119. Responsibility for Who You Get to Be with Ali Moore

• Ali is a psychotherapist and coach, primarily focused on women, and helping them deal with anxiety, stress and self-worth
• So many people today feel lost, stressed and unsure of who they are
• So much of this comes from comparing ourselves to others, lacking compassion for where we are, and then comparing ourselves to others worse off to try to find a way to feel better, which isn’t healthy
• Ali trained later in life for her current work because of her own experience creating a need to change her life
• She had a good job, two daughters, and then lost her son, which lead to a divorce
• Her career kept going as she got promoted, lost weight, found her now-current-husband and seemed to be doing great
• After the death of her son, she had gone back to work and her life quickly to move forward, which is what everyone said she should do
• She pushed really hard to get through
• She got to a point where she had pushed too hard, and broke
• It lead to a story she calls, “There once was a chimp”
  • She was getting her girls ready for school
  • She had this random idea that a chimpanzee had escaped from the zoo, and was on the loose
  • She almost called the school to tell them she was keeping her kids home because of this wild chimp, but thinking that thought broke the cycle so she could send her kids to school
  • Unfortunately, the chimp stayed with her, and she found herself checking for him randomly throughout her life – in hotel rooms, in her car, etc
  • This went on for 2 1/2 years, and the anxiety behind it claimed her second marriage, too
• It got to the point where she knew she needed help, and started by turning to a hypnotherapist who she thought would just make it all go away, which isn’t actually how it works
• What it actually did was teach her that the way she had dealt with things hadn’t actually dealt with things
• A big part of the breakthrough was understanding that it’s ok to talk about it
• Other people are like you – you aren’t the only one who has been through something or not be ok
• She’s now been a therapist for the past decade, and even found herself going back to the pushing approach, looking for external validation, doing more, etc
• We can get caught up in the “What’s next” of it all, which Ali was living and working in for years, so moving past that approach can take much repeated, consistent focus and effort
• What has helped her refocus her effort is to think less about the outward achievements and more about individual impacts she gets to have on people in changing their lives
• She always asks, “What are you most afraid of?” That fear is what holds us back because we are afraid of what we will be when that thing isn’t there anymore
• “Yes, things happened to me, they are horrible, but I’m responsible for who I am now, and that’s a big thing”
• Working with teenage girls especially has been rewarding for Ali, and takes parents who are willing and interested enough to want to seek help for their kids and have the means to get them help
• But not every parent has the interest, and many who do lack the means, so Ali wanted to solve for both of these constraints
• Since she herself struggled as a teen, and raised two girls and as a step-mother to another, she decided to setup a foundation called “BeMoore”
• They go into schools to connect with girls to talk about your position in society, how you feel about yourself, how things like social media impact you, etc
• They’ve had to change tact given the situation with COVID-19 to get more personalized, training more people so they can do 1-on-1 work since the group interactions are harder to do
• We talked about the pandemic and lockdowns have impacted so much of our daily life, but that can include good things, like getting people to spend time together as a family as they hadn’t been doing, riding bikes again, etc
• Ali is building out the foundation more, and also started a community for women to come together, share, support and have common values
• She’s also busy with her private practice, and is working on her next book

Links:

• Website: www.BeMoore.uk
• Book: Reconnect Your Life
• Facebook: bemoorereconnectyourlife
• Twitter: BeMoore_AMoore
• Instagram: bemoorereconnectyourlife