Guilt-free and going after what YOU want in life - Karen Foster & Jodie Fleming

Season 5

24 Mar

Show Notes

Do you have a goal or dream that you want to pursue, but stop yourself because you feel it’s too selfish or you don’t have enough time?

Sometimes we women formulate the idea that we need to be of service to others… in order to be loved. And it’s not our fault. This idea can come from messages coming from society, or perhaps from the homes we grew up in.

The good news is that we can learn how to reprogramme these unhelpful ways of thinking and get ourselves motivated to pursue what we want, or stop the ‘busyness’ to actually understand what makes us happy.

Hear from two experts, who work with women every day, using positive psychology to help them break through their own mental barriers… (while chipping away at the societal ones!):

Jodie Fleming - Clinical and Health Psychologist, Warrnambool, VIC
Karen Foster - Business and Leadership Development consultant and Mayor of the Moyne Shire, Port Fairy, VIC.
Jodie and Karen are part of Rural Women LEAD - a personal and professional development series, running from May - July 2025 across south west Victoria. Book tickets here.

This podcast is produced by the Rural Podcasting Co.

Karen Foster: 0:04
That's probably the number one question that women come to me with is I don't know what I want from life. I don't know what's next. They've never actually taken the time to sit down and dream and imagine what's possible for them.
Jodie Fleming: 0:20
And a lot of women will formulate an idea that I need to be of service to others, to be worthy of their love or to have my emotional needs met.
Kirsten Diprose: 0:32
Hello and welcome to Ducks on the Pond, brought to you by the Rural Podcasting Co, kirsten Diprose, here with an episode that will leave you feeling like you've just been to therapy At least, that's how I felt at the end of it and in a good way too. This episode is all about going after what you want in life guilt-free, without feeling like a bad mom or a selfish person. So why do we, as women, feel like that in the first place? Our next guests unpack that with a lot of research to back it up and give us some tools to start to reprogram those unhelpful thoughts that can get in the way of being our best selves. It's not woo-woo, don't worry. If you're an avid listener of this podcast, you know I'm not really into that, although I'm always trying to remain open.
Kirsten Diprose: 1:24
But this episode, rather, is a special collaboration with a wonderful bunch of women that I'm a small part of, called Rural Women LEAD. Now, lead is an acronym standing for Learning, engaging, achieving and Developing. These women are psychologists, board directors, health practitioners, community leaders, and are running a series of professional and personal development workshops across the southwest of Victoria. So if you're in the area, google Rural Women Lead Southwest Victoria to find out more. And if you're not, well, you'll get a lot from this episode because the concepts and issues are universal for rural women in particular.
Kirsten Diprose: 2:11
You'll hear from Jodie Fleming, who's a clinical psychologist, and she does a positive psychology exercise at the end. So I'm the guinea pig for this one, but I'd love for you to be answering the questions to yourself while you listen along. That's, of course, if you're not laughing at my responses. Let's just say she's got her work cut out for her when she's dealing with me. And you'll also meet Karen Foster, who was on this podcast a couple of years ago in the do you need a life coach or business coach? Episode. She's the mayor now of the Moines Shire and she's a former business owner and mentor to many women who are wanting to pursue their goals. I sat down with them both at the same time, so let's meet Jodie and Karen, starting off here with Jodie Fleming.
Jodie Fleming: 3:02
I was born and raised here in Warrnambool and have worked for the last 15 years in this setting. I moved away to Melbourne for university and then lived in Canberra, madrid and Newcastle. Newcastle's viewed as a larger regional centre, a lot bigger than Warrnambool is, so I tend to think of Warrnambool as being a lot more rural than regional. I work here serving the community as a clinical and health psychologist and, I suppose, get to be invited in and sharing the privilege of people's unique individual experiences living in an area like this.
Kirsten Diprose: 3:47
And Karen, how would you describe your connection to rural and regional Australia and what you do now?
Karen Foster: 3:52
Rural and regional Australia is in my heart. I've never lived in a city for any long period of time, always been a country girl and I choose to live here. My children have flown away to the city but I really hope that one day they come back or to a regional area. I've got a real passion and interest in working with particularly women in rural and regional areas to help them access really good quality professional development, because I don't think we should miss out just because we live in the regions.
Kirsten Diprose: 4:24
And you're also on the council where you are, in the Moyne Shire.
Jodie Fleming: 4:28
Yes, I'm on the current mayor, a second term councillor and the current mayor. So, absolutely, my community and rural communities, as I say, is part of my DNA.
Kirsten Diprose: 4:39
And the Moyne Shire is an interesting example of women's leadership in that it's historically just not been able to attract many women to the council, for many different reasons. But this time, after the most recent elections, you've been able to get more women on, which is great, and I know, karen, you've been a mentor in that space for many women who have been interested in participating.
Jodie Fleming: 5:05
Correct. We've never had much luck getting women to stand in our council. For my first term I was the sole woman and for 16 years prior there was only ever one councillor on our council. So when I was elected I made that a real priority, to try and engage with other women and twist their arm a little bit, to think about standing for council. And I'm so delighted to say we now have a majority this time around, so we've got four women and three men, so the tide is turning.
Kirsten Diprose: 5:35
So I think this is a wonderful space to have this conversation about women stepping into, whether it's leadership roles or focusing on goals and the professional and personal development they might need to get there. But, jodie, I wanted to start with you from a psychological perspective. Is there any reason why women need personal and professional development?
Jodie Fleming: 6:04
I think women in particular struggle under a lot of our society's gender biases and gender stereotypes. It's fascinating to reflect on this. Karen and I both spoke yesterday at an International Women's Day event where we were reflecting on just how far we've come in the last 30 years, even or we'd like to think we've come in the last 30 years in terms of gender stereotypes, the expectations I suppose we have as women on who and how we should act in society. But then it doesn't take much to scratch the surface to realise in fact we haven't come very far at all and I guess we've had some recent examples in the media. I hate to mention his name, but the Marishi Gold Saga is a really great example of how that we still have so so far to go. But in terms of those I guess, cognitive or gender biases, they're not just coming from men, they're coming from society at large. A lot of the time they're formed in so many different ways, including things that have been role modelled for us over our lifetimes, experiences that we've had, our culture, social media media in general or at large, our culture, social media media in general or at large, and a lot of the times messages have been internalized within our homes, within our workplaces, that have just become ingrained, I suppose, rules and assumptions about the way the world works and about the way women fit into the world that we're not even consciously aware that they're happening, and we talked about some of the common ones.
Jodie Fleming: 7:45
Yesterday, I was sent an Instagram post from probably the 90s and it had people like Posh Spice, victoria Beckham, nicole Ritchie being interviewed by different journalists, male and female.
Jodie Fleming: 7:59
They were on various talk shows, different settings, and the journalists did not hesitate to, first of all, largely criticize their appearance, comment on their weight, and in one instance, one talk show host actually had Victoria Beckham stand on a set of scales to weigh herself on live television, which she did because she probably felt like she couldn't say no. There are so many examples of those obvious, blatant things that we would no longer do, that are no longer acceptable, that we would call out, but, of course, there are the ones that we don't know, that we don't know that we're all still operating under, I think, when it comes to why is it important that women choose themselves and continue to grow and develop personally and professionally. It's because we deserve better, and we don't know what we don't know. And so, putting yourself in a space where you can learn more, where you can become more consciously aware of things like these cognitive biases, so that you can then be in a position where you can change them, is how change comes about, and unless we change something, nothing changes.
Kirsten Diprose: 9:16
Yeah, it's interesting in whatever time you live in, you think you're all so modern and progressive and then it's only with hindsight that you look back and go, oh gosh, you know, you look about the LGBTIQ community and how we spoke about things there and you go, oh wow, did not realise it until you look back. But I think some of these things back, but I think some of these things some of society can recognize and the other part can't. But for women in particular, when they can recognize some of the messaging that they've received all of their lives that might not be serving them, what sort of changes can happen? Karen, what kind of issues do you see women presenting, with Unhelpful thoughts perhaps, or beliefs about themselves?
Jodie Fleming: 10:11
Yes, there are some very common themes, kirsten. The first one is confidence, and I will broaden that to say a belief that they're not ready or not good enough. We see very competent, capable, qualified women who don't quite put themselves forward because they just need one more qualification or another year of experience under their belt and I'm pigeonholing but quite frequently their male counterparts oh yeah, I'll have a crack and put their hand up straight away. So I guess you would put that in the self-belief bucket. I'm not the expert here We've got Dr Jodie who does the psychologist, who might know more about that than I but I see plenty of that.
Jodie Fleming: 10:55
I also see a lot of women who don't know what they want, which is so surprising, isn't it? That's probably the number one question that women come to me with is I don't know what I want from life. I don't know what's next. They've never actually taken the time to sit down and dream and imagine what's possible for them. They're so busy caring for other people, looking after everyone else and doing the things that they think they have to do that to dream about their own future is kind of an indulgence. And so they get to midlife, which is where I am and their kids might grow up and leave home, or they might get to a particular point in their career where they've achieved what they maybe thought they would, and then, oh, is that it? What's next? And I've never actually thought about what's next. What do I really want? So that would probably be the number one question that clients come to me with, which is pretty surprising isn't it?
Jodie Fleming: 11:59
This is such a common story. We're born with a set of core emotional needs. Each of us have the same five core emotional needs. When some of those needs are not able to be consistently met, when we're younger we will internalize an explanation for ourselves about why that need was unable to be met. That's a biological survival mechanism in all of us. But when we internalize that messaging, it's usually a story along the lines of I'm not good enough, I'm bad in some way I am flawed and faulty, and those beliefs are what we call our early maladaptive schemas. And we all have a little cluster of those, and of course we have healthy ones as well.
Jodie Fleming: 12:45
But the idea is that from childhood, depending on all of the experiences we have, that hopefully they get challenged and reframed into a more helpful formula for life. A lot of the time there's a couple that stay stuck, and so we then want to develop some coping mechanisms around those. So how do I get my core emotional needs met? And a lot of women will formulate an idea that I need to be of service to others, to be worthy of their love or to have my emotional needs met. I must put others' needs ahead of my own. If I prioritize myself, I'm being selfish. I'm the caregiver, I'm here for everybody else. And you see it, there are different variations of this self-sacrificing perfectionism, fear of failure, setting unrelenting standards for ourselves. We often see women experiencing burnout and stress because they typically carry the majority of the mental load within their families. They're also operating under this belief system that they're not as important as everybody else. Self-esteem, self-confidence is such a big one because we know that one of the most protective factors to counteracting these gender biases and everyday sexism having higher levels of self-esteem.
Jodie Fleming: 14:08
Karen made a really important point about not knowing what you value. When we're busy, putting everyone else and everything else ahead of ourselves, we don't have time, and the key ingredient and true wealth that we should be seeking is time. Affluence, money and material things don't make us happy in the long term. We should value the time that we have. Unless we have the time and space to sit down and consider what is important to me, how do I want to be living my life? We actually don't know, and so we start operating as if everything is equally important, so everything gets equal amounts of our time and energy, and yet we know both of those things are a limited resource, and then the cycle of burnout, you know, continues.
Jodie Fleming: 15:02
Can I add to that question? I feel like we're so caught up in chasing things. So when we talk about if I'm talking to clients around what they want they'll talk about things the first thoughts that come to their brain are well, I want a nice house or a nice garden or a nice car, but it's not the things we're chasing, it's a feeling. When people are trying to work out what's next for me, I really encourage them to think about what they want to feel more of in their life. So, do they want to feel more adventure? Do they want to feel more peace, whatever it is, and then start to look at ways to achieve that feeling. It's not as difficult as people think to try and settle on what they want, because we're all chasing a feeling in the end.
Kirsten Diprose: 15:44
I call it like the fire in the belly or the expansion of the heart, those kind of feelings or being in that flow state when you're doing something that you really are into. And I get that when I do any kind of storytelling, whether it's writing something or even creating a podcast, and it just makes me really happy. It's something so simple, right, I know with my career I departed from what I love to do and really desperately missed it that I just started doing it anyway and that to me, was a big light bulb moment of oh, this is something that's actually important to me. This is something that's actually important to me.
Jodie Fleming: 16:26
Absolutely. We're in an achievement-oriented culture and busyness is worn as a badge of honour. An endless to-do list is something that people seem to thrive on, but it ultimately comes with just empty emptiness. It's met with very short-term sense of reward that only serves to reinforce the need to go seeking that same sense of reward. And if you don't know what to be pursuing, you pursue the wrong things and you're not happy and probably not healthy or well either.
Kirsten Diprose: 17:00
There are obviously some quite some large structural issues that women face as well, whether it's with their careers and trying to balance motherhood when we have these conversations. I 100% agree with you both about confidence, and I think there's that saying of and we've all experienced this of gosh. I wish my smart, talented, kind friend just had as much confidence as a mediocre man did. No, there is that side to it of like yes, we need to be more confident. Yes, we need to put ourselves forward more, but there are other issues that are structural. There's only so much that we can do internally. I feel like an issue for our whole lives is you did something wrong? As the woman? You need to be quiet, be nicer, be prettier, be whatever. It is. It's you and sometimes it's not you.
Jodie Fleming: 17:59
That's a really interesting question, because I'm a huge advocate for radical self-responsibility. I really think, in the end, we are each responsible for our own happiness and where we are in life. However, you're quite right, there are all of these external social, societal pressures at play. We can do all the internal work in the world, we can see Dr Jodi and get ourselves in the right mindset, but there are structural barriers that prevent us from achieving, often, our full potential. We need everybody on board with that. We need men, we need leaders. We need everybody on board. We need awareness. Everybody needs to be aware. We need to have these conversations so that people are aware of exactly what Jodie was talking about those unconscious biases that we carry around with us and the structural norms that are in place. But I'd be interested, jodie, in your thoughts on that, because I know that's something you're very passionate about too.
Jodie Fleming: 19:04
Oh, absolutely. When we think about the progress we have made, it is largely on an individual. It is based on what women are willing to do differently, to stand up and call out things that are no longer tolerated. When we talk about how far we've still got to go, it's that systemic stuff on a global scale.
Jodie Fleming: 19:27
I was reading a paper I forget the name of it, but the United Nations put out an annual wellness review. In it they talked about how, while people who are unbiased when it comes to gender norms the numbers are growing they still found that 50% of people surveyed men and women believed that men made better political leaders than women. 40% still believed that men made better leaders of large organizations. 25% still believed that a man had the right to physically assault his wife. 25% and that's a global study. Did you say yeah? Comes out from the United Nations. The data that I just read was from the 2023 paper. So horrific when you still think about those large numbers and ways of being. And then we've got our own politicians wanting to restrict our working conditions and force everybody back into offices and remove the flexibility of working from home. And who did that impact the most? Well, of course it impacts women as the main caregivers of families, like in particular, like rural women, working from home has opened up so many opportunities.
Jodie Fleming: 20:59
Wow, you know that better than anybody, right yeah?
Kirsten Diprose: 21:02
Yeah, and so many of my friends, and particularly when we're in a childcare crisis. You know, to me it was shocking to have the opposition leader talking about you know, and that's for one sector of the public service, but it was shocking to me that that was his point of view it's just a retreat to the 1950s almost, isn't it and that sort of that's how it feels to me in some way, with a very traditional roles and women.
Jodie Fleming: 21:33
You know, it's almost like we're pushing towards women. You're going to have to stay at home to look after the kids because there's no one to care for them. Sorry about your career, but anyway that's how it's feeling to me at the moment.
Jodie Fleming: 21:45
You mentioned people getting to middle age and then wondering is this it? There's a global study across genders, developed in developing countries, where there is a common age at our minimum level of happiness it's the age of 47.2. 47.2. Across something like 239 countries. This age, 47.2, was the point where we will be in our lowest mood, wise. Why Well? They hypothesize it's because we've worked our whole lives. We've got the house, we've got the car, we're drinking our nice wine, sitting around with our friends raising the kids, but we're now also caring for kids and likely our aging parents, and we're in the middle and we're not happy. Possibly we've been chasing happiness in all the wrong places. I think about the aging population and aging in place, the vast majority of my clients, my friends, myself. Who does the caregiving for our aging parents? It's a systemic issue where we aren't having the resources pumped into our local communities, people aren't being trained up, the funding isn't being directed in some of the most important areas, and then who does the caring fall to?
Kirsten Diprose: 23:05
And we're going to start talking about some of the solutions. It is sort of overwhelming when you think about it. Just the other day, the HILDA survey came out, which is the Household Income and Labor Dynamics in Australia survey, a longitudinal study. While women's participation in the workplace has gone up over the last 20 years, men's housework has not changed. Women are still doing the lion's share of the housework and men are still doing the same level of housework, which is quite low.
Kirsten Diprose: 23:43
No one's surprised when you hear that, but when it's said like that, you go yeah, well, what's happening? Who's doing the housework? Well, it's the women, and or our houses are just getting a little bit messier. I think that's probably happening too and I think that's okay. I don't iron. So, jodie, from a psychology perspective, we have all these systemic things. We can have conversations like this and raise awareness and advocate and, in positions of leadership, do something about it. But for our own selves and our own lives, how can we think about going after our goals, our dreams, whether that's to have this great big career or just to have more time to go on holiday or whatever it is? How do we go about achieving that, despite the systemic structures that might make it harder?
Jodie Fleming: 24:40
I think we've already talked about some important first steps, which is about clarifying what's important to you and how you want your life to feel and how you want to be living your life. Once you've got clarity around that, you can then figure out well, what are the obstacles and barriers that are getting in my way? And there might be some systemic things, for sure, that aren't workable. But the things that will always typically be workable and this does come back to the individual is how I'm choosing to think about my life and these circumstances and this goal, and then what I'm choosing to do in response to that. So what are my coping mechanisms and what steps am I actually taking? Now? For the majority of us, if we sit down and figure those things out, we'll have a pretty clear idea about what we need to do more of and what we need to do less of. Some people need to come and see someone like me when those schemas are super strong and super ingrained and aren't shifting on their own, and there's beautiful therapies out there that can help really help us shift towards freeing ourselves to live the life we are choosing for ourselves. But you know, if we're wanting practical things, I think we start with our concepts and our beliefs around time I was talking yesterday about. You know, if we're continually telling ourselves messages like I don't have enough time, I feel guilty if I take time for myself, it's selfish if I prioritize my own needs. Well, guess what? That's what your reticular activating system, this part of our brain that's like our bouncer, which is busy bouncing hundreds of pieces of information in our environment and only allowing in the VIP information for deeper processing. So that's called our RAS. It's the part of our brain that, when you buy a new red car, you all of a sudden see red cars everywhere. And it's not because there are more red cars, it's because your reticular activating system's gone looking for more red cars, and it will find them and that's what it will focus its attention on. So the same thing happens when we're having habitual repetitive thoughts and the reticular activating system decides what's important based on what you're spending time thinking about. If you're thinking about all the time you don't have, it goes looking for all the evidence that you don't have time. That's what it feeds up to your brain, and so you're reinforcing this messaging I don't have enough time. So what can you do? What should you be telling yourself Well look, this is multifaceted. What we could tell ourselves instead is something like I value the time that I do have and that's a really important thing.
Jodie Fleming: 27:30
There's this really great book called Time Smart by Ashley Willans, who works at Harvard University. She talks about these six common time traps. Often I'm working with women around. Okay, the answer is not actually having more time. Okay, the answer is not actually having more time. We have six hours a week more leisure time than our counterparts in the 1950s. We have one and a half hours less leisure time a day than men do. Just fyi. But the answer is in valuing the time that you have.
Jodie Fleming: 28:03
One of the time traps that she talks about that I think we can all easily relate to. It's called time confetti, and that's where we might have a spare 30 minutes and think I'm going to make a cup of coffee and just sit down and read my book. But on the way to the kitchen to put the kettle on, we notice there's some dirty washing on the bedroom floor that we have to pick up and take, and I might as well put a load on. So then we put the load of washing on and then, on our way to the kitchen we notice that someone's left a dirty plate in the lounge room. So we pick that up and we take it to the dishwasher oh, there's some more dishes, I might as well do those. And then we look up and we notice there's something that needs doing in the spare room. So we go and do that too, and on the way we have a bit of a hot flush, and that's right.
Jodie Fleming: 28:49
I needed to Google that perimenopausal symptom that I've been wondering about. So then I Google that All of a sudden we've lost 25 minutes of our 30 minutes. We've cut that chunk of time up into pieces of pen and paper. Now the problem with that is not only do we get to do the thing we wanted to do so that's gone out the window but our brain is also more likely to underestimate the amount of time we had. We will not see it as a 30-minute block. It sees it as much less, and so it's going to underrate the quality of the time that we had. I haven't really got enough time to do that, so I won't take that 30 minutes to actually do something meaningful the next time we have that 30 minute block. So the antidote to time confetti is monotasking Setting aside, taking that time and only doing one thing and making it a thing that's meaningful to you, because then your brain will start to rate it more accurately, motivating you to take that time again because of how you'll feel after you.
Jodie Fleming: 30:00
Monotask versus run around the house like a mad person and then you feel exhausted because you haven't rested yet. That could be that you have a task that you need to do for work. You're not going to be as productive if you're distracted every five minutes by a notification or an email or a phone call or someone coming to ask you a question, as you would be if you just sat. There are so many of these time traps that she talks about. I find that's one of the big ones for women. So they're like I don't have enough time. Well, okay, I can see where you could find yourself another 30 minutes, and if you're using that 30 minutes in a way that fills your cup, you're going to feel a lot better. You know, feel like you have more energy, because energy is the commodity. It it's gold, right? We want more and more energy. We're all feeling like we don't have enough.
Kirsten Diprose: 30:51
And then you're investing in yourself, which I think can be a really hard thing for us to feel like we're allowed to do. Do you find that, Karen?
Jodie Fleming: 31:02
Completely. I think I am a recovering time confetti addict.
Kirsten Diprose: 31:09
I've got a problem right now. I'm not recovered, I am in it.
Jodie Fleming: 31:12
Well, I'm working on it. A strategy I've used is to be a bit of a slave to my calendar. I schedule breaks and times you go for a walk, for example. It's giving myself permission in a way. I just need to practice the discipline of showing up for my calendar. That has worked for me to help me do monotasking more effectively, because I think we're always looking for little shortcuts. Well, if I just take all these coffee cups to the kitchen on the way and I'll do the dusting on the way, and I'll also just make the phone call with my phone struck to my ear, and, yeah, it just becomes disastrous. So I think, jodie, monotasking is the answer to the world's problems in so many ways.
Jodie Fleming: 31:55
I was just going to say that when we're easily distracted and avoiding a task. Procrastination is a perfectionist's best friend, but all that is is an avoidance strategy. We don't like anything that requires effort. Bringing about change and doing things differently in our lives often requires effort. We often know what we need to do, but we find it hard to take that step and put that thing into action because we're programmed to avoid the hard thing. That willingness to show up becomes easier when you're motivated by clarity about what the outcomes will be. There's a really great goal setting method called Whoop.
Karen Foster: 32:39
No, we have not heard of this. Do tell, there's a website called whoopmylifeorg.
Jodie Fleming: 32:44
I highly recommend it. It's got great resources. But essentially the WHOOP goal setting incorporates and WHOOP is another acronym where the W stands for the wish or the desire. So the thing that you're hoping for, and that's probably where the SMART goal fits in. The first O stands for obtaining the goal. So you spend time actually visualizing what your life will feel like and look like once you've achieved that goal. What will be better in your life when you've achieved that goal? It creates some new neural pathways and sets you up with motivation and enthusiasm to be working towards that goal. Then the blast.
Jodie Fleming: 33:25
The second O stands for obstacles. It's really important to identify what all of the potential obstacles and barriers could be to you working towards and achieving that goal. And then the P is plan. So then you come up with a plan to override or overcome each of those obstacles and barriers so that when they do inevitably appear, you don't need to be like, oh, surprise, here's a barrier and what do I do? No, you're like, oh, I was expecting you and this is what I'm going to do now in response. So really really setting yourself up for success by priming your brain, but also being really clear about why that will be so meaningful for you and what you stand to achieve from it.
Karen Foster: 34:10
I think it all comes back to what we've been talking about, which is knowing what you want, doesn't it? It's? It's really spending that time to understand what you wanted, what experiences you want in your life, what, what you want to feel. That seems to be the key to whooping your life and to being able to make progress.
Kirsten Diprose: 34:30
I was thinking about the confetti of time. One thing that really gets us is when we're young mums and you can't monotask when you have little kids. You start something and then the baby cries or the toddler starts screaming and it almost sets you up to work in these really short spaces of time that you've got. And I feel like I've been through that and now I'm still like that, even though I've got longer bits of time now that my kids are a little bit older.
Jodie Fleming: 35:02
I think that's really interesting, because I sit here and listen to that and I immediately think well, there's an expectation that you might have about what monotasking might look like and how long I should be able to do something for it to count. For example, let's say you were folding the washing and in that moment you get half a towel folded. You fold it in half and then you need to go and check the baby. But what you've done is, while I was folding that towel, I was only folding that towel. I wasn't thinking about what we're having for dinner or how I'm going to get to the supermarket or picking the other kids up from school. I was just folding the towel, oh, but now the baby needs me. So I was just folding the towel, oh, but now the baby needs me. So now I'm just with the baby.
Karen Foster: 35:49
So, jodie, are you talking about being really present with whatever task you're engaged?
Jodie Fleming: 35:54
with Absolutely so, only doing one thing at a time. There's no such thing as multitasking Although, kirsten, I am sure every young mum out there feels like all they're doing is juggling 50 balls at once. But really, when you think about it, multitasking doesn't exist, because all we're ever doing is shifting from one task to another task, back to another task back to another. We're never doing two things at once, we're only ever doing one thing at once.
Jodie Fleming: 36:21
So if we can be cognizant of that and only do the one thing, we will, you know, I think, give ourselves a reprieve from all the inner critical thoughts that we have about not doing a good enough job at anything.
Jodie Fleming: 36:39
Instead, we accept that at this stage of my life I'm not going to be able to sit down for 10 minutes at a time and have a cup of coffee. That's a luxury I'll look forward to in five years time or whatever. So we get realistic about what the expectations are, and then we literally are not as disappointed or as critical of ourselves, because if our goal was to fold one towel and we achieve that, then we have the sense of achievement. If the goal is to go, okay, I fold the towel while I'm folding the towel, but when my baby needs me, that's my priority, and then I'm only focused on my baby. When we switch between tasks, we actually lose time and energy, because our brain takes a minute to switch off focusing on one task, to then switch on to focusing on the other task, and then, if we're quickly switching back to the other task, we lose time and energy. It's called the switch cost effect.
Kirsten Diprose: 37:35
So I mean this has been the light bulb moment for me, because when you're doing something menial like housework, you think, oh, that's some time to think about things, or you think you're being more efficient if you can do two things at once, even if that's folding the clothes, while thinking about what birthdays do I have on the weekend that I need to buy the presents for. But you're actually setting yourself up for this feeling of non-achievement by doing that Yep and non-satisfaction with anything you do.
Jodie Fleming: 38:12
Have we got time for me to run you through this beautiful exercise we do in positive psychology? It's about meaning seeking. I'm going to use Kirsten you as an example. Okay, so you just said what was the menial task. You said let's say folding clothes Okay, folding clothes. Said what was the menial task, you said let's say folding clothes Okay, folding clothes. Do you really hate folding clothes? I don't hate it. What's a task?
Kirsten Diprose: 38:31
Ironing. You don't like ironing? Yeah Well, I never do it, so I've cut that out of my life.
Jodie Fleming: 38:35
Something that feels never ending. But you're just like. This is a thankless task.
Kirsten Diprose: 38:39
I have to do it, but I don't like it, oh yeah look at my house and breathe okay, so it gives you a sense of order you're like oh well, there's a lot going on here no, I get it.
Jodie Fleming: 39:05
Cleaning helps us feel a sense of control, for sure, but what does having a clean and orderly kitchen allow you to do? Work okay look, this is not going how I wanted it to. Okay, well, let's keep going. What does working allow you to do? Be happy. What does being happy allow you?
Kirsten Diprose: 39:30
to do, to focus on something that I enjoy doing, to create something that I think is of value. And what does?
Jodie Fleming: 39:38
creating things of value, allow you to do, be happy.
Karen Foster: 39:43
Be happy yeah, yeah.
Jodie Fleming: 39:46
Is there any more than that, anything more important than that?
Kirsten Diprose: 39:49
to you.
Jodie Fleming: 39:50
Oh, my family like spending time with my family, so is there any way that that you know, feeling happy allows you to prioritize more time with family? I suppose it just allows me to be present when I'm with them Absolutely, and it does allow you to have deeper connections when we're more present, allow you to have more positive communication, and then that has a beautiful ripple effect through the whole family. So ultimately, what you're saying is doing the dishes allows for your family to flourish.
Kirsten Diprose: 40:23
You're trying to make the dishes a bit more exciting for me.
Jodie Fleming: 40:26
Well, no, it's that we really can. If we sit and look at any task that we have to do, we will find deep meaning in it if we go looking for it, and again, it's that reticular activating system of ours, like if we take the time to go. What does this allow me to do so? Some people with the dishes might say well, it allows me to cook hygienically and to feed my kids healthily and make sure they're not going to get sick from food poisoning. It keeps my family healthy and well ultimately, and then that obviously leads to having a family who's flourishing too. You can find meaning in anything if you're willing to go looking for it, and meaning and purpose is such an important part of our psychological wellbeing and for our overall happiness we need we also need that more hedonic, you know in the moment subjective well-being, that happiness too. It takes both for us to have a life that feels like we're flourishing.
Kirsten Diprose: 41:27
Yeah, that's very interesting. So what about you spoke about Jodie, giving yourself that permission to sit down and have your coffee for 30 minutes and read the book without being distracted or feeling guilty? What about taking a day out to do some professional or personal development? How do you get your brain around that, Karen? How would you think about that?
Karen Foster: 41:50
Yeah, I think it comes down to priorities. It comes down to understanding what you want and what you want to achieve and experience and feel. The exercise that you've just stepped through, jodie, reminds me of the importance of being intentional about our activities and actions and looking for the deeper meaning and the outcomes, and I think if we did that with professional development, I can already. My brain is ticking and I'm thinking oh, I need to do this every week. I need to find some kind of development every week, because the value is so huge for me. I think it is for lots of people. If they have that capacity to open their mind, to expand and to connect with other inspiring people, there's huge value in that. So I think it's sort of looking down the track at the outcome and what it might mean for you. Why would you say no?
Jodie Fleming: 42:46
Absolutely, and I think sometimes too, if you can frame things, and I do believe in women doing the work to learn their own self-worth and to value themselves and to be able to put themselves first. But I know that takes a really long time and it's very challenging Sometimes. What I do is come at it from the perspective of how will you taking this time to do this work on yourself or professionally, to attend these professional developments, whatever opportunities? How will that actually serve your community or your family? And I find women are much more motivated by what doing something will do for the people in their lives than for what it will do for themselves. But hopefully that has a flow on benefit to them as well.
Jodie Fleming: 43:36
But there's this really gorgeous study by Christakis and Fowler.
Jodie Fleming: 43:40
They've come up with this theory called the three degrees.
Jodie Fleming: 43:43
What it says is if I choose to do something that will boost my own wellbeing and happiness, then my first degree relationships so my family, my close friends, my close work colleagues will experience a boost in their own well-being and happiness by 10% simply because I did something for my own Friends of theirs will experience the first degrees, get 15% boost. The friends of the friends get a 10% boost, and they could be people I've never met, but they're benefiting from me having done something for my own health and wellbeing. Friends of the friends of the friends experience a 6% boost to their happiness and wellbeing because of something I chose to do for myself. In positive psychology they talk about these tools that we use to boost our own wellbeing and to flourish in our lives. We start with ourselves, but that ripples out to our families, that ripples out to our communities, that ripples out to the world, and that's how, and so sometimes you've got to sell it in a way that allows them to reduce the guilt in a way that allows them to reduce the guilt.
Kirsten Diprose: 45:00
And, karen, you're putting together a rural women lead series of events and workshops in the region you live in, southwest Victoria. What's the idea behind?
Karen Foster: 45:07
that, so I can't take credit for this. It was the brainchild of Kate Roach from Leadership Great South Coast. She assembled a little posse of women in our region, just an informal group. We were successful in getting a grant a $10,000 grant to stage a series of workshops called Rural Women LEAD. Lead is a lovely little acronym for Learning, engaging, achieving and Developing. That gives you a hint as to what our aspirations are.
Karen Foster: 45:37
We want to create opportunities for rural women to come together and connect across our region. We're deliberately staging these in some of the smaller townships, not the bigger urban centres. We want women to come together to have high quality and high caliber professional and personal development and it's obviously some skills development in there. We want women to start expand their thinking around their own potential. That really happens when you get a group of inspired women together. It relates to what you were saying, jodie, about the three Ds. But if you're all in there together inspiring one another and then going backs, but if you're all in there together inspiring one another and then going back into your communities, you keep that momentum and energy going. So often when we do professional or personal development in regions, we take ourselves off to the city and we are with people we don't know and we'll never see again probably. We come away inspired, but we come back to our normal life and it sort of evaporates a little bit. But the idea here is to macerate, if you like, in all of this inspiration and expanded thinking together so that we can keep the momentum going.
Karen Foster: 46:48
We're actually drawing on regional women from our region to deliver the workshops. It's a series of six workshops and Jodie is one of our wonderful facilitators and presenters for one of them. We're doing a range of different topics, all of them unrelated. People can just come along and go to one or the whole series if they want to. So we're really, really excited about it. And it's a simple thing. We haven't made it hard. We've kept it deliberately simple, not expensive.
Kirsten Diprose: 47:18
I love the idea of getting into rural places as well, because that's just an added dimension. Even beyond that, I think the networking is going to be great, Like the ability to develop relationships with other people who are interested in building their capacity personally, professionally, professionally or whatever and because you learn so much from others.
Karen Foster: 47:39
The excitement can really build together and, as you say, it's often the other women in the room. It's not just the wonderful knowledge of the presenters, it's also the experiences of other people that can validate your own experiences or broaden your thinking. Maybe they can be helpful in your network. And the other aspect is finding your tribe, which can be a challenge. In regional settings there are fewer people so it's harder to find people who are like you and who are interested in expanding their thinking and their horizons. So this gives opportunity for those women to find other like-minded women to join that tribe.
Kirsten Diprose: 48:21
From a psychological perspective, what happens when we get together with the intention to learn and grow together?
Jodie Fleming: 48:30
Oh, I think, only wonderful things. I've actually just finished a five-week group program in my private practice. It's just amazing the group dynamics and what that does when you start to learn I'm not alone in my thought processes, I'm not alone in my situation. The minute we feel that we're not alone in something, we feel a connection to someone else. When we're in an environment where a trusting and safe environment is established and people are able to share vulnerabilities with the things they struggle with or the difficulties they're facing in the workplace or in their personal lives, that vulnerability is the key to connection. People's guards and defences immediately drop the minute someone's willing to show up in that way. That's when the floodgates open, a sharing occurs, a growth and a learning and it's just beautiful yeah.
Kirsten Diprose: 49:27
Well, thank you for joining me on this podcast and good luck with the series. I think it's probably a model that other regional and rural communities can use, because it is specifically grassroots and that's a big K to it. What are some of the outcomes that you're thinking about, karen? What are you hoping individuals and the community will benefit from?
Karen Foster: 49:47
Great question because one of the distinguishing features that we've built into each program is at the end of the workshop there'll be a call to action. The group then gets to decide where to from here. What are the next steps. It doesn't end with a dead end. Every workshop and they're very diverse, a whole range of different topics they will all have a well, what's next? What does this mean now? So I'm really hoping that there's a ripple effect, that these workshops they're staged over May, june and July this year, that I hope that women coming together, forming tribes, forming groups who knows what they might go on to achieve, what projects or collaborations might come out of it? So it's not just the individual benefits. I can see enormous potential for women to go away feeling inspired to do something differently in their community or to join with other women to affect some kind of change. I just can't wait to see what happens.
Kirsten Diprose: 50:47
Karen and Jodie, you've both left me feeling inspired. Thank you so much and thanks for joining me on Daps on the Pond. Thank you to Karen Foster and Jodie Fleming. If you are in southwest Victoria, then check out Rural Women Lead. They have a range of workshops running from May to July 2025. And if you're thinking about getting something similar going in your area, let me know, because I'd happily connect you with the people from Rural Women Lead and I'm sure they would love to share any advice on how you can do something similar for your community.
Kirsten Diprose: 51:21
As for me, I'll be having a super short break. I'm back with a brand new season of Ducks on the Pond on April 10. So not very far away at all, and with some exciting things to come, including a giveaway. In the meantime, you can also catch me on a new weekly podcast called Two Smart Blondes. It's for lovers of news, media, film and TV. If it's trending, we're talking about it. I make it with filmmaker Leela McDougall, and we have a special guest from the world of arts each week, and we give it a bit of a rural flair as well. So look up Two Smart Blondes wherever you get your podcasts, and I'll see you there and back right here for Season 7 of Ducks on the Pond on April 10. This is a rural podcasting co-production. I'm Kirsten Dippros and I'll catch you soon.