Turning the Tables Podcast: Simon Ratcliffe Interviews Imogen Roy
Over 50% of women suffer from hormonal health problems because the way we live and work these days is so hard on our bodies. And 77% of workers reported symptoms of burnout even before the pandemic struck.
Our culture of Toxic Productivity doesn’t just cause burnout, chronic health issues and anxiety. It cuts us off from our greatest source of power: embodied energy.
In the Turning the Tables Podcast, Simon and I discuss how we can all take a more proactive approach to protect and replenish our most precious resource: our energy.
“Our bodies are magnificent. They are incredible. They have all these superpowers that we’ve never bothered to learn, let alone experience.”
Links Mentioned in This Episode:
Learn more about coaching with Imogen
Listen to Imogen's podcast, A Year of Magical Living
Read the Transcript:
Simon: Do you ever get that feeling of being overwhelmed, emotionally drained, that sense of struggling to meet constant demands? When that feeling of physical or mental exhaustion happens over a long period of time, it's called burnout. Very often, the focus of that burnout is work-related. A staggering 75% of people in a Gallup survey reported the symptoms of work-related stress. I would vouch that everyone listening to this podcast can point to feeling burnout at some point in their working lives.
For my guest, Imogen Roy, burnout was a dramatic wake-up call. A trilingual Scott living in Paris, Imogen built her career as a brand marketing consultant, working with businesses and traveling worldwide. But everything came to a juddering halt one day as she was about to stand up and present to a packed conference center of business executives.
Imogen: Couldn't eat. Couldn't sleep. And the real pinnacle of this, when I finally heard my body's cry for help, was I was in London to speak at a conference. And before I was about to go on stage, I was shaking violently. And this lovely conference facilitator was like, “Oh, there, there. You're so nervous. Don't worry, you'll be fine.” And I said, “I'm not nervous. This is something else. I don't know what's wrong with me.” And I thought, I'm about to have a stroke, I’m about to have a heart attack. What is happening?
Simon: That moment was the catalyst for a complete change and reinvention of Imogen’s approach to work. 10 years ago or so Tim Ferriss’ book, The Four Hour Workweek, became a New York Times bestseller, extolling the virtues of a digital life focused on productive work centered around building passive income streams. An attractive concept, but for many not a realistic career model. Imogen’s work philosophy takes a different approach, built around shaping work to your own very personal physical or mental energy. This has seen Imogen reinvent her role as a strategy coach, reduce and completely change your working hours, increase her prices, and increase her effectiveness. Perhaps most importantly, it changed her relationship with work and the joy of working. Of course, during this pandemic, the subject of mental health and burnout has been top of mind. So that's where we started our conversation.
Simon: Welcome to Turning the Tables, Imogen. Great to have you on the show.
Imogen: Thank you, Simon.
Simon: I thought we could start with a very current set of issues, which is the effect of the pandemic on the way people will have to live their lives, and particularly their working lives. I think we've seen many people affected with mental health issues as a result of that. You're someone who's had experience of burnout in a working context. You've talked a little bit about that story.
Imogen: Absolutely. And you're right to say that this year really challenged an awful lot more people when it comes to workplace mental, emotional and physical health. Last year, the World Health Organization officially recognized burnout as a legitimate professional illness. And it was the first time that many people had had language to put to symptoms or experiences that they had or had seen others have. Now we're in a place where many more people will have experienced some of those symptoms. Burnout is, in my view, or maybe just the flavor of my experience was that it was more of a physical experience than a mental one. Often burnout feels like a general falling out of love with life. Things that you previously were really into, passionate about, you enjoyed, you felt a sense of purpose, suddenly, you want to just drop everything, stop what you're doing, you don't care anymore, you don't care about the people, you don't care about the mission. And that can actually be very frightening, especially for people who love their work and normally very committed and find it easy to find motivation.
Simon: That happened for you, didn't it? That falling out of love and that pressure of what you were doing, even though you're in a very creative area?
“I found myself in that moment. I found the strength to go up on stage and deliver what was I’m sure a riveting presentation about social media and data science. After that, I stepped off the stage and told myself, “I’m stepping into a new life from this day because I can’t go on living like this. This is no way to live. Just being able to hold it together and not completely collapse is no way to live one’s life.”
Imogen: Yes, absolutely. My burnout was it almost exactly two years ago, November 2018. I’d been self-employed for only about nine months. I'd been very fortunate to have success straight out the gate. I'd been busy, working nonstop, working with a lot of exciting small businesses and startups as a Brand Strategist. And I felt on top of the world. I was loving life, I was enjoying the freedom, I was enjoying learning new things, I was enjoying hopping between all these really exciting clients and projects and working with CEOs closely, learning so much about business and traveling all over the world. And suddenly, I didn’t love it at all. It started with a sense of general irritability and difficulty in concentrating, and those are very unlike me. My productivity just evaporated. The things that normally really lit me up, doing a brand strategy workshop, writing a brand style guide, signing a new client, suddenly filled me with dread and resentment. I thought, “Oh god, not another one.” I realized something was really wrong because this was so unlike me, and I could not find it within myself to self-motivate.
Simon: Was this purely around your work or did it affect you in other aspects of your life?
Imogen: Oh, it was affecting every aspect of my life. The lack of energy and irritability was definitely showing up in my personal life. I was tired, I was bitter, and the physical symptoms got bad too. I was having agonizing back pain, which I had a high tolerance for because I had a history of stress-related back problems. So I ignored that for a long time, but then what really frightened me was new symptoms. I had a racing heart rate, couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, and the real pinnacle of this, when I finally heard my body's cry for help, was when I was in London to speak at a conference. And before I was about to go on stage, I was shaking violently. And this lovely conference facilitator was like, “Oh, there, there dear. You're so nervous. Don't worry, you'll be fine.” And I said, “I'm not nervous. This is something else and I don't know what's wrong with me.” And I thought, I'm about to have a stroke, I’m about to have a heart attack. What is happening? And I pleaded with someone, “Please, I need a side room, a quiet room just to gather myself before I go on stage.” I got into a cubbyhole of this conference center. It was raining and was really dark outside. I sat down on the floor and I sort of meditated trying to find my breath, trying to connect with myself. Going, “Okay, what's going on? What's going on?” I was able to find this place of stillness where I was hearing this heart rate racing and I just felt so unlike me. Then I suddenly felt this sort of basking glow come all over my body. It really felt like a spiritual experience. I opened my eyes and what had happened was the sun had come out through this tiny window, the sun was blinding. It was lighting me up. So I laughed a lot about that, “Oh, this is nothing sacred; it is just the sun has come out.” I found myself in that moment. I found the strength to go up on stage and deliver what was I'm sure a riveting presentation about social media and data science. After that, I stepped off the stage and told myself, “I'm stepping into a new life from this day because I can't go on living like this. This is no way to live. Just being able to hold it together and not completely collapse is no way to live one's life.”
Simon: Were you able to identify what the root of the problem was?
“In business and self-development there’s a lot of talk about mindset. Mindset is everything. But there’s also a group of people, and I would count myself amongst them, who think we need to focus on mindset a little less because it’s the mind that is driving this limitless pursuit of productivity, achievement, and work completely over body awareness. For me, this point of disconnection was between the mind and the body. The root cause of all my physical struggles was that I’d completely forgotten that I had a body. I was working against myself. My mind had completely taken over and was driving my life, but at what cost?”
Imogen: I think I'm still really uncovering what that is, but I have a hint for sure. And I wonder how many people have found themselves in a similar situation. Maybe it’s not necessarily burnout, but some other kind of mental or emotional distress or physical illness. Especially these mystery physical and chronic illnesses that a lot of us experience. I realized how far away I had come from my truth, and how much I had taken on, how much I've been influenced by social conditioning. Sometimes we ask ourselves, “How did I start believing that I had to work this much, or I had to do these things to be successful? That this was the only way to go about something? And in that process of starting to question, “Who did I learn this from? Where did this come from?” When you can't remember who or what or why, I think it’s an opportunity for us to think, “Hmm, maybe this isn't mine. This isn't me. This is me dishonouring my own truth in pursuit of a standard or a design that actually may be completely unrealistic, or even physically impossible.”
Simon: I suspect many people relate to that sense that somehow they've become disconnected from themselves in some way. If you are an achiever, in terms of your personality, you often are driven by your work and driven by the adrenaline of some kind of success, recognition, achievement, or whatever it might be. But I know this from my own experience, it’s almost like a perfect storm of those characteristics and also in the background, there might have been some illness factors, chronic pain, whatever it might have been, that suddenly all those things come together.
Imogen: Absolutely. I think you make a good point about the achiever mindset, the driver mindset. In business and self-development there’s a lot of talk about mindset. Mindset is everything. But there's also a group of people, and I would count myself amongst them, who think we need to focus on mindset a little less because it's the mind that is driving this limitless pursuit of productivity, achievement, and work completely over body awareness. For me, this point of disconnection was between the mind and the body. The root cause of all my physical struggles was that I'd completely forgotten that I had a body. I was working against myself. My mind had completely taken over and was driving my life, but at what cost? For me, the initial burnout realization – it was at that conference, googling on my phone, “what is burnout?” I suddenly had a realization that I'd heard this word used before, and I didn't actually know what it meant. Maybe this could help explain some of my strange symptoms. It all correlated and I thought, “Oh, maybe maybe I'm actually burned out. That's what's happening to me.” It was a physical healing process; it was not a mental one.
“The brain is an incredible organ and it can do some wonderful things. But it’s an information processing center. If we don’t feed it enough information to process, it has nothing to work on. If we don’t allow the body to share the information it has, we don’t have enough data to make a good decision.”
Simon: It's interesting because you're talking about this disconnect between the physiology of the body and the mind. And there's now an enormous amount of scientific research supporting the fact that you have many different processes going on. Particularly, the processes around instinct, which people will call gut instincts, have been submerged underneath the thinking brain, which is driving a lot of our behavior. It sounds like that disconnect was a very important part of what happened to you.
Imogen: Yes, absolutely. Now I teach people, or remind people, that the brain or the mind is simply an assistant to the body. The mind’s job is to collect the information that the body is producing, sorting through it, processing and interpreting it, and then presenting some options of what it might mean or what the message might be, or what we could do. But it's not where the decision happens; the decision happens in the emotions, in the gut, in the fear center, in the heart, or in your bones. The brain is an incredible organ and it can do some wonderful things. But it's an information processing center. If we don't feed it enough information to process, it has nothing to work on. If we don't allow the body to share the information it has, we don't have enough data to make a good decision.
Simon: You had this moment at the conference, and you came away and made a decision that things had to change. What happened next?
Imogen: As you can imagine, when I was reading what to do when you think you have burnout, all the advice I could find was, “Tell your manager, get medical leave, take at least two weeks off work, and drop everything.” I thought, “Well, that's lovely if you have a manager and you have someone covering for you, and you can do that. But if you're self-employed, you can’t.” The biggest thing for me was in my daily actions, showing my body that I was finally listening. Actually speaking to myself saying, “I hear you. I'm going to do something about this. I promise. We're going to work through this together.”
Simon: We’re not going to power through.
Imogen: Yes. It was getting the two parts of me, the overachieving, performance-driven, egomaniac mind and the suffering body to heal that relationship. Let's work together. Let's try and overcome this conflict. Let's get to know each other again.
Simon: I'm just wondering as you're talking, looking back do you recognize something in yourself that took you down that path of work-related emotional stress and anxiety? Was there something in your makeup that you think may have contributed to it?
Imogen: Yes, probably. I do believe that often our greatest truths about how we should go about life or our greatest gifts, we don't believe that good enough so we strive to work to fill up the places where we're empty. And actually, I've realized that I'm someone who is not here to work in the sense that I'm more here to guide other people who are doing great work. The best work that I can do is to have as little of a physically taxing life as possible so that I have the mental clarity and power of observation to perceive what other people cannot see. If I'm overworking myself, I completely lose that ability. I think for a long time I didn't believe that was worthy enough as a gift to offer others. I had to be a hard worker. I come from a family of Scottish Protestants. We have a very strong work ethic It's all about work, really.
Simon: A lot of people point to this feeling that they have to prove something, either to themselves or sometimes to family, and it drives that desire to achieve. But it's covering up a lack of confidence in one's ability.
“Returning to the state that I can trust my own knowingness without having to do a lot of work to justify WHY I know that has been an enormous sense of reclaiming my own energy and trust in myself. Not feeling like I have to prove anything to myself or anyone else. It’s a more direct way of going about living.”
Imogen: Yes. I remember, as a child, I always just knew things. They just came into my awareness, and I didn't have to do anything to discover them, to investigate them. As I grew up through my interactions with other people, I learned that this was odd. That people didn't just know things. You had to experience things, or discover them, or study them, or do something, or make something, or learn something yourself. So I think from this I learned that I would have to prove that I had somehow gained this insight through effort and that just having it on its own was not worthy. The brain has seen a very efficient machine. It's constantly doing everything it can to save energy and calories so it protects us from a lot of unknowingness. This is where letting the mind take more of an assistant role and put the instinctive data front and foremost, suddenly, you start to realize, I do know the answer to that. I do know how I feel about that. I do know how that decision is being made. Maybe I can trust that, I'm going to go with that. I don't need to justify, rationalize, talk it through, make a logical framework, or tear my hair out about it. It is what it is. I think for me, returning to the state that I can trust my own knowingness without having to do a lot of work to justify why I know that has been an enormous sense of reclaiming my own energy and trust in myself. Not feeling like I have to prove anything to myself or anyone else. It’s a more direct way of going about living.
Simon: It's trusting your instincts, rather than allowing the brain to do an evaluation of every single thing that you have an instinctive reaction to. It sounds like you've developed a new manifesto for the way you operate particularly in the working context. What does that look like?
Imogen: That's not to say that I've completely changed my ways.
Simon: That would be too easy, wouldn't it?
“Our bodies are magnificent. They are incredible. They have all these superpowers that we’ve never bothered to learn, let alone experience.”
Imogen: I think the greatest teachers are the ones that took the longest to learn those lessons. That's why they have to keep teaching them is to actually remind themselves. Yes, I have definitely created my own new way of living, which has a lot more led from my body, led from my inner feeling sense, connected to my own knowingness before I start looking outside of myself. I've reversed a lot of the ways that I used to go about work and life. I design the lifestyle I want to live, and then I find the work that's gonna deliver that lifestyle for me. As opposed to getting work and then seeing what life I can eke around the edges. I have a lot more awareness of my own body, how it works, what it needs from me. That was a beautiful realization because our bodies are magnificent. They are incredible. They have all these superpowers that we've never bothered to learn, let alone experience.
Simon: It sounds like it's a bit more purposefully designed now as opposed to things that just emerge. I imagine people listening to this may be thinking, “That sounds great, but on a practical level how did you make this change?” Lots of entrepreneurs have client commitments, they have work they have to do. Often they can't see their way out of that in order to make the choices that you clearly have made about working more around what works for you on a human level. How did you practically go about doing that?
Imogen: I think you hit the nail on the head right there, which is, to work out what works for you. I got the courage to do these experiments because I had nothing left to lose. I was starting again from scratch. I’d gotten to a place where I was thinking, even if I have to take a dive in my career for a year, or maybe I don't work for a whole year, I think it's going to be worth it. Because I've really ruined myself I can't go back. I can't. It’s impossible for me to keep up anymore. This gave me the courage to go, “Okay, if I'm giving myself a year, how will I allow myself to live?” This Year of Magical Living began with me questioning every assumption I had about how one should work and live. “What if I did it this way?” So a lot of things I simply reversed. I thought, normally, I would be getting up and working from 9am, because that's when work starts, right? And instead, I thought, I'll spend the morning raising my energy, whether that's moving my body, meditating, or having a really slow, luxurious breakfast and pottering around, and then when I feel like I'm ready to work, then I'll sit down and work. Sometimes that was 10am. Sometimes that was 12pm. Sometimes it was 2pm. It was different every day. I got clients, actually. I was very selective about who I worked with, and I raised my prices were 50% so that I could work less. But I allowed myself to evaluate those clients. Are they a soul client? Are they going to be a fit in terms of philosophy as well as skillset? I allowed myself to be much more selective because I had the sense that I could live without them. I'm not gonna lie, at the time, I was terrified. I thought, if people find out that I'm waltzing around an ice rink on a Wednesday at 2pm, they're gonna fire me, they're going to think I'm so selfish. They're gonna think I'm deluded, that I'm unprofessional, that I'm not serious. I was really worried about what people would think of me. The truth is that nothing happened. I set all these boundaries that I thought were insanely selfish. I'm only giving them a one-hour slot every day to call me. How unaccommodating of me. How unprofessional. I'm a consultant, I should always be available for my clients. Yet, everyone accepted it, no problem, no questions asked. No push back. I started small, but I kept pushing the boundaries even more. What if I did this? And what if I did this? What if I don't even start working until 1pm. I started to realize that not only did no one have a problem with it, but I was starting to feel so good and so energized.
Simon: That's interesting. It's a turning of the tables, the whole subject matter. So based on what you've learned, from your own experience, how would you design work differently, given what you know, accepting that not everybody works on their own? Obviously, some people work within companies, and that's perfectly legitimate. How would work look different if it met the criteria you just talked about?
Imogen: In my perfect world, everyone would be so connected to their own inner truth of what they need and how they work best that everyone's job would simply be to help everyone else work in the way that works best for them. This is the thing, right? Through this experiment and this experience, I figured out how I work best. One thing I do want to mention is this Year of Magical Living, I actually gave myself a lot of structure. But it was a structure that was all about helping me give my body what it needed first. Whereas before, the structure I'd had was all about getting work done. What I learned was, I'm a very unstructured person. I live in work best when I can just flow and do whatever I feel like doing in the moment. When I can trust my body, I can trust myself to get everything done. I don't have a productivity planner anymore. I don't have a rigid schedule. And that works best for me. But it took that experimentation to know that. However, there are going to be people who really thrive with structure, and they're going to offer it best within that.
Simon: I think it's really interesting, isn't it? The challenge in a corporate context is that there has to be is a very strong belief that you can maximize the productiveness of people, in a positive way. You'll get better ideas and you'll get more of the right kind of commitment. They'll be more effective in the work they do. They’ll make better decisions as a result of this. As opposed to with anxiety we'll end up with people who are effectively only working at 50% capacity, and therefore, how does that work? So I think that's the challenge, isn't it?
“We have a massive productivity issue in the current system where people are not actually productive. There’s a lot of energy wasted. There’s a lot of inefficiencies. People are tired and therefore they can’t produce. They can’t bring forth anything useful. We’re getting to a point where the only solution is to try something else because the status quo isn’t working.”
Imogen: Right now, most people are operating at 50% or lower capacity. When I think about myself, what I actually got done, in corporate first and then in my first year as a consultant, versus what I get done now, you can't even compare. Yet the actual number of hours spent “working” is night and day. We have a massive productivity issue in the current system where people are not actually productive. There's a lot of energy wasted. There's a lot of inefficiencies. People are tired and therefore they can't produce. They can't bring forth anything useful. We're getting to a point where the only solution is to try something else because the status quo isn't working. Especially this year, we're coming to the end of 2020, I think everyone can look around and go, this is not working for anyone. How are we going to do things differently going forward?
Simon: What's next for you? You're now armed with your recipe for what works best for you. What does Imogen Roy's future look like?
Imogen: My immediate future…I'm still learning these lessons again and again. I’m still in love with my work. It's easy for me to want to output more things. This isn't something that I've put away and forgotten about; I have to remind myself of these teachings every single day. That's also why I teach them to others because every time I teach them, I remind myself of these things. What's next for me? I coach business owners and also creatives. And actually, it's not even just business owners anymore. I teach people who have careers in corporate who just want to design a new role that doesn't exist yet and go to their manager and say, “I have designed my perfect job, here's a job description. Hire me.” I coach scientists, artists, novelists, and anyone who knows deep down there is another way for them to go about what they're currently doing. They’re holding a big, beautiful key, but they don't know which door it opens. My job as a coach is to help them find out. What are the doors that you can now unlock with this beautiful key? How can you start to design your life more proactively and live and work in this way that is uniquely suited to you?
“What are the doors that you can now unlock with this beautiful key? How can you start to design your life more proactively and live and work in this way that is uniquely suited to you? ”
Simon: That sounds very empowering,
Imogen: Hopefully. For me, what I've learned about myself in this whole process is I have to create. I have to be creating things. Making things. Having experiments in my own life and then creating things that I've discovered. To me, it's not, “I have to have to sell these things.” It’s all an experiment: I wonder what will happen if ___? Maybe it's this. This is interesting. Maybe this? Getting feedback, testing things. It's a really fulfilling part of working for yourself. I can make whatever I want, test it, and see what happens. If it doesn't work, I can try something else.
Simon: So where can people get in contact with you?
Imogen: The best place is to go to my website, imogenroy.com. I'm interested to hear from anyone who has either been inspired by this conversation to try some experiments in how they're currently living or working, or they would like some ideas for some experiments. I have many of those up my sleeve so please do not hesitate to reach out to me. I'm really passionate about helping people try this kind of work in their own lives. So do reach out.
Simon: Sounds really interesting. One last question I'm asking everybody now: if there was a piece of music that best brought to life the life you're living now, what would that be?
Imogen: Oh, that's a really beautiful question. I just love so much Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, the entire Symphony. It's like the entire human experience in one piece of music, and I never get tired of being profoundly moved by these incredible peaks. Sublime moments when we feel fully transported. It's exhilarating and frightening. When you're listening to that you can't really do anything else. You can only be fully present for the music.
Simon: It's also very opposite given your point about connecting with your own nature. Thank you ever so much. Really good to talk to you. And thanks for coming on the show.
Imogen: It's been a pleasure, Simon. Thank you.
Simon: Thanks for listening to Imogen’s story. Remembering my own experience and what is happening during the pandemic, it seems to me that we have to look hard at the way we approach work. There is a responsibility for us as individuals, for companies, and for governments to recognize the mental, physical, and financial costs of an increasingly 24/7 always switched on work life. Imogen’s approach challenges us to think about the possibilities of working in a way that respects us as individuals, rather than being driven by muddle imposed by societal or personal expectations. At the very least, I can't help thinking we should be educating our young adults to be able to recognize the choices they have in deciding how to approach their working lives.
I’m Imogen, and as a Strategy Coach (a discipline I invented at the intersection of Brand Strategy and Life Coaching) I help people to be more prolific, productive, and present in their life and business.
I do this by developing and teaching unconventional strategies and tools that break cyclical beings free from toxic, unsustainable, and disempowering narratives about work and business to create unstoppable success without burnout or compromise.
If you’re ready to take a more proactive approach to protect and replenish your most precious resource, your own energy, learn more about my online course, Align + Flow, or book a free call with me to talk about coaching.
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