Slowing Creating a Happy Life: Jane Matthews Interview
By Alex Fayle

You already know this week’s Someday Interviewee through her many guest posts her on Someday Syndrome, but for the final interview for September’s self-development theme, I thought I’d give you the chance to get to know Jane a little better.

Jane Matthews of Small Books and Someone Nicer
Jane is a writer and workshop leader, whose books and courses aim to help others discover how to live more authentic lives (since we teach what we need to know..!)

Name one moment in your life when you threw a pity party for yourself and the reasons why you felt you weren’t able to achieve your goals. Were you feeling stuck? Had you felt you failed? What wasn’t working in your life?
I was stuck at home with two tiny children and the only thing dragging me out of bed each morning was the need to respond to their demands. Outwardly I had everything I thought I’d wanted: I’d married a good and loyal friend, we’d bought a country cottage looking out over poppy fields and I’d become a full-time mum.

Inwardly the part of me that would have been happy to stay in bed for the rest of my life recognised the extent to which my misery was entirely down to giving up on my real dreams. I’d fooled myself by buying into the conventional ideas of what a perfect life should look like rather than going in search of my own. My mother said I had post-natal depression. I knew that was I was actually suffering from was the shock of how deeply I’d betrayed myself.

Even our lowest moments fulfill a need in us or express our desires. When you threw yourself that pity party, what did you hope to gain? What need did you fulfill?
Initially what I wanted was for someone to step in and sort out the mess I’d made of my life. One of my fantasies was driving my car into a brick wall, injuring myself just badly enough that I’d be whisked to hospital and looked after. I’d proved I couldn’t be trusted with my own life, so why not let someone else do it?

At a deeper level, it’s been my experience that we sometimes allow ourselves to sink to the bottom of the pit in order to generate enough momentum through misery to get us up and out the other side: a bit like pedalling a bike like fury downhill in order to work up the speed to conquer the steep slope on the other side.

I needed time wallowing in my mistakes and I needed to get to the point where I could look myself right in the face and admit that in listening to the hubbub of what the world seems to expect of us I’d failed to listen to every single one of the whispers from my soul that were telling me I was way, way off track!

Tell us what you did to break up the pity party. What actions did you decide to take? Did someone help you buoy your spirits? Push you along?
Thank God for Louise Hay; for Susan Jeffers and countless other self-help writers; for my sister; and for the hills of northern England… (see below)

Can you look back on that moment and tell us how you felt when you did decide to take action? What results came about from your decision to take charge and move on?
There was never a moment. What there was was a journey which took me years, but which helped me unpick the mess I’d made and start to see what I needed to do to create a truly authentic life.

I’d always wanted to walk the Coast to Coast, 185 miles across northern England, taking in the Lake District, Yorkshire Dales and North Yorks Moors. Since my sister, who was also my best friend, lived in the north east, we began stealing a couple of weekends away each year from our everyday lives in order to walk this route.

Those weekends were what saved my sanity. I’d hand the kids over to my husband on Friday night and with Louise Hay or Susan Jeffers for company on the CD player in the car, drive 200 miles to meet my sister for two days tramping the hills and talking honestly about our joys and miseries and dreams and mistakes. The renewed sense of direction and purpose which we both began to discover will be forever attached in my mind to the landscapes we were walking through. And in time, knowing a weekend was coming up, would actually work as a spur to make the changes we’d talked about on our last outing so I’d be able to tell my sister how I’d moved on.

It took us four years to complete the walk travelling east from Robin Hood’s Bay to St Bee’s Head in the west. By the time we’d reached the Cleveland Hills I’d started writing again. When we hit the watershed, where the rivers of England have turned the Dales into a vast soggy sponge of moorland, I’d given up a part-time job paying pin money and gone back to journalism.

And after a scary time getting lost on the unforgiving peaks above Haweswater in the Lakes, I found I had the courage to leave my marriage and move, with the children, into a new home.

Everyone has a Someday problem hiding deep inside, even little ones. What variety of the Someday Syndrome do you currently harbor? What would you like to achieve but haven’t yet?
No matter how far I’ve travelled – and my sister and I continue to walk-for-therapy at least twice a year – I’ve yet to out-distance that temptation to fall into line with others’ ideas and expectations of how life should look. Every so often I catch myself in the middle of serious self-deceit, most recently when I considered ‘doing the sensible thing’ and returning to corporate life as an easier option than trying to build my dream career as a writer and workshop leader.

I’m not there yet, indeed ‘pin money’ is what it currently looks like, but it helps to remind myself it took my four years to cross England so it’s OK if it takes me a few years to properly reset my internal compass.

Examining your Someday Syndrome problem, what are you currently doing to resolve it and eliminate it from your life?
An important part of staying true to myself is daily spiritual practice. I start each day with at least an hour’s reflection, reading, meditation and visualisation – more if I can manage it. For me, the first hours of the day are the time I seem most open to getting in touch with my own inner wisdom. It’s a bit like the blackboard in a classroom. First thing, it’s clean, so anything written on it stands out sharply. Later, as the calls and emails and demands on my time flood in, everything is a little fuzzy and congested and I can’t make the words out easily.

Many people suffer the same problems you do. You’re not alone, and neither are they. What would you tell people in your situation right now to help them avoid what you’re going through?
One of the most liberating moments for me in recent times was hearing Gill Edwards read the poem ‘Wild Geese’ by Mary Oliver that starts ‘You do not have to be good’.

That’s it. I do not have to be good and you do not have to be good. All we have to do is be true to ourselves.

If you could ask for one thing, right now, to help you overcome your Someday Syndrome, what type of help would you ask for? You might be tempted to provide a cheeky answer, but stop and think a moment about what would really help you.
If I could attend a personal development workshop every month I’d probably never waver in my conviction that money comes from doing what I love. I do find contact with others, and the space to explore myself away from daily routines really helps me recharge and refocus. A workshop while walking in the hills would be even better…

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