Is your routine a strait-jacket? How to enact change, with Donna Ashworth
Happy Place
Fearne Cotton
4.6 • 15.2K Ratings
🗓️ 10 February 2025
⏱️ 67 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Do you dream of pivoting your career or lifestyle later in life? Poet Donna Ashworth did just that. She began to question the busy, fast-paced, perfectionist lifestyle she assumed was the norm, and decided to start posting and performing her beautiful poetry in her 40s...
In this chat with Fearne, Donna explains how she copes with the nerves that come with doing something so new, including hypnotherapy and simply admitting out loud that she’s anxious. She also reflects on how she realised she’d been living with depression and eating disorders for a long time.
If you’re not happy it’s up to you to apply change or you can’t expect different outcomes. Donna talks through how to work out if your routine is deliciously comforting for you, or if it’s become a strait-jacket that’s holding you back. Plus, she shares why it’s helpful for others if you’re able to disclose your own ugly truths and flaws.
Donna’s latest book of poetry, To The Women, is out on the 13th of February.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Well, hello and a massive welcome to Happy Place with me Fern Cotton. Now this is the show that encourages |
| 0:08.1 | you to embrace your perceived flaws. Today I'm chatting to Donna Ashworth. The love lives in the |
| 0:15.6 | sharing of the ugly truths because you can show everybody into your lovely home or here's my new dress and my |
| 0:22.7 | lovely holiday and that's great we all enjoy that and we share that and it's fun but if you let |
| 0:28.1 | somebody in to your ugly your moment where you just weren't a great version of yourself or you |
| 0:35.3 | know underneath the beautiful exterior and into something that is vulnerable. |
| 0:41.5 | You've given them a gift. |
| 0:43.2 | Guys, how are you all? It's February, in case you hadn't realised. |
| 0:47.2 | How are you fairing? I'm doing all right, you know. |
| 0:50.1 | I've become re-obsessed by the Beatles Get Back documentary, which came out about three years ago. |
| 0:55.9 | And I'm re-watching now. It's eight hours long. |
| 0:58.5 | I feel so excited watching it again. |
| 1:00.8 | It's like I've not seen it before. |
| 1:02.5 | And that has led me to dress like George Harrison. |
| 1:07.0 | Maybe indefinitely. |
| 1:08.3 | I'm really enjoying it. |
| 1:09.6 | I'm currently sat here wearing a little neckerchief. |
| 1:12.5 | I've been hugely inspired yet again. I'm very sponge-like with the Beatles. I might even... |
| 1:17.2 | I'm not going to cut my hair like his. That would look ludicrous. I'd look ridiculous. |
| 1:20.8 | But I'm completely obsessed. And again, it leads me to remind myself of how important good music is. I've been blaring, let it be, |
| 1:30.5 | that amazing last album from the Beatles, nonstop. So if you are feeling a little bit shit today, |
| 1:37.5 | don't forget to put on music that you love. I know it's an obvious thing to say, but I sort of forget |
... |
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