Holly Willoughby on her new book Reflections and finding herself again

Virgin Radio

5 Nov 2021, 12:41

The presenter, mum, meditation-convert and author joined the Chris Evans Breakfast Show with Sky to talk to Sam Pinkham about her latest literary offering, how she's got so zen in a world of chaos and how we all can too.

She told Sam what her hopes for the book are: “The success of it is hoping people read it and then pass it onto a friend because it resonates with them in some way. I reached the point where for a long time I’d been coasting through life, getting on with a huge to-do list that you get with life, whether that's being a parent or your job or your career and I think that at the moment in life, we end up high-fiving ourselves for being incredibly busy. It's like a badge of honour to sit down at the end of the day and be utterly exhausted.

“Everything in my life I have is very blessed, I have a wonderful husband and children and I love my career but it felt like there was something that was missing somehow and the more I sat still and the more I started to tune within and think about things, I realised the thing that was missing was me. I'd dedicated every part of me to all different areas of life and I just needed to pull a little bit of it back because I'd lost myself a little bit.

"The more busy we are, the more validated we feel and I think that’s us saying to ourselves, if we just sit with ourselves that's not good enough. We have to be doing something and that's a bad message in itself."

She continued: "Sometimes to sit with yourself and listen to your own head is the scariest thing to do and we're not ready to do that yet or we don't want to know what's in there for fear of what we might bring up so we just keep running and we keep going and I think sometimes we just need to ask ourselves, are we running to something or are we running away from something?

“That stuff will come up at some point in your life and if you don't deal with it in a safe way at the right time for you then at some point it will come out sideways. So I think it is just good to take the time to look after yourself."

On thinking she’d never be able to meditate, she shared: “I wanted to be part of that world but I felt so on the outside of it because I didn't think I’d be capable of it. I didn't think it was a thing that was going to be in my life but I knew that I needed something, I needed something to quieten that part of my brain down so that I could reap all the benefits of that space that meditation gives you. I just thought, there's no way my brain is going to shut up because it doesn't.

“I started with mantra based meditation so when your mind is thinking about things you come back to the mantra, but the whole point of it is that you don't need to control it, you just let it happen and that's what I love about it more than anything is that actually it does all the hard work for me.”

Suggesting people don't have to follow all the classic life 'rules', she said: “Society has this plan for us and this is very generalising and I'm aware of that and I think we all have our plan, but for me it was: be at school, go to college, possibly go to university, come out, get a job, meet someone, fall in love, get married, buy a house, have kids, ta da! And that keeps you really busy for a really long time and then it spits you out the other end and you go, the list just ran out! What else am I supposed to do?

“And what you suddenly realise is you've done all these things that society expects of you - and they are lovely - but when you get to the end, because you haven't really been choosing the things individually yourself, you’ve just been doing what's expected, you suddenly come out the other side and have no idea of who you are and what you're meant to be doing.

“It’s good to make up your own rules sometimes and not just be guided by what's expected of you otherwise you come out the other side and you're lost because you don't know what to do."

On deleting all parent guilt, she said: “Guilt is my overriding factor in all areas of my life, it’s my strongest feeling that either pulls me back or pushes me forward. Statistically 77% of women are in charge of childcare whether they be working mums or not so I think that that maybe has something to do with it.

“The judgement from others comes in that you can't be both, that you have to choose one or the other and if you're a working mum then surely your children in some way are suffering because you're not dropping them off of school, you're not there all the time and I think mums that choose to stay at home have this but the other way. 

“I think what you've just got to do is work out where that judgement is coming from and if I think to myself do I actually believe that? I'm punishing myself thinking that other people think that my kids are suffering and that I don't love my kids enough.

“Do I actually think that? No, they're very well rounded, gorgeous individuals and I'm incredibly proud of them and I love them more than anything in the world. So I'm just choosing to go, right I'm not going to feel guilty over your beliefs. I'm now just going to know my own head and my own thoughts because it's madness otherwise.”

On embracing anger, she admitted: “I love anger. I never used to. Once I started looking inwardly I was thinking, I'm not sure if this is working because I'm not getting better, I'm getting angry about everything. My husband was like, you need to back away from the meditation right now. What I realised was, was that I was experiencing strong emotions instead of living in this safe, middle ground, kind of bubbling along in the land of nice.

"I was feeling strong emotions for the first time and what's brilliant about anger is if you look at it in the right way… if you sit back and think, what was behind that? Was it coming from a place of insecurity? Was it coming from a place of fear? And sometimes I find myself thinking, I sit and talk with my friends all the time about these thoughts and feelings or what's going on and suddenly in this sharp flash of anger, I got to the root of what was really going on in a second so it was a really powerful way of actually finding out what was behind my feelings.”

Who should read her book? She said: “Anyone that may be like me who just might be thinking what's next? That feeling of being outside of your own body and needing to bring yourself back. I think all of us can identify with that at whatever stage we're in.”

Reflections is out now.

Visit her new wellness website at wyldemoon.co.uk

For more great interviews listen to The Chris Evans Breakfast Show with Sky, weekdays from 6:30am on Virgin Radio, or catch up on-demand here.