Redefining Work and Wellbeing with Jo Hooper

"But in all ways, and in total seriousness, we get one life, and I don't want to be wasting it. I want to be enjoying my life. That's what I choose to do with my time, however much time that is. And life's too fucking short to spend it living the way you don't want to live."

- Jo Hooper

[00:00:05.340] - Lucy Critchley

Life is a series of chapters. Some we write and others are written for us. But what happens when we reach a turning point? Welcome to Untold Chapters with me, Lucy Critchley. In this podcast, we'll explore the real-life stories behind those pivotal moments, the heartbreaks, triumphs, and decisions that changed everything. These are the moments that are sent to challenge us, inspire us, and remind us that we're never alone.

[00:00:34.320] - Lucy Critchley

On this episode of Untold Chapters, I'm joined by Freedom Coach and the founder of Get Wildly Free, Jo Hooper. After navigating through burnout and conventional work structures, Jo transformed her perspective on the working world, leading her to establish a business focused on helping others build successful and sustainable, emphasis on the sustainable, careers without burning out. Join me as Jo shares her journey of embracing freedom and helping others to do the same.

[00:01:10.610] - Lucy Critchley

Hi, Jo. Thanks for joining me on the podcast. The premise of Untold Chapters is that we each have this untold moment in our lives where things changed. At the time, we might not have realised the significance, but I think a lot of us have one of these moments, and I would love for you to share yours with me.

[00:01:29.430] - Jo Hooper

I definitely feel like I've had one of those. I think at the time, I did recognise that it was a really significant moment in my life. But yeah, I don't think I necessarily realised the extent of how that moment would shape the rest of my life. So yeah, I think mine came when I was about 30 or 31, and I'd been on a very prescriptive career path. I'd gotten into PR and communications, not long out of uni, climbed the ladder, and hit this career milestone that I'd decided was an important one. I'd got a Head of Comms job by the time I was 30, at a household name organisation, really good at my job, was managing a big team, huge budgets, and was just busily climbing the corporate ladder pretty successfully. I basically ended up having two mental health crises in 18 months. Basically, I had two breakdowns in 18 months. My whole world turned upside down, and I realised that I couldn't and didn't want to, but at the time, really couldn't continue living and working the way I was. So thankfully for me, the organisation that I worked for was going through a big restructure.

[00:02:47.850] - Jo Hooper

Because of the role that I was in, I had quite a lot of influence with senior people. So I basically just convinced them to make me redundant and left corporate life and set up my business. I never, ever, ever thought I would work for myself. I thought I would find it too stressful, too unpredictable. But yeah, I did end up working for myself. Now there is no way I'd go back to working for anyone else.

[00:03:17.860] - Lucy Critchley

Gosh, I really feel that working for yourself thing. I've talked to quite a few people and I have said, I think I'm unemployable these days.

[00:03:27.670] - Jo Hooper

I'm definitely I'm unemployable.

[00:03:32.080] - Lucy Critchley

It's interesting, isn't it? I'm curious. What was the moment that made you think, I'm going to do my own thing rather than looking for employment elsewhere?

[00:03:43.210] - Jo Hooper

I think I It was, and I think looking back on it now, this is the latent entrepreneur in me. I would never have thought of myself as an entrepreneurial person. Even now, I don't see myself as a Mark Zuckerberg or anything. Praise the Godness. But basically in between breakdown one and two, no, it was after breakdown two because I didn't take that much time off after the first one. But after the second one, I got signed off work for three or four months, and then I started to come back to work. It is really, really, really hard to come back into work after a mental health crisis and a big amount of time off, especially when you're coming back to a big job with big responsibilities, with a team, with budgets, with stresses, It's really hard. I realised during that phased return coming back into work, the organisation I worked for was very well intentioned and they wanted to support me, but they just really didn't know how and people didn't know how because they hadn't experienced what I had experienced and therefore didn't know what I needed. There's quite confusing guidance out there in the Equalities Act.

[00:04:54.800] - Jo Hooper

I basically realised that there was a huge opportunity there to work with organisations to help them support their people who have mental health issues because there were people like me who were going out of the workplace, and there's a huge proportion of people with mental health issues who don't get back into the workplace. That causes problems for lots of people and in lots of different ways. And so I thought to myself, I know this restructure is coming. I can see that there's a job. The organisation needs this particular role, a new role. The organisation needs this. So what I'll do is I'll pitch for that role and then I will, over time, say, okay, I've done the first bit of it, and now I think I can do this in four days a week. And over time, I'll reduce my hours and I'll build this business up on the side. And then very quickly, it became obvious that that wasn't going to happen. And so I was like, 'oh, well, you can make me redundant then'. And so very quickly, I ended up going from this like, 'Oh, over the next year, 18 months, I'll go part-time and start building up this business' to like, 'Oh, I'm just going to leave and do it now'.

[00:05:57.790] - Jo Hooper

So yeah, wild, but definitely the right thing to do.

[00:06:02.890] - Lucy Critchley

Yeah. So how long ago was this when you set up your business? Because I know you're in your second iteration of it now, I suppose. Is that fair to say?

[00:06:10.560] - Jo Hooper

Yeah. So that business I first set up was called Mad and Sad Club, and I left corporate in February 2019, and I set my business up pretty much straight after. Not recommended. But I was excited. What can I say? Spring 2019 is when I set up my business. And yes, the business at that time was called Mad and Sad Club because that's what me and my other mad and sad friends would say to each other when we were having a really bad episode.

[00:06:39.950] - Jo Hooper

We'd like, WhatsApp each other and be like, 'Oh, felt sick when I brushed my teeth this morning #MadAndSadClub'. It felt like, I know, you got to laugh, otherwise you would cry. It felt like the only thing I could name my business. Also for the work I was doing with corporates, it was like a real differentiator. Corporates are going to remember someone's company called Mad and Sad Club, not like Hooper Associates.

[00:07:03.540] - Jo Hooper

That business evolved into helping and working with people who work for themselves, because what I quickly found out was that when you've had a big mental health issue that was in part caused by working in the corporate world. Working in the corporate world as a consultant is quite re-triggering and re-traumatising. So I quickly moved on to working with people who work for themselves. And now my business is really business coaching for people who run their own businesses.

[00:07:34.030] - Lucy Critchley

That's amazing. What a trajectory that you've been on over the past five or so years. How does it feel to look back on where you were and coming to it now?

[00:07:46.290] - Jo Hooper

It feels like five years has gone insanely fast. I remember setting up with my redundancy money, I bought myself my laptop, my MacBook. I bought myself a really pretty desk, which It didn't last long because it was tiny. I got myself a chair and setting all that up in the window of my spare room and being like...

[00:08:06.140] - Lucy Critchley

Here she is

[00:08:06.890] - Jo Hooper

Look at me, girl. Here she is. Got nothing to do. Yeah, and that really doesn't feel like that long ago, but it also feels like a lifetime ago. I think as all big events in life do, they feel like they happen five minutes ago and they also feel like someone else's life. I think it's interesting as well, that happened obviously pre-pandemic. So my life changed dramatically from being in corporate life and living in London, where I'd be leaving the house when it's dark and getting back when it's dark and all the rest of it, to working for myself and then to working for myself, living at home, my partner living and working at home as well. And then our lives have really taken some interesting turns since then as well.

[00:08:57.090] - Lucy Critchley

That's ace. What I'm curious I suppose, is having experienced everything that you talked about with your mental health issues, is that even the word?

[00:09:08.660] - Jo Hooper

Yeah, cool, with that.

[00:09:09.110] - Lucy Critchley

With your mental health. Is that all right? That's cool. It's all right. That's a really bad word.

[00:09:12.150] - Lucy Critchley

But with that stuff and then bringing as support, I suppose, around that into your business in that first phase, how did it feel when other self-employed people were coming to you and sharing stuff really openly, I presume, that's quite a lot to take on, isn't it?

[00:09:33.760] - Jo Hooper

Yeah, it is. And I mean, I would say that's one of the cornerstones of my business even now. It's like my business is entirely judgement-free. The work I do with people is entirely judgement-free. Although I don't market myself anymore as the coach for people with mental health issues, a lot of the people I work with have mental health stuff, or they have caring responsibilities, or they've experienced trauma, or they are neurodivergent or they feel singled out by some other way in society or by the systems of oppression under which we all have to attempt to live.

[00:10:11.770] - Lucy Critchley

Sure

[00:10:12.150] - Jo Hooper

And so that's just how I work, is people feeling safe to be totally honest with me about what's going on for them in their business and in their lives. I offer that in return, or not in return, but I offer that, and therefore I people feel safe with me to do that. It is a lot to hold, which is one of the reasons why I am very clear about what my capacity is. I only work with a max of eight clients at a time. I only have a max of two sessions a day, two days a week, because it is a lot and it is deep work.

[00:10:53.250] - Jo Hooper

But for me, I can't really do the work that I do without that level of honesty from people that I work with. If we're talking about how you relate to work and the fact that you feel guilty for not being productive all the time and you feel bad about setting boundaries, I need to understand you as a person and your history and your experiences to understand why you feel that way and behave that way now.

[00:11:20.320] - Jo Hooper

To be able to help people, I want them to feel able to be as honest with me as they possibly can be. And generally, that honesty is freely given. I'm not coercing anyone into that level of honesty. Let's just be clear.

[00:11:33.980] - Lucy Critchley

'You must tell me'.

[00:11:35.790] - Jo Hooper

But yeah, it is a lot to hold. But I am careful about the volume of people that I work with, how I run my coaching and my group programmes and my containers so that it is possible for me to do this work healthily for me and the people I work with. Also, it's a massive deal. It's a massive privilege to... People are as honest with me as they are with their therapists, and often there aren't a lot of people in their lives that they want and are able to be that honest with.

[00:12:07.690] - Jo Hooper

That is a massive privilege. It's really interesting. I love understanding how people's brains work and knowing that I know what they're going to say or what it is that they're really feeling, even if they haven't felt able to express it, that's quite a special thing.

[00:12:25.030] - Lucy Critchley

Would you say that you've always been like that, or is that something that's come to as a result of this business?

[00:12:32.290] - Jo Hooper

No. I think in my corporate life, I was so wrapped up in myself and my perception of other people's perception of me and my beliefs that I'm a failure and I'm not good enough and I need to prove myself, that I didn't have the emotional bandwidth to see people. I didn't feel able to be honest with people in the workplace because I felt that that would be a chink in my armour and I needed my armour to be really spot on.

[00:13:10.980] - Jo Hooper

Whereas I think that's why having the breakdowns is the pivotal thing for me because at that point, there was no other option for me, I didn't feel, than to be honest about what had happened to me and what was happening to me and what that meant for me because I couldn't hide it. You can't just go off for three months, come back and be like, 'Oh, hi, I'm fine'. It's just wild. No one's going to believe that. And so that was the point at which, yeah, things really started to change. But even still, after those breakdowns, being in the corporate world, no, I wasn't as honest, open, intuitive as I am now because I didn't feel safe enough to be that way.

[00:13:50.110] - Lucy Critchley

Yeah, I understand that. In my past, I've not really worked in corporate organisations in that sense, but I've worked in a lot of agencies and production companies and things like that.

[00:14:02.690] - Jo Hooper

Oh, God, me too. And there's that- Agency life.

[00:14:05.400] - Lucy Critchley

Agency life is definitely one of the ones. Yeah, exactly. On reflection, it's one agency that I'm thinking about. I worked there for about a year, not long. I left there to go back freelance, and then I was pregnant. That was 2000 and...

[00:14:27.240] - Jo Hooper

Edie Critch, hero of our times, let's just be clear.

[00:14:30.040] - Lucy Critchley

Oh, thank you. When this comes out, I'll play her that bit and she'll be like, 'Me!'. Well, I mean, if I didn't leave that agency, then she wouldn't exist. That's another Untold Chapter, I think, in my life. But that place, I mean, I learned a lot and it stood me in good stead for how I don't want to work now.

[00:14:54.850] - Jo Hooper

I knew that that was coming.

[00:14:57.140] - Lucy Critchley

It's a real... There was a lot of like, we have to do this yesterday, very much high pressure environments. I feel lucky. I was going to therapy at the time and having that space to vent about what work was like was really, powerful, but there's a lot of people who don't get that. And it made such a difference to me. So while I can't directly relate to what you've experienced, I understand the freeing nature of doing your thing and not having to minimise yourself, I suppose, in that workplace.

[00:15:39.440] - Jo Hooper

Yeah. And the freedom of honesty. It was exhausting trying to keep up this façade and feeling like I was fighting on every front all the time to maintain this illusion that I was really good at this with no effort and it was fine, it didn't affect me at all. It just felt like a battle on all sides all the time. I don't have to worry about that now. I can just say to a client, I'm really not having a great brain day. Can we reschedule? And they know it will be fine because I know it will be fine because I know that I'm very honest about the fact that I do that as part of my marketing and as part of my welcoming new clients. And they know that they get that level of flexibility the other way around as well. And I don't have to pretend on social media or in marketing that I'm great when I'm not. I can just be honest about what's going on for me and in my life because it's my business and I get to decide how I run it.

[00:16:42.180] - Lucy Critchley

That's it. That's a really powerful thing to be able to do. But one thing I have to say is I really love it when you talk about working in your pyjamas and working from bed and all those things, because I do it every now and again and it just makes me really happy. It's a real like, this is what I get to do. I get to choose to do this. Nobody's going to care.

[00:17:07.850] - Jo Hooper

No, I've done client sessions from bed before. Why would anyone care? We don't need to maintain this façade of professionalism, whatever that means anyway. Because when you are honest about who you are, what you do, how you do it, why you do it, people know what to expect when they come to work with you. And so always posting in my PJs. People know that I might be in my PJs at some It's a good point. But also, like what you said there about, I get to choose to do this. I get to choose to work from bed if I want to. I think we forget. We get to choose everything in our businesses. We get to choose when we work, who we work with, how much we charge, why we do it, how we do it, what we say about why we do it, if we want to finish with a client. All of those things, everything is our choice to make. We forget that often like, Oh, I can't just take tomorrow off. I've got to meet that deadline. Why? You could say, I really need a day off, so we're going to have to push that deadline by a day.

[00:18:04.350] - Jo Hooper

That's your choice. But we often don't see those choices, and therefore we don't make them. And so we continue to work in ways that don't do us any good.

[00:18:12.980] - Lucy Critchley

It's really interesting you said that. I have a client and they work in the birth trauma space. And a lot of our conversations around deadlines and priorities and things, it's like, Is this a real deadline? Is this self-imposed? Who needs this? What is the reality of things? And it's such a refreshing approach to work for me. We've worked together maybe for probably a year and a half on and off. And this is a second time of working together. And it's an absolute breath of fresh air to have clients like that. And doesn't it... For me, it really makes me think I want to be more like that in how I run my business, to have that example.

[00:19:01.390] - Jo Hooper

Yeah. And I think that's often why I share things about, I've cancelled client sessions, or I've decided I'm going to do this as pre-recorded instead of live, or I have... Basically, when I make choices for myself, I share about them to remind people that they can make choices for themselves as well. Every choice, every action comes with a reaction and a consequence, but we have to decide whether we're willing to live with the consequence of not choosing ourselves, disappointing ourselves, putting ourselves second, making it harder for ourselves, or choosing ourselves over somebody else. That's quite uncomfortable because especially for those of us socialised as women, we're told that we should be selfless. It's terrible to choose ourselves. It's selfish. The worst thing a woman can be, but it isn't. The only reason the world wants us to be selfless is because the world wants us, women, to look after everyone else, but who looks after us? Sorry to go a bit existential, but we get to choose ourselves and that gets to be okay.

[00:20:15.990] - Lucy Critchley

Yeah, I think I'm a bit of a recovering people pleaser. What you've just said rings so incredibly true to that approach of when you do run your own business and you are so in it and you want to do the best for your clients and that sort of thing, it's quite easy to forget about yourself within that. And I sometimes choose, very important word, choose to work on an evening or to work on a weekend. But then it gives me time in the week with my family. If I decided that that was what I wanted to do, then I think that's fine. But that feeling of like, I must do for this client, not even for my own stuff, because I definitely used to be like that. I used to think I had to work all evenings. On a night, my husband and I probably wouldn't have sat and watched TV together, for example, because I would be on my laptop working. It was stuff that I didn't necessarily need to be doing. This is four and a bit years in. I think my business is slightly younger than yours. It's taken me probably the last two to get to this point where I feel a lot more like, no, it's up to me what I do and when I do it.

[00:21:35.280] - Jo Hooper

Yeah. I think if you're someone who works well in the evening or the weekends and you actively choose free of obligation to do that, then you go Glen Coco. But I would say there's another choice to be made there, which is if you want more time in the week, but you don't want to work in the evenings, then we look at your capacity. Or I know you work with other people and Associates in your business, maybe your Associates are doing more so that you can do less to have more time in the week so you don't have to work in the evenings.

[00:22:07.840] - Jo Hooper

I just wanted to mention as well on, you mentioned about being a recovering people pleaser. I feel like things like people pleasing are so... The term, the idea, the concept is so self-shaming. It's like, I don't believe that it's a thing that we've done wrong or thought wrong or there's nothing wrong with us for being people-pleasers. We're simply just operating under the rules that society has taught us that we should, which is you, woman, must exist for other people. You, woman, must be helpful, nurturing, kind. Always say yes, never say no, never put yourself first, because that's selfish, which is terrible.

[00:22:47.260] - Jo Hooper

We're just behaving as we've been taught and bred to behave over millennia. So there's nothing wrong with us. We haven't done anything wrong. There's nothing to be ashamed of for behaving in those ways. But we get to choose not to, and we get to choose to believe that it's okay not to.

[00:23:07.180] - Lucy Critchley

Yeah, thank you. That is a really powerful way to think about it. There's definitely, I'm not going to go into too much detail, but there's definitely family things that I think have led to that is... How you react and you're very grateful to be where you are and look at what you've done. And isn't that just like, nobody... For me, I'm the first person in my family to have gone to uni, for example.

[00:23:31.070] - Jo Hooper

Same club. Yeah.

[00:23:35.070] - Lucy Critchley

As the oldest of the grandchildren on my mam's side, that was very much like, Well, Lucy's done this. All those things I'm going to call it pressure on that side to be high performing, I suppose, and to please everyone and make everyone happy. And only from having quite a lot of therapy, I realised that that's what that was and not who I have to be, if that makes sense?

[00:24:03.280] - Lucy Critchley

And again, coming back to that choice thing, it's up to me now? I recognise that it's up to me, which I imagine probably when did I... I've finished therapy for now. I've completed it. I've got the badge and everything.

[00:24:18.780] - Jo Hooper

Completed it.

[00:24:18.970] - Lucy Critchley

About probably two years ago, I think, next month. It's changed my life. It changed everything. It changed my life, which I don't know if... Yeah, it's bloody brilliant. And I recommend it to everyone.

[00:24:34.960] - Jo Hooper

Yeah, it's great, isn't it?

[00:24:37.000] - Lucy Critchley

It's the best.

[00:24:37.670] - Jo Hooper

It's bloody great.

[00:24:39.630] - Lucy Critchley

Yeah, I think it would have changed a lot of things, I think. It definitely encouraged me to do more of this thing, to put myself out there a bit more, believe in myself. A lot of good stuff like that.

[00:24:54.860] - Jo Hooper

Yeah. And I think for me, like we were talking about earlier, that's why it's so important for me that people feel that I work with, feel that they can be really honest with me. Because if we were working together and we were talking about how those 'people pleasing' in heavily inverted commas, things were coming up in your business, To help you work through that, I need to know those... To help you work through that in the most helpful, supportive way. I'd need to know where that had come from for you in your experience as a human. The work I do tends to often complement or dovetail with therapy. I say to my clients, this thing that we're talking about here is definitely a more of a therapy thing for you to work on, but it's something that we can be aware of and just notice when it's coming up in our work together. Because you got to be careful that I'm not a therapist, and I do not purport to be, but often things that people share with me are things that they've maybe worked through in therapy or are currently working through. There's responsibility on me to do that safely with people.

[00:26:03.210] - Lucy Critchley

Yeah. And like you said earlier, that's a lot for you to hold when they're sharing quite openly with you. And I know we've met a few times chatting the DMs every now and again. And maybe because of the way that your business is marketed, I feel like I could share anything with you. And even though, yeah, I think that's how you come across. I'm like, here's all my stuff. But there must be, I don't know, techniques or mechanisms that maybe you have to put in place to look after your own well-being outside of how you manage work and stuff.

[00:26:44.430] - Jo Hooper

Yeah. Like I said, I had two pretty significant mental health crises five years ago, and that was really anxiety and depression coming together to form this beautiful little soup. For me, those aren't things that I recover from. I see the mental health conditions that I have basically as chronic illness. It's like they flare up and they're manageable at times or they're less manageable at other times. I still have therapy, still haven't completed therapy. I have been through various courses of therapy in different types and different kinds of different people. But yeah, I have therapy and I have medication, antidepressants, which I upped earlier this year after having them on what I felt was a maintenance dose for a long time.

[00:27:38.030] - Jo Hooper

But I moved last year from Central Edinburgh to live here in rural Wales, house sitting for my friend, and life, life is very different, and it took me some time to adjust to that new life. When I'm feeling like my anxiety and depression is bad for a prolonged period of time, then why would I not increase the support that I can get medicinally? But yeah, I also run my business in a way that makes it possible and easy for me to manage the work that I do.

[00:28:09.190] - Jo Hooper

So yeah, I know that my capacity is max eight clients at one time. I know that I only want to see clients two days a week. I only want to see two clients a day. I only want to do that between 10:00am and 4:00pm. So I'll have one session in the morning and one in the afternoon so that I have space around that to read my book or go in the garden or do something else or move my body so that I would never be the person who has clients back to back to back because that's not how I want to live my life and that's not manageable for me. So I have a range of ways of looking after myself, which are baked into the way I run my business as well as just the way I live my life, I suppose.

[00:28:53.540] - Lucy Critchley

That's really cool. Thank you for sharing that. And I'm glad that you mentioned Wales, because I was going to ask you about that. So how did that come about? It's quite a big move.

[00:29:02.820] - Jo Hooper

Yeah, mental mad move. Last year, my best friend in the world, so she lives and works in the Congo, in Africa. She works in a national park there and her mum got very suddenly taken into hospital last year. She was flying back from the Congo. At the time, I lived in Edinburgh, and I was like, 'right, I'll fly down to Cardiff and we'll go and deal with this together'. Very tragically, her mum passed away.

[00:29:32.280] - Jo Hooper

It was so horrendous, like watching someone that you love go through the worst possible thing. So hard. Like, not to mention how hard it was and is for her. But her mum and my friend lived in this beautiful house in the middle of nowhere in West Wales. I've known my friend for 20 years and so have been coming down to this house for the last 20 years and have lots of amazing memories here. But yeah, my friend inherited this house and a menagerie of animals and lives in the Congo. And so needed to...

[00:30:08.560] - Lucy Critchley

That in of itself is like an incredible thing.

[00:30:12.410] - Jo Hooper

I know. My friend is wildly cool. But yeah, she basically needed someone to live in and look after the house and the animals while she is not in the UK.

[00:30:24.010] - Jo Hooper

And so, yeah, my partner and I moved down here last September. So, yeah, we've gone from living in a flat right in the centre of Edinburgh to a big house in the middle of nowhere. Like, today, I was wondering around the house, something does not smell good, something does not smell right. And then I was like, is it the cesspit? Because obviously we don't have mains sewerage here. Is it the cesspit? No, I go out into the garden, there must be like muck spraying because just the general air smells of cow dung.

[00:30:55.530] - Jo Hooper

So I was like, well, at least it's not the house. But that's how different my life is Well, so yeah, we live quite an unconventional life. We're happily living in sin, no plans to get married, actively not, choosing not to have kids. So yeah, I suppose I do live a bit of an odd life to some people, but I like it.

[00:31:20.270] - Lucy Critchley

I think that's really cool, though. It sounds to me from the outside looking in, that you really know what those values and those things that you want to live by and you're actively doing that.

[00:31:35.470] - Jo Hooper

Yeah. I mean, the kids thing, I've always known, really, that that's just not what I wanted for my life. Even though my family were like, 'but who will look after you when you're old?' I was like, 'my pension? The state? Someone I pay to look after me?' Or like, I can't have a kid to say that someone will look after me when I'm old. I wouldn't wish that on a kid, FYI, not doing it for you. They know that we've already had that discussion. No offence, I do not choose to be a nurse and I shan't be taking up that vocation for my mother.

[00:32:10.840] - Lucy Critchley

Well, this is it. Your parents didn't have you so that you could look after them when they're old. As you probably do know, my mam died a couple of years ago and she'd been ill throughout a lot of my childhood. And there was definitely that sense of that I would be the nurse figure when it got to that point. It didn't quite get to that point, really, but she would have told me to get stuffed if I'd even tried. She would have been like, 'get away, I'm doing this for myself'. That independent spirit was not going to... She was not going to let me do any of that.

[00:32:53.440] - Jo Hooper

What a hero.

[00:32:53.700] - Lucy Critchley

Absolutely not.

[00:32:55.850] - Jo Hooper

Also, I think... So my dad passed away when I was 16, he was 60, and I'm 37 now. I think if I get the same amount of time as my dad got, then I'm well over halfway through my life. I think I do not want to waste my life doing what I don't want to do. I don't want to be a nurse to anyone. My cat, reluctantly, I'll be her nurse. She will claw the bejesus out of me if I try, but fine, I will. But in all ways, and in total seriousness, we get one life, and I don't want to be wasting it. I want to be enjoying my life. That's what I choose to do with my time, however much time that is. And life's too fucking short to spend it living the way you don't want to live.

[00:33:47.030] - Lucy Critchley

I can't even get any words out. I think that is so powerful and a really nice way to tie the bow of this conversation. Thank you very much, Jo. I have two questions I ask all of my guests at the end of every conversation. And the first one is, looking back on everything that you've experienced, what's the biggest thing that you've learned? Although it sounds like you might have just answered that inadvertently.

[00:34:15.190] - Jo Hooper

Yeah, I think it is. Life's too short to spend it not in the way you want. Life is too short to live it unhappy. What a waste of a life. That is not how I want to spend my life.

[00:34:28.090] - Lucy Critchley

Absolutely. Absolutely. And my, my other question is, if you met somebody tomorrow who was climbing up that corporate ladder and was experiencing mental health crises, difficulties, what advice would you give to that person?

[00:34:44.980] - Jo Hooper

Get out!

[00:34:46.750] - Jo Hooper

No. The thing is, I joke, but really, if you're at the point that I was, you're so in deep that I don't believe it's possible to... It wasn't possible for me to retract my way out of it while I was in it. It was not possible for me to get better while I was in it. That's why I was signed off for so long. I had to be off to be able to figure out what was going on, why it was going on, and how I could stop it going on.

[00:35:18.730] - Jo Hooper

For me, the only way to stop it going on was to get out of that way of working or that environment. I don't mean the company, I mean the employed world, the corporate world. I guess I would say, go to your doctor and get signed off, go and get therapy. If you work for an organisation, most organisations have an EAP, which is an Employee Assistance Programme, where you generally get 8-12 free sessions of therapy counselling, that's the quickest, easiest way to access talking therapy in the UK.

[00:35:49.830] - Jo Hooper

The other way is by googling IAPT in your local council area, which is increasing access to psychological therapy, and each council area will have it. There are obviously quite long waiting lists, but that, again, you can self-refer to those schemes.

[00:36:06.420] - Jo Hooper

So, yeah, get out of the environment you're in however you can. Get some talking therapy to support to figure out what's going on for you, why and how you can change it. If you have an idea for something you could do or you want to do, then give it a whirl.

[00:36:26.040] - Lucy Critchley

Absolutely.

[00:36:26.370] - Jo Hooper

Come join the ranks of the self-employed.

[00:36:27.740] - Lucy Critchley

Yes. It's the best!

[00:36:29.970] - Lucy Critchley

Thank you. I really just want to end by saying thank you for sharing so openly. It's been amazing, and so great to talk to you.

[00:36:42.760] - Lucy Critchley

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Untold Chapters. I really hope you enjoyed it and found something that resonates with your own story. If you enjoyed this episode, please don't forget to rate, review, and follow us wherever you get your podcasts. Your support will help us share even more incredible stories. Untold Chapters is an Untold Creative production. Until next time.