The Bend Like Bamboo Resilience Show: Featuring Linda Whitehead, GM of Jay Jay's, Founder of Three Little Moons Yoga and Yoga for Bro's.
Welcome to The Bend Like Bamboo Resilience Show. Each week, I get to interview amazing people, who will share their inspiring stories of resilience. I dive deep into wonderful DNM’s with my very special guests, exploring their stories of how they have overcome adversity in their lives, professionally and personally.
Get ready to be inspired by their stories, golden nuggets, and actionable tools that can help us all to elevate our mindset, and be bigger than our setbacks. Within every adversity is an equal or greater opportunity. My intention for these sessions is to remind us that no matter what we are going through, we can overcome it, and discover what we are made of.
It is important to feel motivated and hopeful about the future. When we are positive we can be more creative, and innovative. Seeing our obstacles as opportunities, rising above the turbulence we can feel more ready to rebuild our mind, body, and lives after what has been a massive adjustment to 2020.
Introducing Linda Whitehead
For the past 25+ years, Linda has been very focused on moving her way up the corporate ladder in retail buying and General Management roles. Her current role is the Group General Manager of the Jay Jays brand. She juggles the role of retail executive with being Mum to 3 kids under 15 and running a yoga business in both Australia and Bali.
It was around 5 years ago when Linda relocated her family from Sydney back to Melbourne – following her dream job at Jay Jays that she reached a time in her life that was deeply challenging on a personal level. This difficult period drove her to make some significant changes to her life as she looked for a way of overcoming them.
The move back to Melbourne was tougher than she excepted as she had to learn to navigate a high-pressure corporate role, a long 3-hour daily commute and trying to balance family life with a loving husband and 3 children then under 9 years of age. She placed huge expectations on herself about how she should perform in her job and her role as Mum which left no room for self-care and self-reflection. She was operating in survival mode and struggling.
‘When I started my role in Melbourne, I felt like I’d landed my dream job. My job sat alongside people in the industry that I’d admired from afar and so I put a lot of pressure on myself to perform and be the person I thought I needed to be to fit in there.’ This person that Linda tried to become was a long way away from the real her – the authentic self and so she went through a period of deep struggle, lost identity and felt like she had become an imposter. This left her feeling exhausted, she lost her passion for her career (that she’d thrived in for 25 years and loved!), she’d lost her down-to-earth, authentic leadership style and generally lost her passion for life.
‘I lived in a constant state of survival. I was too tired to spend quality time with my beautiful family, who needed me because they were going through a big change too, having moved from another city. They needed me to engage with new schools, new friendships and our local community so that they could find their place here back in Melbourne. Instead, I’d spend my weekends either crying in bed or wishing I could lie in bed and wallow. At work, I lacked energy and tended to distance myself from others, I was constantly on the defence and generally dreaded going into work every day.’
How did it feel when I hit my lowest point?
Numb. I felt like I just wanted to run away but I didn’t even have the energy to make a decision to leave my job. I thought it was the job’s fault or the company’s fault but I realise now that it was the expectation I put on myself, the fear of failure driving me to keep going and my lack of self-care that put my nervous system and mindset in a spin.
What was your turning point?
It was at the end of 2016, a little over a year after starting her new role that Linda attended a New Year’s Eve Yoga class on the local beach in Mt Martha where she lives. The teacher – who has since become a close friend and mentor for Linda – encouraged the students to set an affirmation for the year ahead – a positive statement of intent for something they needed more of in their life. Linda’s affirmations were ‘I am strong. I am resilient’.
What does Resilience mean to you?
It means finding the inner strength to rise above everything that’s in your way of being the fabulous, radiant you!
From that day onwards, Linda stated her affirmation every morning to herself in the mirror and slowly over time, her inner strength started to build. At the same time, she started attending sessions with Damien Brown, a Kinesiologist who helped calm her nervous system and helped her to shift her mindset and energy into a more positive state. Over the next 12 months, Linda continued to build on her yoga journey, attending every workshop and class she resonated with and slowly over the next year, she returned to her authentic self and started to prioritise her own self-care more. Slowly the fog started to shift, and the real Linda emerged.
How is your life better now?
Since then, Linda has continued to delve deeper into her yogic journey – trying different lineages and rituals to keep herself happy, inspired and thriving in life. She started ‘Three Little Moons Yoga’ which is a wellness brand for people just like her – people that are struggling to keep up with everyday life and need an outlet to help bring them back to themselves and prioritise self-care. Her classes use asana (movement), meditation, mantra and pranayama (breathwork) to help shift energy, cultivate deep inner awareness and shift the mindset to positivity and happiness. Her classes are inclusive and most weeks she’ll have a teenage girl, a 20 year old guy, a guy in her 30’s, a Mum in her 40’s, a Dad in his 50’s, her yoga teacher in her 60’s and her Mum in her 70’s in class. Some are beginners and some have over 30 years of yoga experience. She aims to demystify the stigma of yoga being for skinny, bendy women only and welcomes everyone to learn a little about the ancient tradition of yoga.
Working in a corporate environment with predominately masculine energy, Linda also recognises the need for Men to find time to slow the body and mind and find some inner calm so 18 months ago, she started a Men’s yoga class in her home studio called Yoga 4 Bros. Prior to Covid, she was welcoming up to 18 men into her weekly class for an hour of yoga and deep relaxation and connection with other guys from their local community. After class, they’d have a chat and enjoy a beer together – a great version of self-care for men. With in-person classes not allowed right now, Linda has launched weekly online Zoom classes and has also just released her online course – THE BROS TOOLBOX TO A CALMER LIFE – which includes 5 days’ worth of morning movement, ‘smoko session’ meditations and a deep relaxation session to help with a good night’s sleep.
As part of her passion for helping others find calmness in the busy-ness of life, Linda and her husband also own and run a Yoga Retreat in Bali. With Covid, visitors to Bali have been virtually non-existent since February meaning the staff (a team of 5 who are like family to Linda) have been financially impacted. While Linda and Dean have continued to pay the staff a good portion of their salary during the pandemic, Linda has worked with the team to put together a cookbook including their favourite Balinese recipes, which is now on sale. All profits go to the team to supplement their income.
In the interview I asked Linda the following questions:
What did you learn?
Throughout this whole journey, I’ve learnt to surrender and trust that everything happens for a reason. I’ve learnt to know that whatever life throws at you, there’s a lesson in it even if you don’t see it at the time. We have to keep evolving and so change is inevitable and the more we can surrender to and trust the process, the less stress it causes.
I’ve also learned to be love and prioritise myself and never apologise for being myself even if it’s not always popular. When you don’t operate from a place of authenticity, we tend to become imposters and it’s a quick road to unhappiness when we do that.
Finally, I’ve learnt to find gratitude in the little moments that I do have. How many first words and first steps did I miss with my kids because I was focused on excelling in my career? And yet, when it all comes down to it, it’s the bedtime snuggles, the dinner time conversations as a family and the wonderment at watching them grow and develop that fills my heart with gratitude. Sure – doing a great job in my work and my businesses is rewarding but there’s nothing more important than the moments we create every day and the joy we find within them we find gratitude for them.
What 3 tips would you give others to help in their transformation?
Firstly, you need to find a way to quieten the over-activity. That could be an over-active mind, an over-active nervous system, it might manifest in the form of anger or anxiety. Whatever it is, find a way to begin to turn the volume down a little. For me it was yoga and meditation but for you it could be healthy eating, a daily walk – whatever it is, find your thing.
From here, you want to start to observe yourself and what you’re feeling, thinking and doing. Try to create that space between feeling your body or mind start to turn the volume back up and observe what’s happening and why. When we can do this, we start to create space between our triggers and our reactions.
And it’s from this space of self-observation that we find our authenticity. What makes us tick really? What sets our soul on fire? What gets us out of bed? And when we find that, we find purpose, we find our flow and we find the ability to really THRIVE in life – a long way from being able to just SURVIVE.
You can also listen to the interview on the Bend Like Bamboo Resilience Podcast
Follow Linda
www.threelittlemoons.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/linda-whitehead-247632151/
@lindawhitehead1
@yogaforbros
@threelittlemoonsyoga
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