Hey, you're on air with Ella, where we talk motivation, mindset, personal development,

basically everything you need to get more of what you want and less of what you don't.

Let's go.

Tilly, how about that intro music? Do you love it?

There's that glitch now. It was perfectly decent last time we were on air. What have you done?

That's my quarantine intro. Can you tell that maybe I did it by myself in solitude?

Oh, yeah, along with the COVID haircuts and all the other improvisations we're all making.

Yeah, it's too soon to joke about that, actually.

Hi, guys. All right, you're on air with Ella and Tilly. We have Tilly here. You may remember her, if you've been listening for a while, as co-host of many, many episodes. And if you don't know her, she is my wickedly smart and wildly sexy writer friend who lives in London. Do you like it when I call you my writer friend?

I like it when you call me sexy. Of course you don't. I'm so glad you're here. I'm really am. I'm so glad to be here, Ella. It's really lovely. And I've been loving these episodes you're doing. So you're doing these like short episodes now. I mean, honestly, I'm doing what I can right now. So I was holding back. I wanted to come back on the air so badly and I was holding back for so long waiting to have time to do all the things. You know what I mean? And then I realized that not being able to do all the things is not a reason to do nothing. Yeah, you've talked about that before. I think you're right, that sense of having to get it perfect or doing nothing when actually that's just a form of procrastination really, isn't it? Yeah. Finally, I was just like, how about I just do the thing? So that's where I am. But it feels good to be back. And you've lived a few lifetimes since we were last on the air. Anything, anything new with you? It's been about 18 months, hasn't it? I remember saying, you know, look, I'm just going to take this brief gap and I'll be back. But then the bottom fell out of my life, really. So I lost my dad and I closed down my childhood home and my marriage ended and a few other things. And I'm still not entirely watertight on it, but I'm getting there. Yeah, you've had a character building year.

That is for sure. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. But I think actually I have, I have grown through it. I know that's a cliche, but the slowing down and learning to listen to myself a bit was a lesson I really needed to learn. And I don't know. I do a lot of spinning to keep myself whole. You know, that sense that velocity works in that kind of G-force way and and I think that I have always

dashed about being to keep myself whole. You know that sense that velocity works in that kind of G-force way?

And I think that I have always dashed about being terribly busy and doing terribly productive

things so that I don't have to notice that there's a gap sometimes in how I feel.

And I've faced up to some of that in this period. It's been pretty good for me.

Yeah, productivity is a

really noble way to avoid our feelings, right? Yeah, so I think it's funny, isn't it? People

write a lot about numbing and they talk about, you know, numbing through alcohol or whatever, but I think

actually work is a really big numbing agent for me. I've always been massively productive. And it's

a good one because you can hide in plain sight, you know, because it is effective. It makes you more

productive. But actually, you know, all that doing stops you feeling sometimes. Yeah, it's been

really interesting to witness this process and observe you going through this. And I hope you know

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