182 Reducing Resistance in Menopause with Jo Renshaw

Join me and Jo Renshaw in our multifaceted conversation about mindset changes we can make during the menopause transition to reduce resistance and allow ourselves to glide through the process a tad more seamlessly. Jo is a leadership coach and in this conversation, the topics we discuss are:

🌱 The Transformative Power of Running

🌱 Navigating Menopause and Life Changes

🌱 Coaching Techniques and Mindset Shifts

🌱 Envisioning the Future: Overcoming Resistance to Change

🌱 Navigating Emotions: The Role of Suffering in Growth

🌱 Learning to Feel: Embracing All Emotions

🌱 Resilience Through Grief: Lessons from Loss

🌱 Exquisite Self-Care: Prioritizing Personal Well-Being

🌱 Hormonal Balance: The Importance of Rest

🌱 Mindset Matters: The Power of Thought

🌱 Reframing Life: Designing Your Future

So come and join us for a moment of self discovery!

Jo’s Links:

Website: www.jorenshaw.com

Instagram: www.instagram.com/jo_renshaw

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jorenshaw/

Sally's Links:

[Free Guide] Healing The Trauma Underlying Your Menopause Symptom Severity:  https://www.sallygarozzo.com/healingtraumatheguide

[On Demand Masterclass 2 hours] How To Heal The Trauma Underlying Your Menopause Symptom Severity [£17] https://www.sallygarozzo.com/healingtrauma

[On Demand Workshop] Redefine Your Values at Menopause and Live Life in Alignment With Them [£27] https://www.sallygarozzo.com/redefine 

[Online Practitioners Diploma - Self Paced] Menopause Wellbeing Practitioner [£127] https://www.sallygarozzo.com/meno

[One to One] Transformational 30 Day Rewire (Includes RTT) [£447]: https://www.sallygarozzo.com/rapid-transformational-therapist

Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/sallygarozzomindmentor

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sallygarozzo/

Send me a voice clip via What’s App - https://wa.me/message/FTARBMO7CRLEL1

Transcript

Sally (00:01.109)
So my guest today is Jo Renshaw. Jo is a leadership coach for midlife entrepreneurial women who are going through perimenopause and menopause. She's the mother of a grownup daughter. She took up running as she turned 40 and has now run four marathons. I'm really excited to talk to Jo today because she's made a few changes in her mindset that have been the cornerstone of her navigating bankruptcy,

relationship endings and bereavement. So welcome to the podcast today, Jo. How are you?

Jo Renshaw (00:35.596)
Hello Sally, thank you. It's always interesting hearing someone else introduce me and you know I can hear you mentioning all those things I'm like yeah that's been quite a lot hasn't it?

Sally (00:48.317)
Yeah, it is weird when you get things reflected back to you like that because you see yourself differently, like you're seeing yourself in the mirror rather than just sort of, you know, existing in your body. But I would say, I always say, let it in, let it in.

Jo Renshaw (01:05.772)
Yeah, yeah.

Sally (01:06.823)
So I'm really curious about you. We've never really spoken before and I really love getting to know my guests in real time. You're local, you are based in Hove and you're in the same networking group as me. And when I discovered you, was like, I'd love to interview you and talk to you because I bet you've got some real pearls of wisdom and some brilliant stories to tell. So how did you get into the work?

that you are currently doing with women.

Jo Renshaw (01:39.342)
That's a really good starting point. it's, I'm turning 52 this year. So it's been probably a 12 year journey, but of course, lifetime's journey. So I graduated from university when I turned 40. And within three days, I stopped smoking, graduated from university and turned 40. And all my friends at university were about half my age.

They were leaving Brighton and going off to their kind of new life in London. And I had a daughter here, so I was staying here. And I thought, I can't keep up this university party lifestyle. Something is going to be different after 40. And menopause wasn't really talked about then. And the conversation about menopause with my mother was so minimal. She'd had a hysterectomy and a fallopian tube removed. And actually, I think she didn't have massive menopause symptoms. And it just wasn't the thing we talked about.

So it never even occurred to me that this was gonna be a phase of life. However, I knew something was going to be different. And so stopping smoking was really the start. And I thought I'll start running because I think I need something to do that feels, is gonna make me feel better than smoking did. And then my sister said, she's a little goody two shoes, my sister, I'm she won't mind me saying, she said, I'm gonna run a half marathon. I was like,

now if you're going to do it I need to do that. And it was really the start of something quite exciting. We went on to run four marathons but running taught me how to show up for myself, how to care for myself long term. I was suddenly having to think on Wednesday about eating the right amount of food so I could do a long training run on Sunday and

Each week I was running a bit further and a bit further and a bit further. And I should say also around that time of leaving university, was having chronic anxiety and panic attacks, hitting financial difficulties in a really toxic relationship. know, lots of things were just really awful. But running was helping me to deal with all of that while my brain was gabbing on about, you idiot, how could you have made all these decisions? And you're so stupid. You'll never run that far.

Jo Renshaw (04:02.894)
At the same time, I was like, yeah, but here I am running 10 miles. So thanks for sharing. So alongside that, bankruptcy turned up. And I thought, you know, I've done everything that everybody told me I was supposed to do with money. And I was a single mum for a long time. So it was tough. And I thought the only thing left for me to do is just work on my mindset around.

And I was listening to a teacher called Abraham Hicks a lot then and it was making me feel better and I thought well I'm just gonna try thinking differently about money. I don't know if it'll work, let's see. Everything else I've tried has failed so and it worked. So I was on the insolvency register for five or six years and at the end of that time I had a stable job, I received some inheritance and suddenly

like life was changed overnight. And plus I developed this new relationship with money. And during that time of researching money mindset was reading what we might call woo books and anything that was just making me think differently about money. And I realized I was coaching myself. And so I thought, well, if I can help myself feel better, can probably help other people feel better too. And as my coaching journey progressed and I

took a couple of certificates. I was meeting more and more women like me who were coming into their 40s and feeling really lost with this sense of like something different is going on here. I can't carry on in the way that I've been doing, but I don't know how to stop. I don't know how to stop partying. I don't know how to stop playing. I don't know how to do kind of adulting, if you like. So they're the people that I've been speaking to.

Yeah, because it's relatable, isn't it? We're all looking for someone we can relate to and who has been through our story. And I think there's a lot of shame around having difficulties in your late 30s and early 40s because there's this perceived notion that we should just have it all together. We've had kids, we've got a career, we should have it all together. So if we're feeling bad inside, nobody wants to talk about that.

Sally (06:26.973)
Yes, my god, you've said so much there. I think we've been on a similar journey actually. I went to university at 35 so much later. I have to say though, I didn't get too involved in the party scene because I had just met my now husband, so we were kind of nesting. But there definitely was that sort of conflict, that internal conflict starting to arise around

Who am I now? Like I didn't feel like I really fit in anywhere. I didn't fit in with all the young things at university. I hadn't really established myself in Brighton yet and I didn't really have any core sort of female friends. So I was a bit rudderless and definitely understand that body thing changing. But just coming back to what you saying about running, I've had a little foray into running. I've done a 5k.

Jo Renshaw (07:24.27)
Amazing.

Sally (07:25.173)
which is not a patch on your marathon, but it was a big achievement for me because I'd never really seen myself as a runner. I'd always like seen myself as a bit of a lump whilst running and felt quite lumpy whilst running. I don't think I'm built for running particularly. I'm built for strength.

and lifting heavy things, but I wanted to try running because I really wanted to improve my endurance and my heart and lung capacity. And something that you said about that we go into the hypnosis when we're running, this of hypnosis, this hypnotic state. And I guess I suppose I'm curious about what that was like for you, what the benefits are.

for running and also what the pitfalls are and what if somebody's listening to this thinking, you know what I really would like to try running, but I've never, I've never started. Like how would someone start running and what are, what are some of the things that someone would need to be really mindful of? Because I know for me, like after I achieved my 5k going from 5k to 10k was impossible. Like I just couldn't get through that, that next level challenge.

and everything started to hurt. I think I could muscle my way through the 5k but then I was like I'm not sure what to do now going forward to make this like longer. So yeah I wasn't expecting to talk too much about running but I think it's a really interesting subject and obviously you've had the experience so yeah.

Jo Renshaw (08:58.444)
Mmm.

Jo Renshaw (09:06.348)
Yeah, I love that you touched on that it can have this hypnotic effect. I definitely have experienced that many, many, many times. So starting running was interesting because I'd been a smoker and I couldn't really even run down the street for a bus. And so once I stopped smoking, I had dogs, so I walked every day.

It was really interesting to watch my mind start rearing up. you can't run. everyone's going to think you look stupid. What are you going to look like? All this just rattling on. And I was I recognized and I think this is really important for anyone else to know the brain will just offer thoughts on its own without us doing anything. And we've got a choice to either engage with them or not engage with them.

And to begin with, of course I was engaging with them and not going out and running. And then eventually I thought, I'm just, I'm going to have to do this. If my brain's going to do this anyway, well, let's just run. I can either run and have the, my brain going or not run and have my brain going. So I'd rather actually achieve something and do it. And the first time I ran a mile, I, my,

sense of achievement was like nothing else I've ever experienced. It was it was equal to walking on stage and picking up my degree. was like, wow, if I can feel that accomplished, I'm proud of myself after running a mile. Then what can I do after two? What can I do after three? So I just thought I'm going to keep going. Because if this like devil in my brain, whatever it is, if this thing on my shoulder is going to keep ranting.

then I'm gonna keep running. And I mentioned earlier that was having anxiety and sometimes it was at the level of panic attacks. So eventually I joined a club and on Sundays we would go for this long run and some days it was like dragging a lunatic behind me, my brain going on. So I developed a way of looking out and around me and naming objects. So I say, there's the sea.

Jo Renshaw (11:23.982)
there's a tree, because my brain couldn't argue with that. Everything else was like an argument. But I actually had to stop listening to the archers around that point. I was an avid archers listener. But it was a very distressing storyline about domestic abuse. And it was it was upsetting me while I was running. So thought, OK, I'm just not going to listen to that. So I started to be careful about what inputs were coming into my brain. So I was listening to less news, less upsetting stories, more and more Abraham.

I thought I'm just going to listen to more of what makes me feel good. So I started naming objects and by the end of the run, my brain was quiet. I was like, wow, that works. That was quite easy. So I remembered that I haven't mentioned I've got a background at Steiner Waldorf education. So I taught at the Steiner School for a long time. And the first part of the day for the children is always in movement.

You teach everything through rhythmical movements. So the times tables, we're doing clapping and moving games and knitting and all these things send the child's brain into this kind of hypnotic state because we don't want them overthinking too much. And that doesn't change us. We're an adult. We want to be in this rhythmical kind of state because it helps ideas come. And I began to get so many ideas.

as I was in rhythmical movement. anyone listening might have experienced the same swimming or dancing or running or making love, like anything that has a rhythmical movement to it, that part of the overactive brain just settles down.

Sally (13:06.503)
Wow, okay, that makes so much sense. I pride myself on having really good rhythm. I don't know where it's come from. All I can think, my granddad used to play the drums, so maybe it's come from there. But, like, don't know if people have seen my Instagram, I've doing, I've taken up dance again, and I'm really good with the rhythm. But, funny you should say that because I noticed that sometimes I think...

rhythmically. So when I'm reading for example I will read in a kind of rhythmic pattern or if I'm speaking I'll speak in rhythms like and when I'm doing my hypnosis when I'm performing hypnosis when I'm being a hypnotherapist some of the words will come out rhythmically.

So it's very interesting that you said that because I hadn't associated rhythm with learning, but I get it now because, you know, once two is two, two, twos are four. That's so cute. That's taken me right back to infant school. Brilliant. Okay. So yeah. And I experienced that as well with running and definitely like putting the podcasts on, putting

Jo Renshaw (14:08.908)
Yeah, exactly. That's how we remember it, isn't it?

Mmm.

Sally (14:24.521)
you know, positive mindset style things are brilliant. So also just touching on how do we overcome injuries with running? Did you have any injuries when you were running?

Jo Renshaw (14:37.422)
Not too many, no, because I'm not a very fast runner at all. And my volume of distance was never very great. I would, I towards the end of marathon training, I was a bit injured, but that was just like wear and tear. So in the last two weeks of marathon training, actually didn't run very much at all, but

just went to have sports massages and stayed off my feet as much as possible. I've got a little bit of an injury at the moment, but that's from lack of strength. So I've been really fortunate and not... Wow, you've just reminded me. I had a sports massage on Saturday and the therapist was massaging my leg and she came across this lump and she said, is that sore? And it's a cyst and it's not sore.

And I said, no. And she said, did you have an injury there? And I'd completely forgotten that I did have an injury there. I tore some fascia. I was about six miles from home and I was having a lovely run on my own, a training run, and this fascia popped and I had to get a taxi home. I couldn't walk at all. And then, yeah, I was off my feet for about six weeks. I had forgotten about that. And I went a bit stir crazy.

Sally (15:48.244)
Wow.

Sally (15:57.358)
Mmm. Mmm. Yeah.

Jo Renshaw (16:00.354)
Because I wasn't getting that, those endorphins, the runners high, the rhythmical movements. Yeah, was a long time ago. I don't remember the details of it.

Sally (16:10.919)
Yeah, injury can be tricky, can't it? Because if you've come to rely on exercise for your mental wellbeing and then all of a sudden you've become restricted, then there's that sense of frustration. But I there's always things that we can do, even if it's not the running or, know.

or lifting really, really heavy weights. There's always something, there's always a modification that we can do. But yeah, it's taking time. And I think as we get older, we are more prone to injuries. We can be more prone to injuries. So like really listening to your body. What I wanna talk to you about is your work. So just give people a little bit of background about how you help people. Like, yeah, what do you do with menopause or people that come and see you?

Jo Renshaw (16:34.883)
Yeah.

Jo Renshaw (16:43.758)
Hmm.

Jo Renshaw (16:56.878)
So it's all about helping people to think in a way about menopause or any life scenario that feels better, that feels true to them and that is going to serve them towards their longer term goals. So if someone comes to see me and let's say they're not sleeping well.

Sally (17:16.789)
Hmm.

Jo Renshaw (17:25.218)
And the brain has a tendency to make things really dramatic. Like, I'm not sleeping well, it's the worst thing ever and it shouldn't be happening. We just want to calm all of that down because first of all, it is happening. what causes so much suffering I've seen is this arguing with reality. lots of women I meet are in this kind of area of being confused about whether or not they're in perimenopause.

If you're in your 40s, you're in perimenopause. You just are. So we need to stop arguing first and say yes to the reality that's going on. And I think some of that is because it wasn't a conversation when we were younger. It just wasn't. So we're writing that public narrative, if you like. So we know if we're in our 40s and early 50s, we're in perimenopause and

We know that menopause is one moment and then afterwards we're post-menopausal. And a big part of the public conversation now is those things that we did in our 30s and early 40s that I certainly cannot do now. I can't drink now. I drank loads in my 20s and 30s, far too much. I stopped drinking about 10 years ago and I...

occasionally have a glass of, fears of is a special occasion, but some of my clients have complained about some of their symptoms, but they're drinking a bottle of wine on a Friday night. I'm wondering why they're feeling so awful. And I'm not ever going to say to anybody, you have to stop drinking altogether, but we have to, I think, take some personal responsibility and say, there are some things that just don't work for me now.

And yeah, maybe I'm gonna feel sad about that and allow ourselves to feel those emotions. For me at the moment, it's coffee. I love coffee so much. I just love it, but it just doesn't sit well with me anymore. And then so have a little bit of a grieving process about stopping it because it's not just a flavor. There's a whole routine and rituals like going to buy my nice beans and grinding them up and finding the right milk and froths and...

Jo Renshaw (19:49.826)
faffing around with a machine. So as I've given it up, part of me feels a little bit unanchored. And so it's not really about the coffee, it's allowing myself to feel the emotions that feel true for me. And if I'm honest, there's a bit of grief around it because I'm saying goodbye to a part of my life that was involved in meeting a girlfriend for coffee and sitting around and going, mm, that lovely smell and flavor. So it's getting to know

So I think what I do is help people get to know a new version of themselves because we have these different seasons of life. And it's very easy to get to kind of mid-twenties and think, great, we're growing up, we're done. Now this is who we are, but this is not who we are. You know, if you then have children, then you're completely different on the other side of that. If you change careers, you're completely different on the other side of that. If you have a bereavement,

completely different on the other side of that. So we can reinvent ourselves and we can do that with very deliberate intention rather than just leaving it to default. Because we have so much agency and I really get very excited about helping people take the reins of their own life and saying, yeah, this is what I want my life to look like. This is what's possible for me and my sleep.

Sally (21:12.628)
Mm.

Jo Renshaw (21:17.474)
pattern is different now. My strike, I can't run a marathon now. I have no desire to run a marathon now. I love a 5k, I love a 10k, but no part of me wants to spend every night of the week training. And there's been a grieving process for that.

Sally (21:36.757)
Mmm.

Jo Renshaw (21:37.026)
because I'm a different human.

Sally (21:40.957)
Yeah, I wonder if it's related to, you know, ease of change, it's related to ease of how we are with our difficult feelings. Like if we're really comfortable with moving through difficult feelings, will we have an easier time of change? Because there's less resistance, perhaps.

Jo Renshaw (22:02.368)
I really believe that, I really believe that because yeah, we know that what we resist persists and gets stronger. And if we're arguing with reality all the time, well, the universe only hears what we're talking about. So what we put our, yeah.

Sally (22:18.293)
Yeah, only here's the war, doesn't it? Only here's the conflict and it gives us more of the conflict because the universe responds to your, how you're feeling. Yeah.

Jo Renshaw (22:24.214)
Yeah, yeah.

Jo Renshaw (22:30.126)
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And it's not to say we don't want to necessarily jump to the place where we're thinking rainbows and daisies about man at balls at all, because some symptoms are really difficult. Some symptoms are painful and uncomfortable and take a while to figure out what's going on. I was listening to an episode of your podcast a couple of days ago and someone was mentioning something about a frozen shoulder.

That's crazy, I had no idea. So I'm gonna tell my sister about that, because she's had this shoulder injury for ages, but she's been working all of this out with no knowledge that that could be a menopause symptom. So there's just also a lot that women don't know, because they don't know, we don't know what we don't know, do we? So we're in an era of figuring all that stuff out.

Sally (23:24.659)
Yeah, it's an era of great change for women's health. Absolutely. this is, and I think there's a lot of confusion preceding understanding. I mean, it's an NLP term, isn't it? Confusion precedes understanding, I think. I think it's NLP. I think that's where I first heard it. And I think if you look on social media at the moment, there's so many different narratives about menopause. What's right, what's not right? You know, is it, it estrogen deficiency? Is it estrogen dominance?

Jo Renshaw (23:39.63)
Mm.

Sally (23:53.907)
Like, my God, so many different schools of thought and no wonder women are so confused right now. But I think ultimately we have to listen to our own body. We have to, you know, take the information that we've got access to, digest it, process it. Look, take a 360 degree view of menopause. Don't just fixate on one Instagram influencer. Like look at all of them and understand everyone's biases.

Jo Renshaw (24:01.582)
Mmm.

Sally (24:22.685)
as well because we all have our own biases, myself included, you know, we're all coming to menopause through our own lens. So the wider the lens, you know, the more unbiased we'll be, which really is my focus for this podcast is kind of listening to all sorts of different schools of thought. So I love what you said about

you know, not arguing with reality. I love that. I'm going to take that on as a little sound bite and and all these different changes that we go through and how we reinvent ourselves every time. And I think I think I've just got this. I have these really silly images that pop into my head sometimes. And I think to get through change, it's almost like we have to lube up to sort of slide through.

the tunnel of change so we can get through without too much resistance. that really is, that lube, if you like, is acceptance of what reality is showing us right now. Is there, you'll never forget that now, will you? Is there?

Jo Renshaw (25:19.086)
Yeah.

Jo Renshaw (25:35.265)
I love that.

Jo Renshaw (25:39.757)
You

Sally (25:41.351)
Is there a model that you use to kind of, when you coach people, and also to kind of help yourself when you're going through a change?

Jo Renshaw (25:52.236)
Yeah, so I use a tool called the model. So the model was taught to me by my coach instructor who is called Brook Castillo. founded a school called the Life Coach School. And she, I want to say she created this tool. She wouldn't say she created it, but she, it came to her as a, from an understanding of all sorts of teachers work. So Byron, Katie, Abraham, Eckhart Tolle.

And we basically say everything in the world falls into one of five categories. It's either a circumstance, which are the facts of the world. So like I was saying when I was running and I was learning this tool while I was running, the sky is blue. It's a neutral fact. Everything in the world is a fact. Sally is sitting in her flat there, sitting in her flat here. We're not going to argue with that. Then the second category is thoughts. We have about 60,000 thoughts a day.

most of them go unquestioned, unchecked, they just come, right? And we have them about all sorts of things. And our thoughts create our feelings. And a feeling is really one word, and it's a vibration in our body caused by a thought in our mind. So happy, sad, angry, upset, anxious. Our feelings drive our actions and our inactions. So everything that we do or don't do comes from a feeling.

Feelings also, emotions, energy in motion, makes us move. And then our actions produce our results. And our results always give us evidence of what we're thinking. So it's a really useful tool to give us awareness of how we've got the results in our lives. So we use that tool first of all to become aware of what's going on. And then we can start to question it, see the impact.

of that thought, see the impact of what we're thinking, how that's creating our life experience, and then we can choose a new way of thinking. So often what we try and do is try and change the circumstance, but we can have a go at changing circumstance. So a good example is if we've got a partner and we want them to take the rubbish out so that we can feel better.

Jo Renshaw (28:21.612)
What we'll do typically is nag them, try and change them so that we can feel better. But actually if we change the way we think about it, then we get to feel better. And maybe they take the rubber as well as a byproduct. But no amount of us pushing against reality and trying to change reality is actually the thing that will make us better. We've all tried it, right? It just never works. And so I think that goes on a lot in around perimenopause.

Like we try and change the circumstance. I shouldn't be having these symptoms. Like this is wrong. Actually, when we're thinking I shouldn't be having those symptoms, well, we kind of should be having them because that's what we're having. This is what we've got right now. So this is a thought I've come to a lot recently. I had a period, I had no period for seven months last summer. I was like, wow, this is interesting. We're kind of nearly halfway through.

fun and then suddenly on New Year's Eve my period arrived and I could have I could have gone into a place of thinking this is awful, there's something wrong with me, this shouldn't be happening and instead I just I that did all come and I felt all the emotions but I felt the emotions so I didn't try and push them away, I didn't ignore them, I didn't reject myself because of them, I just sat with it and then I said to myself this is what we've got right now.

This is what we've got. And so now I'm in a place of being more curious. Like, I wonder what's going to happen next. I don't know. But I'm not going to reject myself when an event happens that doesn't feel nice to me or that my brain believes shouldn't have been happening because it's happening.

Sally (30:02.42)
Yeah.

Sally (30:09.715)
Yeah, it's so interesting you say that it reminds me of something I learned on the space holding course I did and it was about liminal spaces and I think a liminal space is a space between, it's a space between, know, somebody, you lose somebody and they're no longer there but you've no longer moved on. So it's this in-between stage of grief usually. But actually I think life

is an eternal liminal space. Because we just don't know. We can make all these plans, we can take control, but ultimately we just don't know what's going to happen. And so I think if we can make friends with the liminal space, I think whatever happens, whatever emerges in our life, those surprises,

we can kind of have more of a neutral response to them rather than a kind of overwhelming meltdown of this wasn't supposed to happen.

Jo Renshaw (31:11.38)
Yeah, exactly. In coaching, we call that the river of misery, that liminal space. So it's like we have this one unintentional model that we're in, where we're believing this shouldn't be happening. And on the other side of the riverbank, there's this place where it is happening, but we don't quite believe it yet. So we're floating in a river of misery between that one place and this new belief we're wanting to get to.

So there's a way of getting to a new belief that we don't ever want to lie to ourselves, right? So we might not be able to jump straight to this is happening. So we might start by kind of building a little bridge and saying something like, I'm learning to believe that this is happening. I'm practicing the new thought that this is happening. It's like we're instructing to our brain, I had this

dog a few years ago. He was a very anxious dog. He hadn't been lead walked when he came to me. He was never confident on the lead and he hated going in the car. And I had to get him in the car to take him on a walk. And the only way to do it was to kind of gently tease him in with treats. And I think it's like that with the brain sometimes. It doesn't want to change. Its job is to keep you the same and keep it thinks it's trying to keep you safe by minimizing change. So if we can just tease it with little bits.

by saying, I'm practicing the new thought that dot dot dot. The brain just relaxes a little bit. It's like, okay, she doesn't want me to change all in one go. I can just do a little bit, a little bit, a little bit. It's like teasing the scared. Yeah, yeah.

Sally (32:53.981)
Hmm, so it's like a stepping stone.

Yeah, love that. Really, really good. Okay, what are some of the biggest blocks that you see in people, in some of your clients when they're coming to you and they're going through a change? I guess it is that sort of denial, but are there any other things that you notice? Any other kind of blocks or resistances that you notice where people are not getting the change that they want?

and why that might be and how you would take someone through a process to kind of unlock them.

Jo Renshaw (33:35.95)
A lot of what I hear people say is, well, I'm just a person who, or I've always been that way. And so what their brain is really saying is, I'm gonna draw on the past for who I am. But if we continue to draw on the past, we're just gonna keep recreating the past. And because the brain doesn't wanna change, of course it's going to keep going to the past.

So first of all, we work to recognise that that's what the brain wants to do. It wants to keep us safe and the same and of course it's going to go back for evidence.

In order to change, we have to look to the future and decide what we want our future to look like. And there's a lot of resistance to making those decisions because the brain will think, well, if I decide that in the future, I'm going to be a person who lifts weights when I've always been a runner. What if I don't like it? What if I find something better? It's like instantly it's like we plant a little seed.

of something that we want or could be a possibility and then the brain instantly slashes it down as that shoot grows up. And so some of the work I do is help the brain just calm and know that it's okay. can, you're not, it's not like you're cutting every other option off. There's so many, so many possibilities that could happen in the future, but if you don't decide on anything,

Like if you're going on a car journey to Edinburgh, you're going to say, I'm going to drive to Edinburgh. You're not just going to get in the car and start driving somewhere. You want to know where you're headed to. If on the way to Edinburgh, you see a signpost that says the Isle of Skye, and that's much more appealing, then you're going to go to the Isle of Skye. That's OK. But we want to have an end in mind.

Jo Renshaw (35:41.59)
And so helping people pick an end in mind, an end place that they want to get to and work towards that and allow themselves to feel all the difficult emotions, doubt, fear, anxiety that come with that. Because it's very easy to think that, if we've got a new goal to work towards, we should just be feeling great about it all the time. Absolutely not. No. And any runner listening to this will know that.

The goal is to run a marathon. You're not going to feel great in the training. You're not going to want to get up at six o'clock on a Sunday morning when the beast from the east is raging and you've got a 12 mile run. But you do it because of your longer term goal that you want to achieve. Now, if you're building a business, if you've got a goal to make a hundred thousand pounds, it's not going to be a lovely dance in the park. It's going to be hard work.

if you want to be strong, you have to go and lift heavy weights. That hurts. And people are averse to doing difficult things that are going to cause them pain in inverted commas, emotional or physical. And we're okay. We can, we can cope with some emotional pain. We can cope with some, a bit of physical pain.

Sally (36:54.197)
Mmm.

Sally (37:03.283)
Yeah, I think suffering, I think a bit of suffering is good. Don't kill me for saying that. But I think we grow through suffering and nobody likes it, but it's a necessary evil that shapes us and helps us to know what we want as well. And that was something I was going to ask you about shaping our future. So I'm currently writing a workshop about values and we're doing a lot of

Jo Renshaw (37:15.15)
Of course, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Sally (37:32.637)
my own kind of inner work around values as well. And I think when we've got like a blank sheet of paper or clean slates, like people say, what do you want? And it's almost like there's too much choice. So how do you take someone through a journey of limiting their choices to be able to get to the one that's right for them?

Jo Renshaw (37:54.742)
Hmm, yeah, so that's usually around how they want to feel first. And so we live into that vision of when they're feeling, let's say someone wants to feel connected. So we're visualizing what life is going to look like when they're feeling connected. maybe they're maybe they're having doing more creative practice, right? Or maybe they're

Sally (37:58.485)
Yeah.

Jo Renshaw (38:23.756)
going on lovely long walks, or maybe they're inviting their spouse to go on a date night once a week. So it's from the place of how they want to feel that what the external thing looks like reveals itself.

Sally (38:38.421)
I see. Do you ever come up against resistance in terms of, I'm playing devil's advocate here, people that don't know how they want to feel?

Jo Renshaw (38:48.182)
Yeah, because people don't know how to feel.

So first of all, we gotta learn how to feel. And that means feeling all the so-called negative emotions. I really teach that all emotions are neutral. They're just a vibration in our body. But we've been trained that we should just feel happy all the time. And that's absolute nonsense. No one wants to feel happy when someone dies. You don't want to feel happy about your body changing through menopause. But you might want to feel sad about that.

Sally (39:22.739)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jo Renshaw (39:25.516)
So learning to feel those emotions first and knowing that they can't cause us any harm. It's a very normal part of being human and there's nothing wrong with us for feeling negative emotions. And you can't, no amount of shopping or Netflix or bottles of wine will make those feelings go away. So we're either gonna feel like I was saying earlier with running, right? I'm either gonna feel uncomfortable and anxious and not run.

Sally (39:37.885)
Yeah.

Jo Renshaw (39:54.7)
or I'm gonna feel anxious and run. So I'm gonna feel emotion, do the thing anyway.

Sally (40:00.201)
Yeah, so you can either feel horrid and drink the wine, or you can feel horrid and not drink the wine. Yeah.

Jo Renshaw (40:06.764)
Yeah, and then not, so we call this buffering. So buffering is anything that has a negative result on the back end. So wine's a great example. If we, if let's say we've had something that's made us feel disappointed, we didn't get a job that we really wanted. And so our brain thinks the solution to dealing with the disappointment is to drink a bottle of wine. Well,

Tomorrow, we're still not gonna have the job and we're still, and we're gonna have a hangover. Whereas if we allow ourselves to process the disappointment, to sit with it, let it course through our body, tomorrow, we won't have the job, but we also won't have a hangover and we will have overcome a difficult emotion. And that's how we build a strong relationship with ourselves. I think if you can feel any difficult emotion, then you can pretty much do anything. We had a...

significant family bereavement three and a half years ago. And two days, my daughter's father died about a week before I had 24th, 25th birthday. And for the first time in about eight years, I thought, I want a whiskey and a cigarette. And instead I sat with a feeling and it was the most painful thing I've ever been through. But my gosh, I got to know myself so well, so well through that process and I would not.

swap any of that negative emotion that I felt through that period of time. Not at all. Because I know that I'm where I am now because I allowed myself to feel all of that on purpose.

Sally (41:44.309)
What did you learn about yourself during that time of bereavement?

Jo Renshaw (41:51.582)
I learned that I can hold a lot more than I thought I could. That I could withstand pretty much anything that life was going to bring my way and hold another human being through that as well because I was very aware that I'm always modeling to my daughter and any other young women around. And I feel a very strong

sense of responsibility to be a good example for her. And so I knew that she would be watching whatever I was doing. She had such a big experience, but she needed me. And so I wasn't coming at it from a place of, oh God, she needs me. So I have to be strong for her. It's like, no, she, she needs me not now, not just now, but for, so that future her knows how to behave as an older woman.

Sally (42:49.725)
Hmm. Yeah, so you're modeling, you're modeling the emotion, processing the emotion, regulating yourself, or just being okay with existing in that, again, that liminal space of not knowing and withholding all of those, not resisting what's there.

Jo Renshaw (42:59.192)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Sally (43:09.749)
So you're modelling that for her, but also with this feeling that that's okay, like modelling that this is okay, so that she doesn't have to save you or rescue you and she can be in her own space.

Jo Renshaw (43:09.89)
Yeah.

Jo Renshaw (43:17.112)
Yeah.

Jo Renshaw (43:20.622)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I have to say, you know, where she is now, she's blown me away. She just blows me away. She stopped smoking, she stopped drinking, she took up crochet. She's now traveling the world. She's, the way she processes her emotions. And I think, wow, if I could have had that skill at 28, my life would be very different now, but now she's got that skill.

And so her life is now very different. And so she's been able to do it quicker than I was. So I feel really proud of myself that I did that.

Sally (43:59.251)
Yeah, that's a lovely legacy for you. And you've helped to break that cycle for future generations too, which is really important. Yeah. Amazing. So when you have clients that come to you, cause one of the narratives in menopause is overwhelm. Yeah. A lot of women experience so much overwhelm in menopause and a sense and a feeling that they are, that there's too much to do. you know, with

Jo Renshaw (44:02.028)
Yeah.

Jo Renshaw (44:06.306)
Yeah? Yeah?

Yeah.

Jo Renshaw (44:18.382)
Mmm.

Sally (44:29.447)
with everything that life throws at us, how do you help someone? How do you usually unpick that challenge of the too much to do thing?

Jo Renshaw (44:39.758)
Hmm, yeah, I totally relate. That's a narrative that comes into my brain frequently as well. And so I help people reorient their kind of life towards exquisite self care. So many people, so many women have not learned how to care for themselves in a way that is really nourishing and supporting. So if that means going to the sauna once a week.

if that means going to bed at eight o'clock, if that means not folding the laundry or not, if you love a freshly ironed letting the bed sheets be unironed, putting yourself first above all else. And that's really difficult if you haven't done that. If you've been a spouse, a mom, if you've had a career.

you will have been doing a lot of things for a lot of other people and putting yourself down the list and maybe caring for yourself with a glass of wine on a Friday night but all of that has to change you know going for massage once a week well that is so necessary taking time out going for a walk on your own sitting I love my partner so much but I love it when he's out of the house

and I sit in the armchair in the window and I'll stare at the sea for hours in silence. And the level of recovery and nourishment I feel the next day as a result of doing that. But I've had to allow myself to feel like, should I be doing this? I should be doing the meal plan for next week. I should be answering emails. I should be balancing the family budget. I should be, no, I should be sitting and staring out of the window.

Because if I haven't filled my cup first, then I cannot do anything else. So this is something that we go through in practice again and again and again. It's not just giving yourself permission to do that. When the nervous system has been pumped and primed to be active and on all of the time, if we come to a place of rest and relaxation,

Jo Renshaw (47:01.742)
Suddenly the nervous, the brain is like, hang on, what's going on here? Something bad's about to happen. So we have to retrain that side of the nervous system to know that it's actually safe to rest and relax. It's fine to do that. Nothing bad is going to happen if the washing up doesn't get done.

Sally (47:16.894)
Yeah.

Sally (47:21.789)
Yeah, hallelujah. And it's almost like danger, danger, isn't it? It's like sit down, danger, danger, danger. These like flashing lights. Yeah, relate, definitely relate. But also relate to the learning just to sit down look out the window and get into that hypnotic daydreamy state. Because I think there's been so much talk about estrogen being

Jo Renshaw (47:30.89)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jo Renshaw (47:43.576)
Mm.

Sally (47:50.953)
the thing that needs replenishing as we go through menopause. But actually I think it's progesterone and progesterone should come first actually when we're going through peri because we can end up with extremely high levels of estrogen but not enough progesterone to offset that. And as we know, estrogen is an excitatory hormone. I've now got an alarm going off in the background.

to underpin my point, and progesterone is an inhibitory hormone. So if you're having menopausal symptoms and you're not resting enough, likelihood is you're gonna be stimulating all those excitatory hormones like cortisol, histamine, estrogen, adrenaline, all that stuff that's jacking you up, making those symptoms worse. If you're resting,

Jo Renshaw (48:22.382)
Hmm.

Sally (48:46.963)
and allowing your body to come back into the parasympathetic, your body is now going to be able to prioritize or make more of the progesterone, the GABA, the anopregnenolone, I think it's called, new chemical that I learned recently. So that's often the cause of all of those awful menopausal symptoms that we have, not estrogen decline, it's progesterone decline.

And this is all kind of like coming out now. So what you're saying really matches the kind of hormonal profile of someone that's having symptoms.

Jo Renshaw (49:15.329)
Mm-hmm.

Jo Renshaw (49:26.37)
Yeah, yeah. And it's a way that we can, what I've experienced within my own body is that the curve is calmer. I don't get these extremes. And now I'm at a place I have enforced rest one day a week. It's easier for me to do now because it's more of a habit. Four, five, six months ago was much harder, but I've...

trained myself and worked through the difficult emotions with it. yeah, my cycle is definitely karma.

Sally (50:04.347)
it's just made me think actually of scheduling in sitting on the sofa time actually putting it in the diary you know half and is it yeah and you go right okay looking a diary right and sofa time and then I suppose does it lessen the guilt or does it lessen that kind of itchy voice that's going do this do that because it's actually scheduled in

Jo Renshaw (50:12.482)
Yeah, that's exactly what I do. Yeah.

Jo Renshaw (50:31.502)
Yeah, yeah. So when I'm working with women, one of the, and they come and tell me that they're feeling overwhelmed and we look at their calendar, the first thing I get them to do is schedule in downtime. And to a woman, they're like, what? No, I've got, no, no, no. We schedule in downtime first and then meetings and everything else goes in around that. We've got it so mixed up.

other way. If we put all our meetings and work in first, then downtime just doesn't happen. It just doesn't get scheduled in. And at this period of life, it's so important to take care of ourselves and rest. It's so important. And as well, don't forget, we're working against a patriarchal system that has disallowed it. I think this is true for men as well. think men need this too. To rest and digest

properly because actually on the days that I do work, I'm so much more effective. I have much more brain energy, much more physical energy, much more motivated because I've rested. And so that's working through the thoughts that come up with my clients is a big piece of it.

Sally (51:53.107)
Yeah, working through the resistances. Because I suppose it's all gonna come up, isn't it? It's all gonna come up. But within that, there's a wonderful opportunity to look at what's coming up and to process it and understand it. Know thyself. This is how we do it. I can't remember who said it, but I think it was like Socrates or a Greek.

Jo Renshaw (52:10.04)
Yeah.

Sally (52:20.853)
philosopher that said contemplation is the highest form of action or the most something like that yeah and it's true and I love how you encourage your clients to prioritize that get that in the diary first the downtime and then everything else goes around that so that we can you know create create the best ruler

Jo Renshaw (52:27.431)
lovely, yeah. Yeah.

Jo Renshaw (52:38.894)
Mm-hmm.

Sally (52:49.077)
create the better hormonal environment, internal hormonal environment. And it's free as well. We're taught, aren't we, that time is money. I can't sit on my bum because time is money. But actually, so is if you think about all the supplements and the HRT that we take, that costs money. So we're not having to take all of that because we're actually letting our body do.

Jo Renshaw (52:55.32)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Jo Renshaw (53:12.876)
Hmm.

Sally (53:18.739)
what our body wants to do to bring itself back to homeostasis, then that cost versus expenditure kind of balances itself out and likely to be way more cost effective actually, yeah.

Jo Renshaw (53:30.248)
Exactly. Yeah, and the alternative is to keep going through overwhelm and hit burnout and then need to be signed off work. So there's a cost to that as well, much bigger cost, I think. So we have so much within our power and agency just by taking rest of our own accord.

Sally (53:53.033)
Yeah, amazing.

I've really, really enjoyed talking with you, Jo. I think we've unpicked so much stuff together, you know, from running all the way through to, you know, mindset, emotional management. What was it you said? Don't argue with reality, resting, so much. And I know that all of the tips and tricks and these suggestions go such a long way to helping us experience a smoother menopause, better sleep, better relationships.

better physical, mental health, all of that stuff. Is there a final thought that you have, especially around the word mindset? This podcast is called The Menopause Mindset. I know you talk a lot about mindset. You have ideas around mindset. Yeah, do you have any final thoughts around what mindset means to you?

Jo Renshaw (54:47.34)
Hmm. Yeah, I think what mindset means to me is that my mind is, excuse me a minute, our mind is the only thing that we really have full control over. Like you can decide to think whatever you want about whatever you want and nothing and nobody can take that away from you. So you could be in the

worst, most difficult scenario and think life is amazing. So when I was bankrupt, I had 72 pence in my purse. And for fun, I decided to think that it was a 72 pence air because it felt so much better. And I thought, well, know, society tells me that I should feel terrible about this, but I just don't. And because I allowed

myself to feel good on purpose. I began to feel good on purpose about so many other things. And that's the power of mindset is that you can choose to think whatever you want. And if something doesn't feel good, don't think it.

Sally (56:01.127)
Yeah, choose to feel good on purpose. I love that. Do you know, I've reframed doing household chores. I have this like little bit of a sticking point with household chores and fairness and equality and stuff like that. I think a lot of women do, but I've reframed it now. It's like, I get to do those things and in getting to do those things, I get an opportunity to move my body, to bend forward, to reach up, to lift the bin out.

Jo Renshaw (56:21.089)
Mmm.

Sally (56:30.611)
and I'm moving my body and our lift has been broken for three months and I'm on the fourth floor, right? So it's eight flights of stairs and it's like, I get to walk up these stairs. I get to use my heart and lungs. I get to use my thighs. I'm becoming stronger, fitter. And so actually through that, I've noticed that I can reframe so many other things.

Like getting dressed in the morning. Typically it's something that I hate doing because I'm stiff and my back hurts and You know, I feel like an old lady, but it's like, you know, I get to do this because I get to practice mobility I get to like The sonovial fluid on my joints and I get to choose what I wear so

Yeah, it's like you say, it's reframing it. I'm a big, big believer in exactly what you said there. You get to choose the thoughts that you want to think. And to me, that's creativity. That's tapping into the power, like I call it a higher sense.

Jo Renshaw (57:26.349)
Yeah.

Sally (57:31.397)
We have our imagination, which is a higher sense that often we don't use. We have our creativity, which is a higher sense, our will, our intuition. These are our higher senses. And when we use them, we get to design the life that we want. And never is that more true through the menopause transition. This isn't just about entrepreneurialism and career. This is designing the wise elder woman that you want to be.

Yeah.

Jo Renshaw (58:02.23)
Yeah, I love that so much. And I love what you said about reframing household chores and that moving to other areas of your life. This is a really useful point. So I did this while I was running. I found these new ways of thinking while I was running and the brain doesn't know the difference between these areas of life that the human beings have divided up health, career relationships. You only have to change the way you think about one area of your life and the brain will just

send it over to other areas. So it's not like you have to go and overhaul every single area, just focus on one thing. And it'll, it just will have amazing ripple effects everywhere else.

Sally (58:43.731)
Yeah, bingo. Jo, it's been amazing talking to you. How, if people have really been inspired by you, I've been inspired by you, and they fancy maybe exploring what you've got to offer, some more of your thoughts, where are you available on social media, and how also do you work with people?

Jo Renshaw (59:06.542)
So on social media, I'm joe underscore Renshaw. And I work with people for three to six months, one to one. We do meet once a week for 45 minutes. On Google Meet, Zoom, from anywhere in the world. That's how I love to work. I do a weekly blog. And if anybody wants to learn about that tool I described called the model.

I offer a free guide, which is on the link in my Instagram bio. And it's on most of the footers of my blog as well.

Sally (59:42.407)
Amazing, that sounds nice and simple, which I love. Nice and simple but super effective. So Jo, thank you so much for this insightful conversation. If you've really enjoyed listening to Jo and all her pearls of wisdom, do go and check her out. Get on her mailing list and follow her on Instagram. Is it Instagram? You're most active? Yeah, brilliant. Cool, thank you so much, Jo.

Jo Renshaw (59:47.797)
Mm-hmm.

Jo Renshaw (01:00:06.21)
Yeah. Yeah.

Great, thank you, Sally. It's been so interesting talking to you.