When Life Gets In The Way

Welcome to A Magical Life: health, wealth and weight loss. I'm Magic Barclay, your host. Today we'll just be introducing this podcast, what it's all about, and a little about me.

Some of my health history:

• 15 years ago, I found myself morbidly obese at 144 kilos. 
• I was a mum of two kids with Autism Spectrum Disorder and I was raising them virtually alone. I was becoming unwell with multiple lifelong health conditions. 
• I was in a very traumatic marriage. 
• Ten years ago, I discovered how much the body really wants to heal. I actually lost half my body weight and started learning all I could about mainstream health, fitness and personal development. 
• Five years ago, I was told what I was doing wasn't working. Yes, I was losing weight, but I was a very sick woman. So they actually told me I had 12 months to live. 
• I had stage three cancer, diabetes, Cushing syndrome and they diagnosed me with Lyme disease.
• I had surgery and from that I developed lymphoedema. I was actually told at that stage to prepare my kids for life without a parent and I was locked into really nasty divorce proceedings. 

What I learned from all of this, and what I'm going to share with you:

• I've dedicated my life to learning all I could about the 11 systems of the body and how to help others take control of their health in a way that sustainable, ethical and supportive, rather than treating symptoms. 
• I am a practitioner of lymphoedema, a Functional Health Solutions practitioner and a complimentary medicine and integrative pathology practitioner and also a results coach, not a doctor. 
• We're talking about spiritual, and emotional and physical health.
• Money's part of it. Wealth is what you see in yourself. It's how you value yourself.
• Your body is a system and if something is out of balance, it will start to whisper.  Sometimes that will be itchy skin, a cough, weight change, but without addressing the root cause the body will start to scream to get your attention.

Listen to your intuition.  Listen to your body.  If you don't listen to the whispers, you will eventually hear the screams. I'm here to help you recognize the whispers.  Until next time, I wish you a magical life!

Links I've mentioned in this episode:

• A Magical Life Podcast on Facebook
• Wholistic Natural Health website: http://wholisticnaturalhealth.com.au
• Wholistic Natural Health on Instagram

Transcript

Welcome to A Magical Life: health, wealth and weight loss. I'm your host Magic Barclay, lead practitioner at Wholistic Natural Health Australia, and number one best selling author. In this podcast, I aim to give you practical tips on how to accelerate and sustain your health, increase your financial, spiritual and emotional wealth and to look at something that haunts many of us needlessly: weight loss. In some episodes, I'll have guests available to give you even more tips, but in others, the floor is yours. Drop us a line at A Magical Life Podcast on Facebook. And let me know what you would like to know more about. Now sit back and enjoy because it is time for you to create and truly discover a magical life. Hi, Welcome to A Magical Life. I'm Magic Barclay, your host. Today we'll just be introducing this podcast, what it's all about, and a little about me. Ooh, very nervous. Who gets nervous? So I mean, today's title is 'when life gets in the way' and something that gets in the way of my life is nerves. I guess we're all there at some stage. Anyway. For those who may not have met me before or heard of me, my name is Magic Barclay, and something you may not know about me is that 15 years ago, I found myself morbidly obese at 144 kilos. I'm really short. So imagine the blueberry girl on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. That was me. Anyway, I was a mum of two kids with Autism Spectrum Disorder and I was raising them virtually alone. I was becoming unwell with multiple lifelong health conditions. And I was in a very traumatic marriage. Ten years ago, I discovered how much the body really wants to heal. I actually lost half my body weight and started learning all I could about mainstream health, fitness and personal development. Five years ago, I was told what I was doing wasn't working. Yes, I was losing weight, but I was a very sick woman. So they actually told me I had 12 months to live. I had stage three cancer, diabetes, Cushing syndrome and they diagnosed me with Lyme disease. I had surgery and from that I developed lymphoedema. I was actually told at that stage to prepare my kids for life without a parent and I was locked into really nasty divorce proceedings. So, you can imagine my stress was through the roof. During that time, I actually discovered there's a major problem in the world where many Health Professionals treat symptoms and diagnoses (like all of mine), rather than the systems of the body and helping people address root cause of illness, the lack of energy and the loss of vitality. And that's exactly why I decided to dedicate my life to learning all I could about the 11 systems of the body and how to help others take control of their health in a way that sustainable, ethical and supportive. So now you know a little bit about me, let's get on with "When Life Gets In The Way." I'm a 40 something woman, closer to 50 these days (I'd actually hate to admit that). And you know, I have two teenagers that still need me a fair bit. I run my household. I run my business. I volunteer. I'm really big into wildlife rescue here in Australia and I'm really passionate about it. So I spend a lot of my time doing things for other people. Starting this podcast was something I actually wanted to do for me. Yes, it helps everyone that listens to it, but it was just one of those bucket list kind of things. Now I've learned, you know, in the past five, six years, no such thing as a bucket list - it's a "do it today" list. So, I wanted to start my podcast. But life got in a way, my nerves got in the way, not having the right equipment got in the way. Time got in the way. And in my 40s as a woman, yeah, I tend to find that lots of things get in the way. And I think we can all relate to that. When we devote ourselves to other people, we somehow forget about ourselves. And when we let life get in the way, we lose who we are. So in this podcast, we're talking about health, we're talking about wealth and we're talking about weight loss. The guests that I will have on periodically, will all be asked the same three questions and we'll see their take on each of those things. This podcast does not replace medical advice. I don't profess to be a doctor, I don't want to be a doctor. I want to give you information. I work with a company called Wholistic Natural Health Australia. I am a practitioner of lymphoedema, a Functional Health Solutions practitioner and a complimentary medicine and integrative pathology practitioner and also a results coach, not a doctor. When life gets in the way: kids. I love my kids, I would do anything for my kids. I would walk across nails for my kids, but that just became a really bad habit. Now a habit is something that can be good for you or something that can be bad for you. In fact, it wasn't even a habit. It was a permanent distraction. I can't record a podcast today- my kids need me. I can't grow my business today- my kids need me. It really took a wake up call for me to realize that the more I did for them, and not for me, the more I was teaching them to put themselves last, the more I was teaching them that you can allow other people to take your time away from you. And that wasn't being a good role model for them. So yes, I do adore my kids, and I would do anything for them. But three years ago, when I bought my podcast gear, I said, I'm going to do this for me, and then I didn't follow through. So recently, I met a lady who helps people edit their podcasts and my excuse was, "I'm not tech enough. I don't know how to edit my podcast." And I met this wonderful lady, she'll actually be on in our next episode, and she pointed out- outsource it. I don't need to know that. I just need to know my content. I need to be passionate about what information to bring to you. So excuse number one, out the door. I sat my kids down, who were my excuse number two, and I said to them, "I think I'll do my podcast now." They roll their eyes. You know, mum says she's going to do a lot of things -and then she doesn't. So I actually sat down at dinner and said, "No, no, no, guys, I actually am. it's in my diary." Now we use Google Calendar. My kids have access to my calendar, so that they never ask, "what are we doing today?" And actually saw that I had scheduled my podcast into my diary. So we're sitting at dinner and they said, "but we have exams this week, mum. Don't you always put everything on hold for us?" And I actually took that moment to teach them. And I said, "Yes, kids. I do put everything on hold for you. And that's why I am losing direction. This podcast is happening. You guys are all taken care of. And we're moving forward, because I am doing this for me." Thinking they might be, you know, a little bit put out that they weren't the center of my universe for first moment in years, I looked at their faces at dinner and I saw beaming smiles on both their faces. Now, my guys, they're not really expressive with smiles like most people, but at this moment, they both smiled at me. They were happy for me. And I was happy for me because I taught them a lesson: you want something, you go get it. I want my podcast. I'm going to do it. So, role model, tick for me. Self care and self worth, tick for me. Life getting in the way? Here it comes again. So Monday morning I set up my podcast gear, still in its boxes by the way from three years ago, used once, put back in the boxes, and I can't get it working. Now the old me would have gone, "Right that's it, equipment's not working. Podcast not meant to happen, find an excuse, let life get in the way." Instead, I start YouTubing and I start looking at why my equipment's not working. Unable to find the answer that I actually needed, I rang the company that I bought the equipment from. Lo and behold, same guy answers the phone that sold it to me three years ago. So I say, "Listen, I live an hour out of town now. I'm driving down in a minute with my gear. You need to show me how to work this stuff." He cheerily says on the phone, "Sure. See you in about an hour." I load the car. I drive, nervous. 'Oh, no, I have to buy new equipment. It's all broken'. I get there. And I realized that it was the settings on the equipment. He shows me how to set it up. He says, I've been waiting to hear your podcast. I'm like, "but life got in the way." So listeners, don't let life get in the way. Don't let excuses get in the way. I am the queen of them. And I'm really happy to be talking to you today. So a little bit more about the podcast. We're talking about health. We're talking about spiritual, and emotional and physical health. There are so many facets in health and they're all so fascinating. But, when we go after symptoms, and we go after diagnosis and labels, we miss what is causing illness. We miss what is causing dis-ease. We miss what is causing a lack of vitality, and we miss what is draining our energy. So we'll talk with guests as I said, about the systems of the body. I will be talking about questions put ahead on the A Magical Life Podcast Facebook page, which you can all pop over and suggest what you'd like to hear us talk about. We'll be talking about my experiences, my friends' experiences. We'll be talking about things like the Big C: cancer. We'll be talking about emotional health. So dating in your 40s and 50s. Oh my god, there's a podcast coming for you ladies and gents. And we'll be talking about wealth. And wealth isn't just money. Money's part of it. Wealth is what you see in yourself. It's how you value yourself. It's all about value, wealth of information, how you value taking in and dispersing information, wealth of finances, your relationship with money. On that, I've always had a poor relationship with money. But, I have actually started turning that around because again, I realized that two people I would do anything for had no idea about money. Guess what? Mommy didn't teach them. Mummy teaches herself, then she teaches them. So yes, we'll be looking at wealth, financially, wealth of knowledge, we will be talking about self worth and self esteem. And when I wrote my best selling book, "Stop being fat, love yourself skinny." My self esteem was so healthy, I thought, but as I published it and as it hit the bookshelves, I got sick. And all of a sudden, I was faced with my own mortality. And I realized my self esteem and self worth were not in a healthy way. I had very little wealth of self esteem. So we'll be talking about things like that. And finally, the big W: weight loss. Yes, I wrote a book about weight loss. What I didn't realize then, and I did cover it in the book, but now looking back in reflection, in not enough depth. Weight loss is a symptom. Weight gain is a symptom. Yes, I'll say it again, a symptom. What does that mean? It means it's not the Holy Grail. You can be big, fluffy, chunky, plump however you want to describe it. I like to call it fluffy, but it's not who you are. It's just something that's happened because of some thing else. Now, when you get sick, you can lose weight, gain weight. I gained weight both times. When you are stressed, you can lose weight, gain weight. Again, I'm a gain weight kind of person. When you don't understand who you are, or you let life get in the way, guess what. Your weight changes again. So you can see it's a symptom. When something is not right with the systems of the body, and I've always said this, first it whispers in your ear. It says, "hey, I'm not happy. Can you listen to me body? I'm not happy." Then, it starts to throw little, little things in your way. It might be a repetitive cough. It might be itchy skin. It might even be you being unhappy. The start of what we know as depression. But you ignore it. You think, I can handle this. I'll take medication. I'll go out to dinner more. I will get my nails done. I can take care of this. It's more like, "Hey doofus. I whispered, you ignored me. I tapped you on the shoulder. You ignored me. I put things in the way. You ignored me. Now, I'm screaming." And this is when we get a diagnosis. Yep, another label of XYZ is wrong with you. You have 12 months to live. Or, we suddenly have zero energy. We become super depressed. We start to retreat from life, because we don't know what's going on anymore. The body's screaming at us. It could be chronic pain. It could be multiple chronic illnesses. And all of a sudden your quality of life really goes down. Because the body's screaming. Ignore the whisper, you will eventually hear the scream. What does the diagnosis do? Absolutely nothing. It points us in a direction of what could be going wrong. But unless you address root cause, you will keep getting a diagnosis, as I did. First, the diagnosis was diabetes. So I controlled my blood sugars. I changed what I ate, ignored the whisper. Then, the diagnosis was Lyme disease. It explained some of the symptoms. I'd been bitten by mozzies while on holiday with the kids and from that moment, I'd gotten really sick. I ignored the whisper. I treated the symptoms and the diagnosis and things picked up for a little while. But then I got sick again. The next diagnosis was Cushing syndrome. As I sat in my doctor's office, he tells me my adrenals are burnt out. Of course they were. I was in a very nasty divorce. I had moved towns with my children and my pets, knew no one, didn't know the area, had to find schools. Well, for one of them, the other one was homeschooled, had to pick up the pieces of my life. Of course my adrenals were burnt out, groundbreaking diagnosis, dude. But then he said, we need to do surgery. We have to take your adrenal glands. Now I'm thinking, "That's not something I think I want you to do. Hmm. What's the next step?" He says, "we need to do an ultrasound." Okay, we'll do that. Luckily, he didn't jump straight at that as my spinning head was agreeing to an ultrasound. He comes back to me a few days later and he goes, "Uh, have you had thyroid problems in the past?" And I said to him, "Yeah, um - back in the town that we lived at, I was telling my doctor, I thought something was wrong with my thyroid, probably for the past 14 years. And they told me, I was nuts." He says, "I think you might be right. Can we investigate?" So we did. Lo and behold two weeks later, he tells me I have cancer to my lymph nodes, my thyroid's cancerous, refers me to the professionals that deal with it. And at that time, I went along with it. My body was screaming; that is the point. I ignored the whispers, my body started screaming. My body was so highly toxic from being a bigger lady. Fat stores toxins. That's something we'll talk about in the podcast. From acute stress, acute long term stress from my marriage, from my divorce from the property settlement, from my kids, from raising two ASD teens, of course, my stress was through the roof. So yes, my adrenals were not happy. And yes, my body was screaming because it was so sick of whispering because I was obviously either deaf or ignoring it. And what it decided to do was wrap up all my symptoms into one almighty baseball bat to hit me with. So yes, we will be talking about weight loss, we will be talking about symptomology and diagnosis. But we'll be talking about them in relation to root cause and giving you some practical tips every episode on what you can do. Not only to improve your life, but the life of those around you. Now some upcoming episodes as I said, in Episode Two, I will be speaking to the beautiful Sarah Decker, podcast genius. So stay tuned for that one. We will be talking in future episodes about rheumatoid arthritis. We will be talking about dating in your 40s and 50s. We will be talking about female entrepreneurs and what they did to turn their life around and overcoming adversity. We'll be talking about resilience. We will be talking about all sorts of things health. I do hope to bring you some absolutely amazing guests. So stay tuned. But in the meantime, I'm actually going to send you over to a couple of sites. Now the first one is the website of Wholistic Natural Health Australia. So you'll find us at www.wholisticnaturalhealth.com.au. Now that is wholistic with a W. Why? We've talked about symptoms and we've talked about systems. We treat the body on a theory of wholeism. A whole is the sum of all parts. Now, remember I mentioned the 11 systems of the body. They are the parts; the whole is you. So we treat physical, emotional, spiritual, we do results coaching, you'll find everything on the website. That's wholisticnaturalhealth.com.au, with a W. You can also find this podcast on Facebook at A Magical Life Podcast. Now in there, we publish some articles, we share interesting things. We put shout outs for topics and for guests for the podcast here. So any burning question you have, pop it in there, send us a message, or look for a post where we're asking for suggestions and go ahead and comment in there and send a message to us. We would love to hear from you. Now, one more little pearl of wisdom for you for today. I'm, as I said in my late 40s, mum of two. Two humans (pet mum as well). Friend, healer, coach. I have a lot of labels to myself. A lot of parts. And like the mechanics of a clock, every little part intertwines and moves perfectly for everything to work. But, I am me. I am an animal lover. Yes, it's a label. But it's something that strikes true to my heart. And it stimulates me to do better and motivates me to do better every single day. Because every animal I come across during a rescue are having the worst day of their life. And it stimulates me to help them have a better day, and me to appreciate the effort I put in. I'm an avid reader. I'm a bit nerdy, actually. I read every single day. I read books about energy, I read books about the body systems. I read books about philosophy. And then occasionally, I read something about something I find interesting. Might be about witchcraft. No, I'm not a witch. But I do find it an interesting concept. I read about essential oils. Okay, I use essential oils at work. But I love how nature can provide the essence of healing, and we can distill it into a bottle. I love learning about that. I read about all sorts of things. I play sword craft with my kids, no guesses that my character is a healer. But it's something I really enjoy. I love dressing up in my medieval gear. I love getting my weapon, my healing staff, and going out and my kids teaching me how to use it. I'm quite new to it. But I do all these things because they are the essence of me. We have all these labels. We have all these ways we determine who we are. And then we have another bunch of things that make us feel good about ourselves that we really enjoy for no other reason than they build us up. And when you let life get in the way, it means you're not doing enough of those things. Do I love talking in public? Yes, I do. I absolutely do because I love sharing knowledge. I don't go running. If someone said to me, "Hey, you want to go for a run?" I would go, "only if there's a saber toothed Tiger chasing me. Thanks very much!" But I do love walking. So I do that because it makes me feel good. Something I've learnt recently, really recently and I really want to share this with you because this is how we let life get in the way as well. And that is, we do so much to please other people. We don't please the person that matters, which is ourselves. I was a serial 'yes' person. Do you want to go out for coffee? Yeah, sure. In my mind, I'm thinking, "I have 1000 things to do right now. I don't have time to go for coffee. I don't even like coffee. Why am I doing this? Oh, that's right. This person wants to go. I'll do it for them." I let life get in the way. But I didn't make myself happy. You know, I'd get a guy on a dating site. "Hey, do you want to catch up, go on a date?" I think, "ugh. There's not really much about this person that I like at the moment. Nothing really attracted me in their profile. But they asked me I'll go." I'll say, "Maybe I can turn this around. Maybe there's something about them I do like, that I don't know yet." Some of the time that might work but, in my experience that 80% of the time for me, that didn't work. Again, I wasn't doing what my intuition taught me. I wasn't doing what felt right for me. I was letting life get in the way. I worked at a clinic for a short amount of time. One of my roles is as a colon hydrotherapist, certified internationally, and I really enjoy it. Yeah, I'm a poo fairy. I enjoy it. But working at this clinic felt wrong. From day one, I had other people warning me about going to work at this clinic. They had a revolving door of staff. Other people had really struggled to get along with the owner. And, I ignored that. I wanted some financial stability for a little while. So I went and worked at the clinic. From day one, it felt wrong. I twisted myself inside and out to fit in with the other staff, to fit in with their beliefs. I would try and keep my mouth shut and not teach people what I know about health, just to go along with a company line, toeing the company line. And sure enough, it caught up with me. I was so unhappy. I would be bursting into tears in the backroom. The favoritism, the nepotism, it was all going on. And I was miserable. I was traveling over an hour on public transport, to get to a job, the job that I love, but in in an environment that I absolutely detested; it made my skin crawl. As soon as I walked in the door, I would have a tummy ache. Pretty much till the moment I walked back out the door. And I did it because I let life get in the way. I jumped at the next big thing that I thought would be a solution. But it wasn't. It made things worse. So, key wisdom of today: listen to your intuition. Listen to your body. If you don't listen to the whispers, you will eventually hear the screams. So I'd really like to invite you to keep listening. Sarah Decker is on in Episode 2. You will learn some amazing things from this lady! And until then, I wish you a magical life. Thanks for listening today. Please subscribe to hear future episodes, leave a review and share this podcast. You can follow us on Facebook at A Magical Life Podcast for at Wholistic Natural Health Australia that's wholistic with a W. You can find us on Instagram at Wholistic Natural Health or at www.wholisticnaturalhealth.com.au. That's where you'll access all sorts of articles, freebies, and more.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai