Life Lessons With: Warrior Woman Project
Welcome to a brand new interview series on the blog - Life Lessons! The aim of the Life Lessons series is to feature inspiring people from the worlds of food, coaching, fitness, writing, travel and entertainment, and having a real in-depth conversation with them, discussing what inspires them, what really makes them tick and how they came to be who they are. In turn, it hopefully leads to us all taking something away from each interview and being inspired ourselves. This is not an interview series where we want to find out what designer dress the woman is wearing or how they lost those X amount of lbs...this is us discussing what empowers us, what motivates us and how we can apply that to our lives.
So here we go! The first up in the Life Lessons series is the woman with a serious vision and that's Jen Wilson, Founder at Warrior Woman Project (I have so much love for this name!) which aims to help awaken that inner warrior inside you, the warrior that wants the best for you and your happiness and bringing out the strong and loving person who you are inside and out. Sign.Me.Up.
I've conducted a lot of interviews over my career and I can honestly say, this interview is one of the most honest and personal I've ever had the privilege of being part of. Jen is so open in her journey (through the ups as well as the downs) so join us as we chat through her life lessons and hopefully we can all take something away and learn from her.
First things
first Jen...can you chat us through where Warrior Woman Project began and your
motivation for starting it?
I changed career from working 13 years in the travel industry to working in the fitness industry which was a passion that I only discovered in about 2005, all through school I hated PE and would do anything to get out of it. It was 2009 before I went back to college and retrained. During the 2 years I was in college I went through even more of a transformational journey. My marriage ended after us being together for about 8 years and I was completely lost. I didn’t realise at the time that my journey was going to help me so much in the future.
I was introduced to NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming) which helps you change your way of thinking and breaking negative thought patterns which contribute to us self-sabotaging. Working with my clients I was recognising that they too were self-sabotaging and I needed to find a way to help them. It was their headspace that was getting in the way of them achieving the results they wanted. I did my NLP Practitioner and Master Practitioner courses which helped me develop the Warrior Woman Project to what it is today.
How would you describe Warrior Woman Project and what it offers?
I would say that it falls in to the ‘personal development’ category. I very much want to help women find what it is they want, understand who it is they are, if they don’t like who they are today then we create the plan to help them move towards the person they want to be. So often women feel that they need to look a certain way, media, social media and marketing companies are doing a very good job at making us feel insecure about what we look like. Sometimes the change comes in the form of fitness, sometimes it comes in the form of changing up their eating habits, sometimes it comes in the form of a few conversations that help them take a step back and look at their life to see it through different eyes.
I always let the women choose what door they want to come to me through, I can’t tell them that they need to prioritise one thing over the other but I do through our conversations help guide them to what it is they really want.
Have you ever experienced a testing time in your life that you had to overcome? How did you do so?
As I briefly touched on before, my marriage ending. In 2010, I had just gone in to 2nd year at college and I was loving the new life and new opportunities I had. There was a man living in my house, sleeping in my bed that wasn’t loving his life and he was lost and didn’t know what to do with himself. Jake is Australian and when we lived out there he surfed a lot, every morning before work and every afternoon after work. I was really homesick out there and we agreed to move back to Scotland. I knew in my gut that he didn’t want to come with me but he was quite insistent that he would come and it would be fine. Every day I could see him getting sadder, slipping in to a depression. A little bit of him was breaking down every day and that broke my heart. He didn’t want to speak about it for so long. Eventually after we had been back here for about a year I managed to get him to open up and we decided the best thing for him would be to move home.
It was devastating, but I wasn’t prepared to show anyone that a broken heart would hold me down. I responded to everyone and anyone who asked that I was fine. I went out a lot…party, party, party. It was my coping mechanism which I hadn’t realised how much I had been using as a crutch until I decided one day that I needed to do a detox and was going to stop partying, remove all sugar and processed food from my life for 28 days. I then found myself a few days in crying uncontrollably and no idea how to stop the tears or what to do.
I had already been aware of NLP and gone on a weekend workshop so knew that reaching out for help was the right thing for me to do in that moment. I had a chat with Brian Costello of Headstrong NLP and we set up some sessions to deal with my head and move me forward. It was Brian’s practitioner and master practitioner courses that I did and helped me get to where I am today.
Now we're in the beginnings of 2017, what ways can people be thinking about their goals/what they'd like to do or achieve this year?
Be clear on what it is you want and know why it is you want it. The why is usually the hardest part for most people to get their heads around. Be honest with yourself and don’t let what other people think get in the way. If you want to lose a bit of weight so you feel sexy naked then that is your given right. If you want that promotion because you want a particular car or to live in a particular neighbourhood that is great but also understand what that car or house gives you, how will it make you feel? Once you know and understand that feeling you will get achieving your goals then you have more motivation and understanding to stick with it.
The next thing I suggest is just making small steps to change. Being consistent with one thing every single day is much better than going full overhaul and only lasting a couple of weeks at best. Keep your goal and why at the front of your mind. I have recently started using vision boards to help me.
If you have no idea what it is you want in a big picture scale then keep it small scale. What would you like to be a bit better in your life and work on that. For some people having big picture dreams can be overwhelming and taking it day to day. When there is no burning passion, go with curiosity, tap in to what interests you.
As women, we can usually be found trying to balance lots of things at once, both in work and at home. What would be your tips for those moments when we can become/feel overwhelmed?
Take 3 big deep breaths. Our breathing is the first thing to be out of control when we are feeling overwhelmed. When we have too many plates spinning at once eventually one is going to fall. What we need to decide (and often in a moment) is what is least important to drop right at this second?
I know many women that are too stubborn to ask for help, getting over yourself and asking for help is a massive strength. If you are someone who gives all the time, you need to remember if you were driving everyone around all the time, eventually you need to stop and put some fuel in the car, it is the same with our energy, if we are giving physically, mentally, emotionally to others all the time we will eventually run out and burn out. We need to remember to stop refuel and reenergise.
When I feel completely overwhelmed I use lists or mind maps to work out what it is that needs to be done, the steps that need to be taken to do them and in what order do they stress me out. Sometimes I start with the stuff that least stresses me to get me in to a flow, other times I need to go in head first to the most stressful to get it done.
When you take the step back even just for those 3 breaths you give your brain a chance to unscramble the picture a bit.
Creating balance is one of the key points of Warrior Woman Project. How important is this in life and what would be the steps each of us can take to make sure we have the work/life balance that is right for us?
You need to decide what is important to you right now in this phase of your life. I don’t think that we can ever be 100% in harmony and I think trying to achieve that kind of balance can be really stressful. What we want to do is create better balance.
What I do think is important is understanding that your life goes in cycles. There will be times where family is the most important thing and you need to step back a bit from other things like work. Then there will be other times where work needs to take priority (we all have bills to pay) and you need to take a step back from family/ friends. Your health is always important but again there will be times where you don’t get your 8 hours of sleep or you are living on takeaways because everything else going on is a higher priority. But you get back on track as soon as you can.
Giving yourself permission is the number one thing that I have found helps myself and my clients and knowing that everything can’t be 100% all the time takes a lot of pressure off. We are all different in how we operate. I know some women who plan their lives around their monthly cycle. They start out by charting their energy and mood over a 3 month period and then use that to plan. Others use the seasons of the year or even if they run their own business, following their business seasons so taking more time off when it’s quiet. It is finding what is right for you and that is very personal to each individual. I do recommend trying a few different ways to see what suits you best.
Who or what inspires you in life?
People inspire me. Every single day I watch people interact with each other. I see people holding doors for the next person coming through. I see people making eye contact and smiling at strangers on the street. I see people walk in to a fitness class for the first time with that look of total fear on their face, and people who have been coming to class for years make improvements and get personal bests that on that first day, they never dreamed of achieving.
In the last year I have been really fortunate to connect with other likeminded business women that are really honest about how tough it is being self-employed but like me they would never give it up. We meet for tea, we are in Facebook groups together and we share each other’s work and businesses. We are really there cheering each other on and supporting and celebrating each other’s successes.
Is there a quote that you regularly reference when you need it?
‘All dreams come true if you have the courage to pursue them’ really helps me stay focused on working on my business and ‘courage is the discovery that you may not win, and trying when you know you can lose’ really helps me when I need to take a chance in business or my personal life. It was really relevant to me post-divorce. When I got married I never thought that it wouldn’t work out, but there are so many failed marriages out there you would be naïve to think you were invincible. You can only hope and it wouldn’t put me off getting married again if that was felt right. I have both these quotes tattooed on either side of my ribs.
Congratulations on your new book 'Become a Warrior Woman: 9 Rules to Sort your Shit'! Can you chat us through what your hopes are with the book and the message you'd like your readers to take away from it?
Thank you! The book is about putting the stages of Warrior Woman Project into really easy to follow steps that if you want change in your life it will help you change. With the book I can reach and help more people. When people read something that they love or get something from they are often quick to tell their friends or pass it on to others. I have gifted so many copies of The Alchemist because I read it and just thought ‘yes, this is a great book and others need to read it’. That is what I would like for my book. I have an online course which is an extended version of the book with online support and accountability. Some people are just not ready for that step, it’s maybe too big of a step and some people are more private and like to do things behind their own closed door. With the book I get to reach those people too.
The take away message I hope is, if she can do it I can do it. Someone recently said to me that out of all my cousins I would have been the last one of them they expected to write and publish a book - this person isn’t well and has had a stroke and some mental health issues but, it was something I used to think about myself too. I believed I was dumb because I didn’t do well in school. I was 30 before I went back in to education and now have a BSc in Sport & Exercise Science and PGDip with Merit TQFE (Teaching Qualification in Further Education). It is never too late and if you want something there will be a way to get there, you just need to look, ask and don’t settle for a life you are not happy in.
What's next in 2017
for Warrior Woman Project?
I have my first ever TEDx talk in January 2017 and I will be having an official book launch. In April 2017 I will be launching the first ever Warrior Woman Project Academy which will be a 90 day intensive online programme taking all the action points from the book and working on them in a strategic way. There will be online live video calls, workbooks and private one to one calls too. I also want to get a bit more travelling done this year, see more of the world. And I also want to get my wardrobe sorted, I live in joggies, leggings, gym tops and hoodies. S ome nice clothes that are not gym clothes would be amazing!
To find out more about Warrior Woman Project head over to the website here, and keep updated via Instagram @WarriorWomanProject.
So here we go! The first up in the Life Lessons series is the woman with a serious vision and that's Jen Wilson, Founder at Warrior Woman Project (I have so much love for this name!) which aims to help awaken that inner warrior inside you, the warrior that wants the best for you and your happiness and bringing out the strong and loving person who you are inside and out. Sign.Me.Up.
I've conducted a lot of interviews over my career and I can honestly say, this interview is one of the most honest and personal I've ever had the privilege of being part of. Jen is so open in her journey (through the ups as well as the downs) so join us as we chat through her life lessons and hopefully we can all take something away and learn from her.
I changed career from working 13 years in the travel industry to working in the fitness industry which was a passion that I only discovered in about 2005, all through school I hated PE and would do anything to get out of it. It was 2009 before I went back to college and retrained. During the 2 years I was in college I went through even more of a transformational journey. My marriage ended after us being together for about 8 years and I was completely lost. I didn’t realise at the time that my journey was going to help me so much in the future.
I was introduced to NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming) which helps you change your way of thinking and breaking negative thought patterns which contribute to us self-sabotaging. Working with my clients I was recognising that they too were self-sabotaging and I needed to find a way to help them. It was their headspace that was getting in the way of them achieving the results they wanted. I did my NLP Practitioner and Master Practitioner courses which helped me develop the Warrior Woman Project to what it is today.
How would you describe Warrior Woman Project and what it offers?
I would say that it falls in to the ‘personal development’ category. I very much want to help women find what it is they want, understand who it is they are, if they don’t like who they are today then we create the plan to help them move towards the person they want to be. So often women feel that they need to look a certain way, media, social media and marketing companies are doing a very good job at making us feel insecure about what we look like. Sometimes the change comes in the form of fitness, sometimes it comes in the form of changing up their eating habits, sometimes it comes in the form of a few conversations that help them take a step back and look at their life to see it through different eyes.
I always let the women choose what door they want to come to me through, I can’t tell them that they need to prioritise one thing over the other but I do through our conversations help guide them to what it is they really want.
Have you ever experienced a testing time in your life that you had to overcome? How did you do so?
As I briefly touched on before, my marriage ending. In 2010, I had just gone in to 2nd year at college and I was loving the new life and new opportunities I had. There was a man living in my house, sleeping in my bed that wasn’t loving his life and he was lost and didn’t know what to do with himself. Jake is Australian and when we lived out there he surfed a lot, every morning before work and every afternoon after work. I was really homesick out there and we agreed to move back to Scotland. I knew in my gut that he didn’t want to come with me but he was quite insistent that he would come and it would be fine. Every day I could see him getting sadder, slipping in to a depression. A little bit of him was breaking down every day and that broke my heart. He didn’t want to speak about it for so long. Eventually after we had been back here for about a year I managed to get him to open up and we decided the best thing for him would be to move home.
It was devastating, but I wasn’t prepared to show anyone that a broken heart would hold me down. I responded to everyone and anyone who asked that I was fine. I went out a lot…party, party, party. It was my coping mechanism which I hadn’t realised how much I had been using as a crutch until I decided one day that I needed to do a detox and was going to stop partying, remove all sugar and processed food from my life for 28 days. I then found myself a few days in crying uncontrollably and no idea how to stop the tears or what to do.
I had already been aware of NLP and gone on a weekend workshop so knew that reaching out for help was the right thing for me to do in that moment. I had a chat with Brian Costello of Headstrong NLP and we set up some sessions to deal with my head and move me forward. It was Brian’s practitioner and master practitioner courses that I did and helped me get to where I am today.
Now we're in the beginnings of 2017, what ways can people be thinking about their goals/what they'd like to do or achieve this year?
Be clear on what it is you want and know why it is you want it. The why is usually the hardest part for most people to get their heads around. Be honest with yourself and don’t let what other people think get in the way. If you want to lose a bit of weight so you feel sexy naked then that is your given right. If you want that promotion because you want a particular car or to live in a particular neighbourhood that is great but also understand what that car or house gives you, how will it make you feel? Once you know and understand that feeling you will get achieving your goals then you have more motivation and understanding to stick with it.
The next thing I suggest is just making small steps to change. Being consistent with one thing every single day is much better than going full overhaul and only lasting a couple of weeks at best. Keep your goal and why at the front of your mind. I have recently started using vision boards to help me.
If you have no idea what it is you want in a big picture scale then keep it small scale. What would you like to be a bit better in your life and work on that. For some people having big picture dreams can be overwhelming and taking it day to day. When there is no burning passion, go with curiosity, tap in to what interests you.
As women, we can usually be found trying to balance lots of things at once, both in work and at home. What would be your tips for those moments when we can become/feel overwhelmed?
Take 3 big deep breaths. Our breathing is the first thing to be out of control when we are feeling overwhelmed. When we have too many plates spinning at once eventually one is going to fall. What we need to decide (and often in a moment) is what is least important to drop right at this second?
I know many women that are too stubborn to ask for help, getting over yourself and asking for help is a massive strength. If you are someone who gives all the time, you need to remember if you were driving everyone around all the time, eventually you need to stop and put some fuel in the car, it is the same with our energy, if we are giving physically, mentally, emotionally to others all the time we will eventually run out and burn out. We need to remember to stop refuel and reenergise.
When I feel completely overwhelmed I use lists or mind maps to work out what it is that needs to be done, the steps that need to be taken to do them and in what order do they stress me out. Sometimes I start with the stuff that least stresses me to get me in to a flow, other times I need to go in head first to the most stressful to get it done.
When you take the step back even just for those 3 breaths you give your brain a chance to unscramble the picture a bit.
Creating balance is one of the key points of Warrior Woman Project. How important is this in life and what would be the steps each of us can take to make sure we have the work/life balance that is right for us?
You need to decide what is important to you right now in this phase of your life. I don’t think that we can ever be 100% in harmony and I think trying to achieve that kind of balance can be really stressful. What we want to do is create better balance.
What I do think is important is understanding that your life goes in cycles. There will be times where family is the most important thing and you need to step back a bit from other things like work. Then there will be other times where work needs to take priority (we all have bills to pay) and you need to take a step back from family/ friends. Your health is always important but again there will be times where you don’t get your 8 hours of sleep or you are living on takeaways because everything else going on is a higher priority. But you get back on track as soon as you can.
Giving yourself permission is the number one thing that I have found helps myself and my clients and knowing that everything can’t be 100% all the time takes a lot of pressure off. We are all different in how we operate. I know some women who plan their lives around their monthly cycle. They start out by charting their energy and mood over a 3 month period and then use that to plan. Others use the seasons of the year or even if they run their own business, following their business seasons so taking more time off when it’s quiet. It is finding what is right for you and that is very personal to each individual. I do recommend trying a few different ways to see what suits you best.
Who or what inspires you in life?
People inspire me. Every single day I watch people interact with each other. I see people holding doors for the next person coming through. I see people making eye contact and smiling at strangers on the street. I see people walk in to a fitness class for the first time with that look of total fear on their face, and people who have been coming to class for years make improvements and get personal bests that on that first day, they never dreamed of achieving.
In the last year I have been really fortunate to connect with other likeminded business women that are really honest about how tough it is being self-employed but like me they would never give it up. We meet for tea, we are in Facebook groups together and we share each other’s work and businesses. We are really there cheering each other on and supporting and celebrating each other’s successes.
Is there a quote that you regularly reference when you need it?
‘All dreams come true if you have the courage to pursue them’ really helps me stay focused on working on my business and ‘courage is the discovery that you may not win, and trying when you know you can lose’ really helps me when I need to take a chance in business or my personal life. It was really relevant to me post-divorce. When I got married I never thought that it wouldn’t work out, but there are so many failed marriages out there you would be naïve to think you were invincible. You can only hope and it wouldn’t put me off getting married again if that was felt right. I have both these quotes tattooed on either side of my ribs.
Congratulations on your new book 'Become a Warrior Woman: 9 Rules to Sort your Shit'! Can you chat us through what your hopes are with the book and the message you'd like your readers to take away from it?
Thank you! The book is about putting the stages of Warrior Woman Project into really easy to follow steps that if you want change in your life it will help you change. With the book I can reach and help more people. When people read something that they love or get something from they are often quick to tell their friends or pass it on to others. I have gifted so many copies of The Alchemist because I read it and just thought ‘yes, this is a great book and others need to read it’. That is what I would like for my book. I have an online course which is an extended version of the book with online support and accountability. Some people are just not ready for that step, it’s maybe too big of a step and some people are more private and like to do things behind their own closed door. With the book I get to reach those people too.
The take away message I hope is, if she can do it I can do it. Someone recently said to me that out of all my cousins I would have been the last one of them they expected to write and publish a book - this person isn’t well and has had a stroke and some mental health issues but, it was something I used to think about myself too. I believed I was dumb because I didn’t do well in school. I was 30 before I went back in to education and now have a BSc in Sport & Exercise Science and PGDip with Merit TQFE (Teaching Qualification in Further Education). It is never too late and if you want something there will be a way to get there, you just need to look, ask and don’t settle for a life you are not happy in.
I have my first ever TEDx talk in January 2017 and I will be having an official book launch. In April 2017 I will be launching the first ever Warrior Woman Project Academy which will be a 90 day intensive online programme taking all the action points from the book and working on them in a strategic way. There will be online live video calls, workbooks and private one to one calls too. I also want to get a bit more travelling done this year, see more of the world. And I also want to get my wardrobe sorted, I live in joggies, leggings, gym tops and hoodies. S ome nice clothes that are not gym clothes would be amazing!
Jen's Top 5 tips to keep motivated in 2017?
- Know what your goal is, know why you are wanting and keep it at the front of your mind every single day
- Make sure you are doing at least one thing every single day towards that goal
- Meditate (mindfulness, focused breathing) every single day.
- Ask for help, we can’t be experts in everything we do so tap in to others strengths
- Buy, read and action my book! Kindle version is available on Amazon, paperback is available directly through my Warrior Woman Project Facebook page