Nicky Lowe [00:00:06]:
Hi, it’s Nicky Lowe and welcome to the Wisdom for Working Mums podcast show. I’m your host and for nearly two decades now I’ve been an executive coach and leadership development consultant. And on this show I share evidence based insights from my coaching, leadership and psychological expertise and inspiring interviews that help women like you to combine your work, life and motherhood in a more successful and sustainable way. Join me and my special guests as we delve into leadership and lifestyle topics for women, empowering you to thrive one conversation at a time. I’m so happy that you’re here. And let’s get on with today’s episode.

Nicky Lowe [00:00:46]:
If you hang around the leadership or coaching world for more than five minutes, you’ll probably hear someone talking about purpose and purposeful leadership. Because it’s everywhere and for good reason. The research and evidence on the power of purpose is undeniable. It supports our resilience, our performance and our well being. But as working mums, what does purpose actually mean for us and how do we find our purpose in the middle of our careers? Childcare, laundry and life? In this episode, I’m going to pull back the curtain and share my personal story of my own purpose and how I came to discover it. And I’m sharing it so that as you listen, you can be thinking about your purpose and how you can start mining your own life for the gold that’s already there, there quietly shaping who you are and what you’re here to do. And just to say up front, this isn’t some self serving, let me tell you my story episode. Although I do love hearing other people’s stories, I’m sharing mine because it explains why I care so deeply about the things we talk about on this podcast.

Nicky Lowe [00:01:54]:
Burnout, boundaries, well being and sustainable success. And because I hope it gives you a framework to to explore your own purpose too. And as I’m recording this episode, it’s 20 years since my mum died suddenly in November 2005 and she was just 58 and anniversary like this can be quite tender. And as this one approached, I felt a strong pull, not just to privately remember her, but to honor how that moment really reshaped the trajectory of my life. Because when I look back now, that was the catalyst. That was the moment that actually led me to doing the work that I do today with Luminate Group and doing this podcast for women like you. And you may have heard that Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, once said, you can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards. And he famously Shared that quote in a commencement speech at Stanford University.

Nicky Lowe [00:03:01]:
So you’re probably aware in the US when students graduate, they often get quite a well known speaker in to kind of deliver this kind of coming of age speech. And in that speech he tells the story about seemingly insignificant moments in his life. Like when he dropped out of college and he randomly started taking a calligraphy class to kind of tinkering in garages. And at the time they were just like his normal. Nothing looked particularly strategic or world changing in those moments. But when he looked back, he realized those exact moments were pivotal. That calligraphy class really shaped the way that Apple designed beautiful typefaces and the fact that when any of us use a computer now, we can choose different fonts. That was because he dropped out of college and just randomly chose to do a calligraphy class.

Nicky Lowe [00:03:57]:
And those scrappy early experiments laid the foundations for the company that would transform technology as we know it. And I love this story because it shows how we can often can’t see those, the significance of our experiences while we’re in them. It’s only really with hindsight that the dots start to join up and we realize, oh, that’s what that season was preparing me for. And if you’ve not checked out that commencement speech, I really recommend you go and Google it and watch it on YouTube because that’s really what I want to explore to you today, how we can look back at our own dots, our own normal moments, maybe painful seasons, and see the meaning and direction that they might be giving us. And in my life, one of those huge dots, one of those what we would call meaning markers, was losing my mum. And I want to take you back there and then forward again so you can see how those dots eventually joined to help you join the dots in your life.

Nicky Lowe [00:05:01]:
But before I take you back to 2005, I just want to ground you in what I mean when I say purpose. My good friend and colleague James Glover, who I’ve had on the podcast number of times and who I get the absolute joy to co facilitate purpose.

Nicky Lowe [00:05:20]:
Female leadership retreats with, he is a self confessed purpose nerd and he’s really influenced my thinking on this. He teaches the power of purposeful leadership and he’ll tell you this is some of the most important work we can do, especially right now. And James always reminds us that purpose isn’t some like fluffy statement that lives on a website or in a poster in a corporate lobby. Purpose is about meaning. It’s about how we make meaning and how we choose to make meaningful in our lives, at its heart purpose is our ability to decide and to be intentional about what is important and significant in our lives. And the more clearly we understand that for this ourselves, what really matters, what we stand for, the more intentional we can be about how we live, how we work, and how we lead. So as you listen to my story today, that’s the lens I’d love for you to hold. Because this isn’t about getting this perfect grand mission statement.

Nicky Lowe [00:06:26]:
It’s about how life’s moments, especially the hard ones, help us decide what truly matters. So I’d like to take you back to 2005 before everything changed and life on the surface looked pretty good. I was in my late 20s, I’d got this big corporate job, a six figure salary, the company car, the share scheme. I was renovating this old farmhouse in the countryside and literally on the outside I was smashing it. I was really ambitious, I was driven, I was focused on my career. And I brought into that unspoken belief that a lot of us as high achievers do that if I just work hard enough now, then at some point in the future I get to relax and actually enjoy my life. I don’t know if that sounds familiar as you’re listening, it’s that I’ll be happy when script I’ll be able to enjoy life when I’ve got a grip of my work. I’ll be able to enjoy life when we’ve got more money.

Nicky Lowe [00:07:35]:
I’ll be able to enjoy life when that next promotion happens. And it’s such a destination focused way to live. Like we’re constantly aiming towards a destination. And honestly, that’s where I was. I assumed that there would always be more time, you know, more time with the people I loved, more times to do the things that I wanted to do one day.

Nicky Lowe [00:07:58]:
But at the same time, I was ignoring that dull ache inside me that was saying, this doesn’t feel good. I was turning into someone I didn’t recognize and someone I really didn’t like. Week. But I didn’t know what else to do. And I kept just kind of being on the treadmill, just keep thinking, I’ll just do another year of this and then I’ll figure it out. And I’d got to the point not knowing what else to do, that I decided with my partner who’s now my husband, I thought, you know, I just need to book a really good holiday and just like take some time to rest. So I booked this kind of perfect holiday to the Maldives. I thought two weeks in paradise would sort me out, surely.

Nicky Lowe [00:08:47]:
And that was 20 years ago. And I was a week into that two week holiday when I got a call from my brother to say that our mum had died really suddenly, really expectedly. And I was nearly on the other side of the world and I was staring out into this picture perfect view of Parad, this trying to take in the most devastating news. My mum was only.

Nicky Lowe [00:09:19]:
58 and only 10 years older than I am today as I record this episode. And there’s no easy way to kind of wrap that up. It just shattered me. And if you’ve experienced sudden loss, you’ll know that feeling too. Like when the world carries on, like people are still going to work, doing their, like food shopping, talking about their weekend plans, and you’re just standing there thinking, how is everything carrying on? Don’t you realize my world as I know it has just ended. And that’s what it felt like. Everything familiar was still there, but nothing was the same. And I think up until that point, 58 probably felt old to me, if I’m honest.

Nicky Lowe [00:10:07]:
But suddenly it felt ridiculously young. This wasn’t kind of an abstract concert anymore. This was my mum. And even though at the time I didn’t have language like meaning or purpose for what was happening, looking back now, that experience was a huge meaning marker for me. It was the first time I truly felt in my bones how fragile life is. And it forced me to ask, even if I couldn’t really answer it yet, if life is this fragile, what actually matters? What am I doing with this time I’ve got? And what compounded that was about six weeks after my mum died, her younger brother, my uncle, also died, and he was just 54 and he’d worked on the London Stock Exchange his whole life and he’d built up kind of a good amount of wealth. And he was about 18 months away from taking early retirement so he could just enjoy the fruits of his labor and he never got to do it. And that hit me like a freight train.

Nicky Lowe [00:11:13]:
I remember thinking so clearly, we can’t live our lives like the future is guaranteed and we can’t keep postponing joy to some future date that may never come. Everything I’d been unconsciously believing, like if you work hard now so you can enjoy life later, just crumbled. I think those deaths coming so close together smashed the illusion for me that the destination is where life really happens. And I realized I had to learn how to enjoy the journey now, not in some fantasy future where everything is perfectly lined up, not when I’ve Ticked all the boxes, but in the ordinary, messy, beautiful, painful journey of today. And here’s the part that’s really hard to explain. In that season where my heart was the most broken it had ever been, I was actually the happiest I’d ever been. And not happy as in cheerful or at B. I wasn’t like skipping around singing, but there was this deep sense of aliveness and clarity that I’d never experienced before.

Nicky Lowe [00:12:25]:
Like the trivial stuff just fell away. I wasn’t people pleasing in the same way. I wasn’t obsessing about proving myself or comparing myself to others. I was lase focused on what and who really mattered. And I’ve later learned that there’s actually a term for this in psychology. We call it post traumatic growth. It’s that idea that in really difficult experiences we sometimes emerge with a deeper appreciation of life, stronger relationships, and a clearer sense of what we value. And it doesn’t take the grief away.

Nicky Lowe [00:13:02]:
That’s still very real, but alongside it something new can grow. And that’s exactly what happened for me. In the midst of that utter heartbreak, I was also experiencing this profound sense of meaning. And that was another meaning marker for me. The realization that even in the darkest moments, there can be this invitation into a more like, honest, aligned way of living.

Nicky Lowe [00:13:32]:
Remember what I said earlier about purpose being about meaning? Well, those months after losing my mum and uncle were like a crash course in meaning. They forced me to take a look at my life and ask actually, what really matters to me? What do I want my life to be in service of? And if tomorrow isn’t guaranteed, how do I want to spend today? And those questions are at the heart of purpose. They weren’t neat or nicely packaged. I didn’t suddenly wake up one day and go, oh, lovely, this is my purpose. It was more a gradual, I suppose a slow, sometimes messy process of paying attention to what these experiences were trying to show me. And at the time, it felt like an existential crisis, like questioning who I was, what my life was about, and what I’d been given for this one precious life. Like, what was it all for? And over time, as I look back, I started to see all of these events as what I would now call meaning markers. They’re the mom moments that change you, the memories that you find yourself returning to again and again.

Nicky Lowe [00:14:43]:
The points in your story that feel emotionally loaded, where something in you is shifted. And they’re not always about big dramatic losses. They’re sometimes small, quiet moments, but they all hold some kind of message about what you care about, what you value and what you’re here to do. And psychologists talk about these being self defining memories. Those experiences become central to your identity. Identity that shape the way we see ourselves and the way we see our world. And when we join those together, we create our narrative identity. Basically the story we tell ourselves about who we are and where we’re heading.

Nicky Lowe [00:15:24]:
And here’s the hopeful bit, we actually have a lot of power in how we’re making meaning in those memories because two people can go through something very similar and tell completely different stories about what they mean. And those stories shape how they live. So when I talk about mining your life for gold, that’s what I’m talking about. Going back to those meaning markers and asking, what did this show me about what matters? What did it reveal about my strengths, my values, my purpose?

Nicky Lowe [00:16:00]:
And.

Nicky Lowe [00:16:02]:
That for me was how this all led to be. Being where I am now, running Luminate group and hosting wisdom for working mums. Those meaning markers planted something powerful inside me. Like, how do you craft a life you genuinely love? Not that just looks good from the outside. How do you find the courage to change things if they’re not working, even if they look successful on paper? And how do you enjoy the journey, not just chase the next milestone? And those questions wouldn’t leave me alone. They eventually led me to hand my notice in retrain as an exec coach and dive deep into kind of the exec coaching world and leadership development. And I really became interested in what it means to lead in a way that’s purposeful and human, not just productive. Then when I became a mum myself, it added on that whole new layer.

Nicky Lowe [00:17:02]:
Suddenly I wasn’t just thinking about leadership in a corporate sense, but about leading a life and a family and about what success looks like when you’re the linchpin at home and at work. And that’s when it became clear to me that my purpose was around supporting ambitious working mums, women like you, to thrive in all those roles without burning out and without postponing our joy to some future date. And another really important thread in that was about well being and longevity. I had my children later in life and given my family history, you know, losing my mum at 58, my uncle then at 54, and actually my mum is one of six children and all six of them have had cancer. My grandmother died of cancer as well. I’ve got a huge amount of cancer in my family. It really brought a real awareness of my own mortality. And I know all of us want to be around for as long and as well as possible be with their.

Nicky Lowe [00:18:00]:
For our children. But those kind of family situations just made that more pronounced for me. So when I talk about burnout or nervous system regulation or boundaries, it’s not in an abstract way. It’s a very personal. I don’t want to repeat the same patterns I’ve seen in my family, and I don’t want that for you either. That’s why I’m so passionate about sustainable success. Success that doesn’t cost you your health, your relationship, and your sense of self. And again, that ties back to purpose.

Nicky Lowe [00:18:37]:
There’s actual research that shows that people who feel a sense of purpose tend to be healthier, more resilient, and even live longer. So this work isn’t just about feeling fulfilled. It’s also deeply practical. And that’s where my friend James, who I talked about earlier, comes back in. He talks about purposeful leadership not as something reserved for CEOs, but it’s something that’s relevant to anyone leading anything. A team, a project, a family, a life. When we’re clear on purpose, on what’s meaningful and significant to us, we’re far more likely to make decisions that are aligned, to set boundaries, to protect what matters, and to be the kind of leaders our kids and colleagues actually need. And as working mums, you know it.

Nicky Lowe [00:19:23]:
But we’re leading all the time. We’re leading in our homes and our workplaces, in our communities. So this isn’t just a nice to have topic. Understanding your purpose and those meaning markers in your life is incredibly powerful for you and for the people around you. So, okay, that’s enough about my story for a moment. Let’s talk about yours. I’d love to invite you to reflect on your own meaning markers, if you’re able to. You may want to come back to this section later with a journal, or just take me on a walk with you and let those questions, like, percolate.

Nicky Lowe [00:20:02]:
And I suppose one of the first questions is, what moments of loss, shock or big change stand out in your life? And they don’t have to be as dramatic as bereavement. It might be a redundancy, a relationship ending, a health scare, a difficult birth, a promotion that just didn’t feel how you thought it would? Or a moment at work where you thought, I can’t keep doing this. Just notice what memories bubble up and ask yourself, what did that experience quietly teach me about what I value, about what really matters to me? And then I’d like you to think about, when have you Most felt alive and aligned. Those moments where you’ve thought, oh, this, this feels like me. Maybe it was a particular kind of work or a project or a way of being with friends, family. A moment with a friend or a project you poured your heart into. What were you doing? Who were you with? And what did that moment reveal about what brings you meaning?

Nicky Lowe [00:21:13]:
And then I’d like you to think about, where do you see patterns? If you zoom out and look across your life, what themes keep showing up? Are you always the one caring for others? Do you find yourself drawn to fairness and justice, to creativity, to bringing people together, to leading, organizing?

Nicky Lowe [00:21:33]:
Those patterns are close to your purpose, not as a job title, but as a deeper why that can flow through different seasons and different roles.

Nicky Lowe [00:21:46]:
And then finally, I want to ask you, what’s the quiet whisper you’ve been ignoring? Maybe it’s a thought that pops up when you’re loading the dishwasher or on your commute. Or maybe it’s, I can’t keep living like this, or I really want to try fill in the blank. Often that whisper is your purpose, trying to get your attention, and you don’t have to act on it immediately, but could you at least be willing to listen in and get curious about what it might be pointing to?

Nicky Lowe [00:22:23]:
And I want to say this really clearly. You don’t have to have a neat purpose statement by the end of this episode. That’s not the homework. Purpose is something we grow into and refine over time. It evolves as we move through different seasons of our lives and careers and motherhood. My intention in sharing my story isn’t that you go, right, I need to quit my job and set up a coaching business, because that’s what Nikki did. Please don’t do that on the back of this podcast episode. My intention is that you start to look at your own life with a bit more compassion and curiosity, that you recognize your own meaning markers and that you start to see they’re not random.

Nicky Lowe [00:23:04]:
They’re data. They’re dots you can connect to reveal what matters to you. And as I look back now, 20 years after my mum died and after losing my uncle so soon after her, I can see how those dots join together. Those were the moments that shattered my old way of living.

Nicky Lowe [00:23:26]:
Constantly chasing the destination. As I look back now, 20 years after my mum died and after Liz, my uncle so soon after her, I can see how those dots joined together. Those were the moments that shattered my old way of living, the constantly chasing the destination.

Nicky Lowe [00:23:47]:
And it pushed me towards a life and a career that are rooted deeply in purpose, presence and well being. They’re the dots that led me to you and to doing this work with working mums.

Nicky Lowe [00:24:00]:
And then four years ago, losing my dad very quickly reinforced all of this over again.

Nicky Lowe [00:24:09]:
Life really is that fragile and none of this is theoretical for me. We can’t connect the dots looking forward, we don’t know what’s coming, but we can look back at the dots we already have and ask what are these moments trying to show me about what matters most and how can I honour that in how I live today? If this episode has stirred something in you, I’d love to invite you to choose just one question to sit with this week. Maybe it’s what’s one meaning marker from my life that I want to honour or learn from?

Nicky Lowe [00:24:46]:
Or maybe it’s what’s one tiny way I can live a little more in line with what really matters to me.

Nicky Lowe [00:24:54]:
As we approach the end of 2025 and look ahead to 2026, I want to ask you really directly, what are you being nudged towards? Maybe it’s a boundary you know you need to set. Maybe it’s asking for help, maybe it’s prioritising your well being, maybe it’s exploring a career change or having an honest conversation with someone you love. Whatever it is, please don’t ignore that nudge. Choose one small, doable action you can take this week in the direction of the life you actually want. The life that honours what your meaning markers have taught you.

Nicky Lowe [00:25:38]:
I hope this episode has been a powerful reminder in a positive way that you only get this one wild, precious life and you are worthy of a life that feels good on the inside, not just one that looks good on the outside. And my hope is that this episode is the sign that you’ve been waiting for to start moving towards that. And if you feel comfortable, I’d genuinely love to hear from you. You can message me on social media or drop me an email and let me know what came up as you listened, what main markers you’ve noticed, or what you’re discovering about your purpose. And if you’re in a season where you know something needs to change but you’re not quite sure what or how, that’s exactly the work I do helping women like you find the clarity, courage and support to create a life and career that actually works for you. So thanks for being here with me on this episode. Whether you’re listening on a commute, on a pram walk, or hiding in the loo for five minutes a piece I see you. I appreciate you and I’m so glad we get to walk this journey together.

Nicky Lowe [00:26:46]:
Until next time, take care.

Nicky Lowe [00:26:50]:
If you’ve enjoyed this episode of Wisdom for Working Mums, I’d love for you to share it on social media or with the amazing women in your life. I’d also love to connect with you, so head over to luminate.

Nicky Lowe [00:27:03]:
Co.Uk where you’ll find ways to stay in touch. And if this episode resonated with you, one of the best ways to support the show is by subscribing and leaving a review on itunes. Your review helps other women discover this resource, so together we can lift each other up as we rise. So thanks for listening. Until next time, take care.