Kemi Nekvapil

Interview by Madeleine Dore

Kemi Nekvapil: Coach and author

Full transcript

“And there’s a moment in my routine between me finishing my meditation and starting my journaling, I will just sit there with a warm drink and just stare into the darkness. And I’m very aware of what a gift that is, to just be able to sit and just be.”
– Kemi Nekvapil

Madeleine Dore: We often don’t think of something like an empty moment, a moment just to sit, as a gift. Those moments when we aren’t thinking about what we need to be doing and instead we’re simply with ourselves.

I was reminded of how lovely it is to just sit a few weeks ago, when the Melbourne lockdown restrictions were slightly eased and there was an opportunity to sit in a park and just read and be with my thoughts.

It reminded me of a passage from A Journal of Solitude by May Sarton, where she wrote, “I always forget how important the empty days are. How important it may be sometimes, not to expect to produce anything, even a few lines in a journal. The most valuable thing we can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of a room, not try to be or do anything whatsoever.”

I’ve spoken before about how important the variances are. To allow the pendulum to swing in our days. And this weeks’ guest, Kemi Nekvapil, a coach, writer, and speaker, reminds us that this ebb and flow is different for everyone.

From working as a baker and a chef to an actor and yoga teacher across the globe, Kemi Nekvapil has lived many lives. Now as a credited life coach, a speaker, and author of The Gift of Asking, and host of the short-form podcast The Shift Series, she credits exploring various career paths as helping her to draw her own definition of success, and really being alert to the should’s and knowing when to let go.

With an upbringing in foster care and the uncertainty that went hand-in-hand with this life experience, Kemi has seen how routine as an adult has contributed to her own personal fulfilment and self-worth, which also comes back to this idea of choice, and doing the best with what we can with what we have.

As someone who doesn’t have a strict routine, I was personally in awe of Kemi’s committed exercise and wellness practice with her morning journaling, a weekly creativity day, various writing challenges that she sets herself, and what I find especially refreshing about Kemi is that she’s not prescriptive in her approach to routine or self-care. It really has been about finding what works for her.

In this conversation, we speak about letting go of should’s, how you connect the dots looking back, not giving advice, parenting, having a weekly routine, writing, and how it’s really okay to procrastinate and to find your own relationship to productivity.

We spoke the day after Kemi’s birthday, so here she is on how she celebrates.

KN: It’s interesting actually. I did say to a friend who knew it was my birthday, she said how’s your birthday been in lockdown? And I was like, I’m an introvert, it’s been great. I don’t have to tell people why I’m not having a party. So it’s been fine. I’m fine with birthdays. I turned 46 yesterday. I currently do not have any negative connotations around age. Who knows, maybe it will come? But that’s definitely not where I’m currently sitting or have.

And I had a beautiful birthday at home with my teenagers and my husband and my only request was that we got my favourite vegan cinnamon buns and that we watched my favourite documentary, which is called The Biggest Little Farm. It’s just a beautiful story about someone regenerating a farm in America. And that was it, so it was a great birthday.

And actually when I wasn’t lockdown last birthday, I basically spent the whole day on my own doing whatever I wanted to, so I do enjoy my birthday’s, but I don’t need them to be very big affairs.

MD: Yes, I can absolutely connect to having kind of a low-key, introvert birthday. This year I had mine in isolation as well, and it was wonderful to just take away the indecision and just focus on the reflection that can come with… I don’t know, I just like to mark that, be it a new year or be it a birthday, I know it can sort of seem trivial, but it is an opportunity to reflect.

KN: Yeah, absolutely, and I think birthdays are very important and I think it’s important that we celebrate them. I just think it’s also important that we celebrate them the way that we want to and not how other people feel that we should celebrate them.

I remember when I had my 40th and my husband, who’s an extrovert, was very much, you’ve got to have a big party, let me do a surprise party, and I was like I cannot think of anything worse. Like I just want to go for lunch with some girlfriends to my favourite café. That’s it.

MD: Well, I think that’s a nice segue to how you live your life more broadly in terms of eliminating should’s. You’ve worked as a baker and a chef, an actor, a yoga teacher, and now a coach, writer, and speaker. You’ve lived many different lives, and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about actively choosing your path. So I guess side-stepping those should’s.

KN: I think it’s interesting. I think one of the reasons that I am able to choose my path now is because I lived under so many should’s, and realised that those should’s did not make me happy. They may have made others happy. I mean, example with acting, I was very blessed and very fortunate to have a really good acting career for someone that was just starting. I was acting for seven years professionally and had a job from the moment I left drama school to the moment that I left acting seven years later. And it was definitely a profession where a lot of people felt that I should stay, that I should be happy, that I should be grateful. And I was grateful, but I wasn’t happy, and I think that was one of the moments where I started, okay, so what is it that I want?

And the thing is, with choice, it doesn’t mean they’re easy and it doesn’t mean that it’s not lonely, but ultimate I’m very, very happy with the choices that I have made. And I think in terms of going from baking to drama school to yoga teaching, all of those things were me following what I really loved doing at the time. Like it doesn’t really get more difficult than that.

I was able to do things that I really enjoyed and then I realised about myself, when I find something I’m interested in, I dive in. I’m 100% in. And then, over time as I build up skills whatever that area is, I can then use it as a job or whatever it is that I want to do. And then I find something else that I really love, so then I add that.

Because I now know that, as a coach, writer, and speaker, everything that I’ve ever done sits really well into the work that I now do. The way that I am with my clients, the way that I speak from stage, the way that I am with my clients is to do with my yoga practice for 25 years, the way that I speak from stage is to do with my acting, the way that I look after myself and my well-being being very important to me is because of my yoga and meditation practice. So it does all tie in, although it seems disparate in some ways when one looks back on it. It makes absolute sense to me.

MD: Just goes to show that no experience is ever wasted. I’m wondering if, in those moments of transition, you have an inkling that this thing is no longer the thing that you want to be doing and there’s something else that’s sort of piquing your interest. Is it that you still have one foot in the one thing and you’re trying to leap to the next, or how do you actually untangle yourself?

KN: I don’t know. I do have this sense of trust. And what I mean by that is I don’t necessarily feel that I have to finish off one thing before I can start the next thing. I think that each of us starts to understand our capacities and our capabilities, and I do know myself as somebody who does have a big capacity.

I don’t commit to a lot of things, which means that the things that I do commit to I have capacity for, so I always trust that it will turn out the way that it’s meant to be. And I don’t mean that in an airy-fairy kind of let’s just leave it and see what happens. I mean that I have a very clear idea of what it is I’m intending to do, and then a foundation of that is trusting that I will know what next step is in each circumstance.

MD: Do you think you’ve always had that trust, or is that something you’ve honed?

KN: It’s actually really interesting that you ask that question. Many, many years ago, I was at a spiritual family workshop camp and there was a facilitator there that told us a story where a young man is on a journey, like a hero’s journey, and along the way he’s given three golden leaves. And those golden leaves are exactly what he needs to go to the next part of the journey. And she asked us, after she read us this story, it was a long story, the story was maybe two hours, and then she said, “what have been your golden leaves through your life?”

And it was such a good exercise because I realised that one of my golden leaves has always been ‘it’s all going to be okay’. Even though I have, like many, have had times in life that are very challenging, that are heartbreaking, despairing. I had a very challenging childhood. Even though I was in it, and I wouldn’t say that I thought this when I was a child, there was a sense of knowing that everything was going to be okay.

MD: It’s so powerful. I’m just scratching my head right now, trying to think of my golden leaves. I don’t know what they would be.

KN: Yeah, and it is a process. If anyone listening, and if you want to do it, I kind of remember the story, which isn’t helpful, but as a coach, I know it’s the questions that are powerful. Storytelling is obviously very powerful as well, but the way that she guided us was to think of the times in your life where you felt like you couldn’t go on. Or think of the times where you were so heartbroken, you couldn’t go on. Think of the most challenging times of your life. What got you through? And then think of other times in your life. Did that same thing get you through? So then you start to see a pattern and then you start to realise, ooh.

My other golden leaves actually, I might as well share them, I haven’t thought about this for a while, is ‘keep going’ and ‘you are looked after’. And that isn’t so much for me with an entity or I’m not religious, but just this knowing of I am looked after.    

MD: Yeah, you can see how the golden leaves are almost these antidotes to what could be deeply rooted childhood fears in many ways. It’s almost like the things that we’ve reminded ourselves or self-soothed with.

KN: Yes, absolutely, and I think as well if we take it out of our childhood and bring it into our day-to-day, right now we’re all living through a global pandemic. For me to know what my golden leaves are of ‘know you’re taken care of’, ‘put one foot in front of the other’, and ‘keep going’, that’s quite helpful to know. And with there being no evidence, really, except for the evidence that I have chosen, that that is the evidence that has got me to here. So once again we go back to choice. There’s no evidence that that is true. It’s just what I have chosen to trust.

MD: Yeah, and it becomes cemented over time. I think I’ve got one. This is so helpful, just even after our conversation.

KN: Oh! Oh, good.   

MD: I think it was something that I overheard in a podcast once and I remember hearing it and it made me just cry because I felt profoundly sane in it. It was on the Millennial Podcast and she was speaking to her boss and just sort of saying, oh, my life is falling apart, what if this doesn’t work out? This thing that I’m trying to do, what if it’s a waste of time? And her boss said you’ve got a drive in you, and that doesn’t change. And I just needed to know that we have a choice over our drive, or it’s something innate in us that doesn’t go away. If something doesn’t work out, we still have the drive to turn out attention to something else, so it was really comforting. I’m going to think more on this.

KN: Yeah, great. Great.

MD: And I know that in your coaching practice, you try not to give advice, and I was wondering why that’s important?

KN: It comes a little bit from my background. I used to be the friend that used to want to help people, and I do say help in inverted commas, which means that my ego was basically saying if they just did as I told them, everything would be fine for them. And then when that friend or family member would go about living their life the way they wanted to, I took it on as a personal slight, you know?

And just over the years, just observe that in me. Why would I be so attached to whether they did what I asked them to do or not? And then through my coach training, it’s very clear that coaching isn’t advice-giving. And it’s empowering. That’s the main reason. Unless we ask for advice, and advice is great when it’s asked for, but if it’s not asked for, as a coach, my role is for my client to find their own answers.

MD: Yes. Yes, and that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? I’m actually doing I guess the opposite where I’ve observed how reliant I can be on people’s advice and asking for advice, rather than looking for the answers internally, and so I’m actually going on a bit of an advice-asking detox where I’m experimenting with not asking. My first impulse is to ask and validate what I’m doing from others, and what happens if I ween myself off that?

So back to the themes of this podcast being routines and ruts, I was wondering what your days are looking like at the moment?

KN: Well, it’s interesting because I thought that I would throw caution to the wall, and I have been doing podcasts now for, I’m not sure, six or seven years? And I can tell you that this is my first podcast interview from my bed.

MD: How’s it feel?

KN: Oh, it’s great. It’s beautiful. I’m looking out of the window at my lavender and my olive tree. Normally I have a very, very, very clear routine every single morning. I’m going to be talking to Madeleine, it’s about ruts and routines. I’m going to shake it up a little bit. I wonder what will happen if I do the interview from bed? And it’s great.

So my usual routine has actually shifted and changed since the pandemic. So my routine for the first half of lockdown in Melbourne was to eat a lot of crumpets. That was the daily routine. Eat crumpets. That was me putting one foot in front of the other.

MD: Was it like a crumpet an hour?

KN: No, no, no, no. It wasn’t a crumpet an hour. I would probably have a couple of crumpets at some point during the day. It was just childhood nourishment, you know? I’m English, I grew up with crumpets, you’re suddenly in a situation that none of us have ever been in, and I know a lot of us definitely went back to childhood foods. So I would say that was probably what I was doing in lockdown. And lots of gardening.

And this time around, I’d say probably the beginning of May, I have started doing the 5AM. Normally I would get up at 6AM and I started thinking, okay, I’m actually going to get up at 5AM. I’m currently writing my third book and I wake up at 5, I do all of my spiritual practices. So I might do five Tibetan rites, which is a very simple but powerful yoga practice that takes about 12 minutes. And then I do my meditation and then I do my journaling.

Even with my journaling, I’ve changed that. Normally I like to do stream of consciousness, and this time I thought no, actually, I’m going to focus on affirmations and gratitude journaling during this time. Because, even though I will always journal, I will change up what I’m journaling about and how I journal, and I’ll journal in different styles.

And then after that, I sit down, so before the sun has come up, so from 6 until 7, I write. And then at 7 I will then go out, meet the family, see what’s happening out in the other part. I have a really beautiful study and I go out into the kitchen and just check in on the kids and my husband and see what everyone’s doing. And then I do my actual physical work-out. I’m someone that needs to sweat every day.

So then I do my physical work-out and then I start my day, and I’m happy for incoming. So I’ve had from 5 until about 8:30 of just me filling my cup, doing what I want to do for me, and then once I’ve done that, I’m then incredibly open and ready to invite any incoming that needs to come to me that day.

MD: I’d love to ask a little bit more about that because I think that carving out such a solid chunk for yourself is obviously incredibly nourishing, but I think it’s something that people could easily de-prioritise because it’s so much easier to put someone else’s demands of you ahead. And so I’m just wondering, first of all, if you’re waking at 6, how you shift that to something like 5 and actually get your body to wake up at that time? But also how you protect that time.

KN: Well, it’s easy to protect because no one else is up at that time actually.

MD: I can imagine sleeping through it though.

KN: Well, I am loving this routine. I am literally jumping out of bed. And, for me, it wasn’t a big jump from 6AM to 5AM because at the moment there are no running events. I’m an endurance athlete, so I do do long distances, so sometimes that means waking up at 5AM to go and do a long run to get back for the family or for work or something else, and so it wasn’t such a big shift.

The biggest shift for getting up at 5AM is making sure you’re in bed. It’s not so much the getting up in the morning, it’s the routine the night before that allows you to wake up that next morning. My husband and I, when we first met, he was very much a go to bed early, and I was like oh, you’re so boring, come on, let’s stay up until 1AM. And now over the years, he has definitely moved me over onto his side, so we are both in bed by 9AM. 9PM, sorry. We’re both in bed by 9PM and we’re both up at 5.     

MD: Wow.

KN: So it works for us.

MD: That makes sense. To get up earlier, go to bed earlier. Simple when you put it like that. So I suppose when we last chatted a couple of years ago about your routine, you had a weekly routine, which made a lot of sense for the different components of the work that you do and be able to mix that up, but I wondered if that’s something that you’ve been able to keep or have you mixed that up?

KN: Yes, my weekly routine is exactly the same as it was when we spoke a couple of years ago. I’m very much a fan of if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it. It works really well. So still Monday’s are admin days and also meetings/interviews. Tuesday is all day coaching, Wednesday I write, Thursday is all day coaching, and Friday is what I call my inspiration day, so that’s when I do whatever I feel to do. Sometimes that’s writing, sometimes it’s gardening, sometimes it’s writing letters. It’s just whatever I feel to do.

Getting up at 5 though, I have no brain by 4PM. I am of no use to anyone after 4PM, so that’s when the computer gets shut down. I started these walks in lockdown, I call them the sunset walks, and I go for a 20 minute walk around my neighbourhood, just trying… oh, I haven’t been left before, let’s see where that leads me. Oh, what happens if I go up there? And then I get back and it’s family time for the rest of the night.

MD: I also just want to rewind a little bit to when you mentioned letter writing. That sounds wonderful. Is that something that you’ve been doing for a while?

KN: Always. I’ve always written letters, since before there were any other options. From when I was a child, I was someone that had pen pals. I am obsessed with stationary. Like beautiful stationary. And I love writing the letters, I like sketching and doodling around the letters, I like sticking stickers on the letters, and I’m practising brush lettering with my daughter at the moment. That’s our kind of lockdown practice, is brush lettering.

And I have this thing where I don’t like the person to know that I’m writing to them. I have their address, and if I don’t have their address, I will go through scrolls of texts to find the last time their address was given to me, or I’ll ask someone else, because I know that feeling of a handwritten letter. I think it’s one of the most delightful feelings.

MD: Yeah, and especially if it’s a surprise.

KN: Yeah, exactly, and I love writing them and I love receiving them.

MD: And I know that you do a bit to sort of shape your routine around your introversion.

KN: I think partly my morning routine is partly that. Just spending a lot of quiet, reflection time on my own. It’s this little space between, that we used to speak about as yoga teachers, you inhale and the space between the inhale and the exhale is who you are. And I remember when I first heard that and I was like oh my gosh, and there’s a moment in my routine between me finishing my meditation and starting my journaling, I will just sit there with a warm drink and just stare into the darkness. And I’m very aware of what a gift that is, to just be able to sit and just be.

It may only last a minute, it may last five minutes, but that feels to me, in some ways, the gold of that whole hour of spiritual practice for me. It’s the moment where I’m just sitting, staring into the dark.

MD: Yeah, that’s a wonderful thing to build into your day, or not even build it because it’s kind of happening unconsciously.

KN: Exactly, it just happened unconsciously, and I just remember sitting one morning and I thought, oh my gosh, I get to just sit here. And then the next morning that kind of, well, you should probably get onto the next bit. The voice that’s kind of, well, come on, it’s the journaling bit now.

So going from being to doing, and I was like yeah, that’s not the point. This is the gift I’ve been afforded, is that I get this moment to stare into space. What a gift. How many people give themselves that, or have that opportunity? So I’m going to take this.

MD: Yeah, and taking it with no guilt whatsoever and really quietening that voice that tells us to do, do, do.

KN: One thing that I’m aware of as well in regards to lockdown and the pandemic is that, as a speaker, now all of my speaking engagements have either been postponed, have gone online, or have been cancelled. I’ve been quite blessed, most haven’t been cancelled, but I also know that, once the world opens up, whatever that is, my routine is going to have to change again. And there may not be the ability to have one to five minutes of just starring into the dark.

There may be, if I choose to, but there may not be. So at this time, this is what I have right now. This may come again in my lifetime, it may never come again in my lifetime. But this is what I get to craft, this time. So as a person, I regard myself as a person of privilege because I have a home and I have food, I work with an organisation The Hunger Project and we have conversations with who we call our village partners, so they’re leaders and villagers that live in Africa and India and Bangladesh and they can’t socially distance. They can’t hand sanitise. So for me, as someone who’s privileged that creates, it is an incredible opportunity and I’m not with any mental health issues either, so this time for me does feel like a gift, but I’m also extremely aware that that is not the case for everyone.

MD: That’s a really good thing to acknowledge. Have you ever experienced, or what do you make of having that gift? And I guess spiralling to feelings of guilt, rather than seeing it as a gift.

KN: I see it as a gift because of the work that I do in the world. And it’s important for me to be able to nourish myself so that I can create a space for others to do the same. And it’s important for me to be able to focus on my writing and my work in this way because I write to create space for people to own who they are. And the only way that I can do that with integrity and authenticity is if I am doing that myself.

MD: Yes. Exactly.

KN: Actually, Oprah said it. I don’t know when it was that Oprah was here in Australia. It was maybe five years ago? And she said that she does nothing by accident. I think that’s what she said. I do nothing by accident, and I remember thinking, that is something to aspire to. That your intention is very clear, so you’re clear on why you’re doing what you’re doing, therefore nothing is by accident.

It doesn’t mean that serendipitous things can’t happen, and life takes you in another direction, and I remember thinking, ooh. Ooh, I like that. I get that, I understand that. What a gift that is to be able to live with such intention. And I think when we can create the space for ourselves to be clear about what is important to us and what matters to us, guilt may sit there for some, but I feel that you are able to understand, okay, I may have this feeling, but my intention is this. And so if the intention is bigger than the guilt, then the guilt doesn’t have to be the defining emotion.

I believe that if we’re clear on why we’re doing what we’re doing, and the reality is a lot of people aren’t clear, that’s one thing I do know as a coach and as a speaker, when I ask people to stand up, do you know what you’re here to do? Do you know what you value or what your values are? The majority of people do not know. And they don’t not know because they’re stupid, it’s just they haven’t given themselves the time to think about it.

MD: Yeah, because it’s the things that come to us in that moment almost when we’re staring at that wall. Like those moments in between, we can clarify that.

KN: Yes.

MD: Yeah. So I suppose back to your routine a little bit, I know that you have a lot of rituals and I suppose family traditions, which are really interesting, if you’d like to share maybe a couple of different things you do with intention?

KN: Yes, it’s funny actually, the family traditions, because when you have a family, so I have now a 16-year-old son and a 14-year-old daughter, and my husband and I can very much craft our family traditions because they were just young kids and they just had to do whatever we said. This is what we do, so that’s what they did. And for lockdown, I had said to them that we had worked out that the best way for us, as a family of four, to do lockdown was to basically stay as far away from each other as we could during the day, and then we would come together for family dinner, which is what we do every night anyway.

They’re teenagers and the reality is that, developmentally, they do not want to be hanging out in a house with their parents. And so they have their spaces, we work in our spaces, and then we come together. And from when they were very young, we did this thing called roses and thorns, so it’s basically asking what was your rose today? So what was the delight, the beauty, the exciting thing, the good thing? And then what was your thorn? So what was the challenging thing, the obstacle, the disappointment?

We don’t say what was the good and what was the bad because then that’s a judgement. It doesn’t need to be good or bad, it just is what it is. And then we also don’t discuss what each family member says. We just put it on the table, literally, and then the next person does their thing. And for us, it was just a case of there is so much going on in the world, we’re all in this house together, we just need one touchstone every day just to kind of check in and see how each of us are going.

So that was really great for the first lockdown. When we knew we were going into second lockdown, I said to everyone, what worked in first lockdown? They went, we don’t want to do roses and thorns. We don’t want to do roses and thorns. And I was like okay, that’s fair enough, but we need something. We just need something to connect at the end of the day.

And it was great because my daughter just said, we’ll just do gratitude’s. Let’s do gratitude’s, like when we were really young. And my son said yeah, let’s do gratitude’s. So now that’s what we do. I feel it’s great that we have had these rituals through our family that they could then find another one. So that’s what we do. So we just ask what are you grateful for today?

It’s interesting how many of us are saying the outside time. So my husband also has a morning routine for himself, which is different from mine, but he goes out. He sits and looks at the stars actually, that’s part of his thing.

MD: Aw, lovely.

KN: And my son goes on an hour long bike ride in the morning, and then normally the things that, when we sit at the end of the day, it’s what are you grateful for? And it seems to be the things that we’re most grateful for is the time that we get to spend with ourselves.

MD: I also just love the no judgement to the roses and the thorns as well, in terms of you’re not saying what was good and what was bad, and I think that’s a nice tie in to, for me, how I’ve wanted to frame this podcast being about routines and ruts is hopefully no judgment of either. Whether we’re in an ebb or a flow, there’s no good or bad version of that. It’s actually just overall the natural process, is that there will be peaks and troughs throughout our lifetime. So I wondered what, I suppose, a rut would be to you, if you were to describe it?

KN: It’s so interesting because I did look up the word and, I’m sure you know this, but I found it very funny that a rut is also the sexual mating rituals of deer.

MD: I didn’t know this.

KN: No, I had to go there. It’s a periodic sexual mating ritual between deer. So there you go. That’s one rut. So it is interesting, isn’t it? The judgement of a rut. So for me, a rut is you’re a bit stuck. That would be my definition of it, and I think some of the definitions that I saw, it’s monotonous, non-changing. But I don’t think ruts are ever non-changing. Not if humans are involved because we’re constantly changing. And it’s interesting that you talk about this idea of ruts within life and also, for me, ruts within the creative process, and maybe that goes back to this idea of trust.

So for me, if I’m in a rut, so this third book that I’m writing, we were very lucky. We managed to get away from Melbourne for a couple of weeks to go skiing before we then had to come back, so I feel very blessed that we got to do that. And I had assumed that I would go to the snow and I would write every single day, and I got there, and I was like no, I’m actually just going to put the book down for two weeks.

Now, because I write often and this is my third book, for me, that is as powerful as writing every day. For some, that may feel like, oh, that means I’ve lost the book or… I don’t know, but there could be a negative judgment of that. I really trust the creative process, however it presents itself, and so I had this very strong feeling of you need to put the book down for two weeks.

And that actually allowed me to go and take on another creative project that was more aligned with where I was and what I was doing at that time, which then, when I came back to Melbourne, I then had more to bring to the book. So I don’t believe that a rut is a negative. I think it is part of the cycle of life and, if we go back to the deer, they obviously agree. It is part of a cycle of life and the rut may be exactly what we need to take us to the next level. To the next step. To the next action. To the next way of being.

MD: Yes, precisely. I think it is that, rather than stuckness, stillness in terms of figuring it out. Sometimes we’re just not ready yet and we need to put the book down.

Speaking of the book, you had a really interesting book-writing process, I suppose, where over a couple of years, you would collect different notes in your computer and phone and notebooks and then you would take yourself away for a week doing a juice fast, meditating, yoga, and writing.

I’m wondering maybe why you think that worked so well and what the process looks like now, obviously when you can’t take yourself away?

KN: Yeah, so it is different now and it’s so funny because I had planned a few writing retreats with some writing friends this year, but they’re not going to happen, that’s okay. The strongest part of this routine for this book has been the writing from 6 until 7 every single day, but when I first started writing this book, and the same process in gathering information from my audiences, from my clients, from my lived experiences, and then deciding, okay, now I need to collate this and we actually managed to spend some time in India at the beginning of the year, and I started to really formulate how I wanted the book to be of value to other people.

So even though I had the idea, I just sat with the idea for a long time because I wasn’t sure how it was going to be helpful or useful, and for me, writing is about opening up places for other people. And so it was in January that I started formulating, oh, I think I know how I want the structure of this book to go. And then I just sat every day. At the beginning, I just decided that I was going to write 1000 words a day.

So that was the first, for 30 days, I’m going to write 1000 words a day, so that was my first routine around it. Once I got those first 30,000 words down, I then decided… oh, I then actually, the most beautiful gift, I got a sent a beautiful hourglass from my writing mentor, which is just stunning. It’s a just beautiful glass hourglass with white sand, and it’s an hour. So once I received that from him, I then decided I’m going to switch from word count to time.

And so every morning I’d just tip my hourglass up and I would write until the sands have fallen. And now it’s going back in structurally. I did send it to my editor, and she said it’s not quite ready yet. I said I knew that, that’s why I was sending it to you, but now it’s upsetting because you’ve actually told me. It’s what I wanted you to tell me. And so now I’ve had it back and now I’m tinkering and playing and just relooking at it.

But for me, it’s all part of the creative process. I have these people that have written incredible books about creativity that I tap into. Steven Pressfield, Austin Kleon. I just pick up one of those books and I just read, and it just keeps reminding me, ooh, this is supposed to happen. Ooh, this is how you’re supposed to feel. Ooh, ooh, I see. This isn’t when you decide I’m not going to do that anymore, this is when you decide I’m just going to write for 15 more minutes today.

So it feels like, for me, like I’m part of this incredible club of people that are willing to be vulnerable and open and brave and scared enough to write words that you really hope are going to impact people in a way that they need to be impacted. Like it feels like a great club to be a member of.

MD: Yeah, it’s such a good reminder that it’s meant to be hard because it’s hard.

KN: Yeah.

MD: I’m really curious about what it is about you that sticks to these, I guess, routines in terms of getting up and writing 1000 words for 30 days or even that getting up early in the morning thing that I’m still obsessed with. Like how do you do it? The amount of times that I’ve set these sort of goals for myself and just by day two stop them, I just wonder what it is that helps you keep up that momentum?

KN: I think that… I don’t know because I think it’s part of who I am. I think it’s part of my temperament. I think just going back to my childhood for a little bit, I didn’t have any control or any say in how my life went up until the age of 13. And so for me, as an adult, to be able to say how my day goes is a really big thing. Like that’s a sign of success for me. Some people would grow up and success was this or that or this, for me to be able to have full agency around how my day looks and how I choose to spend my time is one of the ultimate signs of success and freedom for me.

And I also think that… actually, I’ve had a few clients like this in the last few weeks, it’s been really interesting, who leave things to the last minute and then are beating themselves up because they had so much time to do the thing and then they didn’t and then they had to do it.

Now of all of those clients, only one of them said, and then the work that I hand in, or the project I hand in, I’m not happy with. Only one of them said that. Everyone else said, and I’m happy with the work that I put in. I just need to change leaving it to the last minute. And my question is, why? And it’s just like, oh. I said, if you’d have said you weren’t happy with the end result, different conversation. And what was mentioned, I love the adrenaline. I love it. I love the adrenaline.

And so it’s interesting, I think what you’re saying about you try and set up these kind of I’m going to do this for a certain amount of time and after day two, we definitely have been told that a certain productivity structure is the one and the only way to do things, and it’s not true. And I think that, for many people, it leaves people feeling like, oh, if only I was more, if only I wasn’t so this, if only I was enough, and if only I was this, then I could do that.

And it’s like no, because that’s only one way of doing something. It doesn’t work for everyone. Every winter, actually, I would find myself getting into a bit of a rut in Melbourne. It’s dark, it’s cold, you know, I’m English, so normally in July it’s sunny and… well, it might be, but it’s sunny and it’s sun. And I realise, oh, I’m going to take on 30 day challenges every June and July and maybe August, and I just pick a random thing. It doesn’t matter what it is. Playing the guitar for ten minutes a day. It has been doodling for ten minutes a day. It has been brush lettering. Just different things. Or a different yoga practice, or different journaling for 30 days.

And then whatever I like from that, I will then add into my current life. And what I don’t like about it, I just don’t do. But I enjoy that. I enjoy these 30 day challenges. They’re fun for me, I like routine, and so it’s easy for me to do. And I think for people that find that harder, it’s not that you should be able to do it, it’s just that maybe that’s not the best way for you to bring things in, or the best way for you to build your capacity around a certain project or a certain creative pursuit.

MD: Exactly. It really is about finding what works for you and, for me, that’s not routine, funnily enough.

KN: Exactly, and people try and make themselves fit. And this is the thing that’s so interesting for me. I feel that there are so many productivity gurus out there that say this is the only way. Like this is the only way. And I think if we could be kinder to ourselves and say oh, this is one way, let me give it a go and see if it works for me, is very different than, oh, well, they must know. They’re doing what I want to be doing, so I have to do it their way.

Because I can guarantee that everyone that is doing whatever it is anyone of us want to be doing, none of those people have done it exactly the same way.

MD: No, exactly.

KN: They’ve done it their way.

MD: And I’ve got an archive of interviews that prove that very thing. That everyone is doing it their own way. So you’ve mentioned that rut doesn’t have to be a rut in the creative process, it’s actually an important part of the creative process, but I was wondering if there is any other parts of your daily life where you’ve encountered different ruts in various shapes and sizes?

KN: It’s actually really interesting, what I was saying earlier about having set up family traditions for our children and now that they’re teenagers, they’re pushing back on that, which is 100% appropriate. But how my husband and I… in some ways, I have been more creative in the last four years in my parenting than I ever was when I was sitting and crafting with my children because they are bringing new ideas and new thoughts and new ways of wanting to be in the world, like every day. Every day. Can I do this? What do you think of this?

And there is a time, even if we have tried to raise our children without kind of an authoritarian overlay, the reality is, we do have the authority. There is a time where we can say to our children, no, we’re doing this because this is why we’re doing this. And they trust that authority and actually they need it in some ways. They need to know, okay, my parents have got this all together.

Then they become teenagers, they’re like my parents so do not have it together at all. In fact, they’re bumbling mistakes, you know? So it’s been interesting for my husband and I to be able honour who they are becoming and what they think about various things, which may be completely different to how we’ve raised them, and we know that that’s part of becoming a teenager. You have to start working out what do I think? What do I believe? My parents have told me this, but what do I think? What do I believe?

And for me, as a parent, I’m so much more aware of asking more questions. So my daughter might come home and say so and so, this happened at school, a negative kind of social interaction. Now, I can give her advice, I can say I cannot believe that happened, or I can ask her, how do you feel about that?

And it’s a very different conversation. It’s so enlightening. There are things that my children will say to me that, as a parent, if I don’t default, there is much more connection and depth to have. So the default is they shouldn’t do that, why did you do that? They this, why do you think that? If we don’t do that and we’re actually open and we want to know more about who are these children becoming, the questions we ask them is what’s going to reveal themselves to themselves, but also to us.

So I feel that, in some ways as parents, we can get stuck in a rut and, as they become teenagers, we need to be able to be more creative in the moment and absolutely it is exhausting sometimes. Like it is exhausting. I want to be able to say, because I told you to! And that’s just not going to fly anymore.

And I’m glad. I’m happy that that’s not going to fly anymore because I want to understand who they’re becoming as they’re becoming it.

MD: Gosh, you’re so inspiring how you really live it, you know? You live the message that you’re putting out there, back to that idea of seeing a version of productivity or how our lives should be or how we should be, and you can see the glossy outside of someone else’s life. So I always like to ask, or even peek behind the highlight reel even further, and ask what you think you might not be good at or what you’re still learning?

KN: Oh, oh gosh, I’ll tell you what I’m still learning. I’m still learning how to be a black woman navigating a white world. So that is a daily thing. That is a daily unlearning of who I have been told I can be, who I should be. My daughter gets followed around stores in her private school uniform. I am unlearning not to be scared when my son goes out wearing a hoodie.

That’s something that sits with me all the time and what’s been interesting since the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and Tanya Day here in Australia is that I also know that it has allowed those of us who are navigating white spaces in black skins to be able to stand more taller in some ways that we don’t have to be as compliant as we have been told that we have to be, just so that we feel that we belong. And that we don’t have to shape or mould ourselves to make others comfortable.

MD: Well, it’s interesting because the question was what aren’t you good at, but really, that answer is actually what the world is not good at.

KN: Well, no, because maybe the reason I answered that is because what I’m not good at sometimes is questioning that. What I’m not good at sometimes if knowing how not to apologise for being.

MD: What would an apology look like?

KN: An apology would look like being super, super, super, super nice to a stranger. Just so that they wouldn’t fear me. My being around them. My apology would be not having an opinion in a certain space if I wouldn’t be named an angry black woman. My apology would be just not standing in certain places for too long because maybe I shouldn’t be there anyway.

That’s a constant thing that I am unlearning. That I am allowed to be wherever I want to be.

MD: Thank you for sharing that. I’m also wondering how that plays into how you are such a keen learner in so many areas of your life and, first of all, do you ever feel overwhelmed and unfocused when we look back at your daily routine and everything that you do, and the wonderful hobbies, and even endurance running, and these incredible things that you do. Do you ever feel overwhelmed by what’s on your plate?

KN: No, no, I do experience overwhelm and I have a great assistant who I now say to her, this is what I’m willing to do and I’m a no to everything. And at the moment, like I said, I’ve got all of these creative projects going on at the moment, not just the book, but

some other things around my business, and I was talking to my coach, because I have my own coach, and I said to her, I woke up this morning and thought oh, could this get overwhelming?

And she said well, how are you feeling? I just said I’m so just excited. I said I just feel excited, I have this surge. I didn’t have that in first lockdown. I was really not feeling creative at all. I was very much into this self-care practices, taking it very easy, taking it very slowly. But now I feel like my cup was very full in that time and now it’s just coming out of every pore.

And my coach just reminded me, well, you know what your red flags are for overwhelm, and my red flags for overwhelm are when I don’t look forward to what I want to do.

MD: Right. Yeah.

KN: And then if I’m doing that, so when we were allowed out in the world, for example, something I love to do is yoga. If I’d be going to yoga class thinking oh god, now I’ve got to go to yoga, that is a red flag to me. That’s like you have too much on your plate that now the thing that you love, you don’t want to do.

And if I get to overwhelm, then I’ll just cut things out. I’m pretty brutal. I’m just like okay, I’m not going to do that.

MD: And that’s really, really hard. Is there a way to tell the difference between you not wanting to do something that you love because you’re overwhelmed versus you’re no longer in love with that thing anymore.

KN: For me, it’s very clear. It’s very clear if I’m overwhelmed or whether I don’t want to do the thing anymore. If I don’t want to do the thing anymore, I just don’t do the thing anymore. I just stop doing the thing. Actually, this isn’t something I started, but it may be just a little bit of an indication. So I’m really into whole foods, I’m really into fuelling our bodies in a way that works for us each individually, and I remember when sauerkraut came onto the market and I remember thinking, okay, I understand this is really good for my gut and my brain function, blah, blah, blah.

And someone said to me, are you going to start making your own sauerkraut? And I just literally spat at them as if they’d said to me, are you a vampire? I was like I will never make sauerkraut. I said I couldn’t think of anything worse than standing and chopping up cabbage. Like why would I choose to do that with my time?

But I have no interest, and I think this goes back to this idea of, for me, to be able to choose what I want to do with my time and who I spend my time with, and how I do that is what success looks like and feels like for me. It doesn’t sit into anyone’s else’s version of what it is. It is very clear for me what success feels like and that’s more important than what it looks like.

MD: Thanks for answering the next question, which is about how do you define success? That’s beautiful.

KN: Oh, really?

MD: I love that. And I know that in your practice, essentially the question it really is asking, what are our lives for? And I like to ask people what you think days are for, especially when, going back to what we were talking about how there’s this swirl of productivity and money and busyness and striving as being the measure of our days, but I would love to hear how you measure a day or what you think the measures of our days is.

KN: That’s a great question. I think moneys great, by the way. Is it the measure exactly, or how do we measure that, I definitely feel that money can bring freedom. I know money brings freedom because I’ve not had it so I know what it can bring. And I have to say, what my day looks like now as a measure, I probably won’t feel the same in my 50’s. For me, I want to put my head on my pillow at the end of every day feeling that I have been true to who I am and who I am becoming.

That doesn’t mean that days are easy. That’s not that I’m skipping through the meadows every day and drinking green juice and hugging and kissing my family and then I fall into bed thinking, ooh. That’s not what I mean. What I mean is I have difficult conversations, it means that I unpick the stories I’ve told myself or that others have told about me. It means that I am willing to be uncomfortable. It means that I’m willing to create so that mine and other’s lives can feel better because they feel worth in who they are and what they have to bring to the world.

Yeah, putting my head on my pillow at the end of the night does not mean that it hasn’t been a difficult day, but it means that I know why it was difficult and it was worth it being difficult for.

MD: Whether it’s how we start our days or our approach to parenting, our creative life, our work, Kemi reminds us to be conscious and kind, and to connect with ourselves.

The idea that Kemi brought up about finding your golden leaf reminded me of a poem by William Stafford called The Way It Is. “There’s a thread you follow, it goes amongst things that change, but it doesn’t change. People wonder about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread, but it is hard for others to see. While you hold it, it can’t get lost. Tragedies happen, people get hurt or die, and you suffer and get old. Nothing you do can stop times unfolding. You can never let go of the thread”.

I’m Madeleine Dore and that’s what I hope to share with this podcast - that in the ups, and the downs, we can hold onto the thread.