Mid Life Pivot

Carly OsmanAnd fun I can't wait okay so my hi Julie I'm delighted to have you here today amazing so today we are going to be talking about the midlife pivot and when you go from that place of I hate my job I hate my life I feel stuck into what can happen if you I suppose trust in the process of letting before we go there

Gilly ridley WhitteAmazing. I look forward to this. Thank you so much. I am absolutely delighted to be with you.

Carly OsmanTell me a bit about yourself.

Gilly ridley WhitteWell, Gillian Ridley Whittle. a mother. i am a sister. I'm a wife. I am a businesswoman. I used to have a life, which was a big corporate career in the fashion industry. I someone who actually relishes her peace, her calm, I love, I'm a very passionate woman, passionate person, and i am on a mission to transform this world in any way that I can.

Carly OsmanI love it. So my first, well, my real first question to you is, you had the big job. You had the title that everyone wanted. You had the success. You had, I'm sure, the money. Why did you leave it?

Gilly ridley WhitteYes, it got so uncomfortable. I had no choice, basically. i Everything I always wanted was a very successful material career, a career where I was validated by my, by the the things I had, the money, the home, the dresses, the, the teams, you know, the, the title, that was everything that mattered to me because I thought that was success and that success equaled happiness.

Carly OsmanThank you.

Gilly ridley WhitteAnd when I got to the highest position that I actually ever achieved, which was actually around 2014, moved to Australia. I had it all, but actually i didn't have it all because I was, I got very unhappy and very stressed and very uncomfortable. And actually that was the start for me about realizing I needed to either fix the job, which I kept trying to do or move out and do something which added value. And it wasn't a quick decision. it was actually a build up over time. But that was where it started. I started to dislike what I was doing.

Carly OsmanHow did that manifest? Was that a mental thing that kept coming up and words in your voices or was it more of a physical reaction? Like, how did you know that something just wasn't right?

Gilly ridley WhitteThank So in the years leading up to that moment, I had always in every job felt there was something missing. And I always thought that something missing was the next big job, but a bigger title and more money. So that's where I always pursued. but but That was my goal. When I got to Australia, where we were a long way from our family, friends, home, I was in very stressful turnaround job. The expectations were really high. i had to support lots of the team through a difficult culture transition. We had to support a big transformation in terms of our strategy and our product. So there was enormous amount of pressure on my shoulders all the time every day. And I started to feel crippling daily anxiety. It got built up and built up and I took to combat that I used to take St John's walk tablets every day just to kind of in the morning just to keep myself calm and i had to visibly hide I'm a very good actress I've discovered I had to hide the physical symptoms and that was that fight or flight

Gilly ridley WhitteDeep nervousness all the time, feeling like I was going to get sacked every day, you know, it's that feeling of not being good enough and and this the pressure because I brought the family out to Australia and my children and my husband, and my husband had given up his agency to come out. So i was, a I was, I prided myself on my strength and my resilience, but actually underneath I was really churning up all the time every day. Sleep became difficult. I ended up working twenty four seven You become a little bit crazy obsessed because I couldn't fail.

Carly OsmanWhen did you know enough was enough? Was there a singular moment that you went, I can't anymore? Or was it a gradual divorcing yourself and stepping back?

Gilly ridley WhitteYeah. so So the first job I had in Australia was where i i saw in myself a degree of anxiety and stress I had never, ever experienced. And it wasn't just at work. It was consuming every single moment of my life. And it was so much going on in here as well. And i didn't know how to cope with it. I thought it was circumstances and nothing to do with me. I then went, had a few, three months off before I started my next job in Australia. i started the next job and actually I felt much better for the first year in that role. Then then my my boss left. There was some shifts in the management and the person who was managing me was just such a different type of character to me and did not support all the work I'd been doing with my previous boss so that became a tense situation and I started to hate the job again so it's kind of like someone once said to you keep doing the thing you get the same result but you know so there was stress was anxiety my husband was not settled in Australia so that in itself also was stress we decided to come back to the UK in 2018 I got made redundant from that job which was perfect because I got a payout We came back to the UK and I went to my next big job, which was Topshop as their last fashion director. And that was just before COVID. And I'd had about a year off actually before I started. So I'd had a lot of time just to kind of get myself back. And I felt I was in much stronger position. But actually once I stepped into that job and into that culture, which was challenging, I started to feel the same things again. And the same stresses and the same mental anguish and the same pain came back and it it became so difficult for me daily to actually exist. And i actually started chanting, Buddhist chanting, just to try and give myself some strength before I went into work every day. very good friend of mine's a devout Buddhist and she, she guided me on this. Anyway, when COVID hit and I had to take Topshop through to sell to ASOS, That was probably some of the toughest time of my life. And I did. So your point, did you have a moment? I just said, I can't live like this. I didn't know where living like this was going to take me because it was not, was so uncomfortable. And I did not like anything. I didn't like who I was. I was a fraction of the woman I thought I was. And I was just very vulnerable. And I felt sad that I wasn't able even to be the powerful mum for my kids. I mean, I was always being a very good mum. I think i we're all good mums. We love our kids. But actually, I wanted to be, i was crying a lot. I was unhappy. I was yeah, just completely out of balance. So it did. I just said, I'm not doing that. I can't do this anymore, but I couldn't leave because there's too much responsibility on my shoulders. So I decided, I'd created the concept for this brand peach house when I was in Australia. And I decided now I have to do this now. I have no choice because I don't know where I'm going to after this because I cannot do another job. So I got it off the shelf and I joined this group called the enlightened living club. It was a Facebook group. which was run by someone I knew. and it was a, there's a small group of women in it. And we did intentions every Monday. We did a check-in on a Friday. And that is how I did it to keep, hold myself to account. And so I literally every week I set myself my deadlines and I made sure I'd done them by Friday. And that is how I, Got a concept together, an investor deck together, I built a business plan. So, and I found an investor all through COVID. This was like transformation and it gave me hope and joy so that when... I got made redundant from ASOS, I was literally lined up with an investor and he said he'd invest. It was insane. And I was still broken. i was still at my lowest ebb. But suddenly I saw a different future. And that was my salvation, if I'm honest.

Carly OsmanOh, I love that. And I think, because my next question was going to be, how did you rebuild? Because And I'm going to kind of jump in with a little bit my story here. I got made redundant when I was about 38. I started going to lots of different companies. I was miserable with the job was as well. I would cry every morning and be like, I can't do this.

Gilly ridley WhitteOkay.

Carly OsmanI can't do this. But the same, it still broke me when I got my redundant and I took it incredibly personally. And then, but then I would be interviewing at companies and they would say, oh, we love you. We want you to come on board. And there was something in my full body would say no. And it was screaming. And I was like, can't, I can't keep going. I can't do this again. I can't do this again. And I had the idea to go out, do something by myself with no plan, no networks, no context, no real idea. Everyone thought I was absolutely insane stroke, having a midlife crisis, And that I also suspected it, but now I really see it as my midlife awakening. And I had to do a lot of work behind the scenes to and get my confidence going and really go into that, do a lot of inward value based stuff to figure out actually, what do I care about? What do I love?

Gilly ridley WhitteYes.

Carly OsmanWhat, what brings me joy? Because I hadn't been living in joy for a very, very long time.

Gilly ridley WhitteYes.

Carly OsmanIs that a similar experience to you, to you? do you think?

Gilly ridley WhitteYeah. i i mean, you look back and you, it wasn't like conscious of I've got to rebuild myself because i would i over it was over time and over years that I'd little by little lost myself to a point where I was so not the person I thought I was.

Gilly ridley WhitteAnd actually, I had to recognize that it wasn't external, it was actually internal stuff. And that was the big shift for me, realizing that no one else could fix me but me. And actually there were things in me and in my whole makeup DNA, which I needed to uncover and i needed to release. So Peach House has been my healing space. And not only have I had to build and launch business, trade survivor business, which in itself in today's climate has been an enormous challenge, I have also built myself up and I had to go back many years. I have had to to, your point, work out what makes me happy. So an example would be, I always used to think I didn't like my own space. I wanted to always be with people now. Why do you think that was? Because actually I didn't want, I didn't go want to find who I was.

Gilly ridley WhitteI love my space. I look really peace and quiet. I love being outdoors. I see so much beauty in nature. Before I just used to glide through life on a speed travelator without really absorbing what was going on around me. So I've stepped out of the matrix of how we have been made brainwashed to live, to think.

Carly OsmanThank you.

Gilly ridley WhitteAnd I've re i've found that i found a new way, which is my own freedom, my own liberation. I've had to use lots of nature walks, lots of breathing techniques, lots of meditation, lots of learning to connect to energy. And it's taken five years, i would say that I'm now version of myself that I never knew I could have could be. And I feel despite the pressures, the fact that, you know, my business is still not into a, you know, the a kind of profit making situation. i i have learned to deal with those fears. I've learned to step through and to trust and to believe in myself.

Carly OsmanAs you're speaking, the word hard comes to mind and it's kind of choose your heart because what you've described, having to build a business, battling it through, trying to cut through in today's climate is hard work. But do you feel it's a just a very different hard for when you are constantly fighting against values in organizations that you weren't aligned with? is Is that something that you think?

Gilly ridley WhitteYes.

Carly OsmanYeah.

Gilly ridley WhitteYeah. So when you're in, I'm going to call it your self-made prison, your echo chamber is your head and your thoughts and your thoughts become your reality. So if those thoughts are negative, then your reality that it it plays that through. And that's what my, that's what happened with me. And those thoughts got darker and darker. We think of heart when I, when you, in In that old space of head and matrix, you think of heart as we have a heart, it beats, it keeps me alive. We've been taken away from our heart. Our heart is a very, very powerful energy center. And we've been taken away from it to live in here because that in itself is controlling. It keeps us in fear, keeps us in scarcity. It keeps us in anger. It keeps us in division. division Whereas actually when you shift your energy into this space, heart, you actually come into a space of, and you live in that space. It's a place of empathy, acceptance, love and joy. And actually I had to ph physics it took me, it's taken me years to learn to unplug my head. And I literally have always imagined this electric flex into a socket. And I literally pull it out when I get into get into headspace. And I go to here and I plug in my heart. And i know now, because I've done so much work on connecting into my heart center, that went now, if i it's like I'm tuning a radio, if I'm slipping out, I have to work so to get back into here, because this is where, if we all lived in our heart space, there would be no wars, the the planet would be self-surviving and renewing, and we would all live in such a better place of harmony and alignment with each other and unity. And that is for me, one of the biggest things I'm want to help people to step back into their true heart center and reside in that space. Cause it is, it's bliss.

Carly OsmanAs someone who is there, and I'm on the cusp of moving into this space, I see this as where everyone also should be going and aiming for. But why are so many people stuck in what you described as the matrix, the jobs that make us miserable? Is it failure? Is it fear of judgment? Or is it something else that because we've been so deeply conditioned to this is the path that you have to take, get that job, get the mortgage, get the house, get the thing? what What do you think?

Gilly ridley WhitteYeah, I mean, i' I was listening to, when you listened, when you told me about your kind of 38-year-old self who was just felt and instinctively followed something different, that which is brilliant that you did that at that stage. But what happened to you was other people projected their fears onto you. Now, that is, I think, a really big part. I mean, I remember when I was like, I mean, I'd left my job, I got the cushion, I got the, but you know, what was going to happen when my redundancy money ran out? My mum would say, you know, what are going to Why are you not giving up this massive career and walking away? And so I think it's a lot of things. I think it's what other how other people perceive it and that you you're influenced by that. It's fear. I mean, it's fear of it's generally money. How are we going to survive? how are we going to pay the mortgage? And they're very real. But that's where society has trapped us into putting these walls around ourselves and then we can't break down those walls and you know what you're unusual I'm unusual most people will choose to stay and they will say i accept this life and I accept unhappiness whereas actually i couldn't accept this life and unhappiness you couldn't accept this life and unhappiness and my calling was bigger

Carly OsmanThank you.

Gilly ridley WhitteAnd i got I kept saying I accept it, but it got to the third job when it was like it got so uncomfortable. I had no choice.

Carly OsmanSo how would you advise people to listen to that calling is it a loud shouty voice is it a quiet nudge because I again i'm going to use example of friends they they've said thought about this business idea but I couldn't do it how do you know it that you should follow your intuition or your dreams and just to give it a go

Gilly ridley WhitteOur most powerful receptor, I think, is our intuition. And yet we don't listen to it nearly enough. I now am guided but all the time by my intuition. And if you think about life as something we're given as a gift to experience, we are brought onto this planet, we've asked to be on this planet. I believe in reincarnation. i believe I'm here. right now, right here to do something, follow a mission. And I believe everyone has an intuition which is guiding them and guiding them to make a decision. It's whether or not they listen to that intuition, i think is, and when you know people are listening to it, this it's find that quiet space, go and get a book, go and write, plant seeds of what your future you want your future to be like. create your future in your mind. This is a gift. This is a gift for you to experience life on earth. it's not It's not what we think it is, which is to exist on this earth, in a life, following a path that we're told is the path to happiness and success. That is not true fulfillment. I realized when I stepped to it, I didn't need all those dresses. I didn't need...

Carly OsmanThank you.

Gilly ridley WhitteTo go to nice restaurants all the time. I actually didn't need the salary. It was my old self, ego self that told me I needed all that. What I i need is beauty, peace, be amazing conversations with other human beings, to be inspired, to feel like I'm out there touching people's lives. And that for me is the most rewarding thing. parts of every day.

Carly OsmanSo would you say therefore success in your whole definition of success has fundamentally changed?

Gilly ridley WhitteTotally, totally. And I think success is an interesting word, isn't it? know does it should it even exist should success even exist is a word I would say if i if I had to say success exists for me success exists for me when I've done an amazing bra fit with a woman and she puts one of our beautiful bras on she come having because what happens is when I do a bra fit within like 10 seconds I know so much about this woman when I say how was your last bra fit and she says oh my God, I haven't had one since I was 18, or I never have. And by the way, I put on weight and I don't look at my body. And oh my God, i'm wearing an old bra. should you know And it's like apology after apology. And you realize she's the version of what I was. And when she comes out, having put on one of our beautiful bras, which just are truly transformational, and I see what happens to her. I see her whole posture lift. I see her face start glowing. That for me is success. Actually having transformed and given something to a woman which actually supports her own power and confidence.

Carly OsmanOh, that's so beautiful. That's so beautiful.

Gilly ridley WhitteIt's so, so, so different to where I was. It would have been getting a new Porsche or something before.

Carly OsmanBut this is what matters. It's the connection. It's the humanness. And I think as we move into a world of AI and hyper focus of technology and productivity, it's actually these moments that really, really count.

Gilly ridley WhitteNow

Carly OsmanSo what advice would you have to someone who's listening? Who is at the edge of making their pivot? They've been in the career for 20, 25, 30 years. They've got the salary. They've got the job. But they know that there's something more. What would you say to them?

Gilly ridley WhitteSo I can imagine that person getting getting up every day is a it' a ground dog chore. living for the weekends, already stressed five minutes into stepping out of bed, into the shower, head's kicked in. what have I got on my list today? or if I'm lucky, when should squeeze in the gym? or actually, I'll go for a drink instead. I know exactly what that feels like. So, and I also know, remember from me first creating the concept for my brand to actually launching it was six years. So I didn't, it wasn't instant. So i I think the first thing I would say is make a mindset shift and make a decision. There's a better life and you're going to make a change. Get a book and actually start journaling about that life and that change. Make, you know, whether it's you want to make a picture board or just write words, but start imagining your life, start imagining how you want it to be, imagine you in that life and what it looks like and what you're doing. And then... that's starting to, it's the energy's already shifting if you're doing that. And then it starts to grow and then it starts, it and it might take, it might be instant because you've left it too long and you just need to go like yours was instant. It might, like mine, it took six years before I managed to get there and it all it it all started to happen when I started to commit to it in COVID. So, and but make steps towards it. And once you start that energy shift, it will start opening the door for you to do it. what By staying in your job, you're saying, this is what, I want more of this. I want more of what I have now. And so you'll get more of that and you'll get more of the frustration and more of the staying groundhog day. You'll think that's what I want my life to look like by making a shift, by making shift, having a vision and having steps, you're actually saying, no, this is where I want my life to go. And you'll start, it'll start happening. It just will. That's the way it is. It's energy attracts energy. You know, you're attracting a new type of energy.

Carly OsmanI love that. Thank you, Jilly. Thank

Gilly ridley WhitteI love this. Can we keep going?

Carly OsmanYou. Yeah, we can keep going. What's like? What else should we cover?

Gilly ridley WhitteWell i you know, I think let's talk about you a little bit, actually.

Carly OsmanOh, gosh. Okay.

Gilly ridley WhitteThis you've made that shift, And look at you, you're out there like trying to share stories like mine because actually you want to ignite a flame in people and you want to facilitate the change. So yeah what for you is success? That's what I want to know.

Carly OsmanFor me, success is, I think it boils down to two camps. One, I don't want anyone to feel as lonely or and isolated as I've done in various times in my life. So I went through IVF when no one was talking about IVF, when I felt like an absolute i had absolute shame and hatred of my body. And I just, and it's taken me, probably my kids now seven going on eight. It's taken me eight years now to come to terms with that. And I've actually just written an article for Grazia, which could just got published around the disconnect I had with my body and my sexuality because of the experience that I went to and how medicalized I was.

Gilly ridley WhitteYes, of course.

Carly OsmanAnd So I don't ever want anything people to feel like that, but also about redundancy and also going out on your own. And because I do believe we've got one wild and precious life and I keep coming back to that, although I also do believe in other lives and. But at this moment in time, we've got one wild and precious life and we've got a duty to make it count and not waste it.

Gilly ridley WhitteYeah.

Carly OsmanAnd not spen I think I've spent too much of my time worrying about what people think and how I show up and saying the right things so I don't actually say anything at all or shrinking my thoughts or being afraid to take that leap that I should have gone out by myself probably about 10 years before I did.

Gilly ridley WhitteYes. yeah

Carly OsmanWas given an opportunity and someone said, Take this agency you've built, I'll back you, I'll fund you, go and do it yourself. And at the time I went, oh, I couldn't possibly do that. It's not the right time for me. But it was, I was the figurehead.

Gilly ridley WhitteYeah.

Carly OsmanI was driving it. It was my ideas and my thoughts and my actions behind it, but I just didn't back myself.

Gilly ridley WhitteYeah.

Carly OsmanAnd I think I've, I'm now turning 41 actually tomorrow and I've got so much of ahead of my life that I want to go into this next chapter with, I've got this dream, let's make it happen. Who knows where it's going to go? i don't. But I know by saying yes and trying things, it's just going to make me a better version of who I am.

Gilly ridley WhitteYeah. I absolutely love that. And thank you for sharing like some of those like informative times, which are pain. We all have pain, don't we? We all have pain and we hide it and we don't want to be shamed. But we've all got it in some degrees. But the fact that you're now sharing that with other people, then someone will go, God, out i I get that. And i'm that's really helped me. so Yeah, and you're you're going to make such a difference. and this is This podcast alone is creating ripples, so well done.

Carly OsmanI hope so we put out an episode yesterday about redundancy and I've had so many people going oh my gosh you're talking about grief and redundancy I thought it was just me and I thought I was broken because I was thinking about it in this way and but it's just a process and it's And we I think we need to give ourselves permission to feel the feelings as well. I grew up in a household with very much a keep calm, carry on attitude. Oh, well, that didn't happen. Let's move on to the next thing. And I wasn't ever processing emotions. So therefore things got stuck in me and it became hard and rigid. And now we've done completely opposite. And now sit my family down and everything we're going to talk about feelings. And and i can see it actually rippling through to my parents and also the conversations that they're having with friends. And it's helping them, whether they like it or not.

Gilly ridley WhitteYeah

Carly OsmanThey They're embodying it. They're taking on this energy that I'm pushing through.

Gilly ridley WhitteI love that so already you shift the work you've been doing it's yeah it doesn't matter how big or small but you're making a difference which is amazing well done thank you so much for today I've loved it

Carly OsmanThank you. Thank you, Denise. It's been brilliant. It really has.