Gill Mathias interview
Sonia Harris: Hello and welcome. My name is Sonia Harris and I have got a guest today interviewing on the subject of stress. Now her name is Gill Mathias. But before I actually introduce her, I’ve met Gill a couple of times now in business circles. And one of the things that usually struck me when I’ve been in her company is her confidence.When she is talking there is a calmness about her. And so, it’s not surprising, I guess that she would be an expert I would say within the field of stress management. But I don’t really want to go on and give away things. What I’d like to do is ask Gill to introduce herself and just to say a little bit about what she does, a little bit about her background. She has children and she’s a grandmother and U read somewhere that that spending time with her grandchildren keeps her young. So, if I can ask you, Gill, welcome and thank you for agreeing to take part in this interview.
Gill Mathias: It’s a real pleasure, Sonia. Thank you for your introduction. I suppose that I’m 65 and therefore, I’ve quite a bit of experience in life. When I was married, very young, at 21, I lived overseas for a number of years which I’ll go into, in a few minutes. I’m also a qualified tennis coach. I qualified at the age of 21. I’m also a qualified complementary therapist, NLP master practitioner and Reiki therapist. But I am more than that. I am a member of the National Council of Psychotherapists, which is really, really interesting. You’re dealing with the mind, you deal with the subconscious and you’re really dealing with a live person. I’ve done conflict mediating and I also, in my own family life, I’ve got 3 children, six wonderful grandchildren and I love spending time with them. And yes, I think they probably do keep me young.
Where would you like to start with me, Sonia?
Sonia Harris: Well, my audience is women over 50.
Gill Mathias: Yeah.
Sonia Harris: And in particular, professional women, who are ambitious in management positions or business owners as well. And I also like to look at women in this age group because I am also in my early fifties. When you have a growing family and also you may have aging parents, you’re kind of kind of in the middle and also a woman, I suppose of my age around 50, there is stuff around menopause, and also looking back at your life. So, there are a number of things there. And so, looking at stress and where stress comes in with that and what your views are really.
Gill Mathias: Absolutely. Well, I just wonder whether it would be helpful because all of that has gone on in my life, particularly the bits living overseas, I think has led me to the end journey of where I am now. And I wonder whether it might be quite interesting to go in here a bit of where my story was and how I’ve arrived where I am now, would that be helpful?
Sonia Harris: I think that would be very helpful indeed.
Gill Mathias: Well, the main thing is that I was married can you believe at the age of 21 in 1971? My now ex was a newly qualified accountant with a large global accountancy firm and we were able tochoose to go and live out in South Africa and we were allocated in the city of Johannesburg. Well, it was a long time ago, but we went by boat, all down to Cape Town which took 12 days. And then we drove from Cape Town to Johannesburg.
We arrived at Johannesburg where the fax had not been invented, the telex has not been invented. And eventually, when we found somewhere to go and live in a little suburb, northwest of Johannesburg, called Honeydew, there was no telephone. And all of this at the age of 21 and I looked at my children when they were 21, I thought my goodness me, this was quite a journey for us. I have qualified as a professional tennis coach and we were lucky because there was a local tennis club. And we met some wonderful Englishspeaking and African players and they became firm friends and several of them are still friends with us now.
And besides my tennis coaching which I did while we lived in Johannesburg, I helped out at a black township called Alexandria on a weekly basis. And I coached children and we practiced all sorts of ball skills and they would often take up pencils and paper and softballs. And they were so grateful. It was as if you had given them the moon rather than just a few pencils. So, we came back, traveled through Africa. I hope this is a bit of interest. It just it leads you to where I am now, okay?
Sonia Harris: Yes.
Gill Mathias: We came back from Africa and we spent some time travelling from south to north Africa and came back, had a couple of children. And then my X was offered a partnership in a big accountancy firm. But there was the good news and the bad news because he came back and he said, “Well, it’s great. I’ve been offered a partnership.” I thought that’s fantastic. So, where are we going to live? And there was this deadly hush and he said, “Well! It’s somewhere called Nigeria.” And the position is in Lagos, but it’s only for three years. We set off for three years in Lagos with two children, age three and five.
Sonia Harris: Wow.
Gill Mathias: And they’re also mad out there was relatively easy because my then husband had a full time driver, went into Lagos, but mostly are working in air conditioned office with flushing loos. But as far as the mother was concerned and not many mom’s worked, it was a very different story because the children only went to school from 8:30 to 1:00. And it was so hot in the afternoons with 100 degrees Fahrenheit, both in humidity and in heat and it was actually exhausting. But the greater problem was due to the scarcity of food which needed researching for availability which meant a trip into Lagos, which sometimes we produced little food or it would be outrageously expensive.
So, we lived a lot on vegetables and fruit which are brought by traders on the side of road and of course for that, you had to trade and negotiate a price every day. And again, there was no communication or phones, but fax had been invented. But the wonderful thing of that, Sonia is that I wrote many, many letters both when we lived in South Africa and in Nigeria and when I moved house about a year or so ago, I came across these letters and they were absolutely brilliant. You just don’t write in the same way that you do now.
Sonia Harris: Well, yes.
Gill Mathias: But we were often without electricity and water which meant that you had to make friends on the other three islands in Lagos because you had to take your children to the loo and they had to perform when you told them to perform, so that you could flush the loo because when you got back to your home you might not have any water and you might not have any heat.
Sonia Harris: Right.
Gill Mathias: But it was a brilliant experience and I think it was very, very character building. But one thing I am going to mention from that because that went on to what I ultimately did as a business is my daughter got pneumonia while we’re out there and the conventional help was very limited at that time and our nanny and everybody had a nanny suggested picking the lemons off the trees along with the leaves from the various plants including eucalyptus. And she added hot water for my daughter to inhale and the results were amazing. And that really began my interest in aromatherapy.
So, I kept that in the back of my mind and just started Aromatherapy Company up some years later. But we returned to UK as a family and I bought a Gym, had many years’ experience on running businesses, the real running of businesses, don’t spend too much money. I invested and put it back into a company and it was part of the Jane Fonda gettheburnera, which we now know is not a good idea. And I had another baby and after three years I sold the business which then meant I went into a company which was a property business for 12 years as a director and managing director.
And then I retired. But during that time, I was passionate about essential oils and I trained in complementary therapy and started an aromatherapy company from scratch and gained immense knowledge. I called it Aromatherapy Gold and the reason it was called Gold was because my initial is G for Gill and my three children or our three children are Oliver, Louise and Dominic. So, it was the first initial of each of their names.
Sonia Harris: Fantastic.
Gill Mathias: Probably, out of a thousand ideas. Probably, that was the one that I wined and dined on. So, having started a cottage industry, we progressed to supplying QVC and many, many global clients and that had become my baby really because when my third child went to school and I was newly divorced, it really was like emptiness syndrome. And most people around the area of the 50yearolds would understand that you can suffer a bit from emptiness syndrome.
Sonia Harris: Yes.
Gill Mathias: And so, Aromatherapy Gold became my baby really. But I sold that after 12 years and I also then discovered that retirement really wasn’t for me. I loved spending time with my grandchildren and my friends playing golf or playing tennis, but I really wanted to do more. And then I suppose I think I can go on if you were interested in how I came to do the stress management, I can go on to do that, unless you have got anything else to go and ask me.
Sonia Harris: Actually, it was really interesting listening to your history, listening to that story. And I do think that sometimes as we mature and I think women particularly, that actually our stories can actually be quite inspiring, how inspiring our stories are to other people just to telling of them. And I know that I was sitting here and just listening to your experiences in Africa when actually, I could actually see I saw myself kind of picturing what it might be like and clearly living in the UK as compared to living in the areas that you said you were living, with lack of communication and all basic things like toilets etc. I think you’re quite right in terms of character building.
Gill Mathias: Yes.
Sonia Harris: And I mean looking back at that time now, what would you say was the biggest lesson for you?
Gill Mathias: I think it was actually that’s a really good question. I think that probably, it was learning that you could handle anything.
Sonia Harris: Yeah. Yeah.
Gill Mathias: And not to go and get panicked by the idea that that was very, very scary experiences in Nigeria for heaven sake. I could think of many but I won’t bore you with them now. But I think that really it was taking a deep breath and saying, “I can handle that. I can do this.” I’m looking at the positive side rather than the very, very many negative sides of life.
Sonia Harris: Yeah. I mean, gosh. I mean I think that is so important and I think that leads me into the fact that you talked about an experience with your daughter and the pneumonia which must have been very scary at the time.
Gill Mathias: It was.
Sonia Harris: And that passion came out of that experience in terms of aromatherapy and stuff.
Gill Mathias: I wanted to say I was really, really lucky there was various things that happened during one’s life that you look back and say, “Gosh. I was so fortunate that that happened.” It wasn’t always the case at the time, but it certainly was from the aromatherapy point of view and from the experience of living and learning about life in other countries and how people lived and how particularly, in Nigeria where people had so very, very little, but they were just very, very happy people. You know sometimes, money does muddle the waters.
Sonia Harris: Yeah. So, you touched on stress and I am actually interested in why you decided to go into stress management.
Gill Mathias: Well, I think that probably what happened, Sonia was that when I discovered the retirement just wasn’t for me and I really had to go and look at where I could get out on my comfort zone and where I could turn my qualities to a profession really, being involved in lot of charitable things. But actually I did feel that I wanted to go and retrain and earn some more money.
And so, I think that having talked to one of my mentors, we really discovered my qualities were being a communicator and good listener. And so, I trained as a business coach and I found that I really could empower people to believe in themselves. But that was really by asking the right questions, but not giving the answers. And my elevator speeches have always been that I transformed lives by raising client’s selfesteem and confidence. And that’s the kind of thing that when you’re playing tennis and someone says to you so what do you do as you’re changing ends, it became a very, very normal thing for me to go and say, “Oh, I transform lives by raising client’s selfesteem and confidence.”
And actually you’d often get people at the end of the day come and say, “What did you mean by that? Tell me more.” You know it was like fishing. You got them on the hook, really.
Sonia Harris: Yes.
Gill Mathias: And then I had realized that I have a gift for identifying and analyzing the problems of an individual and then ensuring that my approach was specifically tailormaid to fit their personality and character. So, when I first started doing this, I didn’t plan on doing stress management. It was just that as I did more coaching, I discovered that so often, that was the core of people’s problems that they were anxious and they were stressed.
So, I did further training in stress management and that’s how I ended up doing stress management which now, I tell businesses when I go to see the HR or the leadership development person, catch it when it’s very small because that’s like popping a spot. If you leave it until you got a lot of absenteeism and the spot has become bigger and bigger and gone into a boil it takes a lot of time to go and repair people’s selfesteem and confidence and get them to be wellbeing in their lives.
So, I suppose that’s really the answer about how I came into stress management. But actually, I really enjoy it because you can obviously it’s a very serious subject. But there are a lot of things you can look at with humor and humor is good for people to just smile and laugh of course.
Sonia Harris: I mean I’m just listening to you and that’s a real clear example of somebody who has a strength and that strength is identified and then obviously, so if I’m creating that passion out of that and your passion obviously taking you into a role where I’m assuming you get paid to do it because I know that one of the things, especially personal development, often people are told, find something that you’re passionate about and then the best thing of course is to get paid to do it. And I think stress I mean stress is something that impacts everybody.
Gill Mathias: Yes.
Sonia Harris: Every part of life. It doesn’t matter where you are. And I kind of picked up on obviously the work that you do with organizations and especially when you said this is about catching it at the beginning. And the start of absenteeism and I work in an organization at the moment where there is a lot of stress because there’s been a lot of changes. And I can see that there is a lot that the management can do to support staff but in actual fact what tends to happen, it comes at the point when the problems are really acute.
Gill Mathias: Absolutely.
Sonia Harris: So, I can see the benefit of what you’re doing.
Gill Mathias: Yeah.
Sonia Harris: And so my next question really is because you’re saying that what you learned from looking back at your life and the thing is that you can handle it. Those are really strong words and if we can take hold of those because of course some sort of focusing in people and women in their fifties because that’s a big change for a lot of women, menopause and stuff like that. And my question is look, some women thrive.
Gill Mathias: Okay.
Sonia Harris: Other women struggle.
Gill Mathias: Yeah.
Sonia Harris: Okay. And what would you say are the main things? What are the things actually you feel impact on women’s ability to cope with stress, especially in their fifties?
Gill Mathias: I think there are loads of things and you are absolutely right just going back on the fact yes, I do get paid for my work, but I do a lot of pro bono work for charities and people in need. And I’m a great believer that that is I love my passion of helping people and I know it sounds a bit twee but I do a lot of pro bono work and I enjoy that. It’s very satisfying. And I think that the problems when people get to 50, it depends on their relationships. It depends…
Sonia Harris: Yeah.
Gill Mathias: …whether they are on business. It depends on their family. But I’m a great believer that fitness and eating habits have an enormous impact on every aspect of life. And you know if for example, you’re a diabetic. You don’t have sugar and I have had a couple of a deep vein thrombosis. And I would not have too much vitamin K. And you just learn to go and look at yourself and sometimes even going to a nutritionist is a really helpful experience to go and put you on the right side of what are allergies, what you should eat and then follow some kind of fitness regimen.
It doesn’t need to be much go walking for 10 minutes each day. But I also think that it’s important to realize that every decade brings change. I mean you can be fat at 40 and focused at 50. You can be sexy at 60 and I’m 65 and therefore don’t call me sexy, but I feel sexier and that’s good, and sensational at 70. I mean change really, really should be embraced because a generation ago, I can remember my mother, my grandmother
sitting in a chair and she would only be about 55 or 60 and she didn’t move, where as now a 60yearold is a bit like a 40yearold.
Sonia Harris: Yeah.
Gill Mathias: But I will mention about the menopause. And the reason I know a bit about this is I was fortunate I didn’t suffer too much. But it was one of our greatest selling products with aromatherapy. We sold bottles and bottles of the stuff with QVC and it really can give hugely positive results to mood swings and acupuncture is another very helpful natural remedy and gives holistic results. And by holistic and that’s how I do my stress management.I mean it has an effect on the overall treating of the whole person, both mentally, emotionally and physically and I think that’s a really important thing.
Now I could happily give your readers oils which we use specifically for menopausal issues. And that would probably be a good thing if I could give you a link to that.
Sonia Harris: Yeah. That’s great.
Gill Mathias: It has things like 4 drops of clary sage, roman chamomile and peppermint oil in a carrier oil.. All of which can balance the whole hormones. Important to go and say this has to be in a carrier oil, but I can definitely go and send you the link to that and it’s a proven product which really were shown to go and help people and we keep this little bottle in the fridge and use as and when necessary, on top of your feet or on the back of your neck. And it’s being really, really helpful.
Sonia Harris: That sounds great. Yeah.
Gill Mathias: The only thing is when you get to sort of 50 and above, sometimes you have the opportunity like I have as being a grandparent. That’s just an awesome experience and you’ve got so much to give to the child and the child just loves hearing about what mommy was like when she was a little girl. And I know that you got that experience yourself.
Sonia Harris: I do. I’ve got my two grandchildren, five and four.
Gill Mathias: Yeah.
Sonia Harris: And actually because I was a foster parent for a while. Gill Mathias: That’s nice.
Sonia Harris: And my foster daughter has got just had a third child. So, it actually feels like I’m a grandmother to five children, young children. And yes, it can give you a
new lease of life, I think. And as I think I pick up on what you’re saying about fitness and eating habits because one of the things for me is I’ve had health problems over the last couple of years. And it’s drastically limited the access I’ve had to my grandchildren purely because I’ve had difficulty in getting to them traveling.
And one of the things I’ve taken on board more recently is my health. Mind, body and soul type of thing. And so, I really, really am listening to you when you say those things are very important, especially now that I am in my fifties. I don’t want to be the grandparent that’s just sitting around and I can’t move.
Gill Mathias: Sure. I can’t imagine with your clarity that will be the case, but guys you know my little children, I’ve got grandchildren between three and ten and I was putting one of the little roguees to bed the other night. He looked me fair and squarely in the face and he said, “They call me Baba because I don’t want to be called granny.” And he looked at me and said, “Baba, I really do like you, but you have got a lot of wrinkles.” I said, “Well, I love you and you have no wrinkles.”
Sonia Mathias: That’s fantastic. They are great. I’m just so in love with my grandchildren, I have to say.
Gill Mathias: It’s precious, precious. And actually, it’s such a privilege to be a part of their little lives.
Sonia Harris: Yes.
Gill Mathias: And you hope in time that they remember the little things you did for them. I mean I keep mints in the front of the glove compartment of my car. And they always know if they open it, there’ll be some mints in there. So, every time, they’ll smell a mint or lavender because put it on their feet because it helps them to sleep. As they grow older, every time they smell this, I hope they’ll think of me in a positive way.
Sonia Harris: I mean it’s those moments, isn’t it? And it’s the smells, what we hear, what we see and feel. Those are the things that we take forward that when I think we do remember moments, don’t we, like that?
Gill Mathias: Yeah. Absolutely. You could suddenly be getting a smell or something. Sonia Harris: Yeah.
Gill Mathias: I mean, gosh as I do to my mother’s perfume and I came to actually not like the smell because it brought back such traumatic memories for me. That was a long time ago.
Sonia Harris: You’re very kindly offered your seven steps to reduce stress. Gill Mathias: Yeah.
Sonia Harris: And that’s something obviously I’m going to be offering to people that are listening to this.
Gill Mathias: Yeah.
Sonia Harris: So, if I can ask you now, can you tell me a bit about that whether you want to share a few of the steps or go through some of what you share in that particular program and I know that it could be as a sevenday program or it could be an Ebook. So, I’m thinking about how I’m going to put that together for people.
Gill Mathias: This is something that I use a lot with people. Very often I have done management courses and getting this out and these people say to me it’s been really helpful and there are seven steps in this. So, I decided, I thought I’d be fairly carefully about how I will sort these steps out. But it was easy to do alone in the house, easy, easy steps to follow. And so, in the first step I talk about deciding how much stress is enough, stress for you.
And you actually need to go and work out what is your stress, what your core stress is, but I go into that in the course. I talk about is it possible to have no stress in your life? But actually you do need a certain amount of stress to make you motivated to go and get to the next stage. And the other parts are roughly about eight full pages.. And then, step two is having gone through step one, is understanding where your stress is coming from.
And trying to get you to do I think I might talk about this a bit later on, about 15 minutes of relaxation. Something you could either, I don’t know if any of your listeners are familiar with yoga or into breathing exercises which I can talk about as well into walking. It’s just having just a little bit of time for yourself and understanding where your stress is coming from because most of what we worry about doesn’t come into a reality anyway.
And the step three is learning to accept the things you can’t change. There are some things you can’t change. I mean if you have got to be back for a job by certain time, you can’t change that. If you have a parent that isn’t well and you’ve got to go and see them, you can’t change that. You just have to put that into your little schedule. And for those that you can’t change, you have to work on accepting them and just letting them go, they become part of your life.
Step four is really important. You must take some time for yourself. Now that’s not easy to say to a new mom or a new parent. So, when you’re 50, usually you haven’t got the responsibility of looking after young children and you might have a job, you might not have a job, you might have retired, whatever your life is, take some time for yourself. And it’s really, really important to go and look at yourself in the overall picture. Even just for a short time, just to be you. Do something that you want to go and do.
And the step five is learn what you need to stop doing. And by that, I mean do you need to stop putting up with some certain behavior from those around you. Do you need to stop smoking or drinking much alcohol and caffeine and would it be helpful to stop having negative thoughts and it puts ideas about how you can change your mindset really. Mindset is so important. I know in the work that you do and I do, Sonia it’s desperately important. And I always talk to people about when you are trying to think subconsciously about things. And just thinking about to a subconscious mind as being your computer and you really can bring the computer out of your head and it’s like setting the computer again.
That is your belief system. You can put different things into your computer and program it into your mind to go and believe that you can do things rather than you can’t do things and that’s a really important point. The step six is learn what you can start doing. So, by that, I probably talk about the belief system about how you can do things rather than can’t do things. And are you going to stop people are you going to stop saying “yes” to everything? Are you going to be able to do the things that you want to go and do and decide what is right for you?
And I suppose that the last one is taking action, as you work your way through these steps in order to go and get to some kind of conclusion about where life is going for you. And at the age of 50, you should be able to go and do that. That’s basically what that’s about. It’s breaking fifth goals down to just smaller tasks, one step at a time and trying to then put a completion date on each task really. So, just say with step one, I’ll do that by such at a time and step two by a certain time. And then you’ll know where your completion date is. And if people are successful with that or have questions, of course I can give a link to my website and they are very welcome to come back to ask any questions from me as well.
Sonia Harris: That’s great.
Gill Mathias: So I hope that’s helpful.
Sonia Harris: I mean that’s great and at the end, what I’ll do is if I’ll ask you for the links that you said then you can give them, I mean I was taking some notes down as you were talking. You know I was thinking oh gosh. I’ll write that down. And I mean I was like pulled out your three, four and five steps, all of them are really good. You know
you’re talking about some meditation and relaxation and stuff. And I know for many years I was somebody that found it very, very difficult to relax.
I was also very sporty growing up. And so, for me, to stop and meditate for whatever amount of minutes was something it just felt like well I’m not doing something. And so, what advice would you have to somebody sort of listening to this who actually is thinking. “I just can’t. I can’t relax. I don’t know how to stop.” A simple tip really that they could do.
Gill Mathias: I think there are various things. I really think there is a lot of help out there. I think that things like yoga suits some people, doesn’t suit me. Pilates suits me. Its anything where you can actually be breathing and I am a real believer in breathing and it’s just simply every morning when I wake up before I get up for 15minutes, I lie in bed and I breathe in for 10 and I breathe out for 12. And by that, I mean you’re breathing in the oxygen, you’re breathing out all the bad carbon dioxide.
So, you breathe in one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten. And then, you breathe the whole lot out, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. And that is really, really, really helpful. And I think that probably that along with exercise. Drinking plenty of water of course is a very important thing. I know all of us want to go and have a wine and so forth, but carrying a bottle of water around with you also is really helpful for your health. And certainly, meditation I say, yoga didn’t suit me, but Pilates does. It’s all these kind of exercises where you can actually be breathing because really breathing does stop panic attacks. It stops stress and it’s really, really helpful.
Sonia Harris: Yeah. As for me, it was such a big surprise actually when I started looking into yoga and meditation.. To find actually breathing was that that number one element of it all and I know that in my work and I work with I manage a team, a group of people trainees. And often when they get anxious, worried about something, my thing is right breathe. And actually I realized that people haven’t been breathing in the way that we think we should be breathing. So, I think that’s I mean for people listening, I think if they just get one thing is that to be taking part in something that gets them breathing. I just think that yes it’s a really, really good tip.
Gill Mathias: Yeah.
Sonia Harris: I mean the other thing for me is and I think when I’ve reached certain ages as I’ve come up in my fifties now, is this thing about taking time for yourself.
Gill Mathias: Yes.
Sonia Harris: And you said about looking at yourself. And is that something that you did?
Gill Mathias: I think I did. I mean I came through my when I came through my fifties and I was just going through a divorce. I got three wonderful children. It felt very good to the fact that we had separated and divorced. But I knew that there was plenty more to life. And having felt that one had given the roots to grow and wings to fly to the children, it was my turn to be able to go and do what I wanted to go and do within the bounds of still feeling responsible as a parent and I think that’s really important.
Sonia Harris: Yeah. I totally agree. I’m a grown up now I’m in my fifties. I should be able to do what I want to do now.
Gill Mathias: Well, it doesn’t. You know yourself, Sonia and I know it doesn’t work out like that. You know you think then I’ll just go and do this and then you know some people have aging parents.
Sonia Harris: Yes.
Gill Mathias: Some people have difficult teenagers, some moms are working and they’re trying to get the grandparents to go and help where the grandparent would like to be doing something different.
Sonia Harris: Yeah.
Gill Mathias: You know as a mother in particular, you’ve got this guilt. I mean once you’re a parent, you’re always a parent.
Sonia Harris: Yes.
Gill Mathias: But you really ought to be able to unless it’s important to be able to say right. This hour is my time.
Sonia Harris: Yeah. Yeah. And your next step, step five and I think this is such an important one. And I like the way that you’ve actually couched it, learn what you need to stop doing.
Gill Mathias: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. And I think that you know you don’t have to at that age when you’re a child, when you’re in school. I’m not that I’m saying you don’t have to go and respect everybody, but when you are working, you obviously have to respect everybody to go and climb the ladder. But there does come a point where you don’t have to put up with certain behavior from those around you. You know you can speak your mind or you can do what you want to.
And I certainly I’m a great believer in many people, saying, “Oh, I can’t do this and I can’t do that.” Stop having those negative thoughts. It’s not, “I can’t do.” Life is a “can do life”, really. And you can avoid unnecessary conflict. Build on your wonderful relations with the friends that you’ve got. And I think another question I’ve got in that particular step is do you need to say, “No more often?” Do you always have to say, “Yes, I can? Yes, do you always have to be the person who pleases or can you be yourself?” It’s important.
Sonia Harris: Yes. Gosh. I read a book recently called “Essentialism” and the name of the guy actually the book is actually here.” Essentialism by Greg McKeown” and in actual fact I have been listening to other people as well. And this thing about no and I think that the biggest thing for me is that when you’re saying yes to something, you’re saying no to something else.
Gill Mathias: Okay.
Sonia Harris: And it doesn’t matter what that is whether it’s on yes to staying late work and taking on more tasks. It’s saying no to your family because you’re not there. More recently, because I’m trying to look after my health I’m not trying. I am focused on looking after my health at the moment and I know the choices. Some of the choices I’m making in terms of what I eat. If I say yes to something, I am saying no to my health. I’m going walking on a daily basis now and if I choose not to do exercise, so, I’m saying yes to staying in and putting my feet up and no to actually my fitness and my health.
So, it’s kind of on different planes. It’s acting on this, but I just think that’s such a useful one for people to really grasp and make happen in terms…
Gill Mathias: Yes, it is.
Sonia Harris: …of actually saying being able to say no.
Gill Mathias: And also it’s I mean I go back to the office situation where we run courses and one of the courses that we run is called managing difficult conversations and learning to say no. For example that if you are middle management, you can go and get your senior manager coming to you on a Friday afternoon and saying, “Can you do this that and the other? And I want to have it all before you leave at 5 o’clock this evening.” And learning to have a skill to go and say, “Well, Mr. Jones, I can do this for you and I can do the other, but I can’t do them all” and which is the most important.
So, you put the pressure back on the person who asked to go and do it rather than just expect for you to go and say, “Oh, yes. I can do the whole lot.” And there are various skills that you can go and learn and tactics you can learn to go and avoid. You can
always say, “No, I can’t do this. But what I can do and going back to the can do rather that you can do this next Wednesday afternoon, but I can’t do it this Wednesday afternoon because I’m playing golf or I’m playing bridge or I am going shopping with my friends and not to be afraid. But this is your life and your time.
Sonia Harris: And what do you think I mean this for some people this will be new to do and I wonder what you think about habits, about how people do this and make it something that they do habitually. Because we can start to do something and then, what happens is that we start to then go back to our old ways, don’t we?
Gill Mathias: Yeah. I think we do. I think that actually what tends to happen with people is I think that people get fearful of sometimes not being liked amidst situations.
Sonia Harris: Yeah.
Gill Mathias: And as we all know or as in our selfdevelopment life like you, Sonia we know that fear is just false evidence appearing real.
Sonia Harris: Yeah.
Gill Mathias: And I’ve mentioned a lot of points in the questions that you have mentioned. But I can actually go and say to you that really very little fear becomes a reality. We worry about it and we think it might happen and it never does. And so, I think that probably the quick answer is that I would just say that try not to have fear. Try to work on yourself as a whole person and say, “I am me.” And I can go back to this thing and I can go and say, “I can handle it. I can handle anything that is given to me and I will be a better person for it.”
But I do think that if some of your people haven’t worked in selfdevelopment, that will sound a bit of garbage. But I know that you’re talking about it and when I give you my link on my website, there are masses of articles on stress and wellbeing, how you can be a better you which is totally free and for people to go and read.
Sonia Harris: That’s fantastic. And you know that leads me into my last question. Gill Mathias: All right.
Sonia Harris: Okay. And it’s interesting because this journey for me really because of certain things that have been happening to me in my fifties, I have thought back to my early thirties and I thought actually, there are some choices that I made back then that’s had an impact on where I am now. Okay. So, my question is okay. So, looking back at your journey and if you were able to talk to you back at some point, whether it’s in your
thirties or in your twenties, what knowledge do you have now that you’d want to say to the younger Gill?
Gill Mathias: Oh gosh. That’s a really interesting question. And particularly, as you’ve got and I’ve got grandchildren, it’s just what you want to go and pass on really, isn’t it?
Sonia Harris: Yes.
Gill Mathias: The problem of being a parent is that actually they’ll accept everything except your advice.
Sonia Harris: Yes.
Gill Mathias: What I’m going to say, I think that probably, I’d say I have got ideas and things. I will say work with positive people and the ones that can do and learn to avoid negative people. Smile and learn that ultimate optimism is empowering, uplifting and inspiring. I think I’d also go and say because my life has been very up and down, but I think it’s on the up now. I think I’d say to 16yearold, you might be in for a rough ride, but hold on you can handle anything and it will be worthwhile.
I’ve always told my children that if you don’t ask, you don’t get and this is important because if you’re not prepared to go to ask the questions, you might not get to the next stage. I suppose be a Polly Anna. Aim for the sun and not for the gloom.
Sonia Harris: Yes.
Gill Mathias: And she’s always glad about things. –what else was Igoing to say? And learn not to worry because 99 percent of what we worry about never happens. That’s a fairly important one. And I have in my office, I’ve got the Kipling poem, actually, I’m not in my office at the moment, but I’ve got the jist of the poem..And I think that if I was telling my current self back at the start of my journey or even to my grandchildren, as they grow up, I think that there is two lines there that stick out there and I know them if you can meet triumph and disaster and treat those impostors in the same way and then they go and finish eventually you’ll be a man or in this case, a woman, my friend and that’s really important. So, the good things that happen, or the bad thing that’s happen, learn to be able to handle them.
Sonia Harris: Yes.
Gill Mathias: What else was I going to say? Learn to love who you are and not to what others would have you be.
Sonia Harris: Yes.
Gill Mathias: And really be happy, be happy, be happy. You know your life is really, really for living and as you know the most important thing that you got is your health and you are doing brilliantly well working your way through that and keep fit. Eat well sleep well. And when you’re anxious, breathe in for 10 and breathe out for 12, which is actually my mantra. Everybody I know knows that’s what I do when I am on the tennis court with a tense point or golf or you know in a traffic jam and you’re thinking I’m never going to get there on time breathing because you don’t need to meditate to do that.
And I think what I probably might finish off by saying to this young person or to my grandchildren, pray for strength and it willcome and that I really, really believe is true. So, that will be my advice to your readers and I hope it’s been of some benefit to them.
Sonia Harris: Gosh, Gill. If you could see me now, I’ve got a massive grin on my face. I am feeling very happy and actually I’m grinning so much that actually my lips are hurting me. And I mean, just listening to you. I mean I was smiling all the way through. I was nodding my head in agreement with everything that you were saying. And yes that thing about being happy or being around with positive people. Yes. I mean I will definitely be replaying and listening to those things.
Gill Mathias: And I think that probably the point about what happiness is no one else is in charge of your happiness except you.
Sonia Harris: Yeah. Yeah.
Gill Mathias: And also, in the bad times, time heals almost everything. So, sometimes in times of disappointment, give it time and it will heal. It will heal.
Sonia Harris: Yeah. Yeah.
Gill Mathias: And I supposed you people go and say, “I’m only just now writing myself a little list down because I figure it to myself.” So, what will I tell myself or my grandchildren? I think but I also think that as a side thing, things like being polite…
Sonia Harris: Yes.
Gill Mathias: …be kind, be respectful of people. Sonia Harris: Yes.
Gill Mathias: Actually I tell you what, be respectful of the people on the way up because you may need them on the way down
Sonia Harris: That’s so true, isn’t it? So true.
Gill Mathias: So, I think that’s a rather sort of long answer to your question. .
Sonia Harris: Now, that’s great because it’s the stuff that we need to hear, but we need to hear over and over and over again. It doesn’t matter how good we think we are at these things. We actually do need to be reminded about them. So, Gill thank you so much for giving your time and I know that there are a lot of things in there from you very kindly sharing your story at the very beginning of that journey and actually how that journey has actually shaped you as a person and how the strengths that you developed through that journey, the highs and the lows as well as you explained, has helped you to actually find a passion that you in terms of helping and supporting people.
And I know that I said in terms of pay, you talk about actually giving your time for free because you do want to help people. So, thank you so much for everything. There’s so much in there, honestly and you’re going to be giving your seven steps that you did an overview of.
Gill Mathias: That’s a pleasure. And I if I give you the link to my…
Sonia Harris: Yes.
Gill Mathias: …website, there are loads of information that I mentioned…
Sonia Harris: Yes. So, if you can share your links now.
Gill Mathias: Okay.
Sonia Harris: And also have them in the written form, but if you can say them as well.
Gill Mathias: Yeah. So, now you know how technophobic I am, but I will try and go and get this which is www.goldcoachuk.comand if anybody wanted to email, it’s gill@goldcoachuk.comand I do hope that this has been of interest to your readers. But if they are new to selfdevelopment, some of it may go above their head. But if you play it again, you will understand what I’m talking about and I’ll say there are plenty of free articles on my website for people to be able to read and enjoy I hope.
Sonia Harris: Thank you. So, I’m actually going to leave this recording, this interview by actually saying breathe in for 10 and out for 12. Thank you, Gill.
Gill Mathias: Step right, Sonia. All the best. Thank you.