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Welcome to Episode 8 of the Create Your Story Podcast on Shaping a Multi-Passionate Life.

I’m joined by Meredith Fuller, Psychologist, Author, Media Spokesperson, Career Change Specialist and Theatre Maker.

We chat about shaping a multi-passionate life in practical terms! There are so many tips for living a full, wise and creative life without overwhelm.

You can listen above or via your favourite podcast app. And/or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.

Show Notes

In this episode, we chat about:

• Making transitions from work or a life we don’t love
• Tools for tapping into what is not conscious
• Living a full, multi-passionate life in practical terms.
• Meredith’s book Working with Bitches
• My book Wholehearted & how Meredith is working with it with clients
• Thinking and Feeling preferences in women
• Choosing projects wisely
• How personality insights can help
• How tarot insights can help
• Setting boundaries
• And so much more!

Transcript of podcast

Introduction

Welcome to Episode 8 of the Create Your Story Podcast and it’s the 6^th of January as I record this and we’re firmly into the new year. It’s warm and humid here in Sydney with lots of rain, so it’s a perfect time for setting intentions and goals for 2022 and also reflecting on my word of the year. I shared about my word of the year for 2021, Author in the past week on my blog. So pop over to see how that shaped up over the year and some tips for applying this learning in your life! More on my 2022 word soon as I ponder on all that it might mean!

I’m thrilled to have my friend Meredith Fuller join us for the podcast today to chat about Shaping a Multi-passionate Life. You might remember Meredith featured in Episode 3 of the podcast as part of the first Wholehearted virtual book launch.

Meredith’s concurrent careers have included author, playwright, columnist & media commentator, talkback radio guest, theatre director & producer, TV co-host, actor, psychological profiler and trainer. As a psychologist in private practice, providing counselling and career development to individuals and groups, she has also consulted to organisations on professional development and interpersonal skills for over 40 years. She ran a university careers counselling service for 12 years and has been a sessional lecturer in postgraduate courses in vocational psychology at several universities.

Meredith and I met via our mutual interest in psychological type as members of the Australian Association for Psychological Type about 4 years ago. From that we have discovered many shared interests and passions. Today we will be chatting about the value of psychological type and personality insights in making change, looking at how tarot can help, my Wholehearted book, Meredith’s book ‘Working with Bitches’ and writing and creative living. One of the things we particularly chat about is being multi-passionate and having a number of projects. There is some fabulous advice about how to make wise choices about where to focus and how to practically structure your life so you don’t get overwhelmed or burn out.

A reminder before we head into the podcast about the Wholehearted Self-leadership Book Club as a focus for 2022. One of the things Meredith mentions in the podcast is about the value of community and it’s something that’s integral to my life and work. If you’re looking for community, support and accountability for living a more wholehearted life, join me and a wonderful group of women gathering for the Wholehearted Self-leadership Book Club to read and work through my book Wholehearted and the Companion Workbook together through-out 2022. Part book club, part group coaching, with weekly accountability and prioritising check-ins, it’s a gentle, focused and value-packed way to keep wholehearted living front of mind and make progress to the transitions and transformations you desire in the coming year.

We start on Chapter 1 of Wholehearted in mid-January so it’s not too late to join us now and there is a space for you. People in the group are already commenting on how the accountability is helping them to do things they might otherwise have given up on! So head to the Wholehearted Self-leadership Book Club.

You’ll also hear more about Wholehearted in this episode and how it can support you. Meredith wrote a fantastic review of the book you can read too.

So now let’s head into the interview with the fabulously multi-skilled and multi-passionate Meredith Fuller!

Transcript of interview with Meredith Fuller

Terri Connellan: Hi Meredith, welcome to the Create Your Story podcast. And thank you so much for your support of me and my book Wholehearted.

Meredith Fuller: I’m delighted with it.

Terri Connellan: Thank you. It’s great to chat with you today. So to kick off, can you tell people a little about you and the roles that you focus on in your work in the world?

Meredith Fuller: So, I’ve been a psychologist for over 40 years. I have a private practice where I’ve seen many thousands of individuals who come for career developmental or personal growth, and I’ve also spent a number of years working in organizations on organizational issues, whether that’s leadership, team communication, mainly it’s interpersonal issues.

And I also write plays that I direct and produce at our venue, and I assist my husband with his short documentaries. So, we’ve got a very psychological focus on that. So essentially what I do is assist people to be the best they can be. And I mainly find that people are often in a position of distress. It could be interpersonal problems with people at work, problems in relationships, a poor fit, and they need some assistance in moving towards whatever their life stage is.

And it’s interesting at the moment, there’s been obviously quite a lot of people who are looking at what next? I’m in my fifties, I’m in my sixties. What now? So there’s a very strong theme there. And the other thing that we’ve been doing for the past two years because of the pandemic issue is working with a lot of people using Zoom to do group sessions or one-on-one sessions.

So, I guess what happens for me is there’s lots of different projects that emerge and if I’m interested, I’ll grab it. So for example, at the moment, I’m making a film with some colleagues about domestic violence. So it’ll just depend on what seems to be the critical issues. And the other part of what I do in writing is I’m an author of books and I do a lot of book reviews and write articles for newspapers, magazines, do some TV work, radio work, just a lot of helping people to understand more about the psychology of people.

Terri Connellan: So many threads, but so many interesting aspects to your life and to your work. And I love that at its core about helping people to be the best people they can be and I think that’s where your work at my work comes together. We’re both interested in that space where people can make choices, make transitions, practice self-leadership, understand themselves to be the best they can be, but I absolutely love all the different strands. And so we’ll explore quite a few of those in our chat today.

So thank you. And thank you for your review of Wholehearted too cause, that was a beautiful first review, which I’ll put in the show notes, but thank you for that. And the work that you do, I’m sure is hugely appreciated because it’s one thing to write and create something, isn’t it? It’s about sharing it with the world too. So thank you for that. So we met through our mutual love of psychological type and it’s valuable insights. So why have psychological type and personality been such powerful frameworks in your life?

Meredith Fuller: I’ve always been psychologically minded. And even as a child, I wanted to be a psychologist and it struck me that I was fascinated all through school about what do I think people will become when they get older so much so that I used to write down all the names of the kids in my class and write down what I thought they’d be when they grew up.

So obviously, the issue of vocation spoke to me very early on, and it was clear to me that people were different and that you could cluster them in some way. And I used to wonder why doesn’t anyone else seem to see what I’m seeing? So I felt quite different and alone with that and I guess for me, what I love about AusAPT and working with psychological type is we have a group of disparate people who are all keen to understand what our differences and similarities are.

And we like looking underneath and we like reflecting back on what we’re observing and to my mind, there’s a great depth of thinking that is so helpful for people. And I certainly find that psychological type has informed most of the work I’ve done since about 1998.

Terri Connellan: Wow. It’s been a really long-term influence then. Yeah. So just to explain to people listening Meredith and I are part of the Australian Association for Psychological Type, which is a connection of people in Australia, but globally who have a passion for personality and psychological type and it’s great community for people who as you’ve said think really deeply about the way we’re made up, the way we’re wired and the influence of that with nurture too. It’s not all about how we’re wired is it? But it’s obviously a big player in how things play out. So how do you work with these insights with clients?

Meredith Fuller: Individuals will come for counseling or careers counseling, and they’ll normally present with distress about their relationships at work or their relationships in the family, or with significant others or their difficulty in forming relationships, their concern about their careers and we’ll explore their lives. And I like to look at childhood through to the present and I like to understand their narrative. But I also like to look at what are their ability, skills, interests, values to get that full picture and what their hopes and dreams are in terms of who was this child? What did that child want in the future? And who is this adult now? What does this adult want?

And increasingly, I’m noticing that there’s so many problems with people who are not being valued and validated in their relationships and at work. And so, the thing that struck me about your titles about, this wholehearted and the shadow coming to work and the half-hearted working. The turns of phrase you used were just beautiful because they just encapsulated for me how people talk about work versus self.

And, I loved the way you gave a number of activities and exercises that they could reflect on, that helped them to see what the misalignment is and what’s changed. And that just sits so nicely with the sort of work that I do with people where something shifted. And if they don’t address what’s going on for them, invariably, they get sick or they have to sever relationships or rethink a lot of things.

So definitely there’s a sense that people are coming because they’re not happy. They’re in distress. They know something’s wrong. And they know that it’s very toxic for them, but they feel so stuck and they often feel very trapped and they seek some support from elsewhere because there’s something intolerable that’s going on.

Terri Connellan: That makes perfect sense with me cause certainly when I went through my journey, in my case, I reached out to a coach. There’s lots of different people or actions we can take when we feel that. But it’s that, as you say, that real sense of misalignment between who we are, what we want to do, what we want to be, and then what’s actually happening. And there’s lots of reasons for feeling stuck isn’t there.

Meredith Fuller: Oh, absolutely. And also the issue of age, life-stage. The sorts of issues people might present with when they’re 27 are going to be very different to what they’re presenting with at 57. So, that’s of concern to me that there’s quite a number of women I find who haven’t got the financial security that perhaps men might have. Historically, we know why that is. And they find themselves in this position where they’re being edged out of their organization, or they’re not ready to leave, but there’s nothing for them anymore. And they’re really at their prime and they might be in their forties, fifties, and sixties, and they’ve got so much to offer, but they just can’t get a gig anywhere so that’s a real concern. And the other one is that similarly with a lot of men who are really stuck, lamenting that nobody wants them and what are they going to do with the rest of their lives? People that have been chewed up and spat out. So that’s very common.

Terri Connellan: And it’s ironic as we get through life, we get more wisdom, more skills and, then we get in a situation where we feel of less value. So it’s a huge issue and it’s obviously something we’ve both really noticed in the work and, and I’ve experienced it myself. So it’s something obviously you’re seeing in your clients.

So in Wholehearted, in your work with clients, we both use psychological type and personality as like a compass or a framework or a way of seeing personal development. I’ve spoken about that in my book, and obviously your story is very different. So do you want to tell us more about your psychological type makeup and how your understanding of your personality and how you’re wired has helped you grow and evolve?

Meredith Fuller: And so my preference is for introverted, intuition, feeling, perceiving, [INFP] and I was aware when I was very young, that there were two parts of me, two aspects. There was the very introverted—I loved reading. I loved thinking, daydreaming and performing, and this would be my outgoing situations. So I started working very young. So I was in professional salaried work when I was four and a half. That was because I came from a single parent home and my father had left and there was no supporting parent benefit. My mother was very unwell. We also had in our house, her mother and her mother’s sister who had Down’s syndrome.

So my mother was quite trapped, as a caretaker and not really able to go off to work. So it was quite dire. But from when I was very young, three or four, I just love singing, dancing, chatting to strangers, that sort of thing. And so there was a photographer called Athol Smith who was very famous at the time.

And he and his wife, Bambi, wanted me to do some modelling with them. And so that began a modelling career and that also led into an acting career. So I had a situation where I loved all that. I could go off to work and earn some money to help my family, but I could do things I enjoyed, which was entertaining groups, being in plays, et cetera.

But I knew that was a part of me. And the other part of me needed that balance of time alone. And I always had that fascination by how people were different. Why were they different? What can I understand about that and how to make sense of all of that? I guess I’ve always been interested in these things and another connection we’ve had is with the the tarot.

So I started reading tarot when I was about 15 and that’s always been a lifelong interest in collecting decks and exploring symbolism and the unconscious. And so locating MBTI when I was working at a tertiary institution. It was about 97, 98. It seemed to me that things very much came together with that because here was something cogent.

It made sense in a way that I just felt encapsulated everything I’d been thinking about. So I seized on that and became very involved in doing something to help people train and bringing that to tertiary institutions, bringing that to organizations and then working one-to-one with clients.

And I found it’s been the most useful thing because it isn’t about people running around doing a questionnaire. It’s about understanding yourself through that self-reflection and observation and imbibing the theory yourself. So, it’s got a lot more to offer than say, there’s a lot of tests and little questionnaires and things people do, and they’re quite simplistic.

And of course the fewer categories, the less comprehensive and the less good affinity. So there’s something about having 16 types that’s so robust and it’s something that people can grasp very easily and then it can help inform, well, who am I with? How do I work? What do I need? Where am my gaps in communicating? So it’s something very practical and very common sense.

Terri Connellan: That really aligns with how I feel too. First it’s making sense of your own personality and your own view of the world, I think often is part of the lens through which we see type. And then, in my role as a coach or your role as a psychologist using those skills to help others to see what your strengths are, where you’ve got blind spots, what you might be missing, because we all just naturally have certain ways of seeing the world that’s so natural to us, we think it’s the same for everybody.

Meredith Fuller: That’s a really good point you’re raising because obviously one of the issues about working in my field is that we see the people who don’t fit, who have got distress, who have got concerns, who do feel different. So , I do have a skewed sample in that sense.

So invariably, what I find is there are certain types who come for counselling and careers counselling and my husband, who’s a psychotherapist psychologist, he finds the same thing. So, we tend to work more with the introverted, intuitive, thinking or feeling perceiving or judging types than perhaps the more mainstream types.

And that interests me as well, that I can actually reframe a pretty horrible life experience for someone, and they can actually celebrate what is unique about them and then work to their strengths rather than feeling unwanted in our society.

Terri Connellan: That’s really powerful work. I think type’s such a valuable tool for reframing, for understanding. I like the idea of it as a compass, as Jung used that idea of the compass and the framework for taking us forward. So, thanks for those insights. You mentioned tarot, which is another love we share. I write about tarot as a tool and a support for wayfinding and personal insight in my book. And I know you have been collecting decks and have lots of insights. What are your thoughts about tarot as a personal development practice?

Meredith Fuller: I love the visual aspect for people. It’s very clear that some people are very auditory and they need to have deep conversation and, and music might be really significant in how I might work with them. For some people it’s visual. So films, things like tarot, help them get the awareness, get the insight, help them to name what’s going on for themselves, and also really help them connect with their unconscious.

And the thing that I particularly like about tarot is that it sits so beautifully with doing dreamwork and how in our dreams, we understand that present, past and future are interconnected. We don’t have linear time, that images can be constructed or archetypal. There are messages in our dreams.

And similarly with working with your tarot and working with your unconscious, you’re actually helping yourself to appreciate what’s going on for you in a way that enables you to perhaps have a few more resources in the moment when you’re feeling lost, uncertain, confused. So it’s something very tangible. And it’s also something that I really appreciate because I love ancient cultures, ancient religions, ancient symbolism, and also futuristic work. So I love how it just seems to combine all of those.

And it’s a great tool for quickly communicating with someone else. It’s a little bit like the way we use type that, you know, we can say, oh, you know, my preference is X. So suddenly we understand a lot very quickly. And similarly with cards, oh look, I keep getting certain cards, what’s going on with me. It’s a good way of quickly absorbing and integrating information that helps us.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. So I love two things you said there, firstly, about both tools,type and tarot, or both frameworks are ways of tapping into that unconscious, like what’s beneath the surface or what’s less conscious for us.

And then secondly, how they both like languages or symbolic systems or languages, we can become more fluent in. I love that idea because they do. At a type conference, for example, when we’re together, I just love it. We all understand, at different levels, but it’s sort of a language we can speak.

And as you say, it’s the same with tarot. When I talk about the Six of Swords and the Eight of Cups in the book, I hope people who don’t know that can also get a way in. But for those who understand that, they will bring that understanding to that book. So it just means we’ve got a language for communicating.

Meredith Fuller: It’s interesting. There was a line in the book that was really interesting for me, that you made that I hadn’t seen anywhere else before. And it was very significant. I think, as a teaching tool for a lot of people who are looking at this business of career change. You’re talking about, you’re leaving success. So you’re leaving things that are working, you’re leaving things and you’re going off and you made the comment, you’re actually choosing to leave the successful things.

And that was a very significant statement because for a lot of people where I find they’re stuck is: I earn X amount of dollars and I don’t want to learn less. I’ve been doing this for so long and I’m a partner or a senior administrator or an executive, or I’m a X, Y, Z ed. I can’t leave all this, all this work. I can’t stop and start something where I might earn less or not have my status or not have the recognition. And that can actually paralyze people.

And so we’re looking at the duality of, well, on the one hand, you’re saying you feel dead inside, you hate going to work. You feel there’s so much inside you that’s not being expressed. You’re bored with what you do, even though you’re busy, you feel trapped. And yet you’re saying I can’t let go, you know, do I stay, do I let go?

And there’s something about the way you’ve talked about this card and saying, you’re actually choosing to leave your success. It was just a beautiful way of describing an active decision. And I think that’s very empowering for people who are frightened about letting go of material things, or letting go of how much work they’ve put into something to begin something different.

And with that thread, you also talk about we bring ourselves to every new thing we do. So it’s just a different iteration of what we’ve done before, but some of those phrases will resonate with a lot of people. And it will help give them a boost to say, I can do this. I’m choosing to do this.

Terri Connellan: Absolutely. Yeah. I think that idea of abandoned success, and the image of the Eight of Cups. If you have a look at a fairly traditional pack the cups stacked up, and then a person’s choosing to walk away from the full cups. Yeah. And to me, it’s about identity. It’s about how much of our identity we’ve invested in that role, that position, the money that we earn, whatever it might be. And then that choosing to find a new path is incredibly difficult.

Meredith Fuller: I guess what makes it hard is our society doesn’t understand. So when people say I’m having a change, I’m leaving X or, I was doing a more senior role, but I’m going back to do a more specialist role in the same organization, or I’ve worked long and hard for this and I’ve got all these qualifications and so forth, but I don’t want to do it anymore. I’m doing something else. And how other people really try to interfere and say, you’ll regret it. You shouldn’t do it. What if you can’t get another job and everyone will laugh at you and what a stupid thing to do. And they’re actually, I think often frightened because they don’t want that other person to go off and be happy because they’re not happy either.

So a lot of investment in keeping the status quo. So I think the way you’ve talked about the Eight of Cups in that sense, that it’s a really sound decision to choose to walk away from amazing success, because you know you will have different success and the success you will have is more congruent with who you truly are. There’s something in a lot of those comments that you’ve made that I just think for people reading the book will strike such a chord.

Terri Connellan: Thank you for those comments. I really appreciate it because it’s something I really felt personally. And my aim in writing the book was to help cause when I went through it, I also felt a bit lost. And there weren’t a lot of frameworks in writing the book. It was working through what I experienced, but then trying to provide some anchors for others.

Meredith Fuller: That was another thing. I did want to mention this because I was very struck by how you wrote the book. What’s unique about your book is that you talk about your own process, including everything you did, every book you read, every person you saw and you very generously talk about what you took from each experience. And it’s almost like a little road map of, here’s a whole lot of books you can buy or types of people you can go and see, and how a coach might be different to a therapist.

And there’s so much that you give in that that is so helpful because traditionally when people write self-help books or here’s your way of looking at your career or change or whatever. They’re very much about, well, this is the system and this is what you follow. And, they don’t compare and contrast other techniques or things that they’ve struck. They don’t suggest that very wide exploration and they don’t talk so much about the internal distress.

They’re much more about, okay, so here’s your problem. So here’s step one and that’ll go to step three and then you’ll be at five and then you’ll be done. And so there’s something quite desiccated about reading those books. Whereas with yours, a) because you’re so honest and open about everything that happened to you, people can feel that you understand them. But the way you talk about how you made decisions about, will I go here? Will I read that? What did that trigger? What did that mean? Why is this person good at this? It’s so much more comprehensive for people to say, okay, well, I didn’t like that book and I didn’t like that person. But you know, it’s like a hairdresser. I’ll go and find one that cuts the hair how I want. Thanks very much.

You’ve really given people permission to play with the way through. And I can certainly see how this kind of approach has been missing in the past because there are a lot of books came out in the eighties and the nineties. It’s almost like we get waves of things happening, but they never really hit the spot about people who had this profound sense of emptiness and loss and confusion and concern.

And they didn’t help people who couldn’t just snappily work through each exercise and tick off all the goals and have it neat and tidy. And, I like it cause it’s messy and our lives are messy. And you’ve really captured that for people, which is nice. And that sense that you have with your work is, well, it is going to be unexpected. We don’t know how this is all going away, but it could be this. It could be that. It could be something else, but there’s growth in it and there’s excitement. And there’s learning in this curiosity, and there’s a sense of mastery rather than having a person feel well look, I’m hopeless, even the help books don’t help me cause I’m so hopeless. So to me, you’ve really picked up on a book for our time.

Terri Connellan: Thank you. I really appreciate that cause often when you’re writing a personal narrative like that, it’s that challenge of sharing your experiences a bit like, show don’t tell. I was just chatting about this in another interview, the difference between telling people to do something versus this is what I went through. And here’s what I suggest, which I thinks a more powerful way to go. And you’re also an author. So tell about your books and the topics you focused on in your writing career.

Meredith Fuller: So I’ve written a number of books that were more academic, but the one I did that was more mainstream was called Working with Bitches and it was identifying the eight types of nasty people that you find, nasty women and how to deal with them. And why I did that was, again, part of the theme of what was happening with my work is women were saying I’m really struggling with a particular woman at work who might be my support person, my boss, my team leader, my colleague, and they were being undermined or they were being distressed and they couldn’t understand what was going on.

They didn’t know how to manage it. And they were being so triggered. It was causing great alarm. So I wanted to identify what was happening with these themes. So I did some research and worked on about 2000 cases and put together types based on all of the materials, the data that I gathered and then worked through, well, how could people deal with that in a way that was safe and in a way that also appreciated their personality structure. Because usually the people who were coming to see me were very much feeling preferred women who avoided conflict, who were frightened by power and control issues and were really getting decimated at work or in relationships. Often it might be something about a mother-in-law or a sister-in-law or somebody’s sister or something.

 So it was a way of validating that what they were feeling was true, because there’s been such a theme of, oh, you can never complain about another woman. We women have to stick together because we’re all a homogenous group and men are the enemy. So you can’t say that you’re struggling with a woman. So they’re actually being silenced before they could even articulate what was going on for them. So it was a way of appreciating that all genders walk up and down a continuum of nice to nasty and what you can do to manage that better.

Terri Connellan: Oh, it sounds a really practical book cause that’s something a lot of us experience in different ways, but maybe don’t have any reference points to make sense of all of that. And often when that happens, we tend to think, oh, it’s us. Is that something you’ve come across?

Meredith Fuller: Absolutely, and of course the other thing with that too, is that often it’s about different personality types. And if you’re not as aware of your own style, you certainly not going to be able to identify what someone else’s style is or where there could be a mismatch or a misunderstanding, or how you could broach that to make it a little more palatable at work.

And one of the key findings in my work, and this has also been researched by Ian Ball, who is our colleague at AusAPT. Interestingly enough back in the day, many, eons ago, I used to work at a university with Ian where he was Head of the Psychology department. So I already knew him before we found ourselves back together in our association.

His research found that while there are far more feeling preferred females, for women in the workplace who had a more senior role, they usually had a thinking preference. So if there’s only about 25% of females have a thinking preference, 75% of those females will be in a senior role in the workplace.

And one of the things that was very clear to me was that people were coming to me with this terrible distress about a thinking preferred manager who actually wasn’t being a bitch, wasn’t being horrible, was actually really trying to help them grow and develop, monitor them, train them, work well with them, but there was such a misunderstanding about the way they went about this. They were really at cross purposes.

So it was also part of my book to say, hang on, maybe that person you’re having trouble with, isn’t a bitch. Maybe it’s something about you you have to look at. So let’s have a look at how you can work better with those people. And I certainly used to find that working in organizations. I’ve done a lot of work in banks and legal firms and universities, where there tend to be more thinking preferred females in positions of leadership and authority. And often they would be having difficulties with their feeling preferred females. And it really was, talking two different worlds, two different languages and so much misunderstanding.

And there were some things you could do to make it work and that really excites me. And again, one of the things I loved in your book, as a thinking preferred female, you operate very much using your feeling and your thinking preferences. And you talk about your integration of those things. And this is so important in terms of, I think all of us men and women being able to access all the parts of ourselves. So I thought you handled that very well. And one of the things I’ve noticed as, I guess walking the talk in your role as President of our association, I noticed that you do the very thing we talk about. You identify well, who are the people on the team, or who the members, or who am I working with? What do those people need to do their best? How can I respond to that, so that I honor the difference that I have around me and I see you actively do that. So I see you working very hard to connect with your committees and your staff and your members and your groups and whatever, and doing it well. And so to me again, there’s that sense of, okay, so here’s someone who writes a book and she actually practices what she’s talking about and I see it. So that was another thing that struck me about what you’ve achieved in this work.

So it also sat really nicely with me about knowing that, it’s very good for many women, I believe to understand a little more about what the thinking preferred woman’s doing, because, historically, that’s been really a problem for thinking preferred females. They’ve had a terrible time at school. They’ve often had a dreadful time when they not yet in a position of authority and they’re struggling. It’s one of those things where the more we understand our gender, the better, and you seem to be saying on our journey to become all of these aspects, let’s understand how it might be played out as we sometimes swing from one extreme to the other till we find that fulcrum balance and why it is important for us to take the time to consider that innermost part of our souls and how we are who we bring to work. We can’t divorce ourselves from all of that.

What happened for me with the book [Wholehearted] was thinking, well, I’m not able to see as many people. I can’t see them in person. We’re doing Zoom work. It’s a bit tricky holding people. Here’s a resource that people can work through that I would say is safe, trustworthy. It doesn’t humiliate anyone. It doesn’t cause people to feel stupid if they can’t work through the exercises or there’s no problem about working through the Companion Workbook and the book. And it’s something that gives us some dialogue when we have a couple of weeks gap between sessions. So I thought you’ve really come up with a tool, right when we must need something.

There used to be a number of books. Everyone would get one every year, like What Color is my Parachute? They were very superficial and they really didn’t hit this spot about people are really saying, who am I really and how do I want to live my life? What does my life stand for? And how am I in relation to others? And so those very fundamental questions and the way we’re changing work. We’re changing work to be, as you would appreciate, most small business run by women, most new business women setting up, most people going off becoming specialists or consultants who are collapsing who they work with at different times.

This is the way that we’re working and doing several jobs in a year. And just going with the flow. And historically, a lot of the books about careers and development just didn’t take into account the new way that work is emerging. So, I’ve been really happy to say, well, here’s a tool that I can recommend both to men and women, interestingly enough, and get them to work through. And then when we talk, they’ve had the chance to really work through some thoughts themselves and that really adds to our work together. So I’ve been really struck by how you’ve put, certainly your understanding of type in, but also your understanding about how organizations have been working and where they need to be working in the future. So it’s got a real breath of fresh air to it.

Terri Connellan: Oh, thank you. And I was really appreciative too of your comments that it’s a book you can use with clients, that idea of particularly in times when we’re not having as much, face-to-face, it’s something people can take away. And it was certainly designed to be part of a whole that people can work through the workbook, read the main book, have their own reflections, have space, create their own ways of working through it. But have a mix as we’ve talked about before of meandering, but also structure to work through. And I guess that’s the teacher in me as well as INTJ coming out. So, yeah, it’s designed to be that sort of self coaching, self-leadership guide as well, supported by also having a face to face.

Meredith Fuller: Yes, that was another thing I liked about it. We want people to sit with the uncertainty. We want people to explore symbolism and dreamwork and art and literature and film and tarot and everything possible. But we want them to be able to do it in a way that they can then integrate that into their everyday life and this helps them do that. Whereas some sort of new age materials, there’s no relationship to get up each day and go to work, come home, and you have to earn an income and you have to feed yourself. And, you have to be in relationship with other people who aren’t on the same journey and all of this sort of thing.

So I felt that you provided those safe walls if you like so there was plenty of space to bounce around in this, but you knew that you were being held in a very caretaking way while you went about exploring all of these, for some people, very new ways of looking at their careers, particularly looking at tarot cards, for example.

Terri Connellan: Exactly. And I think from looking at your body of work, which is a concept I talk about in the book, that all the skills, all the work that we do, the volunteer work, all the different work that we do, often that idea of having multiple sources of income, being a multi passionate, multipotentialite, is very much embraced, I think, by how I’ve moved and certainly it’s embraced in your life. So with all that amazing body of work you have over time and what I also hear from clients is sometimes having lots of passions, people can feel overwhelmed, by which way to go, what to do, what advice would you give to others who are also looking to embrace their multi passionate body of work and interests?

Meredith Fuller: So I had an INTP mother, which is a great mother to have, so she was quite unique and unusual, and her attitude was, you find your own way, Meredith. Value education and trust yourself, back yourself and so for me, I’ve always felt a little different from a lot of people because I’ve always known exactly what I wanted to do is from when I was very young.

So I’ve never felt, oh, there’s too many things, or I don’t know which one to do first. What I’ve always done is I’ve said to myself, I have to go with what’s most important to me at the moment. So what’s the most burning, exciting thing for me now. And I know there’ll always be plenty of time to either come back to something or do it, postpone it and do it later, or do a little bit of it, stop, do something else. I’ve never felt, aw gee, you can’t play with it all. I just knew you could never do it all at the same time. So I find that my question always will be when there are so many things I enjoy doing, how do I choose? I’ll go with what sits inside of me being best, right thing that I have the most energy for. So for me, it’s often about energy.

So I do a lot of pro bono work for clients, particularly cause I work in the creative arts a lot. There are a lot of people in the creative arts, who’ve got no money and I often see a number of those people for nothing. And how do I choose? Because so many people, how do you choose? And something will happen in that engagement with that individual that I’ll feel, and I’ll go with that. So for example, at the moment, this is a funny story, but it’s a good example of how do you choose what you do? We mainly do a lot of our house maintenance ourselves, but in a two story house, there was no way my 70 year old husband was getting up a ladder.

So we had a housepainter come to do the top bit. And he brought his son with him to help hold the ladder. And they were talking and his son had wanted to be an artist and he was really lost. And he was very distressed and there was something in this young man that I felt. So I’ve now been working with him for some months. So he comes every week and we’re exploring his move towards becoming an artist, how he will go about choosing a course to do, how we’ll go about earning some money, to be able to be a student, to purchase all his materials, how he works in the field.

And his sense of identity and who he’s becoming and how he deals with issues because we’ve all got issues, obviously. And because he’s such an aware person, he has a lot to work through. So there was something I felt in him where I felt he had something very special and I wanted to nurture that. And he’s a very humble person and he’s a very respectful person. He’s got qualities as well. So I’ve really felt drawn to working with him. So there’ll be something about that. Or if I’m choosing a play, I want to write, it’ll be a burning issue that I’ve got some energy for. Nothing that might be commercially successful.

It’s always about what I’m interested in and that’s what I’ll do. And if friends come to me and say, how about a project? I’m doing this. Are you interested? Again, it’s always going to be because I either love working with those people or I love the issue and I’m happy to just trust my own sense of where my energy is saying to go.

And it’s very much like that Eight of Cups card. Often it means I walk away from successful things because there’s something new I want to do and different I want to do that the energy is there for. And I know I’m not saying goodbye to everything forever because there’s plenty of time. So it’s something about noticing what’s the spark, what’s the energy, what’s the curiosity. And if you follow that, they’ll always be a few things that bubble up to the very top, rather than everything. And I really love this notion of, just because you’re really good at something, you don’t have to keep doing it. Do something else.

Terri Connellan: Hmm. I love that too. I think that’s great advice because just some of the people I’ve worked with, what you’re saying resonates. And some of them are INFPs too, which is interesting, it’s that idea of just so many passions, so many interests and they compete. But I think that idea of being more attuned to what you’re drawn to and prioritizing that. I’m also hearing you say almost taking a bit of a project approach to things, to help compartmentalize, I guess?

Meredith Fuller: Yeah, I think it’s really important to compartmentalize because I notice for me, if I want to fit a lot of things, I couldn’t keep doing too much of one thing because there wouldn’t be the space. It’s almost like asking yourself, how many days a week are you fit for counseling? How many days a week are you fit for writing? How many days a week are you fit to do radio interviews or whatever it is, and work out roughly what those clusters will look like, and then be really strong.

So I’ll be able to say, well, I counsel on these days so if you can’t fit in with me, sorry, I’ll refer you to someone else because I can’t keep stretching across taking the space from other projects that I really believe in. Because if I do that, I’ll end up getting sick. I’ll end up trying to overstretch and I won’t manage, and it won’t work.

Terri Connellan: So there’s a couple of questions I’m going to ask podcast guests as we go through. And, this being the Create Your Story podcast, it’s a big question, but I’m interested to see just what comes up for you when you’re asked the question, how have you created your story over your lifetime?

Meredith Fuller: Okay. I’ve created my story by allowing myself to sit a bit away from the mainstream. And I’ve enabled myself to listen to what my heart wants to do, even when it seems at odds with what the sensible thing to do is, or the smartest thing to do is, and almost like back myself, even when it looked ridiculous, because I told myself when I was very young, there’ll be a pattern, I don’t understand it yet, but there’ll be a pattern that will make sense to me, but it’s something that I’m doing that’s going to be unique to me. So I can’t be impacted by what everyone else thinks I should do or what one should do.

I have to trust that little voice in me that says, I know I’m here to do something unique for me. And I’ve always done that and to my detriment often, but it’s like I’m absolutely convinced for me that what’s helped me is by wanting to go off and do whatever it is I want to explore because I’m curious about it. Even if it’s not fashionable or even if it’s way too early and then once I’ve understood it or mastered it or done enough, I don’t have to keep doing that. I want to do something else. So a little bit like saying, yeah, just because you’re good at something you don’t have to keep doing it, do something else, as long as it’s what you’re interested in and you believe in it and it sits with your values.

And my values very much came from my childhood and my upbringing, which was about, to care for people and to care for relationships and to care for what the purpose is that we’re here for. And in a deeper sense, in a much deeper sense. And I’ve always appreciated self-expression. And so for me, creating my story was about saying, well, okay if I can trust myself to follow what my interests are and use that as my guide and not be swayed by what everybody else says you should do, or how everyone else goes about doing things, that’s going to keep me most aligned with my true self. And that’s what I’ll follow. And it was pretty clear to me very early on that I didn’t have a lot of the values that mainstream society seems to have.

I believe that if you do things that are really important to you and you do them very well, somehow you’ll be rewarded and it may not be quid pro quo or tit for tat or something, but somehow it’ll work out. If you are transparent and if you do believe in what you do, and if you do respect other people in how you go about that. You know, that whole thing, isn’t it about freedom but freedom as long as you don’t impact on other people’s freedom.

So that’s been a bit of a narrative for me. And it’s almost like if I had to say, well, where does all that come from? I’m convinced it came from being a little girl who used to believe in her dreams and sitting around daydreaming and imagining the future and imagining things way ahead of time and backing that instead of what was just literally right in front of me.

And that came from coming from a family where we didn’t have a lot, it was very difficult. So we had a lot of trauma in the family, a lot of poverty in the family. But what I had with my INTP mother was a woman who said, use your brains and you can help other people. Use your brains and you’ll find a way to construct something positive out of whatever happens. And I saw her do that. So I had a very good role model in my mother. And I also had a very good role model in reading because I love to write, I was always reading books.

I just found that I was far more interested in thinking big picture future than I ever was in what was going on in the here and now. So it was some something about a knowing that I had and that I couldn’t not know once you have that feeling. And also what was good for me, if this makes sense, it’s like I lived my life backwards.

So if you start working at four, that’s a long time that you’re in the workplace, and if you’re very famous, when you’re a child, well, you’ve sort of been there, done that. It doesn’t matter. It’s like I didn’t have to build up to anything. It’s like, well, I’ve already ticked off this and I’ve ticked off that and I’ve ticked off something else.

And so there’s so many things that I had done that really didn’t concern me at all that I could just go along my own merry way, do what I liked because I didn’t have to prove anything. If that made sense.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. That’s fantastic. Thank you. It’s just fascinating to hear how, with all those different things in the mix, how you created your story to where you are now. So thank you for that. So in Wholehearted, I share 15 wholehearted self-leadership tips, particularly for women, but for all people. So I’m interested in what your top wholehearted self-leadership tips might be for women.

Meredith Fuller: The first one is I believe that it’s a good idea to have a small group of people with you, like your clan or friends or colleagues who you trust, that you feel safe with and who have similar shared values. I take that very seriously. I won’t work on projects with people that I don’t feel that we’re aligned about our values and honesty, transparency, trust, loyalty, all those things are really important to me.

So, that’s a very important issue about who do you connect with. I believe that it’s important to work on communication. So, if I’m going to do it, I need to know how I feel. So I’ll do a lot of checking. How am I feeling? What’s being triggered in me? What do I need to do about that? Can I talk to someone? How do I do that? So in my life I’ve always been keen to look for wise counsel. When I was a child, I got to figure out what I would look for in a partner, because how would I know I didn’t have a father. We were very isolated in our home. There weren’t very many male role models.

So I read all the classics when I was in primary school and I thought, I don’t want all the exciting men. I want all the nice men that I’m reading about in these classics. So I thought: these are the qualities I want in a man. I want a nice man. And I got it from the books. And then as I got older, I realized that I want to understand myself and that will help me understand others.

So anything that would help me do the best I can for myself, I will do. So I went into therapy. I went into supervision. As a psychologist, I think it’s important that we do our own therapy and we do our own supervision. So, whether you go to coaches or whoever you go to, it’s going to someone where you can actually explore your process. So I think that’s really important.

And of course, reading, I’m always reading millions of books so I think that’s important. The other thing I think is working out very simply, what do you need for wellness? So, I’m a diabetic, I’ve got a lot of health issues. I have to say part of my day is managing my diabetes, is going to appointments and is to understand that as I get older, I have less energy than I did when I was younger because of that.

So therefore I have to really cherry pick my projects. So I think, know what your health is. One of the biggest problems I’ve seen in nearly every woman who’s come to me is they push themselves way too far. They work too long hours. Doing work that’s killing them and they can’t stop. And so I think it’s really important to say in the week, how much space have you got for work? How much do you need for sleep? How much do you need for your internal life? How much do you need for your relationships and make that pie and make it work?

And I’d also do that with being strict about those boundaries. So both Brian and I, because we’re helpers and we’re feelers, we’re busy. So people come to helping, feeling, busy people and you need to learn to say no. And so while it would be nice to do everything everyone wants you to do, I can’t. So, be really clear about how do you cluster it. So it might be for me, I work in clusters of time. So it might be two days for this and all night for that and a weekend for that. And that’s how I like to work. Other people it might be well mornings isfor this and afternoons is for that. So know what your best rhythm is and then be really strict about how you protect that. And don’t keep saying, oh, I’ll just let this one in. I’ll just let that one in because you’ll get overloaded and you get sick and then, you’re no good to anyone.

So I think they’re probably the key things for me, but, really overall, it’s something about, got to know who you are. You got to know what’s important to you. You got to know what you’re here for. What’s your purpose. And the threads will probably stay the same, although the execution of that will shift over time.

And so you have to keep saying, does this matter to me? Is this engaging me? Am I growing in this? Am I learning in this? Am I sharing with others with this? What’s the point of me doing this and doing it because you want to do it, you believe in it and you love it. So they’re probably the most important things, but you know, it be sensible. Like you might have to say to yourself, well, how much money do I need to earn to live for the week? Okay. I need to earn x dollars. How many hours a week can I possibly work x hours? Well, what do I need to earn per hour to do that? And what will I do to get that? And then if I’m prepared to say, I’ll do a day for that, then that gives me three days for something else. Okay. That’s fine. So it’s not like a childish, I’ll just do what I like, blow everyone else. It’s about making choices and decisions that give the bulk of your time to what you love and you think is very important, but also that you’re mindful that you do live in a society and you do have to buy food and pay rent and, you know, whatever. So something about, honouring, not only yourself, but the other in relationships.

Terri Connellan: It’s a rich body of knowledge, honed from all your experiences and all your client work too. So thank so much for sharing that. And thanks so much for your time today. It’s been a fantastic conversation and I’m sure the listeners will get so many gems of wisdom and prompts to think about themselves. And thank you also for your comments and kind insights about Wholehearted, my book as well, really appreciate that and your support. So, Meredith, where can people find more about you and your body of work online?

Meredith Fuller: My website’s MeredithFuller.com.au. That’s probably a good place to start.

Terri Connellan: That’s great. And you’ve got so much on there about all the things you’re up to your books, your work with your husband, Brian, which we didn’t talk about so much, but he’s a filmmaker, psychologist as well, and your partnership is an incredible part of your life as well. So we’ll pop the links to Meredith’s key work in the show notes and thanks everyone for listening and thanks so much Meredith.

About Meredith Fuller

Meredith’s concurrent careers have included author, playwright, columnist & media commentator, talkback radio guest, theatre director & producer, TV co-host, actor, psychological profiler and trainer. As a psychologist in private practice, providing counselling and career development to individuals and groups, she has also consulted to organisations on professional development and interpersonal skills for over 40 years. She ran a university careers counselling service for 12 years and has been a sessional lecturer in postgraduate courses in vocational psychology at several universities.

Meredith’s website: https://meredithfuller.com.au/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mfpsy/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fuller.walsh

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meredith-fuller-8075a110/

Links to explore:

Book Club: Wholehearted Self-leadership Book Club – open for enrolment now – join us for January 19/20 book club start.

My books:

Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition

Wholehearted Companion Workbook

Free resources:

Chapter 1 of Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition

https://www.quietwriting.net/wholehearted-chapter-1

Other free resources: https://www.quietwriting.com/free-resources/

My coaching:

Work with me

Personality Stories Coaching

The Writing Road Trip – a community program with Beth Cregan – kicking off Jan 2022

Connect on social media

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/writingquietly/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/writingquietly

Twitter: https://twitter.com/writingquietly

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/terri-connellan/