Moment 24 - Mary Portas on Finding Your Truth When You’re Feeling Lost

00:04you say that having it all and having more stuff we thought that was it which leads me into something else i wanted to talk to you about i read you'd said um that you're in the public eye you're making more money than ever and it was extraordinarily exciting but at the age of 48 you found yourself crying almost every day i was probably physically exhausted um i just didn't get that joy you know I just was on this I was doing tv shows radio shows I had my own collection I had the business I had two kids and there were parts of it that was just you know incredible I look back and think what some great years but I was exhausted and you're not allowed to say that actually I was thinking about that at that time there would be those you know women on the front of the Sunday Times magazine like that.

00:54We can't show our post, but it'll be like that. You can have it all. They've got eight kids and they would get up and they would be doing, you know, yoga at 6am and then having a global call with China or whatever. Then, you know, they'd be dropping the kids off at school while chatting to God knows whoever, sorting out the day. And you just thought, oh God, how shit is that life? Where are you? Where are you? And I lost me in that. there wasn't times where it wasn't fantastic there was but where was I I didn't stop to breathe I didn't stop to truly connect truly connect with me and I remember I went away um to some very expensive spa place where it was all om shanty and downward dogs and eating stuff stuff and everyone's all this you know you go where rich people are because you got money and you go and you discover you and um and I remember sitting in this yoga session and I just was crying and I was like please stop please stop Mary please stop and there's all these sort of women in their lululemon and I was going just crying and I thought and I went in to um there was this wonderful Indian guru who used to sit in this little room which you could go and meet and chat with and I remember going in to see him and he didn't say a word and I just was crying I didn't

02:21want to speak with him but I wanted to go to the bookshelf that was behind him because I knew there was some books there and I picked up Eckhart Tolle's New Earth and I just took it and as I left he went that's the right one and I went back to my room and I read it and I read it on the beach days i was like oh my god i've got the world wrong i've just completely got this wrong and that was a start of my journey i took my young i'm still you know getting still partly hybriding that life i'm never going to sit in an ashram but i i discovered how to connect back truly with me and stop loading this stuff in your life mary and and saying no two questions there which is regarding this book, this Eckhart Tolle book that you talk about, A New Earth.

03:15What was it? What was the key lessons that imparted on you about life and how you were living? I was living totally outwardly to my ego and my persona. Mary Portis, Mary with Bob, Mary the businesswoman, Mary the mother. I was not connecting truly with who? My spirit, my soul. so everything was done to feed that and you believe that that is you you believe that that is your personality you believe all of that you talk about you thought you'd become a bit of a caricature oh for sure but i also milked that that was very profitable but you know i knew it was brand mary the red bob the rings you know i've always loved fashion I've always loved, but it was very much, you know, a signature. So, and yeah, of course, I mean, I advise businesses globally on brands. I was, I suppose, a brand myself. And I just didn't want to be that anymore.

04:17Philosophy is very clear on this idea of like abandoning your true self and the consequences of that. Your ego, your outer ego. Yeah. And it seems like such a clearly losing game. And I think people listening to this are probably have to be well you are some stage in the process you've either um you're probably you're either at the start and you've not yet tried to abandon yourself because you think that you know because the outside world has convinced you and incentivized you to do so especially social media that'll have you trying to abandon yourself and become the kardashians whatever whatever or you are in the process of um abandoning yourself or trying to and you're feeling the sense of despair and probably um lack of orientation that comes with that or you've come out the other end which it kind of sounds like you've you've got to where you've realized that you try to abandon yourself and the only true answer is to to be yourself because everything else is despair you either succeed in abandoning yourself is this one i think it's called stodard this swedish philosopher used to say if you succeed in abandoning yourself then you end up in despair if you fail in abandoning yourself then you end up in despair so the only true true path to to joy

05:22is to accept who you are yes i think you know the thing is it's you know it's knowing what the truth is it doesn't mean that we're not going to have our this we are truly connecting on a truth here i don't think we're you know performing but part of it is performative because we are doing a job that's going to be this podcast but it's being on the path some people never even know that path there you know most people don't and that you know i remember when i first discovered it and people like don't you know don't talk about that because you might sound a bit odd on you know spirituality or don't talk about that and you're like and i didn't for a long while you know i even was chatting to a great producer at the bbc saying why isn't there a show on something like this on the bbc like no don't mention spirituality in the bbc at the moment like what this this needs to get out there and it's not hokey pokey stuff this is our truth and I think what I've tried to do is to allow the people who work with me express that and know about it and we share it we share it in the business and it just opens this whole thing up and there are times when you have to be as I say performative and be, I'm Mary Portas, you know, going out, I'm working,

06:47I'm writing a piece or I'm doing, of course, but I'm rooted in who I am deeply. And I think it isn't, whatever we call it, whether it's spirituality, whether it's our soul, whether it's our spirit, whether it's our truth, whether it's our vibration, whether it's our, you know, whatever, our vortex or our frequency, as Oprah says, whatever, getting back to that. You know, I remember I was listening to the lovely Irish poet, and I'll think of his surname and I'll think about it, and they'll all come to me after I've done this.

07:18But anyway, I remember him talking about when he used to give the last rites, he used to be in Ireland, and he'd go to give the last rites to whoever was dying, and he'd go in and he'd see these little pinched faces that had lived a life that wasn't in line with their true self because they couldn't, they had no choice. and he just said it used to make him feel so, so sad. And then he would give them the last rights and he would literally see the pain on their faces, their skin just unstressed and unwrinkled because they were able just to be.

07:55And that is the greatest gift I think we can give to anything and to our kids, you know. I mean, I put them through a great academic system because I could, but I always said, you choose. I remember my daughter coming to me when she just finished Oxford, she got into Oxford, and she was like, I was deeply proud. And she finished her degree and she said, Mum, I know everyone's going to expect me to go in and make a lot of money. I don't want to do that.

08:20And I said, why are you explaining that to me? Like, you know, I'm really going to judge you on that. And she wanted to do something that just connected, not with what she did, but with where her truth was. And that's the only thing I think we need to try and find in life. Now, your truth probably was that, you know, you wanted to get to that place where you were able to say, I did this because that's the truth that was important to you because everyone else was telling you you can't do something.

08:46You're not sitting in this system. I was much the same. Much the same. I met some old school friends and they were like, whoa, you know, my life. Because I was just always the one in trouble. I remember getting 17% in physics and thinking, I don't give a shit. I don't give a shit. And I was like, oh my God. I was like 17. I never felt embarrassed. I was just like, I knew I was a bit different as well, though. You know, you felt different. I did feel different.

09:10Oh, 100%. I felt different. But I wanted to be like the middle-class girls that were living in Chorley Wood. And I came from the working class. So it was the kids from Watford that got into the grammar school that were the sort of, that parents didn't have the money. We used to get the bus out. And then the middle class from Chorley Wood and all those areas, their parents used to drop the roofing cars. And then they'd get to the sixth one where they'd drive in themselves.

09:32I was like, oh my God, I want to be this. And then I went, nah. Nah, I don't want to be that life. I want my life. I want my life.