Annalie Howling | Extraordinary Life Stories

0:12Anna-Lee, thank you so much for joining me. Oh, thank you for having me. I've been looking forward to this. Me too. Tell me, who is Annelie Howling? Ooh, today I would say to you, I'm an author, I'm a speaker. I get to appear on amazing things like this with wonderful people like you, having deep, honest, authentic conversations. And I suppose I also would have to qualify myself as a kind of content creator and influencer as well. But my day job really is the performance coaching and trauma therapy, which lies underneath all of it. Yes, which of course comes from a lot of lived experience. so if we go back to a young Anna Lee talk to me about that sort of initial journey of who and what influenced you career-wise and sort of life decisions that's an interesting question actually I don't know how many influences I I had that kind of married up with who I felt I was inside I think one of the beautiful things about social media although it can be overwhelming is you can find the niche of the thing that sings to your soul honestly when I was little I thought I was Matilda.

1:08I had such mean parents. Genuinely, my father was very violent and my mother colluded, which meant that I had no safe person in my home. And I would read Roald Dahl's work and the escapism and the fantasy, but genuinely, Matilda, I'd sit there waiting for my Miss Honey, just wishing that someone... You identified with her. So deeply. And, you know, there is a happy ending in that story in that she gets away from her parents, which never felt like her parents, which is exactly how I felt, and then was given this kind of happier life with someone that recognized her for who she was and I think that was kind of this that was one of the stories that really spoke to me at that time yeah and during those times where you were that's such a it's tragic to hear that isn't it where you're that's your family unit if you like that's where you should feel safe but actually you couldn't wait to escape what kept you going through that time because I imagine very early on your resilience was being built and your desire for hope if you like I think the things that kept me going were probably thinking well you know even with your childhood brain how am I going to get out of this and it has to be building sort of security for myself so being good at school would have been how it started doing well in studies and exams also that would tend to mean you probably weren't as likely to get physically punished you know so trying to do that and then I actually really remember that when I was about 15 or 16 maybe Sex and the City came out on TV and I was like that's it that's it I don't even really know what this is but I'm going to do marketing that's it this is the answer I'm going to drink Cosmopolitan's have lovely friends get into a city be away from these people my parents and that is what I'm going to do I'm going to be a career woman so I think actually in a way as much as you know we could laugh about it or as an entertainment program it did offer me a sense of no you can have girlfriends you can you know take over a city and you can be a successful woman independently so I remember you are with you asking me that question that was something that resonated as well what resonates for me is role models matilda then sex in the city and again i'm smiling but actually it just shows you how important they are shows you how important the right messages at the right time are for you i want to just flip forward almost to now as you say author um performance coach you know um and and helping so many people how important are role models and do you see do you see yourself as one oh i would love i i believe i am yes and i can say that without arrogance uh because of i think how i live my life so openly now i mean from writing my book and sharing my story so openly and i had like not a ding dong with the publishers but they wanted me to write like a 10 steps book like do these 10 steps and you'll be healed and click your fingers and i don't know do three breaths and it's all cured and i refused and i said that played to you absolutely refuse as I'm not doing it because that's not true and if I if I sell that book and peddle it it might help a bit but it's a band-aid so for me I really wanted to because of finding solace in pages and recognizing myself when I couldn't recognize myself in the world around me I have my client stories in there as you know I have my own stories in there and I have experts in there to help people who don't feel like they belong or you know it's about shame or that the shame has told them that they're broken or something isn't right and I want them to read these pages and as they turn it that lifts out of their system and it might not be your story but we're little bits of each other's and it gives you hope you mentioned that so that's the sort of the role model piece or the the hope because I've been in a place a number of times in my life when I did feel broken and I did feel isolated and I felt very alone and ashamed and what you need in that moment is hope so that's why I created what I created and that leads you to writing the book as well because you absolutely authenticity is what I feel coming off you and even just challenging the publishers you other people could have been just so pleased to be writing a book and want it to be successful which actually can influence for the wrong um ways so many so many things right you stayed authentic to yourself and that lived experience that you you bring to it is underpinned of that have you had this kind of like an outpouring um which could also be empowering for you in some ways for people that have read the book identified with it and then seen you as someone that can help them have you had that but come into you saying you know you're the first person to explain that and i've been able to talk properly and so on have you had that the reviews on amazon are insane so there's all five star reviews makes it all worthwhile then it's unbelievable the reviews i mean i read one earlier on the train traveling up here that was i didn't know how to put this into words I you know I thought there was something wrong with me I feel relief from reading this you know because what I didn't want to do either was be prescriptive as to what you had to do this is why I wouldn't do a 10 steps thing you know take this thing or do that thing and you'll be cured because we're all individuals as well but I wanted people like I say to sort of feel that relief and that release and just know that they have hope and from there with autonomy choose the things are going to help you and what you need to do but yeah the the messages the voice messages I've had.

6:09One lady wrote to me, said she was reading it in Marbella and she said, I physically collapsed on the floor. And she said, I was crying because something came up and came out that I've been probably trying to ignore. And it was, she said, that sounds terrible, but actually it was an incredible experience. It was such a big release. Liberating. Literally liberating from something. Which actually makes you that role model. You probably were too humble to say, but I I think people are looking for someone potentially to articulate and explain something that they won't release, they won't let out. I think perhaps the role modelling that, because it's still quite recent, I think I'm catching up and processing myself on sort of what's happening.

6:47And I'm still in the throes of having just published a book and getting it out there and doing what I call frog kissing to get it over the line. But I think, and also I wrote it a couple of years ago now and it's been through the editing process. But that book is so honest. I mean, there's so much of my story in there. there's my divorce in there there's all about reclaiming my sexuality there's stories of uh theme pain there's so many friendship breaks up betrayal there's so many things in there that are so deeply honest but I think because I've written it written it had an editor go all over it with me written it again you know I've I've almost not numbed out to it but kind of got a bit more used to it and I've spoken about it now a lot doing these awesome things so I'm really relieved that people having those experiences because that's why i had the ding dong with the publishers to make it so unbelievably visceral it's i wrote in the introduction this is this was a difficult book to write and it's a difficult book to read and i'm not allowed to say a certain word but difficult gets done so yeah that's that's what i wanted to happen here unapologetically yeah and i love that and i think there's a humbleness about you but also a confidence without any arrogance you are you're very fully present facing forwards but I want to take you back to you know you mentioned some of the things that are in the book that you describe clearly as raw those lived experiences at the time clearly were not enjoyable at all I want to know back to almost the same kind of question of the Matilda years to then those adult years what got you through some really really tough times I would say in all honesty probably like adrenaline and other poor coping habits until about 29 when I had a huge burnout and I write about that as well what I now know in hindsight is that because of the childhood trauma because of feeling unsafe because of not having a safe place or family unit to return to no matter what happened to me that's how I felt I was running and I was trying to out sprint my own trauma or main history what I was doing quite sensibly was trying to build financial security as quickly as possible because that meant if anything happened to me i'd be safe you know i'd have my home i'd have my life i never needed to go back to a place that caused me pain so that's what i did like i got an mba without an undergraduate degree because i couldn't i couldn't waste the time going to university because that would have meant i may have come away with debt and i would have had to spend more time in that environment really smart that's a young age to process that it was it was probably pure like i need to just keep going thankfully i had a job and a lovely boss who we reconnected from the book so it was a wonderful mentor to me years ago um who wrote an article about me in the telegraph so we reconnected the the day which was gorgeous he kind of saw something i asked i want to do this mba i did it whilst i was working full time um you know i kept on kept on then it's like well i want to move on to this job i want to move on to this job and i did it all fantastically until as i say my body went no no no no no and got served my back on the plate basically which if anyone's had a burnout is uh you can keep going and thinking i've got this and then your body in some way will pull you back down to the ground and say no and that's what happened to me and from there I started to do what I now know is we could call it my healing journey but really probably there was enough distance between me and that to start unpicking who I actually was to even meet the person I actually was rather than who I should be or performing roles or you know masking or being perfect we'll call it what we will just to try and get me far away from what was the danger and really try and understand and integrate all that I've done and then move into roles and opportunities that are much more aligned with my soul, which is being, I would say, of service to others.

10:35I can see that. Where does forgiveness fit into this? That sort of almost contentment I can feel off you now. At times you've been treated like no human being should be treated. And yet I feel like there's no, and all everything I've read and seen that you put out, and a force for good I must say on social media what you put out on socials is I I try not to do this is but I put something out and then I see something and I'm completely going through all your stuff have you reached a point where some of these people even back to your your parents have you forgiven them yes but you don't forget is what I would say and since becoming a mother myself that was a huge part of this for me when my daughter arrived you have daughters you know there's this sense within me that was instant that was you know I'm here to protect this beautiful girl and any threat that I see around her is not something that I want and it's my job to stand in the way of that so I had less understanding for what they did I think when I became a mother myself particularly my own mother's actions and literally standing by and watching and then telling me it was my fault that to me was kind of a whole new level of twisted but I don't have their experiences they're not part of mine and my daughter's life I'm sure that must be quite hard but uh yeah I don't feel any animosity I'm very happy in my life and I say this I'm not grateful I actually write that in the book I'm not grateful for the harm that has been caused to me at the hands of others that I'd never deserved but it's definitely made me better at my job isn't that interesting yeah and actually that you know it's that it's that whole that what doesn't what doesn't break you kind of makes you and I think there's lots of things there that you wish you'd never had to go through but I think that's also where I can't even relate it to that but things that didn't go right for me in business meant I pivoted that I wouldn't be talking to you now enjoying this conversation so it's that whole understanding that difficult in the moment but what advice would you give to someone that is watching or listening to you now thinking I can't forgive I won't I can't release it because that's not just about the person you're not forgiving.

12:41This goes back to the whole how we think in our brains and the voices in our head. It's actually limiting what they might be capable of. Yeah. So I'm going to give some bandwidth to that because there's nuance to everything. I have some clients, I'm just going to trigger warning this. I have a lot of clients in for sexual assault. A lot of the times that's at the hands of family members, sometimes even their parents. Do I think they need to forgive them? No. But do I think that if we carry uh anger and poison and shame within ourselves it costs us yes so i think there's a path for all of us i was asked in an interview recently do you think everyone's meant to heal it was such an amazing question i thought actually i think we're given opportunities that present to us often and it's whether you choose them or not you talked about a career pivot which then leads you to opening up and maybe having to be vulnerable and and humble and being humbled to kind of have to pivot and learn things and do different stuff so I think if you're open to the things that are being presented to you you will be given these opportunities that can support your path but I think you know I found my way I don't like to dictate to others I have heard some of the wickedest things that were beyond my comprehension that could happen to from human to human so I'm also going to hold space for people that may be finding themselves there but I would say to anyone And if something is costing you your peace, we do have to find a way to at least put some of that down.

14:02And quite often in my world with trauma and deep harm that's been done, the thing that's costing us is the shame that we carry. So I do a lot of work with people that have been betrayed in business, in romance and other areas. And although the act has been done to you at the hands of another, they still hold shame. How could I have been so stupid? Why was I so weak? Why didn't I know better? Why didn't I see that coming? And so that's actually the kind of insidious, shameful messaging that your imposters got all over it as well, that's in their ear the whole time, driving them. You know, you could be out of a job or something's changed.

14:40Your business hasn't worked out and you could be so riddled with the shame of that, become quite bitter, quite defensive, untrusting. And it may be no decision that you made or anything like that, but it's the shame that's the thing that kind of corrodes your soul and your sense of self from the inside. you articulate that so well the word you said it i was actually almost if you're going to draw to a close and hadn't said the word bitter i've in business relatively recently i fested on something that i felt a bit about and it totally took my eye off the ball of all the positives and all the facing forwards things that i could and should be and i had to have a proper shake and i'm 47 i should know better i have my own lived experience but i really needed to shake on that so i think that's invaluable advice.

15:21When someone is engaging with you as a client, how important do you think the difference is between having the lived experience and being professionally qualified to give advice? And the reason why I ask that is I wondered if it's changed over the years where someone that might have the lived experience would keep that back because I'm not going to let you into my bit. I'm here professionally. We're having a conversation and I'm helping you with my, but I feel like your strength is not just the professional advice but actually you have that empathy and you can say i you know everyone's different but i have been through this i can and people respect that and that authenticity i think is now what we're craving more yeah i mean the connection piece i love that question as well because i do think that uh me being able to be with people's pain i've definitely said in the therapy room now because people feel ashamed to tell me the feelings that they're having or things they've been through and sometimes i'll say look this might be helpful but this has happened to me and you know but and that could be seen as you know if you went down to a certain book of the way we were all trained back in the day and you know maybe that isn't the way that everyone does it but for me and clients coming to me and the clients that find me that's a strength for you and they've seen it on socials as well so i mean it'd be a bit weird if i was kind of then suddenly not saying anything you know i always say to my clients you can tell anyone you want anything you want you're the client you're fully empowered that does not go for me in this session that's that's the trust piece so if i'm in session with someone whatever they say to me that stays with me whatever uh i share that they can take that forward and use that as advice themselves or someone else that they love and i think we do need to sort of mention chat chat gpt and that kind of technology now because there is a pro version that is a therapist you know esther perel has been training hinge on prompts that i've been approached 55 times from various startups that can I please be the voice and train their AI bot in therapy and I'm definitely not against it because actually if it's a cost-effective way of and it is let's be honest the machine learning is moving on and on and on to to give you a level of comfort or peace in a moment and you're maybe learning something about yourself by way of a mirror I'm not anti it but I really feel so strongly like we do a lot of trauma retreats in person I feel more than ever we need opportunities to disconnect from kind of the insanity around us and I include in that sort of AI and being over-reliant on things and have real opportunities to be with people to witness you to put the device away and to really connect when I do the retreats the first thing we do is we we tell stories of shame but I make you work in a partner so you'd have to tell someone the thing that you've been holding on to and they read it out and it's the most exceptional powerful unbelievable exercise and you have your story retold you're witnessed by someone who's desperate to get it right because they're listening to you that you'll never listen to did I get that right is that what happened and then you see everyone else in the room and their reaction to something that we tend to minimize and you're like oh maybe that was actually a bit worse than I thought it was I've been saying was fine for 40 years and actually you're looking at everyone in the room going you know and this outpouring of empathy and connection and i feel that the future we're moving towards is having even more of those opportunities however we can to to really be with people and share ourselves fully well we're social humans have always been social and we've got this pandemic of loneliness that comes from life being made easy can order we can order a pizza while we sit here now and you can have a car waiting for you outside and you know book your holiday to you know and people are isolating more and more whether they are choosing to or not and it's interesting you bring up ai because i like what you're saying that actually because what i think could be interesting is a lot of people that are hiding their emotions that are not being them true selves they actually could potentially find some of those answers out along that ai route that would then draw them to then want and need the human connection that they should have had which should potentially bring do you agree with that do you know what i mean so i think it might might be that they're not brave enough to have a conversation but they'll do it with AI it reignites the whole principle I should be doing this and now I'm going to I'm actually now going to reach out to Aniline.

19:30Yeah I was chatting to a friend of mine's son and uh he mentioned that his dad had started who was ex-military very kind of closed off he just hadn't ever really discussed anything um and he had started because same thing had started sort of to use the AI model and then was signposted towards actually think you might have some PTSD you know so obviously i'm not saying it's prescriptive i'm not saying everyone should but i think we also need to be real that people are going to use it it pops up and says things and i think like socials where you can find a really niche group that share the same interests as me or you could find my page where i'm talking about trauma and it could really help you and we've got a really lovely community where people help each other in the comments okay you get the occasional idiot but very rare most people are really supportive when i had did a post on narcissism and this guy god love him did a massive comment that was me i did that i've lived with regret every day of my life don't think for a second my life's moved on everything i'm saying is true in this video and i was this is incredibly brave and generous of you to share the journey you've had to be on and you recognize the harm you caused others and that was such a helpful thing in the community so i feel like ai as well we need to with all the things be to your point if we're helping it to keep us in connection in some ways and not kind of using it because it is all too easy to you know if we were in a waymo in austin it's always so easy to never interact with any one human i mean you have some good chats in the back of a car with a driver you know so yeah i think we need to try and keep those pockets of connection where they're of value but absolutely lean in and leverage the technology that's i love that that's powerful and i think that's that's the message i was trying to actually probably maybe she again just said brilliantly is AI in this same conversation and social media get a really bad rep.

21:09People are afraid of AI. People are finding the sort of misuse, if you like, of social media and how the wrong role models are rising to the top and so on. But actually, it's how we choose to use it. Flipping it back to you, your social media is a force for good if you're actually engaging with what you put out there. It's educational. It's inspirational. It might be talking about tough and hard things. and actually I want to open up that narcissistic it's like it's powerful what you said about him flipping that back but that it seems to be popping up more and more and more and it feels like what I thought might have been sort of isolated behavior and there are narcissistic behavior um going on in isolated um pockets if you like it seems that that's a lot more prevalent and you would be someone to really kind of open that up and tell me more about that so again like with all things in the healing world there's a bit of a paradox I think the term is being overused and the true the true sense yeah so the danger of that is that people that are genuine victims it's become a bit blasé so people that are truly absolutely victims of narcissism which is very serious and can be unbelievably awful for someone's entire life i think because it's like oh they're a narcissist you're a narcissist i think that's almost like devalued that term for some people so i just want to put that in but there are so many different types of narcissism so i think we often think of the malignant narcissist i mean we could paint a picture of we could you know i'm not doing this politically but we could say oh donald trump's a narcissist doesn't care he's out there being brash and doing what he likes and telling lies and being mad and gaslighting people and we could be like typical but there's a martyr narcissist type who would be more of a um could be sort of a cult leader like a fake guru should we say in my space someone that's if it wasn't for me if i wasn't the person you know create like fighting for this cause then nothing would get done and we think charity boss let's just say something like that and you could go wow this is such an amazing cause um i'm completely going to fall in with this but that can also be serving their gains the other the one that's the kind of hardest to navigate is one that's called a covert or a victim narcissist so this is someone and i'll tell you the way you can tell with all these there's like an underlying link i can tell in every single one it's always so hard for me you got that john i wish i had that why can't i have more of this um trying my best i never get lucky this is wrong with me i can't because it's a mindset complete victim mindset but with a great big spoonful of entitlement following it up because they want everything that you have but they're not prepared to do a thing for it so they're watching you the whole time with this entitlement and expectation that they should have everything you have without being prepared to put the work in and then when faced with any kind of not even conflict but you know confrontation about it or you could do this just oh i can't it's too hard for me i've got all these issues mental physical other things and they play on that and they perpetuate it because actually they get a lot of attention so with each of these narcissist types the underlying if you like it's not again a catch-all but if people are interested it's entitlement look at all of these people and if they have an overriding sense of entitlement regardless of what they're saying there is a high propensity of narcissism that's fascinating where does ego come into this as well so and i'm going to relate this to kind of almost a lot of what you would interact with clients over where there's someone that's very controlling and very quickly whether it's a conversation you have with a client or a relationship that you you are observing and you realize that that person is controlling and ultimately this this the other person the relationship could be being dominated or be under some kind of spell like a cult snore how how how does that person remove them so what what red flags and warnings can you pick up and go i need to start building steps out of this if you become isolated from people so uh quite often someone that's trying to be very controlling will tell you negative things about friends and family members oh they're not they haven't got your bag oh did you notice that so-and-so gave you a dirty look at dinner making things up and they didn't get you a very nice card or we spent 40 pounds on their present and they didn't get you anything so they start kind of feeding in you start questioning your uh you know people that have always been around you you start therefore arguments happen around seeing them it's just easier not to do it you end up kind of placating and keeping the peace i mean this is linked to trauma as well because there's a the five trauma responses fight flight freeze we all know about flop pass out on the spot last one is fawn and fawning happens when you're in a situation with often a very domineering personal personality because you're placating and fawn happens in sexual assault but foreign also happens with narcissists if I've got a narcissistic boss which I did have but I need to like get my mortgage paid and look after my kid I know the things that they're doing are inappropriate I worked in construction before me too I was like a corporate courtesan the amount of times I was touched told to stay out late comments made about me my body everything all the time I had an MBA in economics you know and it was like the comments that were made about me um this is a footsie 250 business as well you know in the city it's a big company and i was it was ridiculous but that was i knew all this stuff was wrong and i didn't like it and i didn't want to be out late drinking but i wasn't allowed to go home until the last client had gone home and you'll be back in at eight in the morning and all of these things you know and it was this constant carrot being dangled maybe you'll get your bonus and obviously i'm in there this this girl trying to outrun my trauma trying to get my house paid off or whatever it might be I knew it was wrong and I knew what they were doing was wrong but there's rank in that system there's a disproportionate level of rank so I had to oh sorry oh sorry I just hoped I could go home at 11 p.m today oh sorry I just wondered if I could not attend that meeting I'm sorry I just thought I could go to my friend's birthday instead of this thing today and so that's where that can also imbalance if you can see that happening people questioning their own self-worth another other sign if you're worried about a friend is a lack of potentially a lack of self-care so if you've noticed that someone's maybe not looking after themselves in the way they used to not engaging in hobbies or things in the way they may be used to as well that's fascinating and just looking you now thriving flourishing as an entrepreneur so that sort of corporate job in your in your wake if you like less than two percent of vc funding goes to female founders and that bothers me because i've got two daughters so i was drawn to you and i said that to you when we first met a few months ago, that that's a real thing I want to champion and highlight, but also try and understand why is it a male chauvinistic, broken, archaic system, or is it a lack of self-belief and confidence, which goes back to role models in girls, particularly when the mum might be a housewife, but the dad was doing the work.

27:46So, you know, that's not what I do. That almost brings it back to you, actually, as that role model. Do you find that a lot of sort of women you're speaking to do lack that self-belief and you're having to bring that out of them because it feels like that's the one thing I've identified that's stopping girls coming through into business and entrepreneurship because they don't believe in themselves. So my daughter's nine she has complete 100 % self-belief right now I don't know how old your girls are. 13 and 15 right that's got to be because of her her time spent with you right? But maybe, yes, but what I'm saying is she hasn't quite gone through the bits where people start to bring her down.

28:24We've had a tiny bit of frenemy that your girls are a bit older. We've had a tiny bit of, oh, they didn't like mine. I don't want to have my hair like that because they might not like it. Or I like this person, but they also like them, so I can't. This is such an impressionable age. I've got my girls in there, actually. Right, so mine isn't quite there, but I know we're going into it. So when we start questioning and assessing, and as women, we have this great, great fear of being too much. because if I'm too much then I'm taking from other people I'm not being a good girl I'm not you know I was rewarded on being polite and coloring within the lines and keeping my room tidy and not being too loud and you know just all these kind of things and I'm being stereotypical but it's also true and so I think there is a inherent almost feeling that you get to a point and if I'm going to be you know yes queen you go but if I'm about to be too much even though no one never gave me the rule book for what too much is there's almost this this like inner pull to stop doing it you know why didn't why didn't you speak your mind why didn't you tell that friend where to go why haven't you put that boundary in yet why didn't you police the boundary you said you were going to do it's it's this like you know we don't want to take from others and then the other thing i want to add to that i love that question and again with my daughter i hope that she's the bossing the board i always say to her you could run goldman sacks and she could like i said like she absolutely could she could do a million things but that's putting it in her head as well well that's awesome things to be told at that age there's a really really dear friend of mine who's a mentor as well who spent many years in the automotive industry at the absolute height of it and he's now advising for another another company he said we had lunch he was like we just don't know how to get women to buy cars like why aren't women buying cars like i can tell you because it's the process of you know how do i buy my car actually got mine shipped over from porsche belfast they're amazing they're incredible i didn't even drive it first they were the loveliest team the reason i bought it through them was because they were amazing end to end and i couldn't recommend them highly enough uh but the process of going in feeling like isolated having people just jump straight on you being asked all these questions and feeling like you're going to be stupid or somehow get it wrong or you know the amount of times i was asked where my husband was you know i'm not allowed to buy a car myself i even had like i'm not gonna say who someone else that i had previously driven their vehicles for years i had emails from them being like i was selling my car are you sure you really want to be doing this I was like I'm a 40 year old woman and you're telling me that I'm not able to do this because you want me to take out a finance package for something else and you know you're kind of given these experiences and they may be few and far between but we buy cars based on friends that say that there was a frictionless easy process and it didn't give you difficulty we're going to pitch boards when I'm shown role models that tell me that not only was that not difficult it was amazing and seamless and you know that's as good as going there as it is going to you know a brunch with your friends and i think we're beginning to see those changes and i really hope that other female founders can really support this sense of you know if your friends are going you cheer for them and you cheer for them hard this whole like oh well you don't want to do that or waft the kids when you're working every day or how are you going to fit that in alongside something else like no let's just stand there cheering and know that the next generation want to come through with that energy that's powerful That's brilliant.

31:35And flowing on from that to come back to you personally, someone that's giving so much to help others and, you know, you put it, putting the time and energy that goes into being a mother and a businesswoman. What do you do to look after yourself both physically and mentally? Because you're in great shape. And I feel like that's important to you because I think we both know how important that is for this. It's why I keep fit. What do you do? Do you have like a morning routine uh so i hate morning routines so i turn 44 next month so thank you for that yeah so uh morning routines i just think a bit uh i don't like the um commercialization of them because again i think you're set up to fail before you've even kind of got out the door and i think there's often on the women you know i didn't journal make ceremonial match or home bake granola there's so much pressure on that right if you're going to be a millionaire a billionaire you've got to get up at four in the morning and run a marathon yeah i didn't do that and i didn't make her organic granola so i'm obviously a terrible mom as well and didn't look after her nutritional needs she's probably got like gut microbiome issues like so yeah I I uh exercise daily and move my body because that clears my mind it's not I enjoy the fact that it makes me feel stronger I've got to lift suitcases it's me and her you know so you got to make sure that you're I'm able to always be able to look after her physically as well as me so yeah movement for me is hugely important one of my really good friends Justin he's Justin Buckthorpe he's got an amazing performance coaching business works with Harry Kane and the golfers and everything he says movement is medicine but it's the dosage that's important.

32:59Love that. And I love that. So some days I'm really, I can feel I'm a bit frayed. That's not the day to push myself. And so I think... For listening to your body? Completely. So when he says the dosage is important and then some days when I'm like much more energetic, I need to work out first thing for me and then I'm much more creative and task focused. If I'm writing, she'll be writing again soon. If I'm writing, I do that in the morning and then I tend to do face-to-face people work in the afternoon, I'm in a different space. So yeah, for me, that's kind of how my day looks. but I do try and incorporate some kind of strength training, do a lot of Pilates and then sort of walking and other movements in my day to day life.

33:33I love that. And mentally, and not just mentally, but like that sort of community. You've mentioned, and I love the fact that you do, because I'm always like that, mentioning friends. You've got a community, you've got a tribe around you. So at any one time, you must have felt very isolated, very lonely yourself to have built this community that trust must be super important to you. but what do you do in terms of getting almost like that sort of therapy back for yourself because you're giving out to so many people and you're taking a lot of you know negative energy on if you like in any given day how do you disperse that and is that through a lot of what you just said but also interacting with other people and you know how do you how do you move that on it's a really good question because there have been some times when i haven't maybe had enough of time in between the session i don't necessarily know what's going to be in the session obviously until it's finished and then having to say mum or something like that and so you can't actually talk about what what you've talked about so you've got to somehow you know i just wonder if there's someone you can talk to not about clients but almost just like this is my my turn to do a bit of outpouring i do have my own therapist and there have been you know if i need to sort of go to her she's amazing she's in the book actually i waived my own right to anonymity and my files are in there because i wanted i used to self-harm and when i first went to see her i used to scratch at my face until it bled and i uh wanted to put her files of her first impression of me in there in case anybody was feeling ashamed about something they may be doing or feeling to show what a therapist really thinks and so i yeah i have waived my own right to anonymity and my files and my therapist is in there so she's amazing she's awesome um one of my best friends in the room right now so we uh yeah we tend i'm quite unhinged in my personal life i'm actually very unhinged you seem very comfortable with that i mean i i think it works for you i've got that in mind as well it's authenticity again isn't it we're not i've had to i've had to remove all sorts of kind of train tracks and shackles of my own to then sort of be doing what i want to do i see a lot of darkness i hear a lot of wickedness and i think um that actually you know it may be a weird and i've had stuff happen to me and maybe in a weird way that makes me even more grateful for the opportunities i do have my friends and i would travel a lot we just went to like a music festival in caperica just south of lisbon we really focus on making time we've all got big jobs everyone's insanely busy but we really do carve out time to physically be together and just laugh and share we're really open we're really honest like i don't have relationships in my life that kind of surface i have you know everyone talks about it but i've got a smaller group but i'm completely myself and that is quite unhinged yes well i also like as well and i think i know the answer is it doesn't really feel like you've got a destination it feels like all those experiences all those people you interact all the things you're doing all part of a journey that you now you embrace because at other times in your life you've you've hit blockers you've you've been stuck uh whereas now it feels like you've blown that all apart and you're just enjoying the journey have i got that right totally we were talking before we came on air some things have been happening to you that things that you could have spent years like forcing forcing forcing trying and then if you actually just release control quite literally walks into you yes and so that's what's been happening with me as well is that i know i'm on the right path with things because things that i would have oh i've got to try this and email that person or ask that friend or do this thing and why don't they come back to you this thing's gone wrong you're like you're knocking on the wrong doors but you know so as soon as i'm like very much in my flow which is happening right now with the opportunities coming in i've always got a couple of plans there's always a few things i'm thinking about doing and in general direction but as exactly as we're talking about off air when they start arriving with ease you go okay okay but a lot of this comes down to manifesting and visualization which is what we were talking about i i'm starting to really realize there's some a power in the universe whatever force you put behind it mine is a desire to make things happen to connect people or to be able to connect to someone or make something happen and then it's amazing how much that's happening um i want to ask you i would love to talk to you for so much longer i want to ask you on the basis of all that sort of trajectory and experience and perspective you've got looking back anyone watching or listening or a younger version of yourself what is the one piece of advice that you would give them don't take directions from anybody that has never left home that comes back to lived experience i love that so actually you really embrace that can't learn it in the classroom yeah i just think there are a lot of people out there that will give you their advice some of it's really well meaning some of it's in a kind of loving way because they want to keep you as you are now because it would mean things changing for them if you were to evolve and grow but if you want to if you want to become let's not mean to the best version of yourself your fullest self if you've got a destination in mind if you're feeling a pull don't ask the people that have have never gone anywhere else like that you know that's totally fine but if your experience is going to be different find the people as you say facing forward and go and ask them and putting their own positive spin on things that could have actually been.

38:30I mean, this goes back to what you said about the fact that all these things that have actually happened to you that haven't been in any way nice at the time have moulded you into the phenomenal, thriving woman that you are now. And I really thank you for making time to film me today. Oh, I've loved it. Yeah, I could go another hour, but we're going to have to stop there. But, Annalie, thank you. Thank you, John. Thank you. I loved it.