Balance & Beyond Podcast

Reimagine how books can profoundly influence your life as I recount the transformative reads that have shaped my personal and professional journey.

Reimagine how books can profoundly influence your life as I recount the transformative reads that have shaped my personal and professional journey. From a gripping fascination with African history sparked by "The Power of One," leading to unexpected adventures and lifelong connections, to navigating the chaos of parenting with guidance from "Secrets of the Baby Whisperer," these stories reveal the unseen threads that bind our passions and choices. Discover how literature can be a guiding force, encouraging you to reflect on the books that have quietly nudged your life's direction.

In a world where career progression and personal growth often come with their own set of challenges, learn how the lessons from "Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office" helped me thrive in a male-dominated industry. By embracing the teachings of Joseph Murphy, I unlocked the hidden potential of my subconscious, which propelled my business to new heights. Additionally, Maureen Murdoch's "The Heroine's Journey" invites us to reconsider the traditional narratives of success, emphasising a harmonious blend of energies for fulfilment. Join me on this literary journey, and perhaps find a book that will become a cornerstone in your life's library.

Episode Transcript

INTRO: Welcome to Balance and Beyond, the podcast for ambitious women who refuse to accept burnout as the price of success. Here, we’re committed to empowering you with the tools and strategies you need to achieve true balance, where your career, relationships and health all thrive, and where you have the power to define success on your own terms. I honour the space you’ve created for yourself today, so take a breath, and let's dive right in…

Today I'm going to answer one of the most common questions I get asked, and that is, “Jo, what have been the books that have had the biggest impact on you?” And so, I'm going to give you an insight into my history, into perhaps some of my passions or interests, from the present and the past. Some may not be surprising, and some may catch you by surprise. So, we're going to go on a trip down memory lane, and I'm going to share the five books that have had the biggest impact on my life, more holistically. 

So, these aren't just necessarily business books, or some are, but I really encourage you to also think for yourself about what are the books that have had the biggest impact on your life. And you might be surprised at what you find. One of the books that had one of the most formative impacts on my, you could say “teen life”, was quite a surprising one. But, if you know about my history, it may not surprise you at all. 

And this is a brilliant book called the ‘Power of One’ by Bryce Courtney. He's an Australian author, and I initially saw the movie version. This was in the mid-1990s, when it came out. It had a Hans Zimmer soundtrack. It's all about apartheid in South Africa. And having half siblings who grew up there, and that's where my parents met, and my dad lived there for a long time. 

I'd always had a fascination with the country, and with Africa. But, this really brought to life for me some of the history that I'd read, and really kicked off almost an obsession with African history, and African culture. It was one of the many rabbit holes that I've gone down in my life, and that led me all the way through high school, to being very interested in African history. 

When the Rwandan genocide was happening, I was clipping out clippings every day, and looking into the Belgians, and how they contributed to the conflict. I did political geography for my HSC. And anything I did, was all focused on Africa. Now, how that has played out later on in life, is I've been to Africa, I think it's now six times. And, ironically, I ended up meeting my husband because he also had a passion for Africa. So, it was one of the reasons why we clicked. 

And I had my moment in my early twenties, when I went and I spent four months going overland on a truck from Kenya, right down to Cape town in South Africa. And I got to have my PK moment. If anyone has read the book, or watched the movie, one of the main characters has this moment in Soweto, where he gets to be this white kid sort of running around, and all the other kids follow him. 

So, I got to go to a church in Uganda, and took a huge amount of pens, and pencils, and things like that, and spent some time at this church and orphanage with kids. Which was me living out this childhood dream that I had for a really, really long time, and it continued to flow throughout my life. 

When I had an engagement party, for when Mick and I got engaged, we didn't actually ask for gifts. We asked everybody to bring pens, pencils, and school supplies, and we ended up shipping them out to an underprivileged school that we knew of in Africa. So, funny how one book, one movie, that then triggered the book, and then triggered a whole new interest in history, and passions. 

So, that's one that many people, those that are close to me, know about my sort of love of Africa. I still, on a regular basis, listen to African music. It's something that really helps me think, and you know, there's also a spiritual connection that I now understand, I have to Africa. That has happened later on, in my spiritual journey. So, it's very interesting, when one little chance, you know, part of your history, ends up shaping so much of your life. And that's what the ‘Power of One’ really represented for me. 

As we move on, and I had my first baby, wonderful Nikita was born in 2020. Sorry, not 2020. 2010. And, interestingly, the one baby book I read. That's right, I read just one, it was called ‘The Secrets of the Baby Whisperer’ by Tracy Hogg. And a lot of people have been really surprised that I only read one kind of “How to Have a Baby Book.” 

I read a couple of pregnancy books, to find out if I had an olive, or an avocado, or all of those things. And this is because I had a few friends that had kids around the same time as me, and obviously, went to mother's groups, and things like that. And what I saw was, everyone getting really, really confused, because one book said you need to wake your child up at 7:44pm, and then they should be asleep by 7:53pm, and you need to feed them for this long. And others were like, “Go with your child, read them.” 

So, there's so much conflicting advice out there, on how to manage a newborn. And this really goes to a lot of my personality, which I now understand a lot more about. And if you're a fan of something called human design. This is my manifesto, personally. I wanted to do things my way, and this ‘Secrets of the Baby Whisperer’ book was recommended by somebody in my circle, and I loved it, because it's more of a principle-based approach. 

And by this, the book really advocated for it. It had this acronym called ‘EASY’. And it basically said, “The cycle that you want to be in with a newborn is that they eat, they have some kind of playtime, as in lying on their back or tummy time, or whatever else they they need, they sleep, and then, when they're asleep, you take time for you.” And what I loved about it, it was a principle that I could hold loosely. 

So, it didn't matter if they slept for 5 minutes or 40 minutes, or they ate for however long, or however much. And that really gave me just this beautiful way to actually listen to my child and see what she needed. And the moment we implemented that routine, things went really smoothly. It allowed me to step out of that paralysis. And to this day, I can honestly probably count on one hand the number of parenting books that I've actually read. 

Now, this doesn't mean to say I'm a perfect parent, by any stretch of the imagination. And now, having a teenager, there's some podcasts and things that I've gone to, “Oh my gosh.” “Okay, I don't know how to handle this. And this also doesn't say anything about having perfect children. Because, initially, Nikita was perfect. 

She was the angel baby. She was that baby that I would wake up for a nap, and put her in the car, and take her to the movies, and then she'd fall back asleep. And we went traveling for a month when she was six months old on planes. Not a problem, she just went everywhere with us. She was asleep, so we dropped the pram. She woke up, and we put the pram back up. And we're thinking, “Oh my gosh, this routine, we’re nailing parenthood.” 

Well, baby number two came along, and showed us that it ain't the parents, and it ain't the routine. A lot of this was also the child. So, number two really challenged us in so many ways. Particularly in that first couple of months period. So, I can't say that this book was the reason I had an angel baby, by any stretch of the imagination, because it didn't work with number two. But what I can say is, it really helped me. 

It ground in the importance of finding, you could say, this was a mentor, or a guide to a principle-based approach. As opposed to the moment someone tells me how to do something, I go, “No.” There’s a part of me that says, “I don't like rules.” I struggled with this in school. I remember someone saying, “How would you like to go into the army?” I'm like, ”I will not follow orders.” Someone says, “Go this way”, and I have this really instinctual drive to go. ”Nuh-uh, I'm looking the exact opposite way.” 

So, the more I have learned about how I like to learn and how I onboard information, when it comes to different elements of my personality, or my design. It made a lot more sense that, “Oh okay, this is why this book really, really resonated with me.” And I've got many friends that often had, you know, there was one sort of parenting baby book, or pregnancy book, whatever that had the biggest impact, and it's really hard not to recognise parenthood as a giant shift in your identity, and everything. To not have something in there that really pays homage to that important and transformational phase of my life.

Slightly before I had my kids, the first, you could say, more “self-development book” I read, and I've got three of these that have had the biggest impact on me, was a book that I was given in 2006. And this book was published in 2004. So, it was pretty fresh at the time. And this book is called ‘Nice Girls, Don’t Get the Corner Office’ by Lois Frankel. 

This was one of the first books at the time, and I couldn’t  believe this, as I was compiling this. Oh my gosh, this was 20 years ago! It really brought to light some of these self-sabotage programs, that I now talk about a lot. 

I was given this as part of a high potential program. This was my first US-based company, where they had sort of proper high-performance programs, and things like that. And so, I had a session with a psych as part of that. And she said, “You need to read this book, because you're doing everything in this.” I'm like, “What do you mean?” I was “just-ing”, I was being super friendly, I wanted everybody to like me. I was faffing around, and not getting to the point, because I was worried about hurting everybody's feelings. All of the things that I see everybody come to me now with. 

And I was really blessed that this mentor handed me this book! It would have been 2005. I was in my late 20s, so I hadn't yet had Nikita. I don't even think I was married at this point in time. But, it was when I went, “Oh, okay.” It made me reevaluate everything.

This book talks in a really empowering way about networking, and not being afraid to either ask for a mentor or, if you meet someone, to ask for a favour, or ask for someone to back you. And, off the back of this, I ended up getting my first head of role within a couple of years of reading this book, because I started implementing these strategies. 

I started seeing networking as a strategic, you could say “skill-set” that I really had to hone. And not just networking as in, “Oh, you know, I want them to like me.” But, ”How can I help them?” “How can they help me?” “How do I, you know, in a busy email inbox, how do I get them to search for mine, and to do my request?” “Ask, whatever it is, ahead of everybody else's?”

And that was a really, really instrumental piece in learning to deal with men. Because, I was in financial services for the first, well, the bulk of my career, at this point in time. I'd only been in financial services for two years, when I got this book. And there's a lot of men, and I didn't quite know how to deal with their directness, and their frankness, and the competition, and all of these things that I was seeing going on around me. “Oh my gosh, these men are not being nice to each other, and I feel like I am stuck on the playground, and these boys all have their super soakers out, and they're trying to kill each other!” 

And, to be honest, that's not far off what it was. But, this was a really beautiful introduction, and she had a lot of facts and figures. And, again, I look back on what made me really connect to this author. It wasn't, ”Do this because I say so.” It was a “Here’s some facts, here's some data.” My intellectual mind, and curiosity, was satisfied. 

They went, “Okay, she knows what she's talking about.” “There's enough grounding here.” And then through elements like storytelling, I could connect to it, and the advice in there was very practical. So, in all of these three books that I have shared, I guess from a personal development perspective, there is a common thread to it. And the more I understood about, “What’s the best way for me to learn?” The more I'm able to now go, ”No, this book isn't for me.” “No, I'm not going to take that advice.” And it's allowed me to find mentors and guides that are more aligned with who I am, and what I'm looking for. 

So, that was ‘Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office.’ Hugely instrumental in the early parts of my career, in shaping how I showed up, and I attribute that book to a lot of my corporate success. Because, I stopped doing a lot of the things that everybody who comes to me, and so many women do. And I was, you could say, lucky, or strategic in, I stopped doing these in my late twenties, which I attribute to the fact that I had my first head of role at, what was I? I think I was 28. And I was a chief marketing officer at 32. 

So, everybody used to say to me, “You’re what?” “You're on the executive team, in an Asia Pacific, role at 32?” ”That's a little bit young.” And I still remember one of my team members who was older than me. I sat down and introduced myself to the team, and she said, ”You’re a bit young to be a CMO, don't you think?” And I said “Well, obviously the CEO didn't think so.” And I said, “Don’t judge a book by its cover, and looks can be deceiving”, and put her back in her place very quickly. And we had a wonderful working relationship after that! So, there's this really important message here, in understanding what is holding you back, and where are you falling victim to conditioning and gender stereotypes? 

This next book was one of my first introductions to, I would say, neuroscience. And this book came to me very early on in my, I would say, coaching journey. I was still working full-time in corporate at this time, but I knew that the entrepreneurial path was something that I wanted to follow, that had always been a part of my future vision, and I was starting to think a little more seriously about how I could make that happen. 

But, it was very much as I was also at the peak of burnout. So, as I was in the process of starting to blow up my life, there was this wonderful book called the ‘Power of the Subconscious Mind’ by Joseph Murphy. And this really talks to how the two parts of our brains work. We have our conscious, rational, logical mind, the prefrontal cortex, which is the part of our brain that is the most newly developed. And we have the subconscious mind, which actually drives 90-95% of how our brain works. 

This is the oldest part of your brain. It's the part that you obviously aren't aware of, and it's where not just things like your digestion, and your breathing, and all your bodily functions lie, and your repair. It's also where your beliefs lie. It's also really the elephant to your ant, which is your conscious brain in terms of processing power, in terms of speed. And I was the person who was doing all the things, as I was in the process of burning out. 

I was attempting to meditate, even though I couldn't stop my mind. I was doing triathlons, so I was training four to five times a week. So, I was doing what I thought was taking care of my body. I'm like, ”I'm doing all the things, so why am I still unhappy?” And “I'm working really hard at work?” ”Why am I still unhappy?” It's because I hadn't learned to tame my subconscious mind. I wasn't fully utilizing all my resources, and I was using a lot of white knuckling, and grit, and hard work, and ethic, and determination, to push and to do. 

And, meanwhile, my mind was actually undoing all of the good work that I did. And it was only when I understood Joseph Murphy  had numerous books that are all just as powerful as this one, and this understanding helped me go, “Oh, okay, you mean it's my subconscious mind.” 

I remember the moment that I started thinking about having a baby, I saw pregnant women everywhere. I remember saying to my husband, ”Are you seeing this?” “What has happened to the world?” ”All these pregnant women are everywhere, and I have never seen this many pregnant women.” “Are we just surrounded by a baby boom?” 

Well, no, they didn't just jump out of the woodwork. My subconscious mind knew, because my conscious mind told it, that I was now interested in pregnancy. So, ”Please bring my conscious mind to pay attention to all of the pregnant people around me.” And the same thing happened when we needed to buy a new car. Suddenly, I'm going “Wow, I'm noticing all these cars driving past, and I'm not normally a car person!” “I couldn't really care less what drives past me.” Again, my conscious mind gives orders to my subconscious. 

And what this book made me realise, is I was giving orders to my subconscious mind, to find out where I made a mistake, where I could have done that better, where I wasn't fast enough, and where I wasn't good enough. And my subconscious mind was gladly obliging in saying, “Remember this thing in year five yeah?” “You sucked at that!” “And remember this thing?” “Remember when you broke your arm.” “Yeah, you couldn't do that, either.” “And remember this?” And I was like, ”Oh my gosh!” 

The moment I learned that I could actually train my brain, to get me more of what I want, and that was to find, the moments of joy. Find “me”, where I have done something well. Find ”me”, where somebody has backed me up, rather than throw me under the bus. And that switch changed everything, and I attribute that work to me being able to really quickly I had, you could say, almost two failed attempts to build a business, before The Balance Institute was born with this niche, and this market. I put in a lot of time, I put in a lot of effort, I put in a lot of money, to trying to get two other you could say “options” off the ground, and they just wouldn't fly. 

And that is because I was fighting myself the entire time, and the moment this idea literally dropped in on a run, I went, ”Right, I now know how my brain works.” “Okay, I'm going to get my entire brain working for me.” ”In this regard, I'm not going to fight against myself.” And when I think about the very early success I had with the business, I went from nothing, to half a million in revenue in the first 12 months, and I had no clients, no idea what I was doing. But, I got my brain to work with me, and that's when you can come, become exceptionally powerful. 

And last up, let me just say, whittling this list down to five was really hard, because there are probably another six or so books that I could put in here, that have had really powerful impacts. But, I've tried to diversify a little bit, and I've also tried to find ones that, perhaps, you haven't heard of, that aren't the big ticket. You know, ‘The Power of Habit’ and ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving an F’. There's all of those great books that are bestsellers for a reason. 

But, this last one was introduced by an old friend, and it's called, ‘The Heroine's Journey’ by Maureen Murdoch. Not one that you come across, really, in any book list, or New York Times Bestsellers list. This came at a time, when I was really understanding more about energetics. And you've probably heard me talk about masculine and feminine energy, and this book talks to this point. 

Yes, we all know about the hero's journey, who starts off, who goes on a quest, who then has to slay dragons, essentially overcome themselves, you know, reconcile all parts of themselves, and then come back the hero. And this hero's journey, which was born in, I believe it was the 60s and 70s, was very much the story arc for Star Wars. It's the story arc for Lord of the Rings, most of those movies. You could even say Indiana Jones.

And they say that George Lucas was such a student of the hero's journey, and the gentleman who came up with this concept, that he ran the Star Wars manuscript by him, to ensure it was sticking to true, let's say, to that story arc. 

Now, that's the hero's journey. That’s the male journey. But; in that male journey, women feature as the one to be rescued, as the one who is stopping them from getting to where they want to go, or the dragon to slay. And so, women are really the, you could say, sub-plot to this. And it's like, “Well, hang on a second, what does the heroine's journey look like?” And it looks slightly different, because we are different creatures. And a lot of that journey, when I went and mapped my own past, it talks about. 

You know, for many of us who have ended up in, you would say, senior corporate roles, who have ended up with a lot of material success, or career success. Or, who have a lot of ambition, we are more often aligned, or attuned, to our masculine energy. Which is that, “Let me go and get that shit done.” “I'm going to make that happen.” “I'm going to push.” That is our masculine energy, and that's not gendered. We all have all of it within us. 

But, in order for us to get down that masculine path, there is this really different part of our journey, that talks about the split from the feminine. And when we, due to some character in our life, might be our mother, it might be a sibling, an auntie, or a teacher, where we see that, following the, you could say, “Feminine energetic path”, which is that of nurturer, perhaps, and stay-at-home mum. and more of that traditional role. We de-identified with that and went ”No, I want the other one.” 

And my split was very much, I had a stay-at-home mum who loved me dearly, but she was very happy playing tennis, and going to the bridge, and doing French lessons, and she's done that her whole life. She still does that to this day, in her late seventies. Whereas, my dad was this hero, who was a salesman, and was on stages. And we'd fly around the world, because dad had a work conference in Hawaii. And so, I wanted to be like that. 

So, I started adopting, you would say, more masculine energetic traits, of being the high achiever, and wanting to go for outcomes, and being results driven, and being very logical, and pushing down my feelings. Because, no time for feelings. Facts are way faster, you know. You have to be able to back everything up. You need to be able to have evidence. Don’t trust your intuition. 

I distinctly remember being in a hiring workshop, and they said to me how do you know, out of these three candidates, how would you make your decision? And I'd say, “Well, I look at them all, and I probably dismiss one on logic, and then, based on the other one, I'd choose on my gut.” And I got told, “Your gut is wrong, you need to use logic.” And I said, “But, what if my gut is right?” And I was told, ”You have to be able to have a reason, and a logical argument for it.” And I get that, to an extent. 

But that was the corporate world diminishing the value of my intuition. And this heroine's journey was really the gateway, you could say, into a very, very deep understanding of energetics. And I teach this in my coaching programs. But, what I teach even in my foundational 12 weeks is literally probably now, I don't know 3-5% of what I know, and how much work I've done in this space. 

So, this book really opened up, and gave me a really good understanding of why I have adopted this more masculine energetic approach, and really helped me reconcile, and bring back into union, that journey with the feminine, which is now a journey I've taken many of my clients on. We talk often about our feminine energy, and our flow, and our intuition, and “How do we bring that back?” Because, anything in life out of balance, is not necessarily a good thing. 

So, there you have it. One of the most common questions that I get. And this list may surprise you. There's probably something there. Maybe you've never heard of any of them. But, I really encourage you to do this exercise for yourself, and to think about, “What is the common thread between all of these books?” It can be really insightful, as to who you like to learn from. 

Is there a thread to either of the authors? Is there a thread to the themes? Is there a way that they present the information? And again, all of these books, even down to Bryce Courtney’s ’Power of One’, they're all principle-based, which is how I like to learn. 

So, I don't take well with specific instructions, and so I now know where to look, what guides to look for, and this makes somebody who likes to be efficient, tele-masculine energy. This means that I'm not wasting my time, you could say, or I'm not wasting brainpower on guides, on books, on people who I'm not going to onboard. 

So, it's been really fun going back and thinking of these. I trusted my intuition, as I honed the list down. This has given you a little more insight, I guess, into my past, into parts that, perhaps, I haven't shared before, of my journey, and I hope this has inspired you to go and do the same thing for you. Happy reading!

OUTRO: Thanks for joining us today on the Balance and Beyond Podcast. We're so glad you carved out this time for yourself. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend who might need to hear this today. And if you're feeling extra generous, leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice would mean the world. If you’re keen to dive deeper into our world, visit us at www.balanceinstitute.com to discover more about the toolkit that has helped thousands of women avoid burnout and create a life of balance, and beyond. Thanks again for tuning in, and we'll see you next time on the Balance & Beyond Podcast.