For The Days You Want To Quit

Hello everyone and welcome to the Dr Sam Collins podcast. Today I want to speak to you, any one of you, you know who you are, you feel tired and sometimes you feel like giving up. Especially maybe on a Monday morning when you are meant to feel refreshed and alive and ready for the week and you feel more exhausted than you did on Friday afternoon Am I speaking to you? I don’t necessarily mean that you want to give up your job or end your relationship or abandon your cause or walk away from everything you built today. I mean that quieter kind of giving up that happens inside you when you’ve been carrying so much for so long. It’s the moment when your conviction begins to dim, time, your energy starts to contract and you ask yourself, is any of this effort really making a difference? Perhaps you felt it, you wake up tired with your mind moving immediately to all the things you need to do today. The meetings, the deadlines, anything to do with kids in school and caring and bills and all the unfinished tasks that stay on your list day in day out waiting for you to have this magical amount of time to do them. Perhaps you do love what you do but you feel as though it’s all going a bit on automatic pilot right now. Perhaps you dislike what you do yet you can’t really see yet an alternative way that would pay the bills and give you enough security to survive. Perhaps you are trying to improve a team, a company, a community or even a social issue but progress is so slow that your work has begun to feel like Groundhog Day. You remember that film where it was on repeat, everything was on repeat every single day. If that’s where you are today, the most important thing I want you to hear is this, you are not alone. Let me say, and you are not weak, and you are not broken, and you are not failing because you’re tired. You are tired precisely because you care, there, precisely because you are someone who notices what is wrong. You are someone who carries a lot of responsibility for other people and because you want to leave the world or at least part of it better than you found it. I want you to know that you’re making much more of a difference than perhaps you can currently see or even remember and

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that there is more reason to hope than the headlines, the algorithms, the to-do list, and the public conversation would have you believe. All right, so stay with me. If you’re tired, you’re stressed, you’re tired and you’re stressed, and you’re wondering, oh, here we go again today. Here we go again for another week. You’ve opened the internet, looked at the news. You’ve scrolled Instagram. You’ve looked on your LinkedIn and you just thought, oh, wow, again, then this hopefully is podcast for you, all right? This episode is not gonna ask you to do any more, work any harder or add another worthy commitment to your already impossible to do list. In fact, I would love that you would leave today’s podcast doing a lot less, all right? My hope is that it will help you put down some of the weight you’ve been carrying, not just the physical tasks all the things you have to do but the energy of it, the energy or the lack of energy that it creates and that you maybe remember just a little bit how amazing you are, what is really important and recognise the contribution you are already making and have already made for so long and that you choose one, this one little baby step from today’s podcast that is really meaningful and sustainable for you, all right? We can maybe call it the most selfish thing that you will do today. There is an exhaustion to being busy. In fact, I call it busy disease. When we’re really busy, being busy with so much to do, but it doesn’t always feel like it’s making any kind of significant difference. This is another kind of exhaustion that I think many women experience, but we don’t always name it. In fact there’s a bit of a badge of honour isn’t there with many organisations now with being busy and you ask somebody how are you and they say I’m busy and you say I’m busy too and then it’s like a busy competition oh we’re all so busy. It’s this exhaustion of doing all the things that are being asked for of you but then also caring deeply in a world that often seems to reward what is unjust or very superficial or downright frivolous. I mean, how is it, how is it that an Instagram video about making a kale salad can attract millions of views? Millions! While a woman talking about justice for women in Afghanistan may struggle to reach even a tiny audience, what world are we living in that that happens? I mean, well, maybe the kale salad is not the problem. We all need food and Kale is really good for you. Pleasure and a moment of lightness in making a kale salad, but the problem is what the contrast can do to us when serious, courageous and necessary work

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often seems invisible. I find it exhausting to watch public attention gather around these spectacles and outrage and controversy, while often women, mostly women, a lot of the time women are doing patient, the patient, the very patient, don’t we have to be so patient, and difficult work of justice, peace, health, education, safer, healthier, more inclusive workplaces receive very little recognition and may even receive ridicule for doing so. It’s exhausting to see powerful world leaders, and you know who I’m speaking about, commanding enormous influence and control over your life, over my life and over my kids’ life, when their politics or their conduct, quite frankly, profounds me and is at odds with my values. It’s exhausting to work inside an organization, and I know many of you do, work inside larger organisations where political savviness, political astuteness, self-promotion and conformity to the established corporate norm is rewarded more quickly than compassion, integrity, inclusion, authenticity and genuine care for others. And sometimes these things are seen as soft, not very commercial or even unprofessional. Now many of you know this experience intimately. You may have seen a colleague promoted because she and yes it can be she because she or he or they knew how to manage upwards. Perhaps didn’t particularly care about anyone downwards or to the side woods, if that’s even a word, but knew how to, you know, make the boss happy. While another person, often a woman, doing the less visible work of holding everything together, didn’t get that promotion. You have may have watched a leader talk very convincingly about values and you may have even be inspired by them and then shortly afterwards behaving very differently when there was no audience. You may have offered thoughtful ideas for years only to hear them praise when somebody more powerful or with a bigger voice repeated them. You may have been told to become more confident when the system, meaning the organisational structure and culture around you actually needs to become more fair and actually respect and include diverse voices.

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It’s not on you, it’s on the system around you. So, you know, over time when this happens repeatedly it can distort your sense of reality. You begin to wonder whether substance matters. We question whether kindness is a disadvantage, whether integrity is naive, whether the only way to succeed is to become more like the culture we had hoped to change. We may start measuring ourselves through the same system that is making us unhappy, using visibility, followers, titles, salaries, status and applause as evidence that our careers and our lives matter and are working. I want to offer a different measure today. Attention is not the same as value. It’s not. Visibility is not the same as positive impact. It’s not. Popularity is not the same as contribution. A piece of content may receive millions of views and disappear from memory tomorrow. But a meaningful conversation that you have with another may alter the direction of their career, their family, their life for years. You may never know that it even happened. The numbers you can see are not always the outcomes that matter most. Please remember that. Why are so many women genuinely, genuinely, deeply tired? This weariness is not imaginary, is it? Am I imagining this? And it’s certainly not simply a personal failure of the latest time management technique or resilience podcast. The latest United Nations evidence shows us that women and girls still spend two and a half times as many hours as men on unpaid domestic and care work globally. That matters because tiredness is political and systemic as well as it is personal. Remember that next time you’re feeling completely knackered. A woman may be expected to perform professionally, care emotionally, organise domestically, support others socially and still appear positive, slim, capable and have everything organised. Kind of bullshit is that. Even when she has influence, she may have very little unclaimed time in which to think, recover, to imagine a different future for herself or others around her. The wider global

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picture can also feel crushing. The United Nations Gender Snapshot 2026 reports that not one target, not one target under Sustainable Development Goal 5, Sustainable Development goal 5, if you are unaware, is to create gender equality and empower all women and girls. Not one target under it, in which there are 11, is on track to be met by 2030. At the current rate of progress, the report estimates that achieving this goal can take how long? How long do you think it’s going to take? What would be your guess at this point? Let Let me tell you, 171 years, 171 years, actually, what is that? Your children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children? I mean, it’s just too far off in the future, isn’t it? Women hold 27.4% of seats in national parliaments in 2026 and six in seven countries are led by men. Some people would say that that’s progress and perhaps it is a little bit but it’s still way too low, isn’t it? The same report found that one in three national mechanisms created to advance gender equality had experienced an erosion of institutional power over the previous two years. These facts are sobering and I’m in no way, shape or form wanting to soften them today. Progress is too slow, it’s deeply uneven and vulnerable to reversal. It’s no wonder that we feel so discouraged as women, not only in our immediate lives and works and world and wherever you are in the world. If you are in the UK or in Europe, you may feel a certain way. If you are in Afghanistan, Iran, the United States, you may feel something really quite different. Across the globe, women’s hard-won rights and freedoms are contested. No wonder a woman who has spent years, years, advocating for diversity and inclusion in her company, sometimes wonders whether she has the energy for another initiative, another uncomfortable conversation, or another politely worded business case explaining why DE&I actually matters. It’s not surprising that women are becoming or have become cynical, you’re allowed. What is remarkable to me is how many of us keep going

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and continue despite all of this. But you know, the story is not only one of us, of decline, if I tell you only about the delays and the loss of reversals, I’m going to make you even more exhausted today, aren’t I? It’s not the whole truth. The same UN evidence that documents these serious setbacks also shows great movement, light and hope and inspiration around the world. Between 2019 and 2024, 99 legal reforms across 47 countries removed discriminatory laws or strengthened legal protections for women. That didn’t make a headline did it? Women’s representation in national parliaments rose from 22.3% up until nearly 30% in 2026. That’s a big deal. I mean, women who are making progress are not being reported, are not being highlighted in the media, in the press. We don’t know enough about them to inspire us to keep going. This progress does not happen by accident and it doesn’t happen quickly. It’s that slow, incremental, tired change, that quiet change. It happened because you, women, organise, research, negotiate, campaign, stand for office, build alliances, and refuse to accept that the existing reality is permanent. The UN gender snapshot also draws a wider connection between women’s leadership and progress across business, education, environmental protection, poverty reduction and the other sustainable development goals. This doesn’t mean that every woman leads in the same way and that women are inherently better than men or that simply appointing a woman transforms an institution. It means that when women have real power, when institutions are accountable and when women’s lived experience informs decisions, different priorities, quite frankly, enter the room and more of society can be represented within our corporations, within our businesses, within our not-for-profits, within our schools and within healthcare and more. So around the world, dear one, there are so many beacons of this possibility. Amazing women like you out there defending girls’ education under extraordinary pressure.

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Young women who have decided to start their own companies, older women who are reinventing their retirement and creating a dignified next chapter. Women who are reforming or recreating completely workplace policies, women who are going into science and climate solutions, women who are serving their communities, women who are running for office, women who are supporting other women through mentoring, friendship, funding and advocacy. Many will never become famous. Your work may never trend or go virus. Virus. Viral. Maybe your work will never go viral. Is that something that you can be okay with? Because your persistence creates the conditions in which you can move further and faster and others can as well as a result of you. Don’t you think we need to become better at seeing and feeling these beacons of hope around the world? The news concentrates our attention on crisis and conflict and dramatic events, social platforms are designed to compete for attention, not to provide a balanced picture of human progress. If we allow these systems to determine everything we notice and how we feel, we will repeatedly receive the message that outrage is everywhere and patient progress is nowhere. It is your responsibility to look more deliberately, not to escape reality but to perceive more of it. If you look for the dark you will see it and feel it if you look for the light you will see it and feel it too look more broadly have a bigger view hope is not denial don’t go there I’m not advocating for blind optimism and I do not want us to look away from war and misogyny and poverty and violence and climate breakdown on the political dismantling of women’s rights not at all I want you to look more fully at them but also to know that there is light with them in them and not only darkness. Hope that requires denial is fragile and frankly in my view no use. The hope I am describing is grounded in evidence, relationship and action. It does not de-energise you or make you exhausted. it makes you strong and powerful and fierce and able to connect with others

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who have that same warrior spirit. It says this is difficult, this is very difficult, some things are worsening and I refuse to only look at that more dark side and for it to de-energise me. I will still look for where change is working, who is beside me and what remains possible. And isn’t this what leadership, good leadership has always been about throughout history? Hope is a collective practice, isn’t it? It’s much harder to sustain hope in isolation because isolation, it exaggerates the belief that everything depends on us. And I think this is one of the problems with so many of us working from home these days, that it can feel very isolating even if you are doing your back-to-back team’s calls or whatever it is with other people, not having that physicality around us and that chemical reaction that happens between people who are sharing their hope, optimism and inspiration is sadly lost. When women come together, honestly, we discover that another woman feels the same fatigue, has the same doubts or encounters the same obstructions. We realise you are not mad, you are not alone, you are not crazy, you are not despondent, you just perhaps need a rest. We can share strategies, resources and introductions. We remind one another of progress when one of us is too tired to see it. We take turns carrying the torch, carrying the light. This is one reason I believe so strongly in bringing women together, the collective empowerment, whether that’s through a podcast like this, a webinar, being in a corporate meeting room, living room at home, or conversations across continents. We do not need more information or more drama. We need spaces where we can think beyond the next task, tell the truth about what our lives cost us. Remember our own agency and connect our individual contribution to something bigger than ourselves. We need permission to lift our eyes from the endless urgency at our feet and look towards the horizon again, the bigger view. Can you see it? Can you feel it? Look up right now, take a moment to see

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what is around you, who is around you and what is the light, hope and inspiration around you. Taking the bigger view, I do not ask you to abandon your practical realities of all the things you need to do today, how you need to pay your bills and take care of yourself and your family. I mean to recognise that shaping the future is not reserved for people with unlimited time, money or formal authority. We might say, how good a job are they currently doing? Shaping the future happens in how you get up in the morning, how you treat people on the train, how you participate in a meeting, what behaviour you accept or challenge, whose idea you credit, how you take care of yourself, who you mentor and who mentors you, where you spend your money, what policy you question, what boundary you set and enforce, how you raise children and whether another woman and leaves an encounter with you feeling smaller or feeling stronger. So you are already a change maker. Many women hear the phrase change maker from me and imagine a public activist, a national leader or the founder of a global movement. They exclude themselves because they say, I’m too busy, I’m too ordinary, I work in banking or I’m an accountant or I work in the law or, you know, I work in a shop and I’m not a change maker. And absolutely, I believe that cannot be the case. In fact, if way more women from banking and accountancy and law and retail saw themselves as change makers, the world would be radically different. I want to broaden the definition. A change maker is a woman who helps create a future that would not exist without your choices. By that definition, you are already one. You may be the woman who smiled at someone on the bus today. You may be the woman that helped somebody across the road who was having difficulty. You may have been the woman who said, “‘Do we really need to do this meeting “‘and save everybody a lot of time?'” You may have made it safer for a colleague to speak up and encourage them to do so.

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You may have challenged a recruitment shortlist because it was completely un-diverse. You may have introduced flexibility, questioned an assumption, or refused to laugh at a demeaning joke and given them your look. You know the look I mean. You may have helped a young woman understand that her ambitions, while not traditional, legitimate something that perhaps you never had. Or encouraged a friend to leave a situation that was harming her. You may be caring for an older woman with dignity. You may be using your business to create employment and opportunity. You may be simply learning to take yourself more seriously after years of putting everybody else first. None of these actions on their own solve everything. That’s not the standard. The standard is whether your action changes something within your own reach. This is really important that we can only impact those who are immediately around us. The whole world is very big, and it’s too big for any one person to carry, but each of us has our own little sphere of influence. And when we identify that sphere and act within it, you move from a feeling of exhaustion or helplessness into agency. And when we connect our sphere with those of other women, private exchanges can become organizational, cultural and political change. And if any of you have ever wondering whether this works, think about the old boys club. This has been happening for millennia where men have come together within their sphere of influence to help each other to move forward on their ambitions and goals. And that consciously or unconsciously has created the current organizational, cultural and political norms that we are in right now. Huh, so how are you doing? I hope your energy is starting to come back just a little bit. And know that it’s not always about the physicality of your sleep or your food or your exercise, although those things are so important. It’s how you feel about you. It’s how you feel about what’s going on around you and that knowing that there are many, many, many like you who feel the same way. I’m one. And I know that there are many around you right now. If you looked around,

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maybe they would start to light up in front of you and you’d be like, ah, there she is. There he is. Aha. So we need to release the fantasy that we’re inspired every day, all right? Like, I know some people think that about me, that, oh, she’s, you know, she just loves her job and she’s inspired and she bounces out of bed in the morning and I do, but I’m still exhausted a lot of the time, all right? Can we be inspired and exhausted? I believe that we can. Changing the world looks like sending a difficult email, doing a budget meeting where you raise something that no one else will. a conversation that you’d really rather avoid, or choosing to rest today so that resentment does not consume your purpose. Consistency is rarely glamorous. In fact, consistency can be incredibly boring, but it’s how we create that change. It is the in-between times of the inspirational moment. It’s often repetitive and hard and frustrating and insufficiently recognised. We take three steps forward, very happy with ourselves, and two steps back, and one more step back, and one more step back, and then three steps forward. It’s uneven, that’s normal. Yet, these are the conditions in which trust, culture, and social change is built, okay? It’s normal. I want you to stay encouraged, even when the world is very distracting. when frivolous crap attracts attention. I do it too. I get a look on my phone or something and the most stupid things, what do they call it? Clickbait. I mean, it works, isn’t it? You’re like, ooh, what’s that? And then you sort of go down a rabbit hole and I’ve lost 10 minutes of some crap about some, I don’t know, actress or actor that’s done something bad or good or or whatever it is and I just think that was a 10 minutes of my life I’m never going to get back. We need to realise when we’re in those kind of rabbit holes and come straight back out again and become more deliberate about what we use as evidence of success. If your only measure is public recognition the world will continuously convince you that your contribution is too small. Even if you get, you know, 50 million likes on something, there’s someone else who’s going to get 50 million and one. So it’s sort of like never going to be enough, all right? Instead, ask yourself, are you acting in alignment with your values because a lot of people will espouse values, but actually living them is a much more tricky thing. Whether your work improves other people’s lives, whether your influence is widening

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possibility and whether the way you achieve results is compatible with the future you want to create. And again, I say this to you, whatever age you are, wherever you work or whatever you do, I have a memory coming up for me right now. It was one of my very first jobs and I was 16 and I worked in a shoe shop and it was 1980s I remember and we were on commission so we would get a wage and then we would also get commission and it was a phase if any of you are old enough to remember where the fashion was bright yellow and bright orange do you remember that so it was like you could buy like a bright pair of yellow stilettos or a bright pair of orange stilettos remember those days stiletto days couldn’t even imagine getting in a pair of stilettos now. Anyway, so this was my job and I wanted to earn money. And so there was a heavy push towards selling bags and belts along with the shoes. So if you sold a bag or a belt, so you would get the yellow shoes and then you would be pushed into recommending the yellow belt or the yellow bag to go with the shoes, all right? And you you were, you know, this is how you were measured. So sales job, not a lot’s changed there. And I remember thinking to myself, even at this young age, it’s not really fair. Like I don’t want to push these bags and belts on women to buy them because that doesn’t really seem right. And I lived in a very sort of poor area and I knew that the women coming into that shop didn’t have, you know, huge amounts of money to spend. So acting alongside my values was very tricky. So what I did was I actually became very, very good at selling the shoes to a lot more women. And I was very, I found this sort of quick way of doing it that so many women were coming in wanting these shoes, that I sold so many shoes that I didn’t sell hardly any bags and belts, that I made more money for the shop than the, I was just a Saturday girl, right? But I made more than the full-time workers did in the week. So I actually made more commission because I’d sold all these shoes. And so I made, I acted on my values. I didn’t do what I was told, which has been a thing for me my whole life. I didn’t push the belts and bags unless somebody particularly asked for a belt and bag. I just sold more shoes to more women coming in by being really integral about the shoes because I absolutely loved these yellow shoes myself and I had my own pair and do you remember that? They’re like the little buck, two little buckles at the top on the toe and the high heel, just love those shoes. And so it was, you know, an authentic thing

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because I was actually wearing the shoes too. Why am I telling this story? Because I think it’s much more difficult to live our values and at the same time, still be commercial. I mean, that’s a big challenge, isn’t it? many of us. How do we live the values and still be commercial and still be professional and still achieve the things that we want to achieve? So I don’t think that this is for you to think that something’s going to get lost, all right? Like I want you to have it all. I want you to be able to live your values, have energy and be able to achieve the things that you want to achieve, whether that’s commercial or fundraising or whatever it is. I strongly believe that these things really come together, all right? And that’s when we have to look at our own perhaps limiting beliefs about what we can and we can’t do. I want you to know that there are so many others, particularly women and some amazing men around you and around the world that you don’t know yet who are not collapsing into despair, all right? They will challenge you without diminishing you and they are willing to exchange practical support with you, all right? It’s very important to start to learn how to connect with others and ask for help. We have been a long generation of late, of lone wolves, and doing things very much on our own terms, in our own spheres. And many, many women are very good at giving help, but that can also be exhausting, but not very good at asking for help. All right, so I’m not requiring you to rescue everybody or be rescued. Collective empowerment is not every woman carrying more, it’s about women understanding our strength differently and helping and supporting each other. So I said at the start, I’d love for you to connect with at least one meaningful action for yourself as a result of this this podcast and you know this might be about speaking out or resting or researching something or voting or applying or leaving or beginning or saying no but it should be something that is easy enough for you to complete and humane enough that it doesn’t destroy your energy by doing it. All right, so stay with me. If you’ve got a pen or you’ve got someone where you can make a couple of notes, even if you can’t do this right now or you can just think about this right now, and maybe you might do the exercise later or you might share this exercise with someone else,

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but I’m calling this the beacon practice. All right, it’s a bit of a practical exercise. Take a notebook, open a document or use the notes function on your phone if you’ve got a phone there, but give yourself enough quiet to answer honestly. Now, if you’re sitting on a train, a bus, a plane, walking somewhere, or working in the day, or caring for people, or in school, or wherever you are right now, just take a moment to look up, take a breath. Remember how fantastic you really are. The aim here is not to produce a perfect action plan, it’s to help you move from exhaustion and comparison towards one sustainable action. So I want you to begin with what’s true, all right? Write the heading, what is exhausting me? What is exhausting me? And then name at least three things that are taking the toll on your energy. Instead of just writing work, write the person or the meetings, or the workload, or the values conflict, or whatever it is, might just be more detailed. Can you do that? You’re writing it, or at least are you thinking about it? And beside each item, mark whether this is something you can change, or something where you can seek help or something that you might need to accept for now without giving it unlimited access to your mind. Alright so is it something you can change? Is it something you can seek some help or some advice or something that for now, I say for now, you need to accept, but you don’t give it unlimited access to your head. Do you know what I mean? Like that person or that situation and they’re with you all day and you wake up in the night and thinking about them. No, they’re not allowed to have that much access to your mind. Okay, that’s the first part. Now, the next part. And you can always pause me and then come back, all right? So welcome back if you’ve done that. The next, I want you to write the heading, what false scoreboard am I using? What false scoreboard am I using? So I want you to try and notice where you’re judging yourself through perhaps how much income you earn or your job title

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or your status or your visibility or your followers, or if you’re comparing yourself to someone else’s timeline. And then I want you, so take a look at that and think, well, okay, where am I judging myself? And it’s perfectly okay, this is what most people do. And then I want you to write one measure, and it could be counter-cultural, but one measure that better reflects your values. So it could be about the number of people that you help or develop. It could be about the quality of the culture that you create. It could be about you having courage and speaking up and using your voice. Not how it was received or not what people said as a result of what you said, but the courage that you used your voice. So you’re measuring it, the fact that you did it, the amount of freedom that you have in your life. So imagine that. If you measured yourself by the amount of freedom you have rather than the amount of money you earn, I wonder how life might be a little different. Or the sense of integrity you have about the decisions you make. So you spoke up about something, it wasn’t really received that well, perhaps. Perhaps it was. But that you acted with integrity. I’m not requiring you to reject ambition. I’m inviting you to define your success more consciously. Can you do it? it, this is going to release so much for you. All right. The third thing, now stay with me because I know these aren’t always easy questions. The third one, write the heading, where are my beacons? Where are my beacons? Those lights. And I want you to name three people, initiatives or organizations or communities or examples that remind you that change is possible. Three people. It could be someone in your family, someone that you’ve worked for, maybe someone out in the public eye that you admire, but three beacons. They can be people, initiatives, organizations, or communities. And if you can’t find three, then it is your task over the next few weeks to find three, because they are out there. At least one perhaps comes from your own direct sphere, your own industry, or maybe your own organization, or your own sector, or your own country. Find ones that come from different countries. Oh my goodness,

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if you need to look more globally, look more broadly, you will find the most phenomenal examples in beacons, whether it’s within law or funding or political representation, education, persistence, male allyship or women organizing together. Hope becomes much more useful when we understand that is all around us. So those beacons help show you the way. And now fourth, and if you’re still doing this, I’m so impressed. And if you’re not, it’s okay. Just, you know, take a breath and know that you will do it another time. Some of this will be seeping into your brain. Fourth, write the heading. What difference have I made already? What difference have I made already? And write down at least five things from the last year. Include the quiet things, all right? So the person you encouraged, the boundary you set, the relationship that you changed. Remember you started looking after your health more? Remember you were exercising? Didn’t last but you did it. Remember the group that you started? The unfairness that you questioned? The care that you gave? The opportunity you created? Do you remember? The moment that was difficult but you pushed through it? The example that you set without knowing. And if you’re finding this really difficult, ask some people around you who love you, what difference have I already made? Where have you seen me make a difference? Maybe you need another person’s eyes to see your own contribution clearly. My son, older son who’s just turned 18, he said to me, me, you are now redundant, I am 18. And I said, oh yeah. And he said, you are such a great mom. And I thought to myself, wow, this is from the mouth of someone who never gives praise. I guess I must have made a difference there. Now finally, fifth, write the heading, Who is with me? Who is with me? Identify one person, or it’d be my preference, one woman. You can contact this week, not to network and be, you know, performative, but to create a genuine

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mutual support. All right? Who is with you? Tell her what you’re trying to change and what’s really difficult and what makes you tired. Ask her what she’s working towards and decide on one practical way you can help each other. Whether that’s an introduction, a conversation, some encouragement, sharing a book recommendation, attending something together or simply checking in again, find the time to do it. Who is with you? And no, by the way, I’m always with you. You might imagine me at some of your meetings or some of your difficult encounters or when you’re really tired and I’ll give you a little bit of I’ll give you a little bit of Sam energy if you’d like it. So of all of that take one action in the next seven days. Now these actions I’m a big fan of taking actions and I’m a big fan of taking baby steps as many of you know because it is these small consistent things if we do them every day that makes such a big difference and if we can do it en masse well that’s how collective change occurs. So it should be small enough to do or not do, all right? Like I love the idea of the not to do list where you stop doing things. You could make a big list of all the things you wanna stop doing and who you wanna stop talking to and who you, you know, who, what and the rest of it. And then as you don’t do them, you tick them off. You tick them off. Yeah, didn’t do that. Yeah, didn’t do that. Because often it is the things that we need to stop doing which is the most important action, don’t you think? All those people, they’re just exhausting you. And write down what you will do. What will you do? And when will you do it? All right, we’re looking at something over the next seven days. Maybe there’s just been something that just keeps getting delayed, protecting an hour for you to really think, applying for that opportunity when you wonder, am I really good enough? Can I do it? saying no to a commitment that’s preventing you from doing what you really want to do. All right, so you’ve got your five steps and then your one, one little baby step. All right, one baby step. That’s the landscape of grounded hope. So if you’re still listening today and wondering whether it’s all worth it, I do get it. I understand. If you’re tired of seeing attention flow to what or who is loudest, the most unjust or completely bloody frivolous. I do, I really do get it and you are not alone in that. If you are questioning whether kindness, integrity and purpose matter, let me tell you, they matter now more than they have ever mattered

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throughout history. You’re good, all right? You’re in the right spot, you’re doing the right things, keep going, please keep going. Who you are and your worth is not determined by your visibility or how many people applaud it. Some of the most consequential changes begin in rooms that will never be filmed and in conversations that will never be posted. You will find your courage, policies become fairer and teams become safer and a young girl sees a future she had never imagined for herself because of you. A woman who was about to give up decides, hmm I have at least one more step inside me. Yes, I do need to tell you the whole truth about the state of women’s equality, including the reversals and the violence, the slow pace and the concentration of power. I urge you that we are all leaders and that we are all feminists in our way, although we may not call ourselves that. We must all tell the truth about resistance, encourage, reform, solidarity and progress, all are real and all are needed, but seeing only the darkness paralyzes us. I wonder if that is some kind of technique to keep us in the dark and keep us tired, down and depressed about the action that we were going to take today, that busy disease that keeps us down and busy. But seeing Seeing only the darkness is not good enough unless it is paralleled with seeing the light. Holding both allows you to act with both honesty and hope. So take a moment now, don’t give up, shoulders back, be proud of all that you have achieved. But put down the whole world. Look for the beacons, remember the women beside you and decide what is yours now to do next. You do not have to prove that you are extraordinary, you are already extraordinary. You do not have to become exhausted to be committed. You only have to stay connected to what matters. the women who is carrying your purpose and take the next meaningful step. I am with you. Women around the world are with you, even if you do not yet know their names

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or them yours. Together through actions that are both public and private, dramatic and ordinary, recognized and unseen, we are shaping the future. Please take good care of yourself today. Keep going. Know that you have way more grit, determination, persistence and skills of consistency that perhaps you give yourself credit for. Remember to keep laughing. have your sense of humour and know that it is always the long game that counts.

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