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Hello and welcome to Revolutionize Your Love Life.

Do you want to know more about love relationships?

What makes them work?

How to create the one of your best dreams?

Do you want to be in a really healthy,

juicy love relationship?

In these podcasts, we will give ideas and

practical advice to light your way.

Whether you're looking for a love partner,

already in a relationship, you wish could be better.

Or leaving one that has run its course.

There will be something to inspire, empower and support you.

Revolutionize Your Love Life is a fortnightly podcast where you will access

the knowledge and wisdom of love experts and

relationship coaches from across the world to help you find true fulfillment in love.

I am your host, Heather Garbett.

Welcome.

Hello everybody.

I'm here today with Kim Raheera.

She's a 60 year old mother of three who was diagnosed with MS 10 years ago.

And decided to ignore her doctor's advice and

muscle her way back to healthy, healthy, happy life.

Last year, she became European champion in master's weightlifting in her age

group and weight category.

Her journey inspired her to leave her career in journalism in her 50s.

And become a health coach for middle aged women.

With a focus on reactivating and rebuilding muscle.

Today she helps women tap into an abundant source of vitality.

It works by reactivating and maintaining muscle and

eating to nourish and flourish.

And I am honored and grateful to say that Kim is my health coach.

It's been quite a journey with her and I'm eternally grateful.

Welcome, Kim.

Thanks, Heather.

Thanks for having me.

Really, your journey is quite inspiring and I'm happy to say that.

I've also learned a lot from you and how you evolved, which is truly the real

idea of coaching, right?

It's a two way road.

Yeah, yes, it's been a beautiful journey together.

We're here today to talk about self care and how that fits into all of this.

So tell me what you think self care is.

Yeah, how long have we got?

It's, you know, in my line of work, it all comes from this thing that women

tell me all the time, they say, oh, I know exactly what I should do.

I'm just not doing it.

And that got me thinking, do we really know what to do, first of all?

That's the first question.

And if we do, why on earth is it so hard to do it?

So what is self care?

You to answer this, we have to answer the question, what is the self?

And I'm not going to go anywhere near, you know, famous people who have written

about this.

I haven't read Freud or anything.

I'm sort of my own home, homemade definition of this.

And because if we want to know what self care, we have to have an idea.

What is our self?

What are we supposed to take care of?

And for me, it's actually what defines you, but from the inside out.

So there's so many definitions that we live with, labels and boxes that we put

in, you know, like you're a mom, you're a business woman.

You know, you're not a sporty person.

All these things, those are all definitions that are stuck onto us from the outside.

I think yourself is what defines you from the inside out, which is

I think it comes down to what you need, what you truly need.

So that's your values, your desires, your, your need for love, your purpose.

Maybe, you know, there's something that you really need with all of your being,

purpose or, or something that really defines you from the inside out.

And I think this is really crucial to make that distinction, because we can

easily stop short of really finding ourselves if we stick with all the stuff that

gets, you know, stuck onto us from the outside.

We really want to find out what do I need?

And it doesn't sound that that deep, but we find out what we really need.

That's pretty, pretty complicated.

It's deep.

It's, it's long.

And now comes the second complication, because all this self,

this self lives in a physical body, right?

And this physical body has very immediate needs also.

And I think that they, of course, overlap with the deeper needs of the self.

But they're not the same.

And these immediate physical needs, our brain will shout much louder for us to

fulfill them.

It shouts much louder when you're hungry or tired or bored,

than when you like a purpose or when you're not living according to your values.

So this is not something where you don't wake up in the morning and thinking,

"Oh my God, I really need to find that purpose now."

You know, you wake up and think, "Oh, I want a cup of coffee."

Or, you know, "I need breakfast."

Or something like this.

And I think that's, that can be problematic, actually, for self care,

because that voice that looks after your physical needs is very loud,

so it can sort of drown out the deeper voice, the one that's, you know,

for your true self and what you really need.

And then we live in a world where all these immediate, noisy needs

are fulfilled all the time.

All the time.

So I think listening to that loud voice can actually make us drift away

from what our self, our true self needs, because it gets fulfilled all the time.

"Oh, I'm hungry. There's food everywhere."

"Oh, I'm bored. You know, there's 5,000 series on Netflix."

And I really see this as noise and the voice that comes from the self,

what we need is much, much quieter.

And I think it could even go silent if we don't pay attention.

We listen to that loud, like, you know, physical needs noise all the time.

And now comes the trick.

So what can we do?

What can we do?

I mean, we do need to eat.

We do need to sleep.

You know, we want fun and distraction.

We cannot stop that.

But I think if we want to go into true self care and find what we really need,

we need to work on aligning those physical, immediate needs with our deep needs.

What do I mean by that?

I'm going to give you an example.

If you, because the voice is quiet that asks for your deeper needs, but it's there.

Well, sometimes you have a feeling of something missing.

Or there's something that you need, but you can't really say, "What is it?

What do I need right now?"

And your brain that is sort of held bent on survival and instant gratification

will very quickly misinterpret this need and say, "Oh, it's still your knee chocolate."

And then that's what you will believe.

If you can take a bit of time and listen, what is really going on,

what am I really needing here, then you might get to that self and what it means.

But here's what I think.

This is something.

Yeah, go ahead.

Well, this is where I come in really, because it's the emotional needs

that are largely neglected in our society.

And when all of those things are stuck on us, the requirements of roles and demands,

we lose track of what we need in that sort of strong spiritual purpose sense of it.

But we also lose track of what we need as human beings in terms of attachment and love.

And the internal kind voice that needs to be there that can help us with our physical needs

and help us stay calm and quiet and think what our actual needs are.

And quite often when we're eating the chocolate, you know me so well.

There's a sort of quick fix.

It's sweet and it's soft and it's comforting.

It might be crisp.

Largely is processed food, which has got all of those big hitters, sweet, salt

comforting texture in your mouth.

If you're angry eating crisps can feel really good because it's crunchy.

All of those sort of soothes.

They sort of soothe momentarily.

Whereas if speaking for myself, if I can wait a minute and make space,

then I can hear what it is that I really need and what I'm really feeling.

And that can guide me to how I look after myself rather than the chocolate or the crisps.

If you want to go on from there, does that fit with what you're going to say next?

Absolutely, absolutely.

And I think you're on to something here.

And this is my approach, which may sound weird at first or even counterintuitive.

But I really think in what you're describing is this way of doing it.

We want to align the inner voice and the physical needs by working on the physical side of it.

Because we have pretty good control if we start paying attention.

So if we, for example, begin to work our body physically, a lot of the noise

will calm down.

If we work on getting enough sleep, a lot of the noise will quiet down.

You will not have, you know, like you don't sleep well, you will have this noise screaming

for sugar, for distraction, or for staying on the sofa, not going out for a walk.

It will be very strong.

If you look like deliberately with intention after basic physical needs and your physical

body. So if you go about exercising, make it physical effort, a physical effort every day,

eating whole foods, you can really start browning out that noise, that constant onslaught of

stimuli, be it food or entertainment or, you know, just even physical noise in the street,

everything that's always coming towards you.

If you can start looking after your physical well-being with intention

and proactively instead of reacting to these knee-jerk reactions,

you will have a lot more space, as you said, and a lot of

many more quiet moments where you can then check in with what you really need.

So it works like both ways.

We, if we are, there's so many good intention, well-intentioned people say, you know,

we need to find our true self, we need to find our purpose and as soon as we have our purpose

and our why, then everything is going to be so much easier because we can align the things that we do

with that purpose. And I think we can also come, and this is not mutually exclusive,

we come from the other direction and say, let's work on how we treat our body and create space that way

to, you know, have time and take care of our soul.

Absolutely. And it's a funny thing that I say to people I work with. We're really lucky as women

because we get to sit down and have two minutes silence when we close the door and sit on the

loose, you know, can just close the door, close your eyes, whatever happens in your body happens

and just listen to yourself. What do I feel? And then you talk to yourself kindly,

I see that you feel, maybe tired, okay, I see that you feel tired, what else do you feel?

Ah, I feel the need to be outside. Yeah, okay, I see that you feel the need to be outside.

What else do you feel? I'm feeling the need for a little bit of comfort.

Might have something distressing just happen, the phone call or a little bit of agitation of

something's maybe rush or something like that. So, okay, I need a little bit of comfort. What sort

of comfort do I need? Actually, it'd be great to go and get a hug from Ian or have a bath or

stroke the dog or read a piece of poetry or go and smell the flowers in the garden. That's what I

need. And then just doing that, I learn what I need and I can go get what I need. If I never

take that stop, I'll never know. It's a lovely gift we have as women.

Yes, and taking time, just creating a little bit of space is an extremely powerful tool.

And we tend to think, oh, what difference will it make? It's just a, I have so much to do,

I can't stop for two minutes and it will make everything easier. And when you take the time

and create that space, sensations and emotions also will lose some of their intensity. And that's

like a very solid science to this. If you do something close to meditation and that shouldn't

intimidate you, it's just what Heather just described, what you did this time, take a time,

a moment to watch your breath, your creative distance and every all these unpleasant things

that you feel lose a bit of their intensity. And you get back your control, that you can

re respond instead of reacting. And yeah, it's extremely helpful.

Shall I talk a bit about my journey with you in this context? Because I think it's quite a good

example. So when we first started working together, which is probably nine months a year ago now,

I was rushing in the morning, wasn't really getting outside much, it wasn't taking much

exercise, I didn't have much muscle strength. My eating was probably more than I needed.

I'm not overweight, but I'm heavier than I've ever been in my life. And I was less muscular.

And because I'm now 65, my muscle is naturally going to waste a little bit every day if I don't

use it. I've learned that with you. And the strength goes and the balance goes. And that

doesn't sit well with me. And I have made space now over the year, and it's been quite a tussle

inside to really allow myself, because it's not being part of my identity to be somebody that

really cares for themselves on a physical level. My early life was you sit still and you're quiet.

And that's what I've learned to do. So it's still going to be quiet. My whole working life has been

like that, sitting in a room being quiet in psychotherapy, listening to a people. I've listened to

myself too, but not on the physical level. So for this, it's been quite a radical change,

and it's taken me time to adjust. I now don't start work generally before 10 o'clock. I have a

walk with the dog before that some mornings every week, not every morning. I'm doing meditation

in between the mornings. I don't walk. I do the meditation. I'm doing my workouts. My eating has

changed quite a lot. I'm still stuck on the chocolate. I think that's going to be a hard one, but at

least it's dark chocolate. So there's some goodness in it. It's not just pure sugar. I have stopped

drinking alcohol. I've been much more mindful of my sleep and getting more sleep and training my

partner that we get more sleep and training him to eat and cook whole foods because he's largely

the chef. I get to do the shopping, but he gets to do the cooking. So the longest I can stay in charge

of the shopping, I get to eat what I want. If he goes shopping, it's a white rice. If you love,

she loves you. That's a powerful position. If you do the shopping, that's great.

It's made quite a difference, but I want to also acknowledge the tussel in that, that the

inner conversations has been, you're not allowed that. Who do you think you are to think that you

can't start work till 10 o'clock? You ought to be starting a half-hour state, really. You're

there for other people, not for you. Get on with it. Stop messing. That is the old internal voice from

my childhood. And you couple that with sit down and be quiet. It does not lend itself to being

healthy and strong. And I want to also acknowledge my intention with you and we started work

was to be the healthiest I've ever been in my life. And I'm on that path.

Yes. And I love what you're describing because it is a struggle. It's a struggle because

of what we talked about earlier, the loudness of your brain when it comes to immediate needs,

but what you're describing is an identity problem. And so many women have to struggle with this because

we look after everybody. We look after everything. We are in charge of everything.

And we think that if we don't, not only is it kind of frivolous to take time for ourselves and

not look after everybody, we honestly think that the world's going to stop. That things are going to

fall into chaos and nothing's going to work. Now, when I was 45, I had three small kids. The

oldest was like 10. I was out of the equation from one day to the next when I fell ill.

I was really struck down and I was gone. I was in hospital for six weeks. And when I came back,

I was in a wheelchair. So I'm not sharing this to impress you, but to say that I learned first

and I have this experience in my bones when you are not able to do what you usually do,

the world keeps on turning. I came home for Christmas. There was a tree. There were presents.

There was food. The world did not stop because I didn't do those things. And I think that for me,

this was such a powerful lesson. And it's something that really, we need to be aware of. It can be

scary because you don't want to tell yourself 24/7, "Oh my God, I might not be here tomorrow."

It's a fact. We might be here tomorrow. But you want to have this basic understanding that,

yes, you do your part. But the world does not rest on your shoulders. And if you want to do

your part joyfully and with positive energy, you need to look after yourself.

And I want to go into this, how you found this heart and you had these inner voices

that say, "What are you up to?" Be at your desk at 8.30, don't we want to start these changes in our

lifestyle with very, very small actions? Because we want to keep that voice at bay. If we do like

a huge overhaul and you think, "Oh, from now on, I'm going to walk an hour every morning and then

I'm going to have breakfast for half an hour and then I'm going to meditate for half an hour and

I'm just going to..." That voice is going to start screaming at you and say, "Are you out of your mind?"

If you start saying, "Okay, I'm just going to go outdoors for a bit before I start my work."

There's just a few steps. That voice would probably not be awakened. We're not raised that

sleeping dog right away. And that's how this works. And I think for most people, it's the only way

for this to work. You have to start with small steps to take every single day. First of all,

to not have this resistance. And the resistance can also come from... It could come from that identity

back to your skin that doesn't want to allow you to be someone else or to do things that don't fit

with that identity. But it can also come from that brain that's looking after our physical comfort

and says, "No, come on." That's far too exhausting. That takes too much time. Let's just do this.

If you keep it small, keep the change small, then you can do it. And as soon as you start doing it

regularly, it will become part of you. You don't have to fight with that identity. It will become

part of you automatically. This is what I mean when I say, "Start with the physical side. Start

with the body." If you go out every morning, even for five minutes at some point, it's you.

If you will have taken on that identity, and you can take it from there and then do more and more

like you are doing. You're making me think about learning to dance. I do modern jive with Ian.

When we first started learning, I was a bit ahead of him, but I remember what it was like.

How you get it into your body memory so that you can read each other's signs and know where

each other is going to be and know where you're stepping and know where you're turning so you don't

pull your arms off. It's quite a big deal. But once you've got it, the flow is tremendous and it just

feels natural, so lovely. And that's what this is like. Once you're in that flow, the awareness of

my body is so much more. I'm so much more aware of what I'm putting into my body.

And I'm researching what is good for me. And I've heard what you've talked about. I'd like you,

if you can, to talk a bit about the mechanics of willpower, because that's been good for me as well.

Those little things of doing things you don't want to do helps you not do things you shouldn't do.

I got that the right way around. You know what I mean.

No, it's totally fine. Yeah, because that's a big one also. This goes back to the

so many people saying, I know what to do. I'm just not doing it. I don't have the willpower or I

don't have the discipline. And the very first thing that we need to know about willpower is that it

rides on your autonomic nervous system. So if you are sleep deprived in emotional pain,

in physical pain, under constant stress, your willpower just doesn't work. So it is quite

physical too. The one thing that I love to come back to, that the physical

aspect of all these things going on in our brains and minds, it really depends on you being

rested, well fed, not in pain, and not too distracted. So it's not, it's really crucial. It's not

inbuilt into your character. It's not a personality trait. It's not like I am that person who has no

willpower. It really is linked to physical processes. You need to be really in a good physical state

to be able to exertable power at all. And then there's actually there's just one place in the brain

that's responsible for making decisions. What kind of decisions? Like you said, do things

that we want, we know we need to do, but we just don't feel like it. And also reframe from doing

things that we know are not good for us. That's just one spot in the brain where these decision

decisions get made. And that spot is mostly about allocating resources. So if you have,

for example, this is, I love this example, if you have been solving complicated math problems

for two hours, there is probably not enough resources left for you to resist that big piece

of chocolate cake. It's that simple. So if we want to look after ourselves, we need to make sure

that we have resources to allocate. And it comes back to doing the basic stuff. And then also doing

small things. Now these small things can feel like really hard for some people. And that's very

individual. Some people love going up for a walk in the morning. Some of my clients tell me,

I hate going up for a walk in the morning. It's so boring. I'm just taking steps for the sake of

taking steps. I don't like it. So it feels hard. How do you get yourself to do hard things or to

get things that feel hard? Let's say this way, because walking shouldn't be hard, but it might

feel hard if you hate it or if you're bored or if you rather watch a Netflix show. And there's

some really good research that shows if you practice doing hard things, tiny, tiny, hard things,

you get better at it. So it's the same principle, why you do something small regularly. And then

it becomes sort of second nature. So you want to do something hard. A small thing. You could start with

not looking at your phone during breakfast, whatever it is. If you want to become more focused or

more mindful with your eating, put the phone to the side. And if it's really hard, do it for a minute

or do it for two minutes. By practicing these small things that you find hard, you become

better at it and you get confidence because you think, oh, I actually can do things that feel hard.

Do you know the other thing that I'm thinking about that's being really important for me

is to know that you're there. Because I think, I hear what you're saying about doing the hard

things. But if I didn't have you to talk to and support me with it, I could slip past myself.

It's like making the time in the morning. If I hadn't made the time in the morning and said to

you, that's what I was going to do. I probably would have had that other part of me that would say,

oh, you don't really need to do that. Just this once, don't come before you know it just this

once is five days a week. I think it's something that in a way we underestimate.

And especially with what I do, you know, weight control and getting in shape and eating right

and looking after yourself. We have also this inner voice that says, I should be able to do this on

my own. It's another way of saying, am I really worth it? Really? Is it really necessary? Is

someone helping me? Do I deserve that? I should be able to do this on my own. I say, I know exactly

what to do. I'm just not doing it. But I could probably do it on my own. And this is, I think it's

more a way of telling yourself that you're not worth someone actually caring for you than it is

the true conviction that you have all the skills that you need, you know, to do what you need to do.

And especially for women our age, so many women tell me they feel invisible. They feel irrelevant.

You know, you're not able to reproduce anymore. Maybe you're not part of the economy in a

meaningful way, whatever. It's this feeling like you don't count and then nobody cares. Who cares

anyway, if I'm healthy? Who cares anyway, if I'm happy? Which is heartbreaking. And that's where

you know, having someone look over your shoulder, hold your hand, be in your corner,

it makes all the difference in the world. And you'd notice that difference, like just like you said,

when you have it, when it actually happens, and you realize, oh, this is totally different.

I'm not alone in this. Actually, so somebody cares. And it's a great feeling. And it, you know,

will help you do so, so much more stuff and, you know, feel good about it. Because you know,

you can share it. You can hear it. I did this. And then someone says, well done. Sounds so simple,

but it's actually quite essential. Yeah, and I think, you know, if I look from my psychotherapy

hat, then we assume that in our culture being mature means you do things on your own.

And that you are independent. But our notion of independence is really skewed.

True independence is interdependence. We can't do anything in isolation. Not for long.

We really need each other. That is maturity. Absolutely. And it's a, it goes back to, you know,

the self and to know what we need to meet maturity is a mature woman is a woman who knows exactly

what she needs and how she can get it. And this, you know, on the surface that maybe sound like

I want champagne and I want a rich guy picking me up in his Cadillac to go to the opera. No,

you know, maturity is knowing really deeply what you need, what defines you from the inside out

and how you can align the way you live with that. And it's also, maturity is also being able

and at ease asking for help. And I see that, I see that in young people and when I say, okay,

they're young, they still have to learn. And sometimes it's painful. When I was, when I was in a hospital

and I couldn't walk, it was painful to, you know, to need to ask for help to, to take a shower or

something. But you need to learn to ask for help because you cannot, like you say, it's interdependence.

And when you realize that it's, I think it's liberating. It's not scary. It's, it's great.

It because it shows that that we don't have to do it alone and we're not alone on this planet.

What, what life be for if we were alone? So it's, it's, you're right. It's what we consider

independence is actually probably just loneliness. Absolutely, absolutely.

The other piece that makes me think about this is that women of our age. Now, previous times,

women lived beyond the men of course as well. Men tended to die off in their forties if they

got that far. They hadn't been eaten by a woolly mammoth before. And, but women lived longer. And

it's because we have something to contribute and it's wisdom. It's our capacity to live and reflect

and understand. And although that might not be an obvious thing in our culture,

it isn't, you know, the doing in the physical contribution is what is valued.

There's nothing without that wisdom and connection and care.

So absolutely. And it's something that makes,

you know, I'm 60 now. It's, it's, I think it's now that I feel

whole that I, that I feel that I know what I need. And that knowledge of my own needs gives me also

insights into what people around me, what the world needs from me. And that's such a,

it's just a much more harmonious way of being than, you know, like the striving and struggling

that you have in your thirties or, you know, sometimes your forties still. And yes, absolutely. I,

I talked to, to a lady recently on a podcast, her podcast is called Old Chicks, No, Ship. And

she's absolutely right. You know, we have so much to give. And I think even more so because

the struggle and the, and the hustle is sort of behind us. It doesn't mean that we're out of the

game. It just means that we can look at the game in a totally different way and break really

interesting and crucial insights. Yeah, it's all of those soft skills that make the world go around.

Absolutely. So how can people contact you, Kim?

The easiest way is just to write an email at Kim@Kimrahere.com. And if you want to

check out what I do first, you can go to my website, which is Kimrahere.com. Or look at my

Facebook account, which is Kimra here. And there I share my journey, my weightlifting, my clients,

journeys, tips and tricks. I'm trying to make it a fun page where you can find out about me and

participate a little bit in my adventures. And one more thing I would like to say about you

is how well read and researched you are. That all of the stuff that I've received from you is

really grounded in science and that sort of wisdom too. You have an amazing brain and it saves me

reading so much, I can ask you and you know. So please people contact Kim if you want to know

about all of this stuff. Thank you so much, Heather. It's been such a pleasure, such a

such a kind, lovely person, always great fun to talk to you.

Well, thank you very much. I love talking with you too.

Bye for now. Bye.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Revolutionize Your Love Life.

I'd like to know what has been your biggest takeaway from this conversation.

Do take a minute and share this with us and visit us on our Facebook page.

You can connect with me personally on my email at heather@heathergarbitt.com.

If you can think of someone who will benefit from listening to this podcast, please do share it with

them. If you have any feedback on how I can improve it, please do reach out to me as I'm always keen

to learn more. Thank you so much again for listening and we'll meet again on the next episode of

Revolutionize Your Love Life.

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