The Wellness Scoop - Turning Adversity into Opportunity

Episode Date: March 19, 2019

In this powerful final episode of season two, Ella and Matt talk to Nicole, founder of Self Care Co, about her powerful journey of self-discovery from crippling anxiety, panic attacks and moments of such darkness that there seemed to be no way forward, to a hobby that created a sense of stability and then became a thriving new business. We’re blown away by the power of internal transformation seen here as we learn the value of celebrating kindness and unconditional love for those around us, and how one kind act from a stranger saved Nicole’s life and instigated her Be Kind movement. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is an ad from BetterHelp Online Therapy. We always hear about the red flags to avoid in relationships, but it's just as important to focus on the green flags. If you're not quite sure what they look like, therapy can help you identify those qualities so you can embody the green flag energy and find it in others. BetterHelp offers therapy 100% online, and sign-up only takes a few minutes.

Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Deliciously Ella podcast with me, Ella Mills, and my husband and business partner, Matthew Mills. Hi, everyone. So this is our last episode of season two which is quite something it's flown by and today we have a very very special guest with us. So occasionally you meet people in life and they just completely blow your socks off and about I guess it was four or five months ago the lovely Nicole who's the founder of self-care company got in touch and she came over and met just me initially and I was just bowled over by her story and her bravery and

her courage and a lot of the focus of this season's podcast has been on people who have been able to move from from really difficult situations to a much better place in their life and in many ways I link Nicole's story to my lovely and inspirational wife who went from illness to a much better place in her life and I think just sharing these stories will hopefully provide great inspiration for people and so Nicole welcome and thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much and thank you for having me. And so how about we start with can you just give your give your story yeah absolutely um I never really fit in when I was younger in the sense that I at school I wasn't I wasn't academic in the slightest I always kind of wanted to to create

things in a way so I left school with two GCSEs and I guess when in that period between the summer between leaving high school and starting college I realized maybe an academic kind of life isn't for me so I started a club night at 17 years old I started working in clubs illegally. And this was in Brighton? And this was in Brighton. So I just, you know, I gave up on the idea of going to college, university. It wasn't for me.

I was always getting kicked out of class, not necessarily because I was naughty, because I couldn't concentrate. But anyway, in that summer, I was, you know, walking around Brighton and trying to find trying to find a job trying to try and make some money so I then became like a flyer for one of the clubs on the seafront and so from a very young age I was exposed to the kind of the world of the club scene so drugs alcohol really late nights not a healthy lifestyle at all and i was in that world for about three years i ended up i stopped flyering and actually started my own hip-hop disco night

at 17 years old we saw about 900 people come through the doors every monday so we were absolutely smashing it we were the student night to go to I was so young and naive as well so you know we were making a lot of money a lot of cash had no idea about tax and the mess I could get myself into I was drinking during the day to fly off my night it was a really unhealthy world that I was in and one day I just out of nowhere had some horrible symptoms you know shooting chest pains breathlessness I just couldn't breathe. Had you ever experienced anything nothing like it? No never never never but I just assumed I'd never heard of panic attacks I'd never heard of anxiety I just assumed you know my heart is I can't breathe I'm getting all these shooting

pains I feel like I'm going to collapse I so we rang the ambulance that was one of the moments which really shook me up big time I think in a way when I look back on it now I was probably trying to escape in some kind of form I got seriously bullied when I was younger um heckled and my my self-esteem was just on the floor so the club nights I guess were a kind of release from that yeah just complete escape but it got to the point where I couldn't even stand in my own on the dance floor of my own club not anymore because my anxiety was so bad from that one panic attack from the first panic attack I had at 17 I was experiencing them every day and I had no idea how to stop it I was

just paralyzed were you given any advice on how to stop it or how to control them? No, no, not at all. I signed up for some therapy with the NHS, but I was put on a 10-week waiting list. But by that point, it was kind of getting too late. And when you stopped in the club nights, were you still having the anxiety attacks? Oh, yeah, big time, big time. Yeah, I stopped in the club nights, were you still having the anxiety attacks? Oh, yeah, big time. Big time. Yeah, I stopped in the club nights. My best friend, one night after a severe panic attack, I was not living at home at this point.

She, you know, linked my arm and put me in a taxi and took me to my parents and said, Nicole needs to, you know, Nicole needs to get better. She's really not okay. Every day I was trying to figure out what was going on. I didn't understand my symptoms in the slightest OCD started kicking in certain mugs I couldn't use I couldn't leave the house without having a huge huge panic attack had to move my mattress from my bedroom into my brother's

room because I was so scared of dying every day and I just didn't I just didn't understand there was a pinnacle moment which changed my life massively and that was basically from from after the time um having to leave my club night life and and that world I then obviously had no income but I had to somehow find a way to survive so temporarily I had to sign on to the job centre, which is something I really didn't want to do. But I had no choice at the time. They would give me job interviews to go and turn up to so I could get my life back together and find my feet.

During that time, I just ran out of every job I was ever in. So then I kind of, I went back to them. I went back to the job center and I said, look, I can't do this. Something isn't working. You know, I've been to all these job interviews, but I feel like I just can't do it. I'm so anxious and I can't explain why so they said right okay well in that case come back next week and we'll see what we can do. Then sadly tragically the day before my next appointment I had a call from my good friend and he told me that my best friend had just taken her life so I went into that appointment I really didn't want to

but I had to because I had to survive I needed the money and I I was just I remember just waiting for my slot and I was just in absolute I was just in I was just distraught I was in tears I was and it was just the way one of the job advisors spoke to me. It just took me over the edge and I got quite destructive and I was taken away by security. And I was put in a room on my own and my job advisor came in and she said, you're too mentally ill to be on Job seekers allowance we're gonna have to put you on disability allowance so there was um she said i'd have to wait around eight weeks for that to happen

and my money would be sanctioned so i i had no i wouldn't have an income basically for eight weeks and there was just no compassion or empathy for what i had to listen and what I heard the night before that moment really for me was where my life kind of turned around because I I left the job center and I said to myself I'm never going back in there yeah never ever ever so it was actually as I was walking out of the job center I was walking past a bus stop with a massive a board for the prince's trust yeah and I was I'm a big believer in you know omens and you know things happen for a reason so I signed up to the prince's trust that same day and I followed my dreams on you know setting up a mental health platform for young people to explore the connection between creativity and mental

health so with that idea I took that to the Prince's Trust and they were so incredibly supportive I had a lovely mentor called Mary who was this lovely old lady and she was just what I needed at that time that maternal motherly woman who was just like, you know, everything's going to be OK. So that was so life changing for me. So I was running Don't Just Stare, which is Self Care Co.'s kind of sister platform. And the concept is to to build workshops and implement them in schools, colleges and universities. And so did your life start to get better then it did it did for a while are you still having attacks or yeah I was still so

anxious every day was it was still a battle I was I was just so caught up in anxiety yeah I was just you know even if I was meeting new people I would would say, Hi, my name's Nicole. I'm feeling a bit anxious. And that would be my thing. For years, I was so caught up. So from then, my partner and business partner, Adelaide, convinced me to move to London. So, you know, fresh start. Let's just try and make this work.

So I moved in with her. And initially, I was just so overwhelmed by London and the busyness and just but in a way it was so great for me because it was I mean Brighton is a tiny city you know every street reminds you of some kind of bad experience so and then you started dog walking is that right yeah so that came about so when I moved to London obviously I was in the same position as Brighton I had to make some money and had to get a job um I I was working on Don't Just Stare but obviously at that time it wasn't making money enough for me to survive in London so I tried to get into advertising had a little internship which I loved but sadly I was I had a little internship, which I loved, but sadly I had a little breakdown when I was interning. So then I just, that was the point where I realized

I have to just completely stop and focus on getting better because I was spending months on just experiencing anxiety and serious low mood. So that's when my partner Adelaide says, hey, why don't you become a dog walker? And I didn't even realise you could be a dog walker and get paid. So I remember the first dog I had and he was this puppy Ridgeback and I absolutely adored him.

How did you find him? I I was on a what is it called there's an amazing dog not borrowing my doggy it wasn't borrowing my doggy it was bone rangers so I became a bone ranger and that was kind of the start to my recovery in a way because I will just never never I'm so grateful for that time in my life because you know I was spending 10 hours a day in a park with these dogs and it gave me the time and space to to really understand what was happening with my symptoms and it was an incredible time it really felt right to be doing that and so you started to feel like you were turning a corner then yeah absolutely I was definitely my anxiety was starting to um I

wouldn't say disappear I was still very much for the first few years of living in London I was really grieving for my best friend and I couldn't accept it I just you know I'd wake up in midnight and just like that gasp for kind of like oh my gosh I can't accept this this is so tragic but being able to be in my own space in the park with the dogs was just so like you know I could just actually take a moment to grieve because I wasn't I didn't grieve at the beginning it was I was just keeping it all in yeah and that's probably the the worst thing I could anyone could ever do in that in that scenario so you're walking the dogs and then what how did you start coming to poor candles which is what uh self-co is known for now yeah so for me the the dog walking was incredible

but my anxiety constant shooting head pains that it just still wasn't really going away so i tried mindfulness groups uh therapy but it still wasn't I still really wasn't healing. So I then discovered essential oils and aromatherapy. And I adore smells anyway. I'm very highly sensitive. So like, you know, lighting, smells are so important for how I'm feeling. Just down the road from where I live on Fulham Road, there's an incredible shop called Urban Buddha. And, you know, it's full of crystals essential oils and this amazing lady called Millie who runs the shop and she she is

just the guru of essential oils so I went in there one day just thinking right this I need to change my life I have to find a cure so she then but were you you just looking for a hobby? Well, at this point, I was just looking for anything to cure the anxiety. Absolutely anything. I was at the last straw. So I thought, do you know what? I feel like the only way is to go down a more holistic spiritual route. So this lady, Millie, she gave me all these essential oils and I thought okay let's give this a go so I bought one of those diffusers don't know if you know diffuser

started experimenting and it just I know it sounds silly but my anxiety was just subsiding I was feeling calm I was feeling present and it was making such an incredible difference. So from then, I was still kind of, you know, this still isn't quite doing it for me. I really just want to produce something. And I was thinking how I haven't produced anything since I was maybe like a toddler or primary school, you know, when you're like playing with the sand. And I was really craving that because I just wanted to see something and create something and that's where the kind of candles came around so I bought myself a little candle making kit and was experimenting with the essential oils and just playing around I found it

so so so calming and it I know it sounds silly but it made me kind of proud of myself you know I created something yeah um that's exactly how I felt when I started doing delicious yellow having been in such a difficult place for kind of 18 months and felt such a sense of worthlessness and like I wasn't creating or kind of achieving and I remember like the first few recipes I made, terrible, by the way. I remember feeling such a sense of pride and satisfaction and empowerment in myself by the fact that I had done that. I'd made it and I'd taken a picture of it. And it was, for me, that was one of the most powerful moments of my life. As ridiculous as it might sound to someone else I completely completely relate to that sense of kind of ownership of what you can actually do yeah when you doubt what you can do it's it's

incredibly incredibly powerful yeah definitely from that moment of noticing such a huge change in the way I was feeling from I mean my self-esteem was just I felt like I was I mean okay so you had a purpose again yeah I finally had purpose again so kind of what happened was I made these candles and I posted a little picture on Facebook on my news feed and people were like hey these look great you know can I buy one and I thought oh my gosh and that hadn't been the intention, right? No, not at all. I just wanted to have a little hobby

and keep my dog walking life, which I absolutely loved. I thought, you know, it feels like such a... A nice combo. Yeah, just the perfect combo whilst I was feeling so anxious and kind of unsure of the world. But, you know, before I know it,

my lovely, incredible friend Johnny, who works at an incredible design agency, he sent me a private message and said, come into our studio. And then before I know it, we're making this brand. And Self Care Co., the three words just popped into my head and I explained how I wanted it to look. We really wanted the branding and the art direction to look very calm to the eye and very minimal.

And that's kind of how it all began. And now you have a thriving business and you've got multiple people working for you and on this journey with you. And you've got, we've done two collaborations now with um well our second one's launching this week yeah indeed um and and it feels like a full turnaround yeah it really does if you told my hip-hop dj self when i was 17 that i would now be running a wellness brand then i would have laughed at myself but um but and so you have self-care co and then you also have the be kind movement which is so yeah the be kind movement was inspired by an experience I had so it was November 2017 I was just having a meeting with my designers in their studio near Paddington and I just felt really off that day.

On my way home from the meeting with Johnny and the team, I just felt completely out of control at the Paddington tube station. It was peak time and I guess I was so sick of that feeling that niggling anxiety I just had had enough I just wanted it all to be over if I'm completely honest I was very distraught and very distressed and kind of contemplating whether to to take my life or not but out of the crowd one one girl just kind of like tapped my shoulder because my head was in my hands, just kind of like trying not to look at anyone or anything. And this girl, she saw I was so not OK. And she linked my arm and she took me all the way home. And that really changed my life.

I mean, I wish I had her name or her number or, you know, I wish I could dedicate. Well, you know, the Be Kind movement is dedicated to her because it made me realize how powerful kindness is and how important kindness is. And it's available to anyone. Exactly. Anyone can just do something. Yeah, exactly. We can all be kind. So I had an idea to simply have the words be kind on a T-shirt.

So I set up a prototype and I think we had about 20 garments in stock. I really just wanted to create, i thought the idea of having these words on a t-shirt to kind of make people think as you walk if you're wearing the t-shirt and walking down the street and creating we i just reminded for people who are walking yeah i've always just wanted to change the way people think with regard to kindness and strangers um i think the idea of the be kind movement is to exactly to celebrate kindness and to celebrate kind of unconditional love especially if someone's in sheer need it's so important to reach out to others and to be kind I mean the movement has grown so much faster than I could ever have imagined I remember when we launched the Be Kind movement

and like I said I only had 20 garments in stock on the website at this time but I hadn't quite worked out how to use to use the back end of the site so there was an unlimited amount of garments available for people to to order which left me in quite a sticky situation because we we launched the the be kind garments online and it just went nuts it went absolutely crazy people from all over the world feeling connected to the idea that we have to the only way it's just to be kind it's that simple it's so powerful whether it's being kind to yourself or being kind to someone else and being kind to the planet that's kind of what the be kind movement's all about nice you know we live in

such a busy world and we you know and this is something we've talked about a lot, especially it feels like this series and kind of happiness and that quest that we're all on for it. And yet we feel that we're alien if we don't have that sense of happiness and we don't open up enough to each other about it and share it and normalize everything that you're talking about. It's just taking the time to acknowledge how people feel how we can support them because everybody goes through difficult periods for one reason or another but if if everyone i mean it just shows if if everyone i mean this was an extreme example where someone took you all the way home but i mean if you just take 30 seconds or a minute out of your

day just to do a random act of kindness for someone exactly after that accumulates and it builds up yeah it would it would do a lot we live in a better place yeah we really really would and so from this journey of a place of what feels like real desperation to a place where now i haven't got to know you you seem like you're in you're in a great place and you've got a great business and a great relationship and yeah and some gorgeous dogs one of whom austin is having a love affair yeah he sure is uh what would be your advice to anyone else who whether in the extreme of where you felt or is just struggling a bit of life what would what would be your advice to them i think really just telling yourself that this

moment is so temporary I think that in itself is so powerful and for anyone suffering with anxiety low mood just know that it doesn't define you you are not the anxiety and you are not the low mood you are you are above that and that's something I something I've realized in the last year or so. I've been reading so many different books and really understanding the power of our thoughts. And I just think it's so important for us to, I mean, obviously our minds are constantly babbling away with thoughts, whether it's negative or positive. But it's so important to be aware of those negative thoughts and know that they are not you. They're just thoughts.

They are just thoughts. And that's something I practice every day, positive affirmations. Genuinely, they have transformed my life in a way I cannot explain um I love the ones you share so much Nicole shares some I think almost every day at least like most pretty much every day on the self-care co Instagram and I I love it it always I know for me every time I see it it's such a good check-in of you know you are enough you've got this like the world's an amazing place and you always kind of say you know close your eyes and repeat it a few times and I do and I've it's so powerful and so what is your practice for doing that each day for these

positive affirmations do you is it a moment you take in the morning or in the evening or is it just something that just kind of goes throughout your day if i'm honest this is something i kind of discovered around a year ago as well as just with anxiety obviously when you're you're constantly feeling on the the brink of death and that's kind of how how it has felt for me in the past and feeling so close to that edge gave me this i don't want to say an awakening but I almost feel like I see the world now for really what it is and I smile so much every day and I just feel so grateful to be alive I just think there's so much I mean it's so hard obviously, with the way social media is heading, where it's so easy to compare ourselves to others. And there's a lot of busyness, whether it's advertisements in the street or just general trends that we feel like we have to follow.

Or, you know, how many likes are we getting? How many this and how many that? But like, we all need to remember we are so whole as we are. We don't need to care about that and i think the universe has an incredible way of working everything it works itself out if we trust it were there any books that you've read that you'd kind of call out in particular absolutely i'd say the power of now yeah was one i loved i listened to a lot of tara brock's um meditations every day and she i honestly i recommend that for everyone anyone suffering with anxiety low mood depression uh trauma grief it's

she has changed the way i think completely so yeah it's powerful stuff this whole episode's been powerful stuff it sure has I think it shows just the power of just a small step in a hobby as well though yeah you know just just just doing something that is able to either as a distraction or just to give yourself a focus on something outside of what you're feeling it's just I know if there's such a clear link between between both of how your story started so yeah I know for me starting something that felt that it was kind of mine in some capacity felt so empowering and like for the first time in a while I felt like something was in my hands again. And everything in my life had felt out of my hands and in my doctor's hands and in just the sense of a complete unknown of whether I'd ever be kind of healthy enough to feel like I could walk down the street properly again.

And then suddenly I thought, okay, but I do have this. And there was something about that that was, my for my mind incredibly powerful and I think there's a lot in finding something that you love and whether it's a hobby or does develop further and being able to spend time kind of immersing yourself in that rather than solely immersing yourself in things that other people like and I'm not sure what you found Nicole but like when I started doing what we do it was so uncool you know kale was not cool and it was you know it was really you know no one wanted to be involved in it or kind of wanted to hear about it or no one wanted to even eat the food you know it was quite weird and you know I imagine you know you're saying

people like oh it's nice you've got a hobby but actually it's like oh vegan candles that sounds niche yeah exactly but then that's almost the beauty of it because it's so yours and and you're not doing it because it's cool and you're not doing it to impress anyone and I loved that about it so much because again I just I'm just doing this for me this is just for me yeah and I think again there was something really really powerful in saying you know it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks actually I'm I'm going to do this because this is making me really really happy and then it will naturally and then make the other people around you happier too totally but I think that's had a really powerful impact on just my way of looking at things in the last few years of stopping minding what anyone else thinks like I hate going out I love being in bed at nine o'clock I obviously

not drinking but I hate drinking I I hate loud music I just hate it I'm such a granny and I don't care anymore if people think I'm a loser because I'm so happy doing what I'm doing exactly that matters and finding something that helps you get to that place yeah and if you love loud music and all the rest of it that's amazing too but you know following what it is that kind of resonates with you I think does have this unbelievable power on our mental health which you know in the mind and the body are also so connected and it's incredible to see how that then resonates yeah yeah well thank you so much for sharing your story um i think it's incredibly inspiring and i'll never forget when matt first

met you and he came home and he just said that was one of the most amazing powerful meetings i've ever had probably ever will have oh yeah I remember so lovely no I remember it but it's so true and so this is very sadly our last episode of season two don't worry we will be back but it's been so powerful hearing your story Nicole and I feel like there was no better way to end it because I think it resonates so much with what we've talked about throughout which is this kind of quest for happiness and peace of mind and well-being that we're all on but it's it's an incredibly complex journey with so many kind of factors involved in it yeah it is but i think and i think it also shows the power and ability for internal transformation and yeah um the in nicole's amazing story even from the

absolute absolute depths she was able to turn it around and to know that that ability is within us I think and I hope for other people will just be a really really empowering message to hear I hope so too so thank you all so much for listening to us grab it on for 12 episodes I know I can't quite believe where this is this is the end of season two already but we've gone over two million listens I know which is mad so thank you for supporting what for us is like the ultimate passion project I think at Delicious Yellow we you know as we say quite a lot what we what we care about is helping everyone live better and in doing that I think we've you know really so much as well come to understand that health and well-being, wellness, you know, however we want to describe it is so much more than kale and broccoli.

You know, yes, we know we need our fiber day or a 10 a day and, you know, all our grams of fiber and all the rest of it. But it's so much about, you know, that 360 approach of, you know, actually really looking after every part of yourself and i think that's something that we're definitely going to continue to explore and feel so grateful to all our guests so far for helping us get a little bit deeper into that and shed a little bit of light into it indeed thank you so much for listening everyone and so we'll be back middle of may and if there's any topics you particularly want us to cover or guests that you want us to have in, then please do email just hello at deliciousyellow.com and we would love to hear from you. Otherwise, we are sending you all lots and lots of love. Hoping you have a lovely week and cannot wait to be back.

Thank you. You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn Ads. Email bob at libsyn.com to learn more. That's B-O-B at L-I-B-S-Y-N dot com.