Freedom Isn’t Given. It’s Chosen.

Hello everyone and welcome to the Dr. Sam Collins podcast. Thank you so much for listening and also perhaps even watching today because this is the first time that I’m actually recording uh this podcast live on video as well. That might not sound a big deal for many of you, but to me it’s something I’ve been putting off for weeks and weeks and weeks. Why do we do this? [sighs] There’s so many reasons, right? Do I look right? Am I thin enough? Am I too old? Am I going to say anything that is useful for anyone at all? Do my pictures on in the behind behind me line up? Am I wearing the right thing? Do I should I wear makeup? Shouldn’t I wear makeup? At 55, should I really care? But I guess we still do. So, here we are and I’m recording. Whether you’re listening in on the podcast, you’re watching or both. Thank you very much for being here. Already I’m hot. I’m sweaty. I’m going to take my glasses off because, you know, [sighs] this is a lot. Why do we worry so much about what we look like, what we sound like, the visibility that we have? I believe it’s because we want to say something, but we don’t always know exactly how we’re going to say it or how it’s going to be received. So today in this podcast I want to talk about freedom and freedom of speech, freedom to be alive, freedom to do the things that we want to do. What does freedom really mean for women across the world in 2026 and beyond? But most importantly, what does freedom mean to you? This year is I have named it my year of freedom. So at the start of this year after 25 years of building a business and organization called Aspire, the first coaching and leadership development organization for women originally in the UK but expanded across the globe. I now live in the US in California. So I have this life where I I can travel and speak and run conferences and run events. And this is something I’ve been doing for 25 years. And this year I decided that I wanted to do something a little bit different. I had been thinking about it for some time and I know many of the people that and women that I speak to and work with have talked to me about creating more time, creating more space to think, to envision the next chapter and I help women to do that. So this year I also decided that I wanted to do that for myself. So at the start of this year I did not schedule any in-person uh events or workshops. And that’s something that I have been doing for many many years. I would have this whole schedule ahead and know pretty much exactly what I was in for for the year. And that would be something I would be

▶ Play this clip

planning and doing and designing and working on. This year I wanted to create some space. So I decided not to do that. And I thought this would be the answer. This would be the answer to creating this space. And indeed it did. I suddenly had a diary in a schedule with not very much in it. Rather than making me feel miraculously free and amazing and wonderful, it actually made me really stressed and anxious. At least for the first couple of months of the year. I found that I was very very used to being busy. I call it busy disease where I’m busy being busy. Do you know what I’m talking about? Lots to do. And there is lots to do. I have a family. I have children. I have bills to pay. I have a mortgage to pay. I’m the main earner in my family. I have lots to do. And so suddenly all of these fears came up for me around okay Sam well you’ve cleared this schedule but are you going to be able to provide financially are you going to where’s your sense of worth and value because I had associated so much of my identity with running Aspire events that suddenly with no events in the schedule I found myself a bit lost as to who I am really also I had found that over the years going through menopause and now in post menopause there was a creeping 20 pounds of extra weight that was sitting on me. I felt uncomfortable. I didn’t feel particularly fit. I was reading all of this you know make sure you do strength exercises and I just couldn’t really find anything that I like to do exercise-wise. So I felt sluggish, tired, worried with not much to do. Not a really amazing combination. So this year and continues to be has been a bit of a revolution really for me personally, for the work that I do and for the impact that I want to have in the wider world. So, I want to share some of the things that have happened in the hope that they will provide you with some relatable, practical inspiration for things that you can do and for really to believe and see yourself as someone who can be free despite the circumstances that we find ourselves in. What does that look like? Whether you live in the UK, the US, you live in Nairobi, Ethiopia, Ukraine, Australia, Colombia, Canada. What does that mean for women across the globe in this day and age? And my work has always been completely I’ve always been so passionate about the possibility and potential of women as world

▶ Play this clip

changers. And so that might sound a bit grandiose to you, but so much of my work over the years has been on helping women to survive it, to cope, to navigate their health, their wealth, their careers, their businesses, their lives. And when I started out, no one was really doing very many people at all were doing the this kind of work. And now I’ve seen over the last 20 years a massive boom in it becoming much more let’s say cool to work in this field and to uh be an expert, a coach, a trainer, uh a podcaster, a commentator on the empowerment of women. So my work has evolved into how we as women have the potential, the possibility, and are already making changes to the world. And if you believe you’re not a world changer, you’re surviving the day, you’re trying to be pragmatic, you’re getting through the endurance of of work, kids, work, kids, home, health, all of these different things, and you don’t really see yourself as a world changer. Well, welcome because we are all world changers in our own individual ways. I believe that we can all have a say in creating the future that impacts the worlds that we are in. So if you are passionate about raising a compassionate and caring family, if you want to work in a more conscious workplace that actually cares genuinely cares and demonstrates that they care about people as well as profits and planet as well as people and profits. If you are someone that believes that we as a an as a planet need to make significant change on the global issues that affect us all. [snorts] If you are someone like me who looks at the news every day and puts your head in your hands and clicks off because you feel hopeless and helpless about the conflict, the wars, the fires, the political instability, and everything that’s going on in the world, and you wonder what on earth is going on. then welcome to this podcast because we’re going to have a go at seeing whether we can make some changes. I often think to myself, if we women were less tired and less tied up with being busy and all the things that we are trying to do on a daily basis and we were able to free ourselves of some of that freedom meaning psychologically free, mentally, physically, emotionally free as well as free

▶ Play this clip

in the structures and systems and barriers that there are around us. What on earth might happen? I believe that if we women got together and some and some of the look don’t think that I don’t like men because I really do. I’m married to one. I have two sons. Dog is male. Like I’m all in with it with men. But men, you know, you’re pretty much running the planet. Let’s give women a chance to do that, too. I’m not talking about women taking over. So, don’t be freaking out any women either that think that’s the case. I’m talking about here the equality of voice and having many more women at the table to be able to say hello what about human beings hello what about the children hello what about the healthcare hello what about education and all the things that we believe to be incredibly important and if on mass we can again like we have through many women’s movements throughout history really come together as a community as a tribe of women and men that really get it. Men that are all about wanting to have a more equal, equitable, healthy, balanced, authentic planet, too. Then perhaps we’ve got a chance of some kind of not just survival, but thrival. Thrival, is that even a word? Thrival into a new era for our children and our children’s children. In fact, uh my oldest son, uh Jake, who turned 18 the day before yesterday, he said to me sort of quite randomly, he said, “Do you think if like we all came together as a planet that we’d be able to end war?” Randomly, he was having breakfast. He’s not Mr. Talkative really. I don’t talk to him that much about the work that I do. So, you know, I don’t want to take any credit really for like having an influence on him being this kind of person, but I looked at him and I was like, “Oh, thank God. He’s got some of my genetics maybe.” But, you know, he’s 18. He spends most of his time on social media and gaming and all the rest of it. But even him at 18 is thinking there must be something we can do. So, look, I don’t want this to be another self-help podcast in the sense of like change your life. You can lose seven pounds in four minutes if you eat these foods and eat this food and your menopausal belly will go instantly. There’s enough of that out there and I’m trying enough out. I’m trying a lot of it out and I can tell you a lot of it is just a whole lo of crap that doesn’t work. But, you know, that’s good too. We all need to look after those things. But I am here because I want us to think about to feel about if that’s even a term cuz I think emotions are important and I don’t want to

▶ Play this clip

underestimate emotions and I think a lot of us get accused of being over emotional. What the heck is that over emotional? How can you possibly be over emotional? It’s about passion and really caring about things. Yeah, I get really annoyed and frustrated and and and pissed off when I see how people are or organizations are or boardrooms are or meetings are or companies run and I want something better. If that makes me overeotional, I am not apologizing today. So, we are here to start to think about the future that we want to create. Yes, it absolutely starts with ourselves because what I’ve learned this year is now this may seem like complete common sense to a lot of people so forgive me. And I think I got this logically but I didn’t get it like properly you know like yeah that makes sense but I didn’t really deeply understand and now I do. This is a thing I’ve understood because now I’ve lived it for a good few months. That’s not that long. But consistency is key. Otherwise, you know, you just fall backwards. So, I have learned that when I’m feeling good in myself, like I’m feeling healthier, like my brain is clearer, I’m doing work that I love to do, then I am braver. Then I am more willing to be visible. I am more resilient. So, I’m more resilient if somebody doesn’t agree with me or they don’t like what I’m doing or they have a negative comment. I’m not going to necessarily take that to heart or most importantly let it stop me carrying on with what I believe to be important. So in the creation of what we might call a movement of thinking, a movement of doing in the words of one of the original suffragettes, deeds, not words. You know, it’s all well and good to talk about these things, but what actually does it mean in practice? So this is some of the things that I’m sharing in this podcast. The evolution this year in my year of freedom of moving from tired, sluggish, irritated, full diary and schedule of stuff I like doing and I really loved and enjoyed and will do more of, but there was just too much of it to creating actual physical space, meaning there was not a lot in my diary. By the way, what I did was I started filling it up with other things because I was like, “Oh, no. I should do more of that instead.” And so, it ended up getting full. And then I was like, after a month, I was back to where I started. So, it really is a bit of a two steps forward, one step back. And what I realized is

▶ Play this clip

it really, at least initially, has nothing much to do with what’s going on outside of me. So, it’s not the events, it’s not the family, it’s not the politics, it’s not the people. I mean, I can absolutely blame them and say it’s all their fault and it’s all to do with that and that’s all the reasons it’s stopping me. I’ve just got no time. I’ve got no time. um which I hear all all the time from other women. I’ve got no time, which is true. It’s not saying it’s not true. But what I realized is I had to change what’s going on inside not just my brain and my mind. So it’s not this isn’t a neuroscience podcast. I had to really understand what’s going on in the whole of this massive piece of technology called the human body and learn more about it and educate myself more about it and sort of learn how to integrate my intuition, gut feeling, heart feeling, whatever, whatever you want to call it, but there’s definitely another level of intelligence than purely the mind. I had to learn how to listen to my body. People say all the time, what does your body say? Listen to your body. What the what are they talking about? Listen to your body. But I understand it much more now. And I’m able to say, okay, there’s an intelligence in the wider human body than purely in my brain. In fact, a lot of the brain mind stuff I would say is conditioned coming from how I grew up. Uh I grew up on a council estate, not much money, parents that were all about well my dad especially just very hard on me, all about achievement, achieve achieve achieve and you know no appreciation really. Um, and my mom, you know, had lower expectations than I would have perhaps wanted for myself. So, you know, you grow up with these things and you’re going through school and you get all this stuff in in you and you know, when I grew up there wasn’t social media, but you know, now there is. And so, you know, all this stuff that we get, social expectations of what uh we should do when we come from a poorer background or if we’re female or whatever is, you know, against us, perceived against us or is against us from the outside world. So, what I realize is a lot of what’s going on in there really does need a bit of a revamp, a bit of a spring clean. And that has been a big focus for this year. And what I want to do is is present to you a living breathing example of imperfection which is a living breathing example of someone who continuously and never endingly fails at things. I do I mess up on so many things regularly. I am not a good parent regularly. I am not

▶ Play this clip

a good wife. I am not a good sister. I am not the best friend. I’m not a tremendous business owner. I don’t do s social media very well. I’m an author of two books which were, you know, good but not great. You know, there’s so many things I’ve done over the years that have many people would say they weren’t successful. You’re not particularly successful. You failed. But what I have learned and I have to continuously remind myself is at least I did it. You know, at least I tried. At least I’m trying. You know, a lot of people are like me me with their excuses why they don’t do things and they say, “I’m a procrastinator.” Or, “I’m a perfectionist, so I, you know, I’m going to wait until it’s all perfect and I’m going to wait until the perfect time, the perfect moment.” And, you know, then they’re dead. Then what, right? Then what? And I don’t mean like literally dead, although that does happen. It’s like dead inside. You know what I’m talking about? those people that are doing jobs, living lives where they sort of the walking dad, where they don’t love what they’re doing at all. It’s completely unconscious. They don’t see or feel any sense of conviction, purpose, meaning to what they do. And I think that is for me that is the living dead. And I get it. You got to pay your bills. I’ve done a whole load of miserable jobs throughout my lifetime. But I do believe we all have the capability to do what we love. And I’m not talking about, oh, it’s a hobby and you know, you do your creative stuff on the weekend. Yes, that but you’re miserable in the week. I’m talking about finding work that you are passionate about, you care about, or aspects of your work at least, and you bring more of those in. You find ways to bring more of those in in service of or for the sake of making a difference in the wider world. Because every time we do that, we role model that for someone else. We show people, look, you know, there’s a different way of doing things. We’re rebellious and countercultural in a way that can be completely nonviolent, in a way that can really encourage change and possibility and peace, you know, and I think that we’re all looking for a world that is more peaceful, whether that’s our home lives, our work lives, in our schools, in our communities, in our organizations, in those wild corporations out there in the small businesses, in the charities, in the consultancies. For all of you that are working for yourself and making it through the day and worrying about all the things you have to worry about, I I know it’s it’s tough, but

▶ Play this clip

at least we’re alive and we’re living and we’re we’re living our lives and uh as they say in the self-help world, we’re living our best lives or at least trying to. So this year, my year of freedom, I invite you to choose freedom and to start to think about what does that mean? What does freedom really mean to you personally? Not to your partner or your family or to your parents or to your work manager or your workplace or the expectations of what you believe you should and shouldn’t be doing wherever you are in the world. What does freedom mean for you? Maybe it might seem at this point unobtainable, difficult. You may not feel free and you may not be free at all at this moment. I invite you though to dream of what is possible. What could it be? What does freedom really mean to you? And you might start off with something like I did saying that you’ve got a very clear diary of schedule when you wouldn’t normally because you’re so very busy with all the things you’re doing. So that’s my invitation for you for for this week’s podcast. Choose freedom and to think about to envisage maybe to write or draw be creative about what it means to you. This is not an invitation to consult with anyone else and get 360 feedback or what it means to everyone else or what they think you should and should not be doing. This is purely for you, for that part of you that wants to be more free. Choose freedom. Thank you very much for listening and watching. If you’re watching, great. I thank I’m I’m I did it. I did my first video. [gasps and sighs] Now I should wipe the sweat from my brow. Thank you very much for listening to the podcast today and choose freedom until next week. Thank you. Bye-bye.

▶ Play this clip