#54: There Is A Price To Be Paid For Neglecting Yourself

(upbeat music) Welcome to another episode of The Podcast. Today's episode is all about a concept that I've been thinking about lately. And that is hindsight. Hindsight being a great thing. We all look back on decisions we've made and actions that we've taken in the past. And for a lot of them, we can think, you know what, if I was to do that again, I would do it differently because we have hindsight. And I think that, you know, things make so much more sense when we look back on them. And I think reflecting on things that happened in the past, you know, everything becomes much more obvious. Things like what we should have prioritized maybe a year ago, five years ago, 10 years ago, the stress maybe that we shouldn't have carried for all of that time, stress that maybe was never ours to carry. The people that we should have appreciated more, the moments that we should have appreciated more. And maybe the people that we should have appreciated less and given less time and energy too. Maybe the ways in which we have neglected ourselves over the years and convinced ourselves that we would sort it out later. And we keep pushing things down the road, we keep kicking the can down the road and saying that we'll sort it later. And hopefully you're starting to realize that I'm talking about health here, you know. We all think there's more important things going on at the moment. And when the time is right, when conditions are perfect, all the ends start and focus on my health and fitness. But to be honest with you, I've said it on the podcast multiple times at this stage that for me, I believe that health is the table that everything else in my life sits on. And I think it's true for everyone, you know. When your health is gone, nothing else matters. The job doesn't matter, you know, the relationships don't matter if they're no longer going to be there as a result of your poor health. And I think if we can, if we had the ability to fast forward to the end of our lives, or if we were told that we had a finite amount of time to live, I think everything, health and everything that's important would become so clear. The importance of, as I said, health, our energy, our peace, our connections, the people we surround ourselves with, our time, like time is a finite resource. And maybe for a lot of us, we aren't spending that in a way that if we had the ability to go to their end of our life and look back, that we would probably choose to, the way we're looking after our body, rest, and what was enough, like a lot of us hold such high expectations of ourselves. Expectations, I actually had this conversation with a client yesterday. Expectations that we wouldn't ask of anybody else. So I know that's the expectations that I have of myself, you know, I would never expect a loved one to hold themselves to such high standards. So what I'm trying to get around to is, I think, if we realized how we treated ourselves throughout our lifetime, mattered a lot more than we give it credit for in the moment, I think it would change the way that we live our lives. And one of the biggest things that separates humans from most other species on planet Earth is that we have the ability of foresight, right? So we guess to imagine the future. We guess to essentially time travel in our minds, you know, we can picture consequences before they happen. We can, you know, say to ourselves, if I keep doing this, then I'm probably going to get this outcome. We can essentially plan for the future. We can look into the future and say, OK, I think this is going to happen if I continue to live this way. And most animals, most other animals don't have that ability. They live and, you know, I'm laughing now because wouldn't that be a luxury just living in the day to day, not having the worries about the future? But that's something that I want to chat about in a minute. But for most animals, they largely live in the present, right? So their day to day is driven by instinct. It's driven by survival. It's driven by their immediate needs in the day. So things like food, safety, reproduction, trash from other animals. And we used to live this way when we weren't apex predators, but we no longer live in this survival mode. We have that luxury, I suppose, nostto have to think on a daily basis, where am I going to get food? You know, who's going to come behind me and kill me? Where am I going to sleep tonight? OK, so animals are so focused on the day today. And they don't have this ability of foresight. You won't watch David Attenborough documentary and see a poor little gazelle and think, oh, you know, I wonder if they're wondering what their life is going to look like in five years' time or what they're going to have for breakfast. They're very living in the moment. Whereas we're the opposite. We can pause, we can think, we can reflect, we can imagine, we can plan for the future. Now, obviously, you know, things don't always go the plan and life happens and priority shift. I get that. But for the most part, the actions that we take on a daily basis, determine where we will be in a year's time. We also get to prioritize what is most important to us in our lives. And we get to delay gratification if we choose to do so. So we get to say no now for better things to come. And I think this is what catches so many people out in today and the age that we live in. And that, you know, everything is just now this instant gratification. Anything that you want pretty much, you can guess at your fingertips, within, if not in the day, within a couple of days. And it's so hard to get away from that. It's so hard to say no, do you know what? I'm not going to have the takeaway now. Even though it's easier. I'm going to stick to what I had planned to eat because I know this time next year it will benefit me. We don't look at things like that, but that's what happens. You know, your future self is dependent on the actions that you are taking today. And I think this ability to see into the future or predict the future, this foresight that we guess as human beings, I think it's one of our greatest gifts. But I also think it's one of the most underused gifts that we have as human beings. Because most people use this, and I mentioned it literally a couple of minutes ago, to imagine what could go wrong, to worry, to wonder about the worst case scenario, to think about or to ruminate on failure, on rejection. If I try and do this thing that I've always wanted to do, what happens if I fail? What happens, you know, if people laugh at me, I wonder what other people will think. We use this ability of foresight to focus on the negative, focus on what could go wrong. But instead of using, you know, disability that we guess that most other animals don't guess, to look at the negative all the time, maybe we should look at, you know, as a gift of looking into the future and realizing the importance of caring for ourselves now, prioritising what really matters now. Because as I just said, the actions that you take today, the decisions that you make today, determines where you will be in a year's time. What people disconnect from that, because the consequences of not doing and giving into that instant gratification, the consequences aren't immediate. Like you don't skip the gym today and, you know, something really bad happens to you tomorrow. You don't, you know, get the takeaway today and the next day and the next day and then your health is gone a week later. It's not this instant thing, but there is a price to be paid for neglecting your health. In the long term, it happens slowly, it happens quietly. It is basically compounding over time until for a lot of people it's too late, you know. I get so many people coming to me who, you know, have either got a diagnosis or maybe are pre-diabetic or maybe diabetic and they're looking to reverse that. Now obviously if it's pre-diabetic, I've worked with a lot of people and we've actually reversed that diagnosis and they're absolutely clear now. But like, you can guess health complications that can't be reversed, you know. So my whole thing today is about using disability of foresight that we guess to look into the future and say to yourself, "Do you know what? If I keep acting the way I act today, if I keep taking the piss out of myself, if I keep delaying or if I keep giving into instant gratification, I'm going to end up paying for that at some point down the line." And for the rest of this podcast, I want to do this kind of activity which I have done with my clients and I think it's so so useful, right? I want you to imagine and take this seriously, right? But imagine Imagine on the day that you were born, you were given a set of car keys and you were told that this is the car that you will guess and it is the only car that you will guess to bring you through your whole lifetime. So basically this is it, there's no replacement, there's no upgrade, there's no newer model you guess or there's no trading it in when bits start to break or things start to go wrong. Imagine that in your mind, I imagine this is the car that carries you through your entire existence and think about this for real. How would you treat that car if it was the only one you ever got? You'd probably treat us and protect us, protect us like your life depended on us. And here's the funny thing, your life does depend on it because your body, I'm not talking about a car here if you've not realized, your body is the only body that you will ever guess for the rest of your life. And when I was thinking about this podcast, I actually was thinking about the number of people who look after their actual cars so well, they're pristine, they clean them all the time, they lock them in the garage to protect them from weddering, they service them regularly, they wouldn't let anyone in with mucky boots and all of these different things. They look after their car so well, this object that can be replaced. Yes, they take their body for granted, which is an object that can't be replaced. So what I'm going to do for the rest of the podcast is I'm going to talk about specific things that you would probably focus on if you were given this one car for the rest of your life. And I'm going to relate them to what you should probably focus on when looking after your health because if you just quickly think about this car, like you'd make sure you'd fuel the properly, right? Obviously food for us, you would make sure that you drive it regularly so the engine doesn't didn't see is same with us moving our body regularly. As I said, you'd service it often, you'd like after it, you would pay attention to us, you would give us what it needs so that it would run smoothly for as long as possible. And that's what I'm going to chat about, chat about in this podcast and reference it back to the car analogy because I think right when we take ourselves out of the equation, I was only having this conversation recently, right? When we take ourselves out of the equation, we know the advice we would give to other people, to our loved ones, to our friends on how they should treat themselves, how they should, unless others take advantage of them, how they should pack in the job because it's causing them so much stress in your life is a mortise yet we can't take that advice for ourselves. So using this car analogy, it takes you out of the equation and it allows you to see things so much clearer. Like one example is, I think this is pretty obvious, for the car, you wouldn't put cheap diesel in it every single day and then be shocked when it starts running badly. Like it's obvious, if you're putting cheap 30 diesel in your car every single day, at some point it's going to affect us and we are no different. So you need to realize today, how are you treating your body in terms of, you know, all these topics that I'm going to talk about and hopefully, off the back of the podcast, be a little bit clearer about how you want to treat it going forward because you're using this, the under, the undercurrent of this podcast is about four sides, right? You're using all of this information that I'm giving to you today to be like, okay, if I don't do this and if I don't prioritize these things and look after this one vessel that I've been given to last me a lifetime, then I'm going to end up paying for it at some point. It won't be immediate, it might not be next week and it might not be next month, it might even be, it might not even be next year, but you do pay the price for neglecting your body. So the first aspect I want to chat to you about is fuel, which is obviously the diesel that you put into your car. And diesel, the same for us is our fuel as food, obviously it's the thing that allows us to stay alive, right? And your body responds to the quality of food that you're consistently putting into it. I always say, when you eat well, you feel well and when you eat like cheese, you feel cheese. And this doesn't mean, I think if you've been listening to my podcast over the years or if you've been following me on social media over the years, you'll know straight away, that I don't mean that you have to ease, you know, perfectly nutritious food all of the time. That's not what I'm talking about. It's about what you do most times. It's not about what you do sometimes. But yes, if for the most part, you're going to be fueling your body, you're putting, you know, takeaways and sugary process foods into your body. It's going to react, you know. So it does matter about what we're putting into our body most of the time. I look at nutrition as, and this works for most people after working with at this point, thousands of clients, one to one, what works best for most people? Again, it might be what works best for you. But for most, it's, you know, tree nutritious meals at regular times. And nutritious meals, a lot of people will hear me say that and think, oh, these, you know, organic, you know, blah, blah, blah meals. A nutritious meal can be a ham, cheese, tomato, lettuce, onion, sandwich, you know, you're getting your protein, you're getting your carbohydrates, a think with nutrition people. And it's because of all of the shit online as well, massively overcomplicate it. And what happens when you overcomplicate things? You can never, ever stick to it. So with nutrition, go back to the basics, have three meals a day where you focus on, you know, having some sort of protein and some sort of complex carb. Try and have them at regular times throughout the day. This creates hunger signals. And then have a little bit of chocolate or a little bit of ice cream or whatever it is that you fancy. A little bit, every single day is fine. For most things in life, you can follow the 80 to 20% rule, you know. 80% of your nutrition, good quality, high protein, high fiber, all of those good things, and then 20% of the stuff that you enjoy. So what you put into your body matters. The same way as the quality of diesel that you're putting into your car matters. The next thing, when we're looking at the car, the analogy is how often do you drive your car? If you knew you had this car for the rest of your life, you wouldn't leave it sitting in the garage or in the driveway without driving it ever. Because you know that the engine would see it's cars seize up when they are not used. And humans are no different. We are designed to move. And it's actually what maintains our muscle. We maintain muscle through movement. So if we, I say this declines and maybe this is a bit harsh, but when we stop moving, we start dying basically. I think about my granny. One age, my granny, she killed me for saying this now, but she's probably about 85, something like that. And she still goes for a walk every single day. And there's periods where she might not go for a while and she'll always complain to me that she's not feeling grace or that the muscles are sore or that body is tight. And we'll have the conversation. And she'll say, yeah, I need to get back out walking. And when she walks every single day, she notices the benefits of that in terms of how her body feels. Because as I just said, you know, our muscles are maintained. The health of our muscles are maintained through movement. We weren't born to sit indoors in front of a screen 24/7, not moving our body. And I also think on the back of that, right, I think we massively underestimate how connected movement is to mental health, to our energy, to our mood, to our stress regulation. Like I run maybe three for maybe five times a week when I'm stressed. It's five times a week because I know that getting out for a run will make me feel better, you know. Mental health needs physical support when I'm feeling stressed, when I'm feeling emotional. I get out and I go for a run and I release all of that stress, I release all of that tension. So not only are we exercising to maintain our actual body, the whole thing I'm talking about today, you know, this vessel that we guess, the only thing, the only home we guess for our entire lives, not only are we moving and exercising to maintain that, right? We're also exercising for the mental health benefits, to reduce stress, to improve mood, to improve energy. Like I know exercising is the last thing that you want to do when you're feeling, you know, tired, but it always energizes you. Like I've never finished a run feeling worse about myself. I've never gone out for a walk and felt worse about myself. exercise. You know, we need to get away from the thing that a lot of people think now and realize that exercise isn't primarily about changing your body, right? That's not really what exercise is about. It is one of the most powerful tools that we have as a form of self-respect. It's for muscle mass maintenance and it's for mental health, balancing and maintaining or improving your mental health. So basically, drive the car regularly, move your body regularly. Now, on the flip side of that, I think it's really important to know as well that you wouldn't leave the car in the driveway to seize up. But equally, you wouldn't drive your car flat out every single day nonstop. Because eventually the engine will do the opposite of seizing up. It will overheat. And also, if you're driving it full tilt constantly, the parts of the car will wear down faster, will wear down sooner. And I honestly think this is how so many people are living their lives today. And I think it's only getting worse. I think we as individuals have to actively fight against this happening to us. And that is that we're constantly on. We're constantly on the go. We're constantly doing. We're constantly creating. We're constantly stressed, overstimulated and exhausted. And we never allow ourselves rest. We're running on caffeine. We're running on cortisol. We're all pretty much in survival mode. And then we wonder why we're feeling exhausted. We wonder why we're feeling burnt out. We're given our energy to everything else in our lives except ourselves. Doing things for everybody in work all the time, doing more than you're supposed to. And never actually giving ourselves time to rest and time to recover. And I think in, as I said, the day and age that we live in, a lot of us are looking at us, rest as a luxury or even a waste of time. Well, I could be doing this or I could be doing that. I know I've felt victim to it really badly in the past. If I wasn't creating, if I wasn't doing something, I was wasting my time. But rest really isn't a luxury. It's a necessity. And I always use the analogy of charging the batteries. Like you plug your phone in every single night because, you know, you couldn't deal with the consequences of not having your phone tomorrow because your phone would not work if you did not charge the batteries. We are no different. And eventually, and this, I can speak from personal experience, it was fucking horrendous. But eventually the bill comes. And it comes due with interest. If you haven't been looking at the warning science of, you know, constantly on constantly doing constantly creating. And your nervous system, as I said, will eventually send the bill because it will shut down. And it's like the computer in a car if it's gone on on, it will eventually turn off. And most people, myself included, waste until their bodies forced them to shut down before they slow down. So just be careful that you aren't falling victim to this. I suppose I talk about it as being the productivity trap where a lot of us base our worth on how much we can do, how much we can produce, how I suppose good we can be perceived externally. And that's not what life is about. But as I said, it's about actively pulling away from that because that's the narrative that's the narrative that society is hammering home, grow that all costs be bigger, be better, do more at the cost of what the fucking mental health, your physical health, your sanity, your body literally breaking down. It's not worth it. And it's creating, it's finding that balance. I'm not saying don't do things, absolutely do. Go after the things that you know, light up yourself, do whatever you want to do with your life. But don't base your work on doing, on outcomes, you know. I think that's a really important point. Drive the car, which is move your body. But don't drive us 24/7 full tilt. Same with you. Don't be on 24/7, you know, when you clock out of work, actually clock out of work, get the work emails off your phone. It's not your responsibility to be answering emails outside of your work hours. But what happens if you do? Well, then you'll continually be expected to answer that. I remember and I think I've talked about it before, but when I was teaching rice, I deleted my work emails from my phone. And a lot of the members on the staff taught us mad. They're like, Kelly, how can you do that? I was like, do it. Just delete, press the lease. What happens if this that leader? Well, they're contacting me outside of work hours. So how can they expect me to reply until I'm back and work? And it's about setting these boundaries because nobody else is going to do it for you. Like everything in life, you know, people can give you the tools, people can give you the wisdom. People can bring it to the door, but they can't bring it in. You have to do the thing. You have to set the boundaries. You have to get up off your arson move, you know, you have to focus on a fuel in your body well. We do it for everybody else. And that's the reason why we're so anxious, we're so overstimulated, we're so burnt out because we're doing everything for everybody else. We're saying yes to everybody else, work, family, friends, yes, yes, yes, at the expense of saying no to ourselves. So stop saying no to yourself. Stop thinking that rest is a luxury. Give yourself space. Give yourself time to do things that you enjoy. Give yourself time to recharge the batteries. So yeah, move, but don't constantly be on basically. The next thing about the car and how this can relate to real life is you wouldn't load the car with more than it can carry, right? Let's say you were to put six, seven, eight, grown adults, squeeze them into the car. What would happen is it would eventually at some point start dragging along the ground, right? And I don't just mean physical weight here. So many people are carrying around everybody else's expectations, everybody else's emotions, everybody else's problems. I literally just spoke about this. We do everything for everybody else, but we can also carry around so much mental energy from other people. And again, wonder why you were constantly exhausted. A lot of things that you're carrying were never yours to carry. The expectations that others put on you have nothing to do with you. For some people as well, high achievers have already talked about this. The expectations that you're putting on yourself are so unrealistic. You would never expect them from anybody else. But for a lot of us, we can carry, you know, emotional loads from other people. And the truth is, and this is so hard to take, right? What the truth is that you are not responsible for any other adult. You're not responsible for the decisions. You're not responsible for their actions. You're not responsible for their outcomes, how they live their life. And I know it would be great if you could. I know it would be great if you could control other people's decisions, actions, how they live their lives, how they showed up for themselves, how they showed up for others. It would be amazing because then everybody else who we think are doing wrong or are living wrong, we could change, but we can't. We can only change ourselves. And I think a huge part of health that people aren't aware of is this emotional load that we carry. Stress has weight, emotional weight. People pleasing has a weight, you know, trying to do everything for everybody else at the expense of yourself, as I already mentioned, has a weight. Never resting has a weight constantly putting yourself last, constantly abandon yourself at the expense of trying to please order people. All of this has an emotional weight. And you're going through your day, you know, whether it's doing things for others, right? But even more than that, constantly your mind is ruminating on what are others people thinking, you know, I've been asked to do this, I better do this because they'll think this and you if this whole narrative going on in your brain constantly, brain has never switched off. You come to the end of the day and you're absolutely exhausted, you're mentally shattered. And then you wonder why you can't get up and go for a walk, you know. Let go of all of the shifts that was never yours to carry. I think I mentioned this maybe on the last podcast. So apologies if I'm repeating myself, but I did an exercise with clients about you know, carrying this bag and just putting it down for a minute and having a look inside and and looking at all the things that you're carrying around on a daily basis. Order people's expectations. doing things for older people, all of the things that you're carrying that were never yours to carry. And start emptying the bag, you know what I mean? But again, it's uncomfortable because it requires having those conversations. It requires implementing those boundaries so that people can't take you for granted anymore. That's difficult to have those conversations. But again, you wouldn't load the car more than it could carry. It's so easy when we think of the car. Of course, you wouldn't because we scrape it on the ground. It's so easy when we take ourselves out of the equation. But yes, we constantly push expectations, jobs, commitments, honor shoulders from older people every single day. Another thing is, right? And this kind of links into people and who you surround yourself with and stuff like that is for your car, right? If you were told on the day you were born, not that you could understand, but you know what I mean? That this was the only car you would ever guess. I guarantee you you wouldn't leave it outside at all. You put it in the most well protected, insulated garage because you'd want to protect it from damage. You'd want to protect it from weddering. You'd want to protect it from erosion. You wouldn't constantly keep it exposed to harsh conditions. But the same goes for our environment. We are no different. The same is for the people and the things that we surround ourselves with. The people we constantly expose ourselves to. That matters. The people we surround ourselves with matters. The conversation that we have on a daily basis with older people matters. Negativity matters. You know, the constant drama, the constant moaning, the constant chaos, the constant criticism, the constant toxicity that a lot of people surround themselves with. That affects you. You can't leave a car out in the lations of rain and expect it not to be wedder damaged. We are no different. When we expose ourselves to naysayers, to be be girders, to negative nancies, constantly, that slowly wears us down over time. You know the quote that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Well, that's true. Because if you are constantly exposed to negativity, you're probably going to become more negative. It's this echo chain variety that I've spoke about way back on the podcast. When we're surrounded by people who have all the same opinion, you know, think about people who love rugby. They're all going to chat about how good rugby is. I only had the conversation with a client yesterday where rugby households, you know. But you'll never hear about other sport. If you continuously surround yourself with their rugby environment, right? And I'm not talking about rugby here. I'm talking about people who are negative people who are never going to take responsibility in their life. People who are never going to see, you know, improvement because they're focused on the negative all of the time. But you know, older people are doing opinions on everybody else. You tell, you ask them to take responsibility for their own actions and they look at you with five heads. Surrounding yourself with these type of people matter. One thing that I constantly see with my clients, right? Is that when we're working together for a long period of time, they start to say, they start to say to me, "Jesus, Kelly, you know, I've noticed that this person or that person has something to say." "How I'm changing the way I show up on my life." And for a lot of people, when they see you changing and you having different opinions or you trying to work towards a better version of yourself, they won't like this. Because one, they're terrified that they'll be left behind. But two, you know, older people, you know, prefer versions of you that best serve them. Think about that. People like the version of you that they know. And when you start to change, people don't like that. I had Paul Scandal on the podcast a long time ago at this point and I always reference back to some things he says because I think the man is just a wealth of knowledge. But he talked about that, you know, when he started wearing a man-born, people were like, "Oh, I'm gearing him and saying who'd you think you are?" And you know, "Oh, I'll bled this, that, and the other." And he was like, "It had nothing to do with anybody else, the hairstyle that I chose to wear." Like, think about that. But yet everybody has a fucking opinion. So my advice to you is try and surround yourself with people who are headed in the direction that you want to go. I declined Chattamino. It was a good few years ago, but they basically right were coming to me looking to lose weight and their whole family were overweight. And they were with me a good few months and they'd seen a load of progress and they were loving life and, you know, losing weight, getting fit and all of these things. And they started to say to me, "You know what, I'm really surprised because my family are, you know, saying smart things to me." And I thought they would be really happy for me. And I was saying, you know, that whole point about when you start to change, you start to leave other people behind. And when people aren't willing to do to work on themselves to get to the next, you know, version of themselves, there's no one proved version of themselves. They don't want you to either because they don't want to be left behind and they don't want you changing into this version that probably won't suit them anymore. Because you're probably not going to do all the things you did for them before. You're probably not going to agree with every single thing that they say. You're probably not going to let them take you for granted. So if you take one thing from this conversation, it's that who you surround yourself with matters. And it's so uncomfortable because, you know, it's not easy realizing that Sandra, who you've been hanging around with for 20 years, is just not living her life in the direction that you want to go. Sitting in at home, constantly bitching about about orders never doing anything with her life, you know, and they talk about this. We chatted about it with Paul Scannon as well. He talks about it as a cocoon. Other people talk about it as the uncomfortable period. What it's that messy middle where you're kind of like, OK, I want different things from my life. I want to surround myself with people who are now kind of more aligned to the diversion of myself that I want to become. And you don't know who that is where are they? You know, so it's that bit in the middle that you're kind of cutting ties with those people who just aren't headed in direction that you want to go. But you haven't found the new people that, you know, you want to hang out with that messy middle and so many people. If they do the work on themselves can get to the point, right? And Paul Scannon said for a lot of people they turn back because it's just so uncomfortable. But like on the other side of uncomfortable comfort is incredible things. And that's something that I've realized again through experience. This podcast is just fucking chatting about the struggles that I've been through and what I've learned there at the other side, but nothing worked while comes easy. And on the other side of waiting through the fucking trenches is so much growth. Like last year, 2026 was that last year? No, 2025. 2025 was one of the most uncomfortable, hard years of my life. I wouldn't wish the mental torture that I went through on anybody. But honestly, this year because of having experienced that and because of having come through us, I'm in such a better place. Mentally, just such a better place, such a happier if that story we want to use, but such a more fulfilled content place in my life. So yeah, I went on a little bit of a tangent with that one, but who you surround yourself with really, really matters. Another thing we go back to the car is if you hopped into your car, remember the car that you get, the only car you get for your life. And lights came on the dashboard. What would you do knowing that you don't get another car, don't get another replacement, don't get another upgrade? You probably wouldn't ignore the flashing signals for months on end and just cross the fingers and pray that it sorts itself out. And so many people do this to ourselves. Anxiety, fatigue, pain, whether it's emotional or physical, brain fog, low mood for a prolonged period of time, poor sleep, burn out. All of these things are warning signs. That there's something not right. And a lot of people see these as weaknesses. They are absolutely not weaknesses. Anxiety isn't just a weakness that you have. Anxiety is a signal for something else going on in your life and unmet need. Something maybe that you're ignoring. And our bodies are constantly communicating to ourselves to us all of the time. But most of us never listen until it's too late. Until you know, The engine light comes on and you're like, "Oh, shit, I should have sorted that out a couple of months ago." When the engine light comes on the dash, you have to get that sorted. But for so long, these signals have been popping up, popping up, telling you that there's something not right, but you've just been ignoring them. So what I would say to you is, don't waste until it's too late. Don't waste until the crippled anxiety or the low mood or the fatigue gets to the point of that nervous system shut down, where your body literally forces you to stop. And I don't think people who have never experienced something like that can really, really understand the extent to which your body can shut off. Like you can get to a point of clinical burnout where you literally cannot get out of the bed. You can get to a point of crippling anxiety where you literally feel like there's a hose pipe in your chest and it is full blasting fear out. Don't know what you're fucking afraid of, but you're afraid of something. You can get to such a level of low mood depression where again, you physically cannot get out of bed. But there's been warning signs all along that you're not looking after yourself and it's multifaceted. It's not just you haven't been eating well for a week, you haven't been sleeping well for a week, you've missed training for a month. That's it's not that. We're talking years of bad habits, of bad routines, of not looking after ourselves, abandoning ourselves, saying no to ourselves constantly for years on end. Maybe saying yes to other people, but also let's be honest, let's cut through to shit here because it's so much fucking easier not to do the things that benefit us. Like it's so much easier not to train, it's so much easier not to go for a walk, it's so much easier not to make your own meals, it's so much easier to say, I should know I'll cancel and meet up with a friend because I have no energy, I'll sit in on the couch tonight. All of these things that are foundations of health, it's so much easier in the moment to not do them. But again, the another undercurrent to this chat is that at some point you have to pay the price. I recently did a business course with an absolutely incredible human being. His name is Blaze Brosnan, he's written, I think three books at this point, but he's amazing. Google him, he lives in Waxford, but he ran a business course. Now a lot of people who attended the business course that I attended, it was Wednesday morning for 15 weeks and a row didn't miss a day, but a lot of people were going to how to improve their business, how to improve marketing, negotiation, all of these different things. But I wasn't, I was going for more of a kind of mindset, kind of self-worth element to the course because Moe had done it before, because she runs her family business. And she was like, Kelly, I think you could get so much out of this. But I did the course with Blaze and one of the things that he said, so many things stuck, I used them as teaching points with my own clients. But one of the things he said is, nothing in life is neutral. You will never get away with not paying a price. You just decide when you want to pay the price. I think this is so evident when we look at training. Like, getting out of your walk, doing your two to three workouts a week, you pay the price in the moment. You know, I was only shouting to Dan about this, nobody goes to the gym and thinks I can't fucking wait for this gym session. Like pretty much nobody before a workout wants to do the workout. But they're willing to pay that small price in that moment instead of kicking the can down the road. Because Mary out there thinking that never training, never moving her body isn't going to pay a price off the back of that. It's absolutely delusional. Nothing in life is neutral. You don't get to skip paying the price. All you get to decide is when you want to pay the price. You want to pay it in small little increments now and down the line, live a happy, healthy life. Increase your health span. Health span is basically, so there's a difference between health span and life span. Life span is the age you get to. 95. You die at 95. That's your life span. Health span is completely different. I think people confuse these two. Your health span is the age you get to where you live independently. You're able to look after yourself. You're able to go and get your shopping and feed yourself and look after yourself and all of those things. And the research on this is scary. And the reason I notice is because I've been chatting to clients about this recently. But I think the average gap between health span and life span is like 10 to 15 years. Think about that for a second. Do you want to be on this planet for 10 or 15 years where you can't look after yourself? Now, again, I always say this. There's going to be outliers. There's going to be health complications that come up that were never your fault. But for the most part, the actions that you take today will determine the quality of your life down the road. But it's just this thing that again, coming back to when I'm going to finish up one more example, but it comes back to this four size. We have this incredible ability to look into the future. Now, other animal dogs, they're just interested in where am I going to get my next meal? Right? But we get to look into the future, mentally look into the future and think, okay, I can be here or there or here in 5, 10, 15 years time. How do you get there? It's so easy when we think about our job, you know? We know how to progress up the ladder in our career. We have to do this that in the other. We never ever take that advice for our health transfer of skills. Think about the thing that you're really good at in your life. What are all the things that make you good at it? Talk to about it in the last episode. And apply them to your health and your fitness patients, consistency, resilience, bounce back ability, doing the thing in the moment, you don't want to allow yourself time. Like it's so easy when we take it away from health and fitness, but we all don't think about helping fitness fitness because it's not instantaneous. Think about your job. If you stop performing at your job, it would be instantaneous feedback because after a week or two, you'd know about it. If your numbers dropped or whatever job that you do, you know, you didn't show up to the classes if you're a teacher. You'd be pulled up on that pretty much straight away, but we only have ourselves to pull ourselves up on our health. Obviously, if you work with a coach, they can help you. Like I say to every single one of my clients, you will get every single thing you need to succeed here, but I can't do the work for you. There's three things. There's three parts to change. First is awareness. Second is knowledge or tools. And third is action. I give every single one of my clients those two things. Awareness can change what you're not aware of. And I give them the tools or the knowledge to change, but I can't physically do the work for them. Okay, last one. We've made it to the end. And this is the last thing. And I think it's very, very important because I think this is a huge factor that is preventing people from just getting the work done. And that is right. You wouldn't spend your whole life comparing your car to somebody else's car. You've been given this one car. You know, it's all you get for the rest of your life. So why waste your fucking energy comparing it to Mary Sandra. Tom. The neighbors down the route. What would you do? You would focus all of your time and all of your energy protecting this one car as much as you could. And ensuring that you are giving it what it needs, as I've said already, to make sure it runs smoothly for as long as possible. I'm not talking about the car. I'm talking about yourself. And comparison, like especially with social media, like honestly. Comparison still so much joy from people. It makes people disconnected from themselves. Instead of looking after themselves. Because, you know, Mary or Sandra down the road is so much better. There's so much better at us. So lucky because they have this. So lucky because they have that. And the main thing is that you're comparing your behind the scenes real life. You're comparing us. To a person's highlight reel. Social media, right? Take this line and remember, social media is not real life. And it will ruin your life if you keep acting like it is. I said literally on my Instagram stories yesterday. I said that I don't go on my phone first thing in the morning. I got up at about six most mornings. I do not go on social media till 10 am. Because who goes on social media and comes off feeling better about themselves. Almost nobody. So I give myself that four hours in the morning free from the toxic. of the online world because honestly, he lads, it's not real life. And if there is people who are showing up as, you know, their most, let's say, with this word thrown around a lot, but their most authentic selves, that's great, but they still aren't showing everything. They still are not showing everything, you know? And to bring this back to myself because all of this is just, you know, as I said, experiences I've had throughout my life, what I've learned from them and just sharing it with you in the hopes that maybe it can help you change your life. But again, it's your decision whether it does or not because it's the action that you take off the back of it. But like, people might see my, what would they see from me, maybe my social media following, the number of clients I have to success in my business, the events that I speak at world wide, why they might see all of these things and they might think, oh, that's amazing. And, you know, doesn't Kelly live a great life and doesn't Kelly have it easy? And then, right, if I was to bring it behind the scenes, and I was to show you every single thing that it took for me to guess to that point, I guarantee you 99% of the people wouldn't choose taking that route to get to where I am today. I guarantee you, I guarantee you, I just know, you know, because nobody knows every single sacrifice that I've made, nobody knows every single mental health challenge that I faced. Nobody knows the mountainous number of hours that I have spent building this business. Nobody knows the times that I've maybe neglected things that I shouldn't have neglected or in order to build this. Now, am I saying, I regret it? I'm not saying I regret it. But what I'm saying is so many people, you know, if they were given a list of actions that they would need to take to guess to where they say they want to be, they might fill themselves in the moment and say, yeah, no, I'll do that. But how long they would stick it out for, I don't know. So, I've gone off on a tangent there, but what I'm trying to get to is social media is not real. It's not real, and you're looking at it and you're driving yourself absolutely mad, thinking everybody else has this great life. Everybody else is killing it and everybody else is doing this, that new to them. Why, is there something wrong with me? Why am I not happy? Why am I not, you know, where I want to be with my health and fit in it? I'll tell you why because you keep comparing yourself to others, focus on your own car, focus on your own body. Your only job in this life is to take care of your own car. And you know what? You might say, well, I need to take care of my kids. Yeah, you do, but you are the blueprint for life. You are showing your kids how to live your life. And one of the things that has resulted in the most grout in terms of me improving, you know, how I'm living my life and really taken, because we can all tell people what to do. It's easy to give advice, but really take in my own advice. One thing that has massively improved what me taking my own advice is having kids, because every single thing I do and every habit I repeat every day and what I prioritize and what I do in my life is showing my girls what matters. And it's probably going to be how day show up in their lives. I've said it before, but think about what age you are today, right? And think about your kids at that very age, living their life exactly how you're living your life. Would you be happy? I'd say for a lot of people the answer is no. Why? You're neglecting yourself. You're neglecting your health. You're neglecting both physical and mental health. You're probably working too much. You're probably not prioritizing connections with family, with friends, not prioritizing health, not getting enough sleep. The list list goes on and you wouldn't want that for your kid. So start acting like somebody worth modeling. All you have to do is to take care of your own car. Stop worrying about everybody else's car. All the cars on the road, because it's none of your business. And likewise, you're what you do in your life is nobody else's business. But social media would have you believe otherwise, it would have you believe that you're living this inconsequential life, this so-barriage life. You're not. You're just comparing yourself to a made up reality. It's not real. And as I was saying, you come off social media thinking you're less than hating yourself. And you need to realize that you will never, ever hate yourself into becoming somebody you like, somebody you love. There's no amount of self-hatred, self-criticism that will get you to where you want to be. So how about we start folks on our own car? How about we start folks on our own lane? And stop worrying about what other people are doing in their cars, thriving in a completely different lane. So now that this, right, I hope that the car analogy has helped. I, as I said, had done this with clients and they're like, wow, that really, really helps because it just makes everything so clear. As I said at the very beginning, isn't hindsight a great thing? If we were able to look back on all of the decisions that we made, we'd be like, I'd never do that again. We don't know any difference in the moment. We do, however, know. And listen, it doesn't take a genius to say this. If you neglect your health now, you will end up paying for a down the line. Nothing is neutral. You don't get a waste of free with anything. You just decide whether when you want to play the price. So I want you to, I want to leave you with two questions of the back of this chast and then I will let you go. First question is, I want you to ask yourself, are you treating your body like something you can replace later? Because, and I know I mentioned this at the start, but when I started thinking about this concept, and I was like, oh, this would be a great podcast episode, I started to realize that we're all treating our actual cars better than we're treating our bodies. We only get one body. We're surely not going to get one car for the rest of our lives. We're going to have many of those. But yet we treat ourselves like something that can be replaced or something that we can focus on later. No, you're just pushing the car down the road and that car is gathering moss. It's getting worse and worse. The second question I want you to ask yourself is, if your body was the only vehicle you ever got, how would you treat us? And I want you to start doing this now because your body is the only vehicle that you guess for your whole entire life. We will gather scars along the way. I've gathered a good few scars. I've had back surgeries. I've had knee replacements. I've had this that new to write as a result of doing crazy, crazy things, plain rugby and all of these mad things when I was younger. So, nobody comes through this life not scattering scars. I'm not talking about that. But what I am talking about is how you show up day to day, how you treat yourself. Stop abandoning yourself. I'm not talking about completely overhauling your life and saying, you know what I'm saying? I know this episode has made sense. I'm going to get everything perfect tomorrow. That's actually resulting in you giving up in two weeks. It's not about perfection. It's about meeting yourself at where you're at and trying to be a little bit better. Rice, that is it. I hope you've enjoyed. And as always, if you have enjoyed the episode, maybe share it with someone you think would benefit from it, sticking the WhatsApp group. And yeah, I will see you on the next one and keep your list.