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 2 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 guest 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 go on with today’s episode. Welcome to this episode.

Nicky Lowe [00:00:47]:
I’m your host, Nikki Lowe. And today, I’m hosting my annual year in review. I’m reflecting on my life lessons from 2024. It’s basically that time of year when I get to look back on everything that’s worked and everything that didn’t. So if you’re listening to this episode when it goes live, we did it. We made it to the end of another year. Even if you’re not listening when this episode goes live at the end of December 2024, know that what I share will hopefully be really useful for you to reflect on at any time. I started doing these end of year reflection episodes a few years ago, June lockdown.

Nicky Lowe [00:01:27]:
And to begin with, I wasn’t sure if people would be interested in my life lessons, if this subject would be seen as a little bit self indulgent. But I always receive lots of messages about my end of year reflections. So it’s kind of become a bit of a tradition and something that I really look forward to doing. It’s about being able to go mining for the gold of the year before saying goodbye to it. And you may have heard me say before, I actually find this practice really powerful because I’m naturally very future orientated. So it doesn’t come naturally for me to pause and reflect on the past. And that means it’d be really easy for me to rush into 2025 and not look back. And if I do that, I’m gonna miss the lessons that this year has taught me.

Nicky Lowe [00:02:17]:
And if I’m honest, I might end up making some of the same mistakes. And ultimately, at my core, I’m about development development by myself and development of others. And how can we wisely develop if we don’t take the time to reflect? And I think there are some deeply profound and important lessons that I wanna take from this year. And my guess is it’s the same for you too. So if we walked away without reflecting on them, we’d lose the goodness in those lessons. And I know I don’t want that, and I don’t want it for you either. So in this episode, I’m gonna reflect on what my life lessons have been, and I hope they help you to reflect on what your lessons have been too so we can carry what we need to into the new year and leave behind what we need to as well. So in this episode, I’m gonna share my 3 top life lessons from this year.

Nicky Lowe [00:03:10]:
My first lesson is all about unraveling. So this is the year that I really feel that I’ve stepped into my midlife. I’m 47 at the time of recording, and probably for most of my career, I felt like I was one of the youngest people in the room. And that was probably because I found myself in places where I was often the youngest. I’d be with more senior leaders. And I often have the underlying feeling of being the most unexperienced person in the room or the youngest in the room. And I like to think that I never let it completely undermine my confidence. I used to see it as a learning opportunity because I’m innately curious.

Nicky Lowe [00:03:51]:
But I think that feeling of being the youngest person has stayed with me for a long time in my career. And I think when I came into my forties, I still had that underlying feeling, even though I was no longer the youngest and sometimes maybe even the oldest in the room. But I didn’t really step into owning that and the wisdom that I brought with it. But there’s been something about this year. I think I found myself smack bang in the middle of perimenopause that has massively shifted that. I now feel like I’m stepping into my wise woman era, but the transition has not been easy. And I also wouldn’t say that I’m fully there yet either. And along in that process, this year has felt like an unraveling personally, but interestingly, not professionally.

Nicky Lowe [00:04:42]:
And I love Brene Brown’s description of midlife. And she says it’s not a crisis, but an unraveling, and I can completely relate to that. So she’s got a quote and she says, midlife is when the universe gently places a hands upon your shoulders, pulls you closer, and whispers in your ear. I’m not screwing around. All of this pretending and performing, these coping mechanisms that you’ve developed to protect yourself from feeling inadequate and getting hurt has to go. Your armor is preventing you from growing into your gifts. I understand that you needed these protections when you were small. I understand that you believed your armor could help you secure all the things you needed to feel worthy and lovable, But you’re still searching, and you’re more lost than ever.

Nicky Lowe [00:05:40]:
Time is growing short. There are unexplored adventures ahead of you. You can’t leave live the rest of your life worried about what other people think. You were born worthy of love and belonging. Courage and daring are cursing through your veins, and you were made to live and love with your whole heart. It’s time to show up and be seen. Loweve that quote. And I felt that invitation for midlife this year, that sense that time is growing short.

Nicky Lowe [00:06:13]:
I’m only 10 years younger than my mom was when she died, and I’ve had this sense that if I only had a decade left, how do I wanna spend it? Now don’t get me wrong. I intend to be around a lot longer than just 10 years, and I do a lot of work in the background along the longevity. But if that was my fate, how do I wanna spend it? And I don’t mean going around the world on a cruise type of time spent, but more like who are the people I genuinely want to spend time with? What are the conversations I want to have? What’s the impact I wanna have in my life? And with that invitation to midlife as kind of disintegration, I think this year at times, my experience has felt the only word I can use is discombobulating, And I love it a lot. And it’s a word I’ve used a lot. And the word discombobulating means causing confusion, disorientation, or discomfort. And it describes a state of being unsettled or thrown off balance emotionally or mentally. And I love it because it describes my experience of this year, but it isn’t emotionally loaded. Like it allows me to acknowledge the experience without judging it or giving it a negative perception.

Nicky Lowe [00:07:26]:
And it’s as if the person I’ve always been is slipping away, leaving me, like, grasping for a solid footing while kind of navigating, I suppose, unfamiliar terrain. And at times, that’s felt isolating and overwhelming, like I’m losing control of my body and mind and my therapist. And if you probably if you listen to my podcast, you probably heard me say before, I do a lot of work on myself. Like, how can I expect my clients to go to places I’ve not been? So I have a coach, a supervisor, a therapist. And my therapist introduced me to the work of doctor Sharon Blackie. And she talks about midlife being a disintegration and then a reintegration of who you are. And that’s how I felt this year. It’s felt like it’s been shaking the foundations of who I thought I was.

Nicky Lowe [00:08:17]:
And as Brene Brown says, it’s like unraveling of the carefully constructed armor piece by piece, the coping mechanisms that I think I’ve built over my life unconsciously. You know, the perfectionism, the people pleasing, the overachievement, they’re no longer working. And I think neuroscience does offer an explanation for why this peeve will feel so profound because this kind of perimenopausal time in life and nurturing hormones like estrogen are beginning to decline, and a brain chemistry is shifting. And so those hormones, which have helped many of us juggle life’s demands with, like, empathy, those kind of hormones are packing up and heading off for an early retirement. And their departure leaves the brain kind of recalibrating, which explains the emotional roller coaster, which explains why I’ve suddenly developed the patience of a toddler waiting for a snack. And I think one of my superpowers has always been my high degree of tolerance for others. And this year I’ve discovered that my once seemingly endless superpower of tolerance has taken a hit, thanks to those hormonal shifts. So perimenopause has apparently decided to remind me that I have limits, and it’s not shy about pointing them out.

Nicky Lowe [00:09:31]:
So where I used to kind of smile and nod through someone cutting in line or, you know, just being rude, not so much anymore. But here’s the thing, while my hormonal shift has kinda turned down my patients in some areas, it’s also turned up my clarity. I’ve realized that while I may snap at small annoyances, I’ve also developed a sharp intolerance for behaviors that cross my boundaries or feel fundamentally wrong. You know, whether it’s dismissiveness, dishonesty, or actions that might harm other people, I no longer feel compelled to tolerate them and just keep the peace. And the balance and the they’re like I suppose the beauty of that shift is that while I’m while I might lose my patience for minor irritations. I can still hold the space for empathy and understanding towards the people in my life, but the kind of difference now is I have the courage to separate the person from the behavior and draw form kind of kind of firm lines where necessary. And so this new version of tolerance isn’t about putting up with everything. It’s about respecting myself enough to know what not to tolerate anymore.

Nicky Lowe [00:10:47]:
And, honestly, that feels like a superpower too. It’s like the software that I use to navigate my life is being recoded, and it has it has felt and is feeling like a disintegration. It’s like a shift in identity. And at times that’s left me feeling unampered, like the waves of life were tossing me around. And my usual way of responding weren’t kind of accessible or even valid anymore. But in that unraveling, I started to hear the universe whisper like, this is a new beginning. It’s time to shed and no longer serves you. And I’m kind of, I suppose, reimagining and reexamining how I interact with the world around me, you know, habits, responses, relationships.

Nicky Lowe [00:11:35]:
And stripped of that armor, I’m beginning to discover the real me, not the person performing for validation, but the woman daring to live fully with my flaws and all. And I’m not saying I’m there yet. It’s also unsettling, but it is also liberating. So perimenopause isn’t just challenging me. It’s inviting me to grow. It’s offering a doorway to courage that I haven’t realized I needed. Because amongst all that discomfort, there’s also been a strange and powerful clarity. The unraveling has kind of forced me to slow down, listen, and reexamine parts myself I didn’t know got or I’d ignored.

Nicky Lowe [00:12:20]:
And so while that process is unsettling, it’s also teaching me resilience, and it’s opening the door to a deeper, more honest version of myself. And it’s an up leveling in my personal principles. And I’ve gotta say thanks to my assistant, Laura, for that term, which I love. And I feel like I need to do a whole episode on just that topic of personal principles in 2025. But that leads me on to lesson 2. And this year, I’ve done a lot of thinking about my kitchen table. And if you’ve not yet listened to episode 148 on the subject of my kitchen table, it’s definitely worth going and listening to. So if you head over to luminate hyphen group dotco.ukforward/podcast forward slash 148.

Nicky Lowe [00:13:13]:
That’ll take you there. The kitchen table isn’t actually my real kitchen table. It’s this metaphorical term inspired by Michelle Obama’s reflections in her book, The Light We Carry. And our kitchen table represents the relationships that truly sustain us. And I had a realization earlier this year that between raising my family, running my business, and trying to find time for my husband, I had squeezed time for my friendships into the edges of my life. I’d not prioritized them enough. And particularly in this midlife season of life, when our time and energy never seem to be enough, I’ve not nourished them. And so this year, I’ve become more intentional about who gets a seat at my table, especially as a kind of working mom in midlife, but also kind of what are the conversations I wanna have.

Nicky Lowe [00:14:02]:
So I started to consciously curate my table again after feeling like I did it in my twenties, took it for granted in my thirties that I’d always have the time and energy until I had my children. And I felt like in my forties, I didn’t prioritize my kitchen table. And I’m not beating myself up about this because I think this season in life with young children, something had to give. But this next season in my life is about the people who bring strength, laughter, and perspective into my life, the ones who make me feel safe enough to be seen, and the ones that, hopefully, I do the same for. As a working mom, I think prioritizing our social well-being can feel like it’s one more thing to add to the never ending to do list. But I’ve really realized that to have that strong kitchen table, you know, that social convoy, the people who journey with us through life, it isn’t just a nice to have. It’s essential. And I know this because the research shows us that relationships are as important to our health and happiness as good nutrition and regular exercise.

Nicky Lowe [00:15:10]:
And I don’t think it’s talked about enough. We all hear on, kind of, social media about, you know, nutrition and exercise, but we don’t hear this stuff about friendships. And I think, especially for working moms, those connections are our lifeline. They’re the ones who remind us that we’re not alone even when we’re drowning in work deadlines, laundry, school runs, whatever it might be. And I’ve also made peace with the fact that not all friendships last forever, and it’s that bittersweet letting go of friendships that no longer fit. But I’ve learned it’s not a failure. It’s life. And as Michelle says, our kitchen table is where we go to breathe again, to be seen and feel supported.

Nicky Lowe [00:15:51]:
This year has been about clearing space at my table for the relationships that truly nourish me, Because as a working mom, it’s those meaningful connections that keep me recharged, keep my sanity intact, and remind me that I’m not alone in this. So when the juggling act of life gets overwhelming, it’s these relationships that, I suppose, ultimately keep me grounded. And that’s why tending to them is one of the most important things I can do for my soul. So it feels like it’s been another kind of evolution in my personal leadership, something I’ve reflected on in last year’s, kind of end of year reflections. And it feels like it’s just an evolution of that another level of empowerment, which actually leads me onto my next life lesson. So lesson number 3 is about re imagining my relationship with power. Now I’ve not been really someone that’s ever thought about my relationship with power. I’ve never, I don’t think, ever wanted power.

Nicky Lowe [00:16:52]:
But, actually, part of my purpose is helping others to feel empowered. And more and more of my work with female lead is about helping them feel that they have more influence and power in their lives. That kind of sense of empowerment about the knowledge, confidence, and ability, as opposed to make decisions and do things for themselves. And earlier this year, a client on a female leadership retreat I was running introduced me to the book, The Power Code, by Katty Kaye and Claire Shipman. They’re 2 journalists, and it opened my eyes to something that so many women, I think, feel but don’t often say. And that is that the type of power that traditional leadership roles require can feel deeply unappealing to women. And it’s not that we lack the ambition, the talent or the drive, it’s because the idea of traditional power is like dominance, control, and hierarchy, can feel at odds with who we are and how we wanna lead. And actually, all of the research shows that women are less likely to want to pay the perceived cost of gaining power.

Nicky Lowe [00:18:06]:
And that’s because the trade offs are are greater for women than men, but also because the traditional view of power doesn’t appeal to us in in, kind of feminine energy. But in their book, The Power Codes, Kathy and Claire talk about what if we could reimagine power? What if instead of seeing power as something we take from others, we saw it as something we create with others, the kind of power that, builds and uplifts and connects rather than isolates and competes. And this shift doesn’t just benefit women. It changes the way leadership looks and feels for everyone Because, again, the research shows that traditional power doesn’t actually work for men. It’s just that they, I suppose, experience less trade off with it. And so for me, this has meant redefining power as the ability to align my life with my values, to influence, I suppose, with authenticity and create spaces where others can thrive. And so it’s about rejecting the power, I suppose, the outdated power model of power over others, and embracing this new model of power with that that reimagined power isn’t about climbing a ladder. It’s about building a table where everybody has a seat, where collaboration and care are our strengths, not our weaknesses.

Nicky Lowe [00:19:33]:
And the truth is when we reject traditional notions power, we’re not rejecting leadership. We’re actually rejecting a broken system. By doing so, we can open the door to new possibilities for leadership that feels purposeful, for careers that don’t compromise who we are, and for a life where power means creating real impact, not just wielding authority. And that reimagining power doesn’t happen overnight, but it starts with a question I’ve been asking myself. What would leadership look like if I did it my way? And it’s a question worth exploring for me, for you, and, actually, for the future of leadership itself. And so as a result of this, I’m kinda getting curious about my relationship with power, about seeing it as something that if you gain, you can use your benefits for others. As I’ve been reflecting on my relationship with power, I’m feeling like it’s not something to fear or shy away from, but it’s something that when gained, as I say, can be used for that benefit for others. And I think it’s a shift in perspective that feels both empowering and inspiring.

Nicky Lowe [00:20:41]:
And as I’m saying that, I’m noticing, like, I’m jiggling my body in, like, a, like an energetic way. And just last weekend, I witnessed a beautiful example of this in action. I had the privilege of attending a surprise party for Giovanna Fletcher. Now you may not know that name because she’s an author, she’s a podcast host, she’s an actress, a TV personality. But I’ve come to know her as a passionate ambassador and patron of a charity called Copperfield, and they’re a breast cancer charity raising awareness of early detection of breast cancer. And after losing my mum and grandmother and my aunt’s breast cancer, I’ve got involved with Copperfield myself, and I’ve seen firsthand the incredible difference that Giovanna’s work has made. On Sunday, I was invited to this surprise party for her where we celebrated this monumental milestone. Giovanna’s helped raise £5,000,000 for Copperfield.

Nicky Lowe [00:21:39]:
So just let that sink in for a moment. £5,000,000. And that achievement isn’t just a number. It represents lives saved through the charity’s awareness campaign for early breast cancer detection. And whenever you’re around Giovanna, people come up to her and share thank you because, actually, through your work, I’ve you know, I detect my own breast cancer. And you may have heard the Strictly Come Dancing, celebrity dancer Amy Dowden has shared that exact story. And what struck me the most wasn’t just the staggering impact of her efforts, but really the way she’s done it. Giovanna has harnessed the power of her brand, her visibility, her influence, her voice to make a tangible difference in the world.

Nicky Lowe [00:22:25]:
In her speech, she shared how her role with Copperfield has become her purpose, something she prioritizes every single year. She basically starts the year with putting those dates in her diary for Copperfield, and she even turns down work opportunities to make space for this. To her, this isn’t just an ambassador to role, it’s a calling. And what Giovanna’s example reminded me is that power itself isn’t inherently good or bad, it’s how we use it that matters. When power is tied to purpose, it can create extraordinary change. And Giovanna’s commitment to Copperfield has shown me that power isn’t about elevating yourself. It’s about lifting others. It’s about using your influence to amplify causes and make meaningful contributions in the world.

Nicky Lowe [00:23:11]:
So seeing her dedication has made me curious about my own relationship with power. What could I do if I embrace the idea of power not as dominance, but as a tool for good? And Giovanna has shown me that when power is guided by purpose, it’s not just something we gain, it’s something we give. And that’s the kind of power I’m excited to explore. So imagine what you could do with more power. Imagine if we had the power to make things right, the power to protect, the power to take care, as Kathy and Claire say in their book. The ability to have people listen and the ability to affect change just like Giovanna. And I think that’s what I’m stepping into in 2024 and beyond. Do you wanna join me? I hope you found these insights into my lessons useful.

Nicky Lowe [00:24:05]:
And I really hope that as you’ve listened to them, they’ve sparked ideas on what your life lessons have been from 2024, and how you can take the goodness from these into the new year. So thanks for hanging me out with me in this episode. Could you do me a huge favor, please? Can you share this episode with 2 or 3 other women that pop into your head as you listen? As I’ve said, my mission is to support as many women on their journey as possible, and so I’d be grateful if you supported them by offering this free podcast. I hope it’s been useful for you. And if it has, can you pass it on to another 1 or 2 people, please? So thanks for tuning in. I hope 2025 is a year of health and fulfilment for you and your loved ones. And until next time, take care. If you’ve enjoyed this episode of Wisdom For Working Mums, please share it on social media and with your friends and family.

Nicky Lowe [00:25:03]:
I’d love to connect with you too. So if you head over to wisdom for working moms dotco.uk, you’ll find a link on how to do this. And if you love the show and really want to support it, please go to Itunes, write a review, and subscribe. You’ll be helping another working mom find this resource too. Thanks so much for listening.