HVF015 – Wendy May

Tony Winyard 0:00
Happy versus flourishing Episode 15

Wendy May 0:04
There's a lot of brain science that says we are able to more successfully and more sustainably make really difficult life behaviour changes. If we're supported by other human beings, if we're feel connected, if we feel accountable if we are visible, and if we can relate and resonate with other people that are going through similar challenges.

Tony Winyard 0:31
That is the voice of Wendy May, who is a purpose coach and a conscious leadership consultant. And we're gonna hear a lot more from Wendy in this week's episode, welcome to the podcast where we aim to give you ideas on how you can improve aspects of your life to have a generally a better quality of life. If you liked the show, why not subscribe, leave a review. And hope you enjoy this week's episode with Wendy May. Happy vs flourish in my guest today, Wendy May. How are you Wendy?

Wendy May 1:07
I'm very good. Thanks.

Tony Winyard 1:10
And you're somewhere pretty exotic?

Wendy May 1:13
I guess you could say that. Yeah, I'm in Thailand right now on this island called Ko Pha Ngan.

Tony Winyard 1:18
And all the places that someone has to see through this whole pandemic, I think that's one of the places I would prefer, if I could choose from many places on earth. That's a pretty good choice.

Wendy May 1:31
I definitely agree. I feel very, very blessed to be here in general, and especially during this time.

Tony Winyard 1:39
How long have you been there?

Wendy May 1:40
I've been coming and going from Thailand since 2015. When I left my corporate job. And I've been pretty stable here for the last two years, I would say. And normally I do travel back and forth to the US where my family lives. But of course, this year has been not a typical year. So I've been pretty much here continuously for the past two years, more or less.

Tony Winyard 2:05
You talked about when you left your your corporate job. So what was it you were doing previously,

Wendy May 2:10
when I was working in San Francisco, I did a bunch of different things. The most recent job I had was in a management consulting firm, where I was doing what they call leadership and organisational development, which is a fancy way of saying, working with a lot of executives on their interpersonal issues, dealing with human beings and facilitating process and helping people make really difficult emotional decisions. Yeah, so making people play nice together, basically.

Tony Winyard 2:43
Had you been doing that for long?

Wendy May 2:45
Yeah, I'd spent about 15 years in corporate and doing various roles. I worked internally as well in leadership development role where I was doing more training, development and instructional design, working with executives, as a coach and as a facilitator and instructor. And, yeah, worked in house worked as a consultant and eventually decided to go independent.

Tony Winyard 3:10
What was the catalyst for that change to make you want to leave?

Wendy May 3:16
Yeah, it's funny, everybody loves to ask what was the moment you know, you decided, and honestly, I can't say that there was one defining moment where I made sort of an abrupt change in my life. I think that, from the outside looking in, it always looks like that. Because that's what you can observe. Right? You can observe the fact that, okay, I was in a corporate job, living in a condo in San Francisco, and you know, working this office job, and then I popped out and decided to travel the world as a nomad and work for myself and build my own business. But what's observable seems quite abrupt, but I would say the process of getting to that point was over many years, you know, it was many years of observing myself being Yeah, exhausted, unsatisfied. It was, yeah, it's an accumulation of experiences or sort of receiving a kind of you get to a point where you get enough signals where you're like, Okay, I can't ignore this anymore. You know, so you start to get messages and they pile up and they pile up and they pile up. And eventually you're like, Okay, I need to actually respond to this now and do something different with my life.

Tony Winyard 4:28
I just wonder how different life became once you've made that change.

Wendy May 4:33
I mean, it was a gradual change, I would say, because in the beginning, I was still doing a lot of similar work. I was just doing it remotely. So I kept doing very similar work with some of my old clients. And over time, I started branching out into different things. So I think this is the thing about making changes is that if you don't want to shock your system into going into fear response, it's good to kind of take baby steps. So I actually kind of started my new life before I left the old one, in the sense that I was already doing a bit of work outside of my day job. And that sort of, there was a proof of concept for me actually, that people were approaching me for this without doing any marketing without having established a business of my own that already people were from my network, friends of friends, were approaching me and saying, Hey, can you help me with this? And that, to me was it was just more information, it kind of built my confidence to say, Hey, I can actually leave my corporate job and go out on my own.

Tony Winyard 5:41
And so what is it that you do now? And how do you help people?

Wendy May 5:46
There's so many different things that I do. It's kind of difficult to say in a brief statement, but yeah, I mean, when I look at the last five years, I've done a lot of different things. I mean, in the beginning, I was doing executive coaching, I was still doing a bit of organisational design and organisational development as a contractor and a consultant. I've been running women's retreats. So I had a retreat programme called Life reboot, which was basically reaching a hand behind and helping other women, specifically who were in similar positions, as I had been in sort of saying, okay, I don't really know what I want to do with my life. But I know this isn't it helped me to change, right? So I was running immersion retreats, these intensive one week, deep dives, with small groups of people 10 to 12 people at a time. So that was something that I was doing. I also started an online business, selling biodegradable glitter. So became very passionate around sustainability and sort of eco friendly products. And just in my travels, started getting introduced to people who were also interested in that and had the inspiration to start a glitter brand called glitter revolution. Yeah, and then the last two years, I've really been focused on regenerative purpose, which is now a book and an audio book, as well as turning into a group coaching experience. So there's just yeah, many different things that are going on.

Tony Winyard 7:21
And so when you when you just mentioned about regenerative purpose, what is that?

Wendy May 7:28
Well, it's a philosophy, I would say it's a philosophy, and it's a methodology. It's a way of looking at the work that we do in the world from a slightly different lens. So I would say, conventional purpose usually talks about purpose being something that is my purpose or your purpose, right, we talk about it as being something that's connected to our identity as an individual. And my take on it is a bit different than that. So regenerative purpose is something that's much more fluid. So it's not something that's fixed that you can define and diagnose and sort of just that's it. It's something that changes. It's not necessarily about the form that it takes. Because often when people talk about purpose, they think about, okay, what's the business? I'm going to start? What is the project I'm going to see through? Or what's the partnership, or what's the product, and those are all forms that purpose can take. But I guess my belief, and what I've observed with my clients is that when we say we want purpose in life, it's really not the form that we're seeking. It's the experience, it's a feeling of being alive, a feeling of being activated, a feeling of being engaged and aligned, right feeling that you're of use, right that life, and you are in a conversation together, right? So there's a bunch of different shifts in the perspective on purpose that regenerative purpose brings. And it's also a process. So in terms of the coaching that I'm doing and working with people, there is a whole methodology around techniques and tools and practices that we can use to help evoke this feeling of being on purpose, more and more. So this is the thing that I'm developing. And I think what's really different about it is that for me, it needs to be done in community. And there's a lot of brain science that says, we are able to more successfully and more sustainably make really difficult life behaviour changes. If we're supported by other human beings, if we're feel connected, if we feel accountable if we are visible, and if we can relate and resonate with other people that are going through similar challenges. So the process of regeneration This is very much a collaborative process.

Tony Winyard 10:05
You mentioned about sometimes doing retreats? So do you have a number of people say on a retreat, or you're working with all of them together on this?

Wendy May 10:16
Yeah, I mean, honestly, since COVID, I haven't been doing retreats. But my idea is to take the experience that used to be in an in person retreat and bring it to the online world. And it is very much a co created experience. So it's not just like, I'm the teacher or facilitator, downloading wisdom to the students, right, it's much more of a shared space where everybody's bringing their own wisdom from their own experiences. And my job is basically to guide that process, right to set up the structure and to ask the right questions. But in terms of the content, we're really all learning from each other, as well as supporting each other in the process of making big life changes.

Tony Winyard 11:06
Typically, the people that come to this, are they from all sorts of different backgrounds and industries? Or do you concentrate on a particular sector? Or how does it work?

Wendy May 11:17
You know, to be honest, I don't know, I am sort of in an experimental phase right now with shifting my work from the in person retreat space to an online community space. So I, it's an open question, I'm sort of waiting to see what life is going to bring me, I don't have a specific person in mind, I feel that the people who are attracted to me into my work, somehow magically find me because they just resonate with the message or the approach. And I trust that, you know, so I don't really have like a traditional marketing plan with target market or segments or anything like that, I just kind of speak from my heart and put it out there and see who comes.

Tony Winyard 12:03
You mentioned before about how you have a different idea around purpose and the kind of conventional way that people tend to think about it. So when you put this across to the people you're working with how do they respond, because I think most people have this kind of set idea of what your purpose is all about?

Wendy May 12:26
Yeah, I think it can be challenging for some people to to get I mean, for most people, because it's really counter to what we've been taught about purpose, right. And it's very counter to what we've been taught in school in general, which is very much a masculine, linear, logical, step wise, goal oriented process, right? This is kind of what our education system is based on that, you know, A to B, B to C, C to D, right? It's very much, you know, you you have a plan, a strategic plan for five to 10 years, and then you figure out the tactics to get yourself to that goal. And this is turning that completely on its head. So it's definitely kind of mind spinning for people to, to really understand. But then I think that the trick is, beyond the understanding, it's really practising. So yeah, I expect that people when they first hear about this, they're going to go kind of like, Huh, you know, most people have that reaction. But then as people start to dig into it more, I've gotten a lot of positive feedback about it, where I think people have the experience of feeling relaxation, and relief, when they start to understand purpose like this. Because just like with everything in life, we can get really attached to needing to do something to be, I don't know, to be conscious, to be spiritual, to be contributing to be worthy, all of these different things. And what this does is basically say, hey, you don't have to try so hard. You know, you can chill out. Purpose is happening anyway. And yeah, there are things that you can do to work on yourself to plug into that more. But also, you don't have to push that. You know that it's all kind of happening in its own time. So that's the overall thing that I hear from people when they learn about this. They're like, Oh, wow, I feel such a relief, right to understand purpose in this way.

Tony Winyard 14:36
When did the book come out?

Wendy May 14:38
published in October of 2019.

Tony Winyard 14:41
What kind of response has it had?

Wendy May 14:44
It's funny because I feel like the book was actually written for this year. When I go back and read parts of it myself, I think, Wow, I can't believe I wrote this before the pandemic because so much of what's in it really speaks to To the Zeitgeist of the times, in terms of this, I think we've all collectively been going through this process of reorienting ourselves, right going through loss and grief and a sense of just disorientation. And a lot of the book really speaks to that in terms of, Okay, how do I find my ground? How do I find my place? How can I engage in what's happening in the world right now without being completely flooded and overwhelmed by all of the things that need to be fixed, right, all of the things that we can look around and see, okay, this isn't good. And this isn't good. And it's so easy to get caught up in stress and anxiety about that. But this really gives people a way to say, Okay, I can take part, I can choose to step into this, but also stay centred, and take care of myself and be nourished and be relaxed about the whole process.

Tony Winyard 15:59
In the process of writing that book, did it take you a long time to kind of pull these ideas together and express them in a way that would be understandable? And how long did it take?

Wendy May 16:15
The physical process took about 10 months. But I would say, you know, similar to what you were asking before about my own life change. I think that the seeds of it were percolating much earlier than that, you know, because when I started to write the book, what I did was I actually just dumped all of the blog articles that I had written over the past four years into a Word document. And so a lot of the raw material was there. But then I was leaving myself voice notes, you know, waking up in the middle of the night at 3am, and having ideas coming through to me and needing to capture them, and then somehow massaging that into sentences and paragraphs and pages. So yeah, it was it was happening on many levels, I think over quite a long period of time. But yeah, the physical process was about 10 months, from the time that I started to sit down and actually put words on paper, to the point where it was actually, you know, printed and bound. And, you know, I could hand it to someone.

Tony Winyard 17:14
And is the book aimed at a particular type of person?

Wendy May 17:19
I would say it's, it's for anybody who wants to contribute, and wants to create a better world, and is looking for guidance on how to do that in a way that is infused with both ease and engagement.

Tony Winyard 17:37
You said that you you're doing a number of things, you're not kind of just doing any, you know, just coaching, for example, is just doing workshops, is it sounds that you've got a very unstressed life. And I get an impression that's very deliberate?

Wendy May 17:58
I love it. I work when I want to work, I work on things that light me up. If I don't feel like working, I don't work. And I get to choose the people and the projects that I feel like, are aligned, you know, that my heart says yes to, and it's not from a place of fear. And it's not from a place of trying to push to reach a goal. It's really feels much more organic, that I'm listening to life and I'm paying attention to what's coming to me and being able to filter and say yes or no.

Tony Winyard 18:31
You mentioned about the blog post that kind of helped came together to help form this book. One of the things I was reading on your website, you mentioned you talk about privilege. It seems to me that you've got a different take on privilege than many people have.

Wendy May 18:51
That's possible, I'm not sure.

Tony Winyard 18:54
What is your take on it?

Wendy May 18:59
When I think about privilege, as it relates to purpose, one of the things that comes to mind is that privilege is something that we feel a lot of weight of guilt or shame around. For those of us who have a lot of privilege, it can become such a burden, that we feel paralysed with it. Right. There's this almost sense of unfairness, you know that who who am I to even ask a question about my purpose when there's people who can't afford to feed their families or they're starving, you know, struggling to make ends meet. And I guess the way that I look at privilege is that it is a gift. Like many different kinds of gifts that were given to work with in life. And some of those gifts are earned gifts, right? There's things like skills and talents and abilities that we develop. And then there's unearned gifts that we just you know, by accident of birth, we kind of win the lottery and we have a certain race or gender or nationality. or speak certain languages have educational opportunities and and see all of those things as part of this basket of basically all of those things are assets, they're part of the raw materials that we have to work with. And instead of feeling guilty about having those things, I think the best thing that we can do is to feel grateful for them, and see how we can use them to serve

Tony Winyard 20:31
Your attitude to life, it's very different to conventional or to how most people are, most people just think that they have to work very hard, and they tend to just stay in one place. And money is very important. And often cases seems to be more important than than how much they're really enjoying life. So I wonder is this attitude that you've developed, Do you see that in many other people in your family? Or is there Where do you think this came from? Was it someone that you met along your journey? Maybe in university? or How did this come about?

Wendy May 21:22
I think it's the accumulation of a lot of different experiences. I've done a lot of work to develop myself taken numerous trainings and going on many, many retreats and invested a lot of time to understand this about myself, I would say that the root of it was a shock event that sent me into a deep depression. And that was just it was a breakup, it was the end of a relationship that I thought was it, you know, I thought this was the man that I was going to marry, we were gonna get married and have kids and buy a house in the suburbs and have 2.3 kids. And that dream that I had held on to, for much of my adult life blew up one day. And it left me really at the bottom, you know, at the point where I was in a very depressive state wondering, how am I going to live? You know, I had this very almost, I had lost really the desire to live, not that I was suicidal, exactly. But something close to that. And basically, to climb out of that deep dark hole, I started to find different resources, I started to go to yoga, I started doing meditation, I started taking classes. And, you know, many, many things were poured into my buckets. And it was a lot of unlearning that I had to do, because this personality or this orientation that you described, that was me, also, you know, I was so intent on getting the promotion at work, getting a salary raise, of buying my own place, you know, all of these different status symbols, I spend so much money on handbags and shoes, and just ridiculous things. And at the end of the day, it was really empty inside I was really unfulfilled. I was stressed out my health was terrible, you know, was drinking three coffees a day and not sleeping, working many hours travelling all the time, labouring over PowerPoint presentations, you know, and getting really caught up in feeling like that was important. And, you know, again, it wasn't a sudden, you know, oh, I just suddenly had a 180 and realise that all of this stuff that I cared about is both it was over time that I've sort of built this new understanding of what's really important to me in life.

Tony Winyard 23:59
So I guess you look back on that breakup now as probably the best thing that ever happened?

Wendy May 24:03
Yeah, absolutely. It was the catalyst moment in my life that started the process of so many other explorations, which, I mean, that breakup was four or five years before I actually left my corporate job. So, you know, it was one of the dominoes, I don't know if it was the first one, but it was a big one. And then there was a whole series of things that happened after that, that sort of made me have deeper and deeper realisations and also grow in my own courage and conviction to make a change right after being educated my whole life, you know, by society and by my family that this is what success looks like. And this is what you should be focused on. Having to really deprogram that and say Actually, that's not true in my experience of life.

Tony Winyard 24:50
And so typically in the people that you're helping with your programme with your coach him, whatever are they are you trying to Help them to see that life doesn't necessarily have to be how we all kind of conditioned to think it needs to be in terms of success and materialism and so on. How is it? How, what is your, your approach with people you're working with?

Wendy May 25:15
Yeah. I mean, I would say, in general, with my coaching, I'm not trying to get people to do or see or say anything, what I'm doing is really giving them a safe space to reveal themselves and to discover themselves, because I can't tell anybody else what's true for them. What I can do is, give them a space for them to really ask themselves the hard questions without judgement, and to come from a place of genuine compassion, and curiosity for the process that they're in, as a fellow human being who has lived through a lot of these struggles myself.

Tony Winyard 25:56
You mentioned before about the people that are attracted to you, and so I wonder if it's those type of people that are attracted to you in the first place? Who, who, inside internally, they realise they want to make that kind of change that you have, but it's, for most people, this would be so scary to make that kind of change.

Wendy May 26:16
Yeah. And that's why we need support. You know, there's, I think, I would like to believe that this type of person that you're describing someone who is wanting and willing to make changes in their life is not so rare anymore, especially now that we've been through this experience of what happened in 2020. I think that there's probably a lot more people who are now asking these questions and saying, Okay, what I've been doing isn't working, and I want to do something else. And I need support in that, you know, I need a community or I need a coach, or I need to, you know, give myself some space to really inquire what I really want, and what's important to me, and what are my values? And what kind of life Do I want to have? Basically, I do have the sense that there are a lot more people entertaining that question now.

Tony Winyard 27:08
And you've got this 12 week, collaborative group coaching programme that you mentioned. So how does that work? And what is the objective, for people taking it? What are they going to get by taking this course?

Wendy May 27:23
Yeah, ultimately, it's the objective of that course is to help people to feel more aligned with being on purpose. And the process is really structured around many of the principles that I talk about in my book. So it's a bit of a group coaching meets sharing circle meats, book club experience. And you know, there's live sessions where we go into specific topics, there are assignments for people to do in common, and reflect and also share with each other, to offer feedback to the fellow participants, and to do practices in between the live sessions that help to integrate some of these perspectives into their day to day life, right, because like, we were saying, it's not something that happens overnight. And it's really helpful to have that structure and accountability to help implement some of these things. So that they become our new habits, our new habits of thinking and our new habits of feeling, rather than the old ones makes it super hard to quit an addiction. Just cold turkey, but if we have new, better habits to replace them with it's a little bit easier, I think, especially if you have other people who are doing the same thing at the same time.

Tony Winyard 28:46
You've been living in Thailand for the last few years. How do you see things over the next few years? Is this like your paradise? Or do you see yourself moving around quite a bit What do you think?

Wendy May 28:58
Yeah, that's funny, because I really don't think that far ahead anymore. I mean, this is part of my new perspective on life is that I feel that life is really uncertain. And I don't necessarily think that that's a bad thing anymore. Because I'm really excited to see what's going to happen. So my lifestyle now is very fluid and very mobile. You know, I have a house here that I've paid rent on for a year. But in terms of my personal belongings, all of it could be packed into two suitcases in a backpack, probably within two hours and I could be gone. So there is that flexibility of, you know, whatever happens in life, I have this feeling of being resourced and having options. And that doesn't mean that I can't have dreams and visions and plans. I think one of the things I have been thinking about is investing in land here and building a house of my own as opposed to renting but You know, that's also something that I could rent out if I decided not to stay here. So I think it's, it's really about building flexibility and fluidity into my life that gives me such a sense of freedom, that, you know, I can always upsize or downsize my life as needed moment to moment. So there's not this pressure of, you know, I have a huge mortgage payment that I have to make every month, and therefore, I have to stay at this horrible job that I hate, because the only way that I can afford to pay my mortgage, you know, it's like, my expenses are very manageable in terms of what I make, and what I have the capacity to make in terms of income. And that gives me a lot of freedom and a sense of ease, right, so there's no stress.

Tony Winyard 30:48
You mentioned just now about how, if, if need be, you're able to move very quickly, you can put everything into into a couple of suitcases. So that kind of minimalist lifestyle, is that, again, something is just happened over this course of you know, you mentioned, was it the last sort of 5, 10 years? How did that come about?

Wendy May 31:10
Yeah, it's been a gradual process, since I started being more nomadic five years ago, I had left a lot of things in a storage unit. And every time I came back to San Francisco to the Bay Area, I would empty it a little bit more. And I went from a, you know, a huge room sized storage unit to, you know, a very small, you know, table underneath a tabletop kind of size storage unit. And now I just have a few boxes in the corner of my mom's apartment. So, you know, step by step, I started to give away all the furniture and, you know, now it's like, I have very little stuff. And it's beautiful, because I don't really need that much stuff.

Tony Winyard 31:55
I'm assuming you've therefore a different attitude towards gratitude, than many people?

Wendy May 32:03
Yeah, I guess. Yeah, I feel like gratitude is part of my day to day life for sure.

Tony Winyard 32:11
And maybe there's, I think the problem that many people have without them realising is because they have so much stuff. And therefore they're, there's a lot of stuff they have, which they never use, and have no appreciation for. And it's always just about acquiring new stuff all the time.

Wendy May 32:31
Yeah, even after this many years of being quite minimalist, I still feel like I have too much stuff. You know, so I'm constantly giving things away and trying to clear my space to just have more space, you know, I would much prefer to have more space and less stuff.

Tony Winyard 32:49
I agree completely. I know, one of the things I saw on your site, you you talked about...

Wendy May 32:57
PAIN, which you use as Personally Activating INformation is my acronym for pain.

Tony Winyard 33:05
Acronym! Is the word I was looking for. So do you want to explain that?

Wendy May 33:10
pain as personally activating information. To me, that just means that the things that we generally think of as being difficult or unpleasant or uncomfortable in life, often are a two edged sword, right? So of course, nobody likes to be in pain, we'd much more rather have pleasure. But pain can be useful, right? So this is the thing of pain is basically the way that I look at pain is that it's something that nature uses to draw our attention to something, right. So imagine when you hurt yourself, it's basically your body's saying to you, hey, we need to send resources here to heal. And it's the same with other things that are not necessarily physical pain, it could be emotional pain, or social pain, or whatever it is, but just or even just existential pain of what in the world. Do you notice that's going on around you that is causing your heart to hurt, and this is something to pay attention to. And it's an amazing highlighter, in terms of helping people align with purpose, I think it's a really critical piece of information, that we're able to tune into what causes us pain, all different kinds of pain. And that we use that as guidance, right to say, Okay, I'm going to put energy here, I'm going to quit attention here, because this is something that my system is uniquely sensitive to. And this is really individual because we don't all necessarily have the same sensitivity to everything, right? You can look at what's going on in the world and say, Wow, there's so much, right, there's so much that we need to do that we need to heal that we need to help and we can't do all of it. So how do we filter and how do we sort and how do we choose and for me paying Basically that pointer that says, Okay, go there.

Tony Winyard 35:05
If people want to find out more about your programme and your book and all the stuff that you're doing, where's the best places for them to learn?

Wendy May 35:13
You can find me at www.heywendymay.com That's my website. And it's the same on social media. So I'm Hey, Wendy may on Facebook on Instagram, LinkedIn medium, just to make it easy. It's all Hey, Wendy May.

Tony Winyard 35:34
I get an impression you've been influenced by a few different things over the course of your life? Is there a particular book that you sometimes recommend to people?

Wendy May 35:45
Yeah, one of the books that I quoted quite heavily in my own book is called The Soul of Money by Lynne twist. And this was, for me really pivotal in shaping my understanding around money, and what it is and what it isn't, and how sometimes people conflate the terms abundance and money, how they're actually not really the same thing. But we sort of have distorted that concept. It's really compelling, because she talks about people that are both resource rich, and resource poor. And basically points to the fact that we all have the same psychology of lack this sort of scarcity mindset, that is, irrespective of your station in life doesn't matter, your socioeconomic status, that this is basically a cultural disease that we have that we look at life from a place of lack. And yeah, it was really formative for me that book,

Tony Winyard 36:42
How long ago was it that you read that?

Wendy May 36:46
it's been at least five years.

Tony Winyard 36:50
Is there a quotation that you like?

Wendy May 36:57
Yeah, there's so many, I mean, the one that came to mind when you first asked me is a quote from my book, where I talk about "Purpose is not what we love to do. purpose is what we do from love".

Tony Winyard 37:11
what is it about that that resonates with you?

Wendy May 37:15
I think for me, it's this idea of moving from love is really important to me, because I feel that a lot of times, whatever it is, we're talking about love, purpose, freedom, all of it can be very much an ego drive, right? That we want to be seen as loving, we want to be seen as free, or we want to be seen as purposeful. And this distinction really kind of digs a little bit deeper into that, right. And a lot of sort of personal development, self help talks about this pleasure principle, right of do what you love, or follow your bliss, or this kind of thing, that it helps us to get out of this brainwashing of, you know, sacrifice and martyrdom and all of that. But I think for me, it This takes it to the next step, which is okay, once you're out of this suffering is merits mindsets, and you can actually embrace what you enjoy, then the next level beyond doing what you love is actually doing from love, which is a little bit different than doing what you love to do. Because sometimes, purpose work isn't necessarily enjoyable, right? It can actually be really hard work. It can really bring us up to our own personal growth edge and be challenging, or we even have resistance against it sometimes. But we do it anyway. Because we're moved by love. For me. That's really, the soul of purpose is moving from love.

Tony Winyard 38:52
Wendy, I love your attitude towards what you do and towards life. It's really refreshing. So thank you for taking the time to share that with us over the last 45 minutes or so.

Wendy May 39:04
Yeah, thanks for all of your lovely questions. It's really fun to kind of dig into some of the stuff for myself as well.

Tony Winyard 39:12
Thank you Wendy. In next week's episode, we explore the world of Toastmasters International and public speaking in general with Bob Ferguson. Bob Ferguson has been a member of Toastmasters International for 25 years. He's also a member of the Professional Speaking Association and is a professional speaker. For Toastmasters he's won a number of contests for the UK and has represented the UK in the world championships for for international speech contest for impromptu speaking for giving feedback to other speakers on their talk. So we're going to hear a lot more about Toastmasters, how it can help you in being more confident. In in your communication, and just your general communication and being able to, speak off the cuff when your boss asks, asks you something or you're at a meeting or whatever the case may be. So that's next week's episode with Bob Ferguson Hope you enjoyed this week's show with Wendy May. And if you do know anyone who may get some value from some of the information that Wendy discussed, please do share the episode with them. Why not leave a review for us and subscribe while you're at the iTunes site and hope you have a great week.