jitters and being nable to stop your hands from shaking.

But yeah, today those women, as I said, I could never, if I met them today, I would not ever be able to imagine that once upon a time this woman was found in fetal position, abused and beaten in her home or something like that.

Maisie: You know, as you said, what happened to those women and the shift there, but you’re right, it also happens in plenty of other situations as well. And, I love saying to my clients, okay, well, if you’re going to be doing this thing, um, What are you going to do after it? Like, what’s your kind of protocol going to be for, okay, I’m going to have this conversation or I’m going to send this email. I’m going to do this thing that, you know, I feel really called to doing. I know I need to do it. It’s going to be a really good thing for me to do it regardless of the outcome, just for me to step up and to do this for myself is already cool. So knowing that that is going to require something of you. What are you going to do after it that just supports you through it? And I had one client who chose to, I think she was sending a text to her parents about something and she’d known that she wanted to do this for years and didn’t feel able to do it.

But she decided she was going to, so we spoke about this and I’m like, okay, so if you look at this week in your calendar, when would be a good time for you? And for some people that might be, well, actually a good time is when I’m busy and I can just do it and I can go back to my work and, you know, be distracted.

For her, she was like, I want to do it when I don’t have any meetings or anything and I have time to be upset if I’m going to be upset by anything. So that was the beginning part and then I was like, okay, and what’s the narrative you’re going to have about you doing this? Right? Because when we do something that’s a bit risky for us, our inner critic loves to go to town.

It’s like an opportunity for it to come in and be like, who do you think you are? You shouldn’t have done that. You’re such that this person and that person, you know, da, da, da, da, da. So. I thought, well, you can decide the narrative in advance. You can decide what you’re going to think about you doing this.

And she was like, well, you know, I’m going to say things like, this is really courageous to do and shows you really stepping into having an adult relationship with my parents. You know, and she just had this really cool narrative. And then it was like, you know, and I’m going to go out with some friends in the evening and I’m going to pick a movie in advance to watch by myself at home. So there are these like really practical things that we can do that combine mindset and self compassion and practical support and you know, what’s going on in our environment to really take care of ourselves because I think, it was about like two or three years ago maybe, I sent an email to someone that was the kind of initiation of, well, what ended up being legal action and was at that stage potentially going to be legal action against this person, or this business rather.

And you know, for me to do that, which is fight, that is me going into that fight response, which is an appropriate use of it, I needed my coach at the time to be on the phone with me as I sent it, and I was shaking afterwards. Like, shaking, feeling nauseous, same as you’ve described with the women that you previously supported.

But I think one of the things that we can do is chastise ourselves and think, well, you know, but I’m not the women who were abused, like in the stories. It’s okay for them to respond, but I should be able to send an email without it being a big deal.

Krati: We do that a lot. So true!

Maisie: So that’s where really honouring your experience without getting into some weird competitiveness with other people who’ve experienced trauma, right, we don’t need to do that, and deciding your narrative in advance. Actually, it’s really amazing that I did this. It’s really cool that I stood up for myself – like that.

Krati: This is so amazing, and it would be hugely helpful. And I don’t think very many people do this, that they keep a narrative. That they create for themselves and keep it separate from whatever narrative they believe that the world is creating about them. I mean, obviously, you know, we all know that nobody is really thinking about us.

Unless you’re like some super famous person, nobody really cares. I remember when I posted my first podcast episode, I had to keep myself really busy because the moment I sent it out, I was like, Oh, great, now everybody’s laughing at me. Like I really believed that billions of people around the world are sitting and listening to my podcast. Had that happened, that would have been awesome. And then, the next morning, I didn’t allow myself to have access to my laptop all day. All day, I kept myself outside the house. So crazy! The next morning I opened my laptop. I gave myself permission. One person had listened to my podcast because I had not advertised it. I was so scared.

It was my first podcast episode. So one person and I’m like really I spent, I think, some 16-17 hours working out, trekking, doing crazy shit just so I’m not around my laptop. You’ve got to create a narrative for yourself. The narrative I should have created in that moment was, this is amazing. I’m a very, very private person, and look at me sharing my story on a podcast, not even in writing because writing is easy for me, but an audio recording.

This is amazing what you have shared. I wish people would do that. Everyone should do that. A narrative for yourself that you create fully aware of just what you’ve achieved today. And that might not amount to much in someone else’s books, but you know your reality, you know your truth, you know what you just did and that’s massive. And, you know, congratulate yourself on that. And protect that narrative from whatever you think other people are thinking. They’re probably not thinking anything, but just in case, you are surrounded by idiots and assholes.

Maisie: Yes, exactly. But it’s so true. I’m a huge believer in the art of celebration. Like we are just not good at celebrating ourselves. We are more accustomed to apologising for ourselves, for dismissing our needs. And, you know, just not being great towards ourselves. And, you know, just the way that we are wired, we are more likely to pay attention to the things that haven’t gone well and the things that we could improve on. And, off the inner critic goes again. So, it has lots of avenues into speaking up. But, if we intentionally find things that have gone well, which is what I always ask my clients to do. I’m like, okay, start off with telling me what went well, what was a success. And I tell my clients this all the time, they’re really shit at coming up with things that have gone well. And then I’m like, what about this, this and this? And they’re like, oh yeah, but we don’t think, there’s so many things that we don’t think to celebrate because we have this idea that celebration is about these quote unquote big things like getting married, having a kid, getting a promotion, you know, there’s certain areas of life that it’s acceptable, but you know, for the kind of more day to day things, then that’s not worth celebrating is the idea that we have.

So, you know, for example, with you, with the podcast, you made the decision to put yourself out there. How many people avoid making that decision and always tell themselves, Oh, it’d be cool to have a podcast, but I don’t know if I could do it. Right? You declared that to yourself and you made it happen.

You figured out the tech. That is no mean feat. And again, there are people who would use that as a kind of excuse not to do it. Oh, it’s too complicated. No, it’s not. You can use your iPhone or any phone and plug in headphones and record, and that can be put out in the world. And you got your first listener. It was published. Like the list could go on and on. You shared something about yourself. We could easily find 20 things just from that first episode to be celebrating, right? And then we’re like, Oh, I’m on a roll. Let’s go. Episode number two, who’s going to listen to this one? And then off we go.

Whereas if we’re in the habit of just criticising ourselves, then we’d be like, Oh, you know, yeah, it’s crap. Only one person listened. I don’t know why I bother. I’m going to stop. And thank goodness you didn’t, look at you now.

Krati: I did it, yeah. Something else that I really notice about myself and everyone else is that when somebody else comes up to you and tells you, I want to do this but I’m so scared. Everybody’s so amazing at pumping other people up like, so what let people judge. It doesn’t even matte. You are so powerful and so strong. And they could be having an identical situation in their own life, and they are terrible at pumping themselves up, terrible at motivating themselves.

Maisie: It’s always easier when you’re not in the situation and you can offer that outside perspective. But that’s something really useful that we can all bring in as well. It’s like, well, thinking about if this was your best friend and they were going through something similar, what would you be saying to them?

And then we can see the gap between what we’re saying to ourselves and what we’d say to someone else. And then we get to ask the great question, why is there such a difference with you? When you’re talking to yourself and then, you know, adjust it.

Krati: I think the other thing that I’ve noticed is just acknowledge that you’re flawed every morning, like start with that. I used to attend these workshops when I was in depression. So they necessarily had to be on a really like positive high and optimistic high. They were trying to like help us focus more on the positive, but I think it helps me when I can start my day. Any day that is going, I know it’s going to be tough for me with the reminder that I’m flawed, but so is everyone else. And that’s the beauty of humanity, you know, beauty of the human experience that you are flawed, and still today, you’re going to do something amazing. I don’t know. It helps me.

Maisie: Yeah, and I think just acknowledging like, okay, this day has the potential to be a tough one, right? I might be surprised and things go more smoothly, but you know, there’s some things that could be tough here and just really deciding in advance what can you call on? What can you bring into the day that’s going to support you?

And just figuring out something that’s going to be a non negotiable for you. So it might be the non negotiable is – I am going to take a lunch break and I’m going to eat some lunch. Or, you know, I need some time in between calls to go to the toilet without running there. And actually have the time, or the non negotiable could also be something like, I’m not gonna slip into self criticism or when I do, I’m gonna bring myself out of it.

Again, it’s that intentionality about things, which is challenging to do if you’re someone who’s rushing around all of the time, but usually the people who are rushing the most are the ones that need it the most. And in all my years of doing this, it takes less than we think, because again, we can be a bit perfectionist with it and think, well, I need this amount of time in the morning to take care of myself. And it has to be like this and I can’t do this more than this every day. Or we think, you know, well, I have to have a two week holiday in order to reset. And as much as I would love that for you and I and everyone listening, it’s not always possible.

So, great changes can happen from making adjustments here and there. And sometimes they’re more sustainable doing it that way than a kind of big, revolutionary overhaul.

Krati: Yeah, I don’t think that has ever worked for me. I think it’s always the smaller steps and building over time that works for me because otherwise if you try to do too much, you get tired and then you just check out of the whole process altogether.

Maisie: Exactly, so we go into that freeze overwhelm state because actually, in some situations for some people, some bodies, it’s just too much all at once.

Krati: I want to now discuss some strategies here. We know about brain plasticity. We’ve discussed it a lot on the show. So I’m going to assume that people know what brain plasticity is. But what I want to know about brain plasticity is, we understand what it tells us about our ability to create the life that we want. But why is it that despite this knowledge, despite repetition, we sometimes revert back to old patterns when trying to create new habits?

Maisie: Oh, I love, love, love this question. What a great one. I think I have a podcast episode about this, fairly recently. I can send you the link.

But this comes up with my clients a lot, right? Because they’ve been doing work with me, you know, and I’m sure for your audience as well, you know, you go through it, you make these changes and then, you know, kind of six months, a year on, notice that you’re in a situation where you kind of revert back to previous behaviours, previous mindset, et cetera. And most importantly, I think it’s just like making peace with that that is going to happen. That is part of being human. It does not mean anything about you as a person. Or it doesn’t take away from any of the success with the improvements you’ve made.

And you know, you just get to decide what it means because it’s just a normal human thing to happen, right? And it can happen, I’ve noticed, especially in situations that aren’t that frequent.

I was talking to someone about this and it was, I can’t remember exactly what it was. It was something to do with their holidays, like family holidays. And they were talking about how, you know, they’d wanted to work on not being stressed when they went away with their kids and kind of just feeling connected to them and everyone. Just that being the priority for the holiday, but they would just say, Oh, you know, but we’ve got this holiday coming up and I just noticed I’m slipping back into old ways of thinking.

And I was like, well, when was the last time you took a holiday? And they were like, Oh, like two years ago or something. I’m like, right, so this is the first opportunity since then that you have had to practice this way of going. So does it not make sense that you are kind of going to your most practiced way of thinking and doing things.

So, the analogy that I like to give is, if your kind of most practiced ways of thinking, feeling, behaving would resemble a really strong Oak tree that’s been growing for decades. It’s really thick. It’s resilient. It has got deep roots, right? That’s just the way that you’re used to doing things.

And at some point in time, you’ve decided, actually, okay, oak tree, you’ve probably served a purpose in some way, but I’m making some upgrades around here and so instead I’m going to plant this tree over here, but it’s just a sapling, right? And it needs some support to grow and it’s got some roots, but it’s just getting going with things. And so that’s your new way of thinking, your new way of doing things.

But, of course you’ve still got the mighty oak tree. You haven’t just planted one tree and then poof, the other one’s gone out the window. It’s still there. So, it just becomes like, where are you putting your attention?

And this is the thing, when we kind of revert to other ways of doing things, we’re focused on the old oak tree. Oh oak tree, why are you still there? I can’t believe you’re still there. I thought you’d be gone by now. Right? And all the focus is there. Meanwhile, this sapling that’s trying to grow is wanting some water, some nourishment, some sunshine to help it grow.

So really this becomes about where are you directing your attention? And there are times when it is helpful and appropriate to investigate that oak tree. Like, oh, how come you grew so mighty? Like, what was it? Why did I make those choices? How was I raised? What has made you this strong oak tree?

Right, that’s useful. But sometimes we’re just like indulging ourselves in the old oak tree. Meanwhile, the new tree wants our love and attention. So instead we direct our attention over there and we’re like, how can I cultivate these new beliefs? What can I do that’s going to support some growth here?

And then eventually that tree gets going and then that becomes the dominant tree.

Krati: That is such an amazing example because I think this conversation happens most frequently, at least in my experience, when it comes to relationships. Reverting to old patterns, that most frequently comes up when you’re talking about relationships. So it makes sense that if you have indulged in a specific kind of relationships your whole life, you’ve had one particular kind of behaviour, like if you are always a pushover, or if you are always self sabotaging, or if you’re always, you know, being one particular way, what you said makes so much sense that you have to investigate.

Investigation isn’t just important, it’s almost necessary. Because the information that you get out of that investigation you will then use to nurture the new patterns.

Maisie: Yes, exactly. And that’s the thing, because if you’re going to like chop down that tree a bit, then you need to know what made it grow so strong in the first place. Because maybe, you know, it is overshadowing the new tree and it’s casting its shade. So you’re going to chop some branches off and kind of bring it down a bit. Bring it down to size.

And so understanding what made it so strong in the first place is very useful. But there’s a way to do that without getting kind of really caught up in it. And kind of remaining on the outside of that, like looking in and understanding things without getting really caught up in things. I find that a really useful way of looking at things.

Krati: Another aspect of this is finding motivation for the more mundane things. Like we talked about this stuff that we are dealing with, but not on a regular basis. And therefore, you know, we might find it in ourselves that we are reverting to our patterns but the stuff that we do on a daily basis, like if it’s something like discipline to work on your art, every single day so you can put in your 10, 000 hours, you can actually reach a place of mastery and actually put together something for that exhibition. It’s so hard for people to do. And it is something that gets in the way of people’s growth. They’re unable to stick to that discipline. They get it done for 20 days, on the 21st day they simply don’t have it in them to sit down next to the canvas and do the work. What would you say, how can people motivate themselves to keep going?

Maisie: Ooh, well, another wonderful question, but I think there’s some nuances to this because I do agree that putting in the hours, I always think about it as like getting your repetitions in at the pool. Like you have to do those laps to build the muscle memory and the strength and all of those things that are important.

So that is important. But what I see is often this idea of productivity and oh, what’s the word that everyone’s always using? Not commitment. Like the showing up. Like, you know, when you’re showing up every day…consistency. That’s it! When people are like, oh, I need to be consistent, right? And I’m like, okay, tell me what you mean by consistent because that’s important. Because people have varied ideas of what consistency is, and most people, though, would say that consistency means doing something every day. And yes, that is consistency, but you can also do something once a year and be consistent. Right? It’s a different amount, but you’re doing it consistently. Because again, I see someone would be like, yeah, I’ll do it for 20 days. And on the 21st day, like maybe my period’s due. Maybe I’m ill. Maybe something urgent has happened at my work and that has interrupted things. And then they use that as a reason to stop.

So, I don’t think the interruption of doing things is a problem. It’s how you respond to that interruption, because do you think, Oh, no problem. I’ll just pick things back up again. Off we go. Or are you thinking, Oh, I didn’t do it for that 21st day. I’m such a failure. Oh, I shouldn’t be doing this in the first place.

And I will share, when I first started writing my first book, Period Power, when I first had the idea of wanting to write a book, my son was a year old, about to turn a year old.

And, I hadn’t returned to work quite yet, I was just starting to. So my partner was working. He was paying the bills and stuff. And I said to him, you know, I really want to start writing and I think the best way for me to do that is to write a blog post every week for a year because then I’ll get to practice writing. I’ll have a body of work that I can then show to an agent and a publisher and be like, you know, these are my writing skills. These are the things I like to write about and go from there.

So I had this idea in my head of what’s going to help me to be a writer and write a book. It was a nightmare trying to make that happen. It was so challenging and, you know, at that stage in the parenting journey and being a couple, you’re trying to figure out, you know, how do we be a couple? How do we both, like, maintain our relationship, but also have our separate lives where we get to do our own things? And we’re parenting. And we’re living in a temporary home, like, you know, it’s just all these things. And so the idea, as lovely as it was, of me leaving the house for two hours on a Saturday and writing a blog post in that time, when I’d had very little time to myself the rest of the week was ambitious, I think is the most positive way of describing it, right?

And by the end of that year, despite feeling so determined to do that, I think I had four blog posts. So we could say, Oh, Maisie, you really failed at being consistent. You did not do that. What happened? Right? But instead actually what happened is even though I wasn’t able to write like sit down and type,

I was writing in my head all the time, right? Every time I’d be feeding my son, every time he’d be having a nap on me, I’d be thinking. I’d be getting up at 3 in the morning to feed him and thinking about, Oh, if I was gonna write a chapter about this, what would I include? Right? So although very little word count on my laptop, I was still writing in my head and the whole time I was doing that I was building this identity of myself as a writer and towards the end of that year, I actually had a publisher contact me and say would you be interested in writing a book for us and, you know, despite not having done my plan, right?

But this is that intentionality and doing that and I think it was in that September of that year, I started messaging with my agent about potentially working together and, you know, she was just like, well, if you want to do this, we need to get a proposal together. And a proposal is quite a lengthy document including a variety of things, including two chapters of the book.

Like, we want to send this out after Christmas, like in the new year. So I did basically no writing all year. Right? And then in that December, I wrote, I want to say about 24, 000 words, like two chunky chapters of a book.

Krati: Amazing!

Maisie: And, and there was this furious typing, like it was just in me, probably because of all the frustration of not being able to do it the rest of the year. But my point is, you have to work with what you’ve got,

Practically, I wasn’t really able to write in the way that I would have loved to. And lots of writers find themselves in similar situations but, you know, by the end of that year, I’d written two chapters of a book and a book proposal and it had been sent out to publishers and they ended up getting a book deal.

But, I could have just been like, Oh, you know, it’s October, I haven’t done anything. I’m never going to be a writer. So it’s all about, what are you deciding to think?

Krati: Yes, love that story. And I think this is life. You’ve just described life. I have never met a single, and considering I do this podcast, I meet a lot of writers, I meet a lot of artists, I have yet to meet a single person who told me that, oh I picked up this goal and it came together beautifully. I was just able to start working the very next day. Nobody has ever said that. The process is always borderline ugly.

Maisie: Yeah, it is, but there’s something really beautiful about that and really necessary and vital and it is testing in the best of ways because of who you become in the process.

Krati: So true! How much do you think chronic stress interferes with this process?

Maisie: Yeah, I mean the thing is with chronic stress where, you know, I spoke before about that kind of baseline where like when we’re operating around the baseline we are able to meet the demands of life. And, you know, like the bus is late, our kids don’t like the lunch that we’ve made them, you know, the boss sends us a project back with some things that are incorrect on it, or, you know, we just have stressful things happen, but we’re able to respond to them appropriately and then return to that baseline.

So, stress gets a bad rap for good reason, but stress responses are actually fantastic. They keep us alive. They literally keep us alive. Without them, we’d be dead. But what’s important is that we encounter a challenging situation, a perceived threat, we experienced a stress response and then we return to baseline.

But what’s often happening with people is that they’re not returning to baseline. So they experience the stress and then something else stressful happens and then this accumulation of stress that’s happening and then they’re like at their threshold or exceeding it. And then that’s when we see people going into the quite long term burnout and things because they’ve gone past that threshold on an ongoing basis and kind of living at that threshold and not returning to baseline.

So, it does have an impact because it reduces our window of tolerance. So that kind of space that I spoke about between our baseline and then the threshold is our window of tolerance. You might have spoken about this on the podcast before where, you know, things can happen and yeah, they’re stressful, but we can manage it. We have enough resilience to respond appropriately and recover from it.

But with chronic stress, that window becomes narrower. So actually, it takes less and less to stress us out. And that’s when we become either very reactionary and every little thing bother us in a way that, you know, used to be water off a duck’s back.

Or we go the other way into the shut down freeze response where we just, I call it going into ostrich mode, where you’re just sticking your head in the sand and can’t cope with things and, you know, need to be signed off work and looking at kind of more long term recovery. So, for sure, chronic stress levels do impact stress responses and just the ability to respond to life.

Krati: What you’ve just shared is also a good way of recognising, for a lot of people, that they are in survival mode. Because I think, a lot of people, especially people with anxiety and neurodivergent people, if they can’t get the environment that their brain demands or needs for optimal performance, a lot of those people are stuck in a sort of high arousal state. And I don’t think very many people consciously recognise that.

Maisie: Especially if they kind of lack the interoceptive awareness that we spoke about earlier to kind of pick up on things and suddenly like, you know, it does take it being in the extreme for the body to actually recognise what’s going on. That’s a really good point.

Krati: If you can just get the right environment, the game can change completely. Then if you can get the right kind of stimulation, things can be better. There are so many factors at play. I think people are very hard on themselves because we usually end up, as you have pointed out so many times during this episode, that we end up making it about some story about ourselves and It’s not necessarily true.

Maisie: I like to give the example of houseplants. When you buy a house plant, it comes with a label that says this amount of sunlight, water me this often, doesn’t do well with whatever, right? And we don’t judge a house plant for that. We’re just like very accepting, Oh, there’s a clear communication here about what this house plant needs and what it’s going to struggle with.

And so, I love to invite my clients to do this and I’d love to invite your listeners to do this is to figure out what’s on your plant label. If you are a plant, what would you put on your label? So for me, it’s enjoys being social, but needs time to recover after. Right? Doesn’t like multiple people speaking at the same time, finds it overwhelming, right?

Because then we’re just like, Oh, these are just the things that are actually quite factual and straightforward about us, but when we use it as the kind of plant label, then there’s less judgment about it. And it is more matter of fact. And we all have different labels just as all houseplants do.

Krati: Anything you want to plug, share with the listeners? Any way they can connect with you, learn more from you. Just let us know about that.

Maisie: Yeah. So, the various ways you can connect, I have the Maisie Hill Experience podcast. There’s all sorts of juicy episodes for you to listen to over there. I’m also on Instagram and you can sign up to my email list. There’s actually a bunch of great stuff on my website. There’s a whole workbook that accompanies the powerful book that’s got loads of questions in there. And if you just downloaded that, printed it out, or you can type it on a device and answer those questions, your life will be changed.

So, um, you can just head to maisiehill.com and check those out. They’re just free resources that are available to you, and yeah, just enjoy the podcast. Enjoy the books.