Welcome to The Crucible, Conversations for the Curious.
I'm Hamish, your host.
In each episode you'll hear from everyday people who've been through profound life
altering experiences, from life threatening illnesses or accidents, deep
existential crisis, addiction, or having to make life choices that have ultimately
brought them peace, connection and purpose.
They've all stared into the abyss, walked through the fire of their own personal
dark nights of the soul, and emerged from the other side transformed.
This podcast is for anyone going through an awakening, a time of massive change, or
questioning the
meaning of life.
You are not alone.
You can get through this.
I promise you life is more meaningful and beautiful on the other side.
Hi everybody, today we're talking to Angela.
We've known each other for a couple of years and I know her story, but it's
really nice to be able to share it with you all today.
So Angela, thank you ever so much for turning up today.
Thank you for having me Hamish, it's good to be here.
Can you please tell us a little about your journey and your awakening?
So I think my journey, it's like everybody, with everybody's journey, we
have so many things going on, don't we?
But a lot of them become more understandable, I think, as we look, as we
listen to ourselves and start understanding why we are who we are.
And for me, this last year has been incredible and things that I didn't
understand, things that I didn't know about myself.
or didn't understand about myself have become clear and everything has started to
fall into place.
So it has been, the word awakening feels to me like a really good word for it
because for years now I've been a very impulsive person.
I've made decisions, snap decisions and not always sensibly found myself then
having to pick up the pieces afterwards.
I've also made some very good decisions and I've had huge ideas and
ideas kind of falling out of my head so that I go to sleep with some ideas and I
wake up with other ones and life has been very, very full on.
But one of the things that I've probably most struggled with was in growing my own
business, I had made some bad decisions, not for the wrong reasons, but for the
right reasons, looked to the wrong people for help and support and spent a lot of
money doing it.
And then finding that
Actually, the help didn't come and I had trusted the wrong people and I'd begun to
do things, spent money unwisely really on things that I thought would help and try
and sort of get myself to the right place that I wanted to get to.
Part of that was an awakening in the sense of realising that other people had done
the same thing.
And so I created a business around that to help and support other people.
But I never really understood why the way I worked.
And it wasn't until about six months ago that I was diagnosed with ADHD that
suddenly everything in my life began to fall into place, literally from when I was
a little girl and couldn't really concentrate on schoolwork, found it very
difficult and would tell myself the story that I wasn't academic.
I knew I was intelligent.
I knew that my ideas were good and I knew that I could think like the best of them.
But I didn't like writing it down and I didn't like spending hours doing homework
and all of that.
So I would sort of look at my other sisters and so on and think, well, that's
just me.
I'm not academic.
You know, I'm not really meant for that.
But still went to university because that's what our family did.
You know, we all did that.
And I managed to get a degree.
But I changed halfway through.
I took courses that I switched from one thing to another.
And so going through life,
There was lots of times where I didn't really understand what's going on.
And then as I say, suddenly, our eldest son was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult.
And that was, that was transformational for him.
And it also began to make me think partly that I had been a failure, that I hadn't
really recognized what's going on in his life.
But of course it wasn't really spoken about, or shall we say it was.
but only in a critical way.
When he was growing up, it was like, well, you're a bad parent if your child has
those kind of struggles, or they're just naughty.
They just don't listen and all of these things.
So we never really went down that road with him.
And it wasn't until he then started exploring that helped me to start
exploring and began to everything began to fall into place.
And what that's done for me is to help me understand my own super
powers and my own gifts that I've got to give to this world.
It's not like something that's bad or that's something that's wrong or that I
need fixing.
It's something that I need to understand how to use and how to develop and how to
grow and make it even more powerful and stronger.
And that has been fascinating.
And it's also enabled me to start adding things to the business or making decisions
to help and support me.
But that's meant that they help and support other people too.
So being diagnosed with ADHD, wind back a bit and just explain to me what you were
struggling with.
You said there's this sense of I'm not academic, but what were the stumbling
blocks that were tripping you up?
Rephrase that, they're not stumbling blocks.
What was the traditional approach that wasn't working for you?
What was your mind doing differently or your cognitive ability?
Well, one of the biggest things is the inability to switch off and the inability
to stop and to rest or to even go to bed at a sensible time.
There'd be times when I would stay awake all night basically because there were
things I needed to do.
Or, you know, my husband who's a very regular.
guy who likes to go to bed at a set time, he falls asleep quite quickly, he would
sort of suddenly wake up again and find that I'm sitting in the bathroom with my
laptop doing a post for LinkedIn, that, you know, because I have to do it now,
because if I don't do it now, I won't be able to go to sleep if I don't do it now.
And it could be quite disruptive.
But he had, because we'd been married for a long time, and he'd sort of kind of got
used to some of my ways and sort of accepted them.
He's a very patient.
guys.
So they didn't really cause a sort of marital issue, but there were lots and
lots of times where he'd be saying, thought you said you were coming to bed?
You know, and yes, I'm coming, I'm coming in a minute.
And it would still be an hour later, and I'd still be talking or doing whatever I
was.
So that was quite a thing.
Then from the point of view of looking after the home, I mean, we have four
children.
And at certain times, I can be super.
organised.
And so if you ask me to spring clean your house, I will do a brilliant job at it,
but I won't stop till it's finished, you know, in a week, I won't go to bed, I will
just carry on doing it.
Everything would be in beautiful, you know, shelves will be tidy and all of
that.
But during that time while doing it, the house has to be will be complete mess
because I get everything out of every cupboard.
So the only way that that would work in our home will be for Dirk to take the
children away.
And then we would, you know, then I could do that and you'd come back and find this.
this beautiful place, but I couldn't do it at the same time.
And for a long time now, Dirk's done pretty much most of the housework because
he just, he sees it.
He, I don't see it.
It doesn't impact me because I'll be in my own world doing and creating all the
things I want to create.
I've got a very, very creative brain, but at school I was told I had no imagination
as my brain and pattern didn't fit.
It didn't fit into the thing I was being asked to do.
you know, we would be asked to paint a certain thing and I couldn't do that.
If you would have asked me to create something from the colors of the rainbow,
I would have been able to do that and I would have enjoyed it.
But ask me to draw a banana or a ship or something, it just didn't work.
So it would be very boxed in.
It just wouldn't look particularly good.
And I could be quite outspoken in the sense that my English teacher liked
particular kinds of poetry.
To me, they weren't poetry because they weren't beautiful.
They didn't do anything with me.
They didn't make me sing.
They didn't make me feel.
And that, again, that wasn't right.
But the thing was, she was telling me I didn't have any imagination as well.
So I found myself floundering, really.
in those kinds of subjects and then feeling like I was being told how to be
and I wasn't that person.
But I think because of when I grew up, you didn't argue with those kinds of things.
You just, you accepted that that's what, you know, they were the teachers, that's
what they were telling you.
There wasn't another option.
There was nobody that was querying those things.
And so, so I just went along with it really.
But I think,
You know, over the years, it's had some very good things for me, as in I have, I
can turn my hand to pretty much anything.
I've had quite a few different roles, from job point of view.
And I, I just approach them and do them because that's what I'm doing.
And I don't need to prove anything.
I can just get on and do it.
I'm very, very capable person.
But the commitment side of it to be long -term committed to something, that's been
a struggle at times.
And I feel like it works now.
I couldn't be more committed to the business that I run now, but that's
because it's giving me the whole space to imagine and invent and create and bring
new things in and find other ways to help people.
And it's because it's so people -centric and because people are all so different.
that gives my brain exactly what it needs.
And it just means that thinking on the spot, answering questions, giving people
advice about things that I didn't even know I knew, because they're all stored in
there somewhere.
That's been a wonderful, wonderful gift for me.
And I'm so really so grateful that the opportunity arose, albeit from having
used our life savings to invest in support and help that wasn't the right thing at
all.
So it's been a very expensive learning journey, but at the same time, it's made
me connect with myself in a whole new way.
What was cropping up for me was it's more emotionally centric rather than brain
centric or heart centric.
You know, painting a banana.
No, painting from the rainbow.
It's a different approach, isn't it?
So it's, I can, because I can relate to quite a lot of that.
I don't switch off and various other things, but it makes a lot of sense to
you.
This combination is slightly different and you're wired for
Obviously passion, I can hear the passion for your job, your creativity, what you
do.
And maybe it is that kind of creativity and passion that is leading the way more
than, as you said, society, teachers, dogma, conformity of structure.
Yeah, I think that's absolutely right.
I think from the creativity point of view as a little girl, I was always making
things.
That was much more enjoyable to me than anything else really.
And then of course I went into jewelry.
I taught jewelry making.
I had a business teaching jewelry making and creating jewelry.
It was all about getting people to...
express themselves through color and through shape and through texture, none of
which had been taught.
And it was just literally, I was literally just making, making things up on the spot
if that sounds.
I mean, that sounds a bit disrespectful in a sense, because actually, I was, I was
good at it, I still am.
But it was all about just almost like drawing information from somewhere that
I'd stored up.
But again, it was all about emotions.
It was all about expressing.
And the colors that I wear, the clothes that I wear, they're all about the ability
to just to bring brightness and light and joy into everything that I do, everything
that's around me.
And I find joy in beauty.
And beauty for me isn't about the perfection or the person who looks
wonderful figure and all of that.
Beauty is about how you feel.
And if something makes you feel deeper or feel warmer or feel more whole and more
protected, that's beautiful to me.
And so anything that I can do that will create that for somebody else is always
going to be what sparks
Yep.
I like that.
That makes a lot of sense.
And your description of beauty, I completely relate to as well.
I was a photographer.
I am a photographer.
And first time I picked up a camera, it made sense to frame people in the right
space, as you see on TV and magazines.
It's just natural.
So I can understand that.
And the idea of things being beautiful.
I think, you know, walking down the street and you see the
the grass and the weeds growing up through the cracks in the pavement.
There is an element of beauty in there.
And it is all around us.
And I love that beauty is important to you because beauty is love.
Beauty is magical.
It really is something very precious.
I loved what you said there.
Going back to finding out that you had ADHD, how did that work?
It was an interesting one because it was a question that somebody asked me and on a,
as I said, been looking at it with Andrew, with our eldest son, because in some ways
he's very like me, in other ways he's very like his Dad.
But quite a few of the things had resonated when he started, particularly he
and his wife, they started to watch a comedy series and it was all about, it was
the husband talking about the wife and...
how he would find her doing whatever it was.
And that would resonate for Simone, my daughter -in -law, in how Andrew was.
But actually, I would think, do you know what?
That's what I do, you know, beginning to recognize these things.
And then I was on a business call, actually, which was a sales call.
And the lady who I was talking to, she told me at the beginning that she was
ADHD, and she just said, I might not concentrate too well.
And I did a couple of things, which I normally do.
And she noticed and something resonated for her.
And she said, have you ever looked at yourself?
And at that point, I think I'd been, I don't think I'd been open to it just
because again, looking back at our children's early years, which was when
ADHD was first talked about and with such a negative connotation around it.
that I hadn't, I don't think I'd even allowed myself to go down there.
I didn't even explore what it was all about.
It was only because of Andrew that I'd started to explore.
And I sort of just happened to mention something to him and he then showed me
where I could look, who I could talk to, how I could explore that.
And I went to see my own doctor about it.
And just then everything, it was literally like,
It was just amazing.
Everything fell into place.
I was just, it was in 24 hours.
Almost my whole life had sort of passed in front of me and it had all fallen into
place.
And of course the doctor was talking about, you know, there's various points
that you have to fit into this category and that category and what this affects
you.
And, and I said to him, you know, it's not really about me needing extra help or me
wanting to go and get, you know, diagnosed so that.
I can go and claim some kind of benefit or something like that.
It's more about understanding what is it?
How does it affect your brain patterns?
How does it affect your emotions and how you behave?
And then how can I use that to my advantage?
What sort of help can I help myself with?
And also what can I say to other people and how can they understand it for my
husband as well?
For Dirk, it was like,
To begin with, he was thinking, well, it's a bit odd, isn't it?
But actually, it began to make real sense to him too.
And it's enabled me to sort of recognise where I can...
introduce things or where I can respect his needs in a new way.
So how we can help each other so that we can really sort of bring the best out of
each other.
And so you've, it's given you tools to understand the ways that you process, the
ways that you function.
and that then gives you an appreciation of how you can take that one step further.
That must be really empowering because I'm going to hazard that you were, you were on
your back foot.
You certainly said as a kid, you were, you were on your back foot.
You weren't intelligent.
You weren't this.
You weren't that because society told you.
but now you're able to use that.
So how has that changed your confidence and your approach to people, relationships
and things like that?
One of the first things that it helped me to do was to really, to really fully
accept that, that I work in the way that I work for a reason and it's not a bad
reason.
There's lots of good things about it.
So I began to think, do you know what, if that's how your brain works, then use it
like that.
You know, do more of what you're good at.
You know, put yourself in situations that you're going to really show your...
your own superpower, if you like, you're going to be able to really help and
support other people.
And then it also made me realize that there are things that I was just taking
responsibility for because I could do them.
Not because I should be doing them, but because I could.
And because I don't need a lot of sleep, because I can spin a lot of plates,
because I can put my hand to lots of things.
I was doing that, but that was actually limiting.
my growth and limiting the ability to grow my business.
And so one of the biggest decisions for me, which involved an investment and that
was a, because I've invested badly in support before it was quite a hard thing,
but I recognise the fact that if I didn't make a decision to take some more help and
to say, actually, I need somebody else to do that bit, then the business would just
stay at the same level it was.
And I've
and I know that there's a lot more people out there that need help and support that
I can give them, but I wasn't going to be able to do it if I didn't make some
changes.
So bringing in some help and admitting that I needed that help and that it was
okay to do that, it was okay to admit that I needed that help, has made a big
difference already in the step forward in that I've been able to spend time this
week concentrating on the things that I want to do, that I love to do, that I'm
good at.
and that I need to expand in and grow in.
It's definitely helped me understand my son and acknowledge that, you know, his
journey through life was chaotic and difficult.
There were times of great difficulty.
And I had felt like a complete failure when I looked at those times and I'd
thought, you know, that I'd let him down.
and if only things had been different.
But now I know that we've got something in common that's really precious.
And there's an understanding of each other.
There always was, that's the thing.
There was always this closeness.
And one of the hugely wonderful things to me is that of our four children who are
all so different, I know that each of them...
knows how much I love them.
We have communication between us, we talk, we develop things together, we go through
difficulties together.
And I know everything about them.
I know they would tell me anything, literally they would tell me anything.
And I know that that's not true for many people.
And so although this has been that situation with Andrew, that worry that I'd
let him down, there was still this closeness.
But now it feels like...
There's an even deeper closeness.
There's a oneness.
There's a way that we can support each other in a different way.
And also a way that I can support his wife too, because now I understand some of the
difficulties that she's probably facing.
And how particularly when they have their little one that they're expecting, how
that might be a challenge, you know, and there might be, we need to do something
there.
It's helped me recognize things in my own.
I've got seven brothers and sisters and
It's really interesting reflecting on the relationships I've had with them and how
they felt or how we've got on and which ones we've got on better with.
We all go on holiday with each other every year.
We get on well, but there's those that you get on better with than others, and
understanding what's going on for them in their lives.
I almost feel like a little girl who's been given a present and it's unlocked.
It's like a key to a treasure box.
When I was little, I collected beads and I've still got them.
And if you look at them, some of them are bits of things that fell out of my nana's
brooch and plastic beads that I got from a sweep packet or something.
And there's nothing very special about them, but they're very special to me
because they were my security.
I used to go and sit and look at them when I was confused about life.
And now I feel like somebody's given me a whole treasure box full of all sorts of
things.
that I can explore and look at and get out and decide whether I want to keep or not.
And that's really fascinating.
So you're curious.
There's definitely a curiousness there.
Has that always been there or is that just something that has appeared as you've
understood more of who you are or how you are?
And there's always been a bit of a curiosity inside me about who I am and why
I do the things I do.
And I know that there's been a curiosity in the children at times.
They've like, why, what are you doing?
Well, you know, there's been that sort of curiosity about it, but puzzlement,
because I didn't have any answers.
Now I feel like the curiosity about myself is growing.
but it's growing in a way that's unlocking the understanding of why.
But it's also making me curious about other people and why do they behave in the
way that they behave.
Because literally, if you look at everybody that you meet, we're all sort of
a preacher of our past.
There are things in our past that have made us how we are and how we're like.
But at the same time,
There's an innate quality in us that's created, that's there right at the
beginning, that nobody else is like, that's individual, that's unique.
And there's something in me that wants to unlock that for them, for other people, to
find the thing that will make them run.
You know, I meet, and you do, you know, we meet so many people in our lives who've
got such a passion, such a vision, such an emotional desire.
to go forward and to help other people, to help them change and to help them grow.
But quite often they put blocks in their own way and they don't access the part of
them that would really spur them forward and get them taking action.
And now I feel like I want to understand why so that I can help them unlock that
part of them and so that they can access whatever their superpower is.
And...
enable themselves to really change the world, to really get out there and meet
the people they should meet and change the lives that they should change.
Because at the end of the day, there's something in me that believes all of us
have a calling.
It's up to us to listen to it.
If we don't listen to it, you know what, we're never going to find the fulfillment
that we are capable of.
But if we will listen to that calling and answer it and go and do that.
and take that sort of step forward, then the fulfillment that you get in life is so
much more powerful.
It's so much bigger, it's so much wider, it's so much more rewarding.
completely relate to this wanting to know more and feeling there's more and then
choosing it.
Because it's not easy to choose to become expansive, to choose to leave those old
patterns behind, especially when you've had that drummed into you.
You're a problem child.
You don't conform.
You're this, you're that, the other.
And then, you know, all those kinds of things are incredibly limiting for people.
But you've not allowed that.
And certainly when you, when you got diagnosed with that, you thought, yay, I
know what I am.
I've got more sense of who I am, but you've, you've, you're allowing that
you're giving yourself permission to expand.
I mean, I love the idea of the cookie box being opened Pandora's box being opened
and you can do whatever you want.
and that curiosity.
I want to go back a little bit and look at asking about ADHD, whether you've got it.
What's the kind of conversations you want or who do you want to talk to, to get a
sense of, of whether, whether you are struggling with ADHD.
I think think of all, there's actually a lot more help and support now and there
are people, there are organisations who you can talk to.
I'm just trying to think what the website is, but we'll have to find it and add it.
But there is a sort of self diagnosis route that you can follow.
There's quite a lot of stuff on YouTube, of course, as well, that people start
talking about it.
But I would say don't get lost down rabbit holes, which you're probably quite used to
doing.
Just really kind of look for people who are ADHD or who are sort of qualified in
working with people.
And what I found is, and what's most interesting is that most people, it seems
to me anyway,
that work successfully with people who have ADHD are themselves ADHD.
So, but the first thing literally goes to your doctor.
They will give you a form to fill in and it's an interesting form because if you
have,
got any of the traits, you'll know them, you'll know them.
You know, it's sort of you tick which ones work for you know, are suitable for you.
Well, you wouldn't even be looking at that form if some of them weren't, I can tell
you that now.
And when you do look at it, you just honestly, you'll just laugh.
If you've got any of those traits, you'd be just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, maybe that's not quite so strong, but that one is.
And that in itself, just doing that is massively releasing.
because suddenly, almost like on this official document, there's a recognition
of a personality type, of a behavioral sort of experience that you've had.
And even just doing that makes you realise that you're not odd, that you're not
strange, and that you are, you're just working a different way.
if you're asking yourself those questions or, and it may not be ADHD, it could be
anything.
It could be any other kind of neurodivergent experience that you've had.
If, if you know that there are times when you feel different and you don't
understand it, then I would definitely say, speak to somebody, you know, talk to
us, contact us, find somebody that you can talk to that you can actually express
yourself to and say,
what it is that you feel is different.
Because believe me, those differences create a space for you to achieve
something dynamic and something new and something fresh.
And it isn't a hindrance.
It's not a hindrance once you understand how you work.
It's the opposite.
It's like taking the lid off a whole new beginning and taking you into a space that
is...
changing your world and it will change the world of other people around you.
So, but that's the first thing I would do, literally talk to the doctor and ask them.
Don't take no for an answer by the way, because some of them will say, no, no, no,
we haven't got time for that.
Just say it's my right.
It's my right and I want to explore this because I don't think I'm achieving my
full potential and I want to.
And it's really worth reaching out to, obviously you could reach out here, but
you could also reach out to similar places where there are people who are struggling
or have struggled with it themselves and start talking to them.
Because once you understand yourself, you'll have the confidence to stop the
criticism and to not live underneath it anymore.
If you've been living your life,
with constant nagging or criticism or being blamed for things that you're not
achieving that they think you should have achieved.
If that's how you've been living your life, then you can't talk to those people,
not yet.
But once you've found somebody that you can talk to about it and once you've
understood yourself and how you work, it's amazing the difference that you can go
back and start living in who you really are.
and appreciating who you really are and seeing the benefits in it.
And you know, once you start doing that, what I've noticed is that other people
start recognising your gifts rather than the things they thought were problems.
And it's just because you're living in it now and you're appreciating it.
So, but that's the, I would definitely go to that website first and listen to this
guy.
I think he was really, really helpful to me.
Yeah, we'll put that information in the show notes for that.
Was there shame that you weren't, let's call it normal, that society, school said
you're not good enough and things like that?
Did you beat yourself up for that kind of lack, perceived lack that society was
throwing you away?
That's a really interesting question for me.
There were times that I did, just because of the situation in our area, the
education system.
I'm number six child in our family, and between number five and number six going
to high school, comprehensive schools were created.
And the local grammar school that my sisters had gone to became a...
11 form entry comprehensive school overnight and it drew children from all
over the place and it became a very difficult school to be in.
My parents wouldn't send me there as well.
So I actually went to an all girls direct grant school where my mom and dad had to
give some money for it.
They didn't pay the whole amount, you know, because a certain amount paid, but
it was a huge sacrifice for them.
And so I found it very difficult to talk about the struggles.
because I didn't want them to feel that I was letting them down.
So I sort of kept an awful lot to myself, bullying that went on.
And also just things like my teacher telling me I'd gotten no imagination and
all of these things.
I just sort of just kept that all to myself, really.
So I'd look at my next sister down, Katie, and she was very academic.
Her writing was beautiful and all of them.
My writing was very untidy.
And I would feel that she was...
Yeah, just more academic than me and that I just couldn't match up to that.
But I was fortunate enough to be very, very good at maths and she wasn't.
So I think I kind of excused the other things and sort of thought, well, that's,
that's okay, because that's what I'm good at.
And, and I think, to be honest, I think because underneath it all, I've always
known how much loved I am.
That really carried me through in a lot of ways.
So even when I didn't quite feel I was fitting in, I knew at home that I was
loved.
So that really, really helped me sort of go through those years.
But shame came more in.
It wasn't that I felt shame that somebody else caused that, but there was that kind
of sense of failure that I wasn't achieving what I thought I ought to be
able to achieve.
And as I say, I would just excuse it and say, well, I'm, you know.
I'm just not that academic.
But truthfully, had I had the support that I could have had now, I probably would
have achieved the same results that she did, I think, and all the others did.
My dad was a little bit, for my dad, 100 % was good, 95 % wasn't.
He was a real, and that was a struggle.
There were times when I found that really hard and it wasn't until he...
Not long before he died, really, that I fully understood where that came from
because of his dad being so oppressive.
My dad wanted to give us all the opportunities he could do and his way of
doing that was to try and open these doors for us.
But I do think it does have, you know, shame has such an important role in all of
this.
And I think there's a lot of people out there just because they don't understand
themselves and the people who love them don't understand them either.
And it can really stop you from achieving your full potential if that's where you're
at.
Thank you for that, Angela.
I think you were, it sounds like you were very blessed with your family, just having
that love and the support.
And that is incredibly important, isn't it?
How are you able to make sense of it and use your newfound superpowers?
What are you experiencing that is really helping you move forwards?
I think most of all I'm experiencing a real joy in who I am.
Probably not that I didn't enjoy who I was before.
I've always valued the gifts that I've got and I know that I've been able to help
other people and be able to do things for other people that maybe they couldn't do.
I mean that's got me into difficult situations at times because I've
volunteered to do something without thinking in fact that actually I will hate
doing that thing.
just because, you know, my hands got up.
But what it's given me now is a huge desire, even more than it was before, to
help people really find their full fulfillment, to really achieve what
they're capable of, no matter what bars may have been put in their path
beforehand, and may have been sort of the way that they've been limited growing up.
You know, I just want to...
I want to get out there more.
I want to enable other people to be seen, to be heard, to make sure that they are
reaching the people they should be reaching.
And I think it's given me really to put fuel in my tank.
If I was firing on 10 cylinders before I'm now firing on 20.
But because it's made me realize what my limitations are also, and therefore that I
need help with those things, that's given me, I think, the scope to be able to
to do more and to achieve more.
Because now I don't feel that who I am is a bit odd.
Now I feel like that I am who I'm supposed to be.
And that means I need to help other people to be who they're supposed to be.
And if that means that if they can be who they're supposed to be by helping me to
achieve what I can achieve.
then that's even better, isn't it?
Because I'm opening doors for them on the other side as well.
So there's, yeah, I just, I just feel really excited.
I feel like I've got a whole new energy.
I already believed in what I was doing.
and things were happening, but I didn't really understand them.
Now I couldn't be more committed to it.
And I'm determined to make it a space for anybody who's out there who is not
achieving their full potential, who's been labeled, who's been stuck, who's been
criticised, who's probably not had the same opportunities that I might've had,
then...
I want to see them get those opportunities.
I want to see them finding themselves the confidence to believe in who they are and
just make it possible to open the doors for them.
I think that's wonderful.
And what I'm also sensing from that is you asked for help.
You realized something wasn't right or you got an inclination and you asked for help.
And what you're surrounding yourself with people who can tap in and help you where
you're not perfect, where they can do the job better.
And that's supporting you to help other people.
So you're building that raft around you to help other people.
I had to do that.
I had to ask for help and it's very, very hard.
Very hard for me to do that.
But yeah, I had, when I did, so many things changed.
I think you're giving people permission to say, hey, something's not right.
Ask for help.
And I think that just oils the cogs, doesn't it?
Makes it easier for you, makes it easier for everybody when they go, let's have a
look at this.
What's not working?
Why are things not working in my life?
What's wrong?
and yeah, that's where the magic is.
Daring to be that little bit vulnerable and then saying, I want some help.
was the most significant thing that you sort of learned or experienced when being
diagnosed with ADHD?
the most significant thing was that I had been aware really for a long time that I
was different from most of my family and most of the people around me.
But I didn't know what to do with it.
So I just...
I built my life around it and used it in whatever way I could.
And I would have questions in my mind going around, but I would never talk about
it.
So I didn't ask anybody else what they thought.
I just, I was just who I was, if you like.
So the most significant thing for me is what a joy it is to find reasons for
things and to understand myself.
And also what a joy is to give other people the opportunity to do the same
thing and to encourage them to do the same thing.
So, and it could, and it doesn't really matter what it is that you're confused
about or what you're puzzled about or what the end result is.
But I think it's just given me a sort of an energy around opening the door for
other people to explore themselves in a greater way and to not accept.
the status quo and not to accept the things that people said.
And they could have said this, you know, 30, 40, 50 years ago, however it is.
And you could have lived your life based on what other people said.
And I've been fortunate, truly fortunate to have had people around me who've seen,
just who've seen good things in me and who've encouraged me to do the things that
I've done.
And I don't know, I don't know what I would have done had I been diagnosed at
school and maybe life would have been completely different, but I feel like I
have been very fortunate and I'm very grateful for the love and the support that
I've had in different ways.
But now I feel even more grateful because I feel like now understanding and knowing
who I am and how I work, I can really appreciate even more what they do for me
and what they have done.
And now I can even ask in a new way.
But I ask through confidence now.
I don't ask through apology.
You know, I ask because I know who I am and I know what will make me work better
and I know how I'll be able to achieve more.
And I think that's been a huge step forward for me that I don't need to
apologize or feel bad about asking for something.
It's good to ask because I recognize that I need.
And, you know, again, that's something I would love to help other people to do, to
find what is it that you need?
And the fact that if you need it, that's not because you're a failure.
That's just because you are who you are.
You know, we've all got gifts.
We've all got strengths.
We've all got,
ways that we can support and help other people, but we've also got needs and
weaknesses and things that we're not so good at.
And understanding and accepting all of that doesn't mean, it means that you're
accepting your greatness and acknowledging your weakness and that both are really
good.
And I think at the end of the day, if we could do everything, we'd be terrible
people to live with.
We'd be awful, wouldn't we?
If we could do everything, if we were perfect with everything.
Nobody would want to be off rent, you know, because they feel like complete
disasters.
So actually acknowledging that there are weaknesses then you can't do everything.
It's really helpful to the other people around you.
I think that is one of the most brilliant things I've heard for a long time.
I love that because I'm not proud of aspects of who I am.
I don't have the tidiest house.
I don't have certain things.
I'm not saying I'm going to immediately ask for someone to come and move in with
me and be my cleaner, but I think it's really important to be aware of those
weaknesses and those bits and get people to help you with them.
Whether it's you helping each other, certainly in that relationship, you said
your husband was able to do the day to day cleaning and then you would do the once a
year cleaning when he took them all away and things like that.
It is a teamwork and I love the way you phrase that.
Don't be ashamed, don't be sad, don't be embarrassed about having to ask for help
because two people work much better than one person or a team even better still.
And I think that's really, really important.
Did you have any unhealthy coping strategies or healthy coping strategies as
ways of managing how you
did things and how you overcame things.
I did have sort of unhealthy strategies around sleep.
That has always been a problem.
And so I went through a period of convincing myself that I would just have
to get up.
And so I would, you know, as soon as I woke up in the night, I would get up and
go and get myself a cup of tea and sort of listen to a story or something.
And I'd sort of convinced myself that that was because I couldn't get back to sleep
again.
And I was constantly quite tired, but also very driven.
So I could still work at quite a high level.
But it wasn't very healthy for me, should we say.
And so I'd started to develop some strategies around that.
And without, I realised I couldn't switch off.
So the only way I could switch off was to listen to an audio book.
And so I'd...
sort of developed this strategy of using earphones and listening to audible at
nighttime.
But it was really interesting because I had to be quite careful what I was
listening to.
It couldn't be too interesting.
And it couldn't be.
If I put the time, I put the timer on and if I put the timer on for like 15 minutes,
a half an hour, my brain said, well, you can stay away long enough to listen to
this.
So I would still stay awake and it wouldn't help me at all.
And then I'd put it on for another half hour and then I'd be awake for another
half hour.
But then I realised that if I put it on for 60 minutes, my brain would say, you'll
never stay awake for that long.
And actually I would fall asleep straight away.
So I developed this strategy, which my husband didn't even know I was doing
because I was very quietly putting an earphone in my ear.
But that's actually been probably one of the best strategies.
I had ever thought of and now I know why I couldn't switch off, but now I know the
way that I can.
And so, you know, that's something that I would say to other people if they have
that problem, then for me, it's medieval mysteries that I can listen to at night
time.
And so, and it takes a long, long time to finish the book, but I have to keep going
back to the bit that I fell asleep in, but it's a brilliant way for me to be able to
turn off.
So that's...
that kind of was developed by accident, but it's definitely worth a try.
So Angela, tell me a little about your...
job and your business and what you do because you've talked about helping people
and things like that and I know this is a passion of yours.
Yeah, so the business itself is called Succeed From the Start.
And the story behind it was literally having discovered myself and pouring money
down the drain, asking all the wrong people to help me.
And then realizing that I wasn't alone.
And there was a lot of other people who'd done the same thing during lockdown.
So I started the business with a view to help those who are heart led, those who
are passion driven, who know that they've got a mission, who know that they want to
change people's lives.
And for whom it's actually their first calling.
So yes, of course they want to earn a living.
Yes, they need to pay their bills.
But what drives them forward is a need to change people's lives and to bring
transformation.
And that's, most of those people or many of those people find it difficult to ask
for money.
They find it difficult to know what to charge anyway.
And they also often find it difficult to structure their ideas.
And I began to hear...
People who kept saying, you've got to identify this niche, this very specific
niche, and you can only work in that specific niche.
And the more that I listened, the more that I realized that that's not true.
That for many of us who are heart led, who have that passion inside of us, we can
actually help an awful lot of people.
It's the change that we make that's the most important.
And that once you start talking about the change that you make in people's lives.
the right people that draw towards you, the right people are brought towards you.
So Succeed from the Start is all about being part of a community that will help
and support you to help others to make the change that you can make.
And so it gives all the structure around the business.
It's got the technical side.
So all the sort of stuff that you need, like email marketing and social media
posts and all of those things, landing pages, all the bits that often
Those of us who are heart led find difficult or we get a little bit
overwhelmed by.
All our members have access to all of that where they get all the support that they
need to run those systems.
And if they want to, people to help them run them as well.
So support to actually do the work for them if that's what they want.
And then there's also course building software, but most of all, it's the
support that you get of being part of a network of others.
who are purpose -driven, who will support you and answer your questions, and who
will get alongside you if you're struggling, who will lift you up if you
feel like you're failing, with very much the view that together we're stronger and
that together we rise.
And it's not about competition.
It's not about squashing people out of the way.
It's about building each other up.
and drawing strength from each other and knowledge and information.
And if I've learned something, then you can learn it too.
And vice versa is a gift to each other.
And that for me inspires the whole community.
And that's why I'm determined for it to grow as big as it can grow in a way where
everybody feels supported and nobody gets dropped through the cracks.
Brilliant.
I love it.
Remind me again what it's called and then where can we find you and find out more
about you and your business.
So it's called Succeed From The Start and we have a website which is
SucceedFromTheStart .com And you can email me at SucceedFromTheStart at gmail .com.
Or of course you can find me on mostly LinkedIn and Facebook, although I'm on
Instagram as well.
But if you actually use the hashtag SucceedFromTheStart, you'll find us on
Google if you search for Succeed From The Start too.
And there's lots of ways to get in touch.
And we'd love to hear from you and find out how we can help you succeed.
and get your message out there and make sure that you're reaching the people that
you should.
Wonderful.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for that Angela.
That is great.
And then one last question.
I think you've probably answered this, but what is your superpower that you've gained
from your awakening?
Do you know, I think it's the ability to recognise that I can go as far as I want
to, that I have the capacity to achieve anything that I turn my hand to.
And I think that the excitement in recognizing the power of my brain to make
connections that I didn't even know were there, it's...
It's opened so many doors and it's opening up even more now.
So that's hugely rewarding.
Lovely.
Thank you.
Well, thank you ever so much for your time with us today.
I've thoroughly enjoyed chatting to you and I think it's been a wonderful message
to help people who are wondering what is wrong with their life when really there's
nothing wrong.
They're just thinking differently and being differently.
So thank you very much for sharing that today.
Thank you for having me, it's been great.
Thank you for listening to this episode of The Crucible, Conversations for the
Curious.
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