WISDOM IN HEELS / SOPHIE LE BROZEC
Oh, am I excited today!
It’s been bloomin’ ages since I’ve done a Wisdom In Heels interview (if you missed the series, think inspirational interviews with the very best kind of women and catch up here). Well over a year in fact, but after so many of you said you loved them, I’m hoping to bring more of them to you on a regular basis and I’m starting today with an absolute cracker!
If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to ditch the day job and work for yourself or dreamt about moving abroad and living in an exotic location, then this is the post for you.
Sophie Le Brozec, whom you’re about to learn much more about, is one of the most inspiring women I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. She’s also one of the friendliest. She’s a woman who doesn’t just talk the talk, but lives it! And lives it very well, from one of the most beautiful islands in the world.
This is an interview which will make you think, give you hope and perhaps even get that inner fire to do something different with your life, burning again. It really is a belter.
And then if you love what you read and fancy changing your life, you might want to consider joining Sophie (and myself!) to take part in her Life Reboot Camp which starts next Monday. (Scroll to the bottom or keep reading for more information and to grab the heavily discounted introductory price.)
Hello Sophie! Please introduce yourself to PIH readers and tell us a little about you.
Hi lovely Katie and thanks so much for having me here, you know I’ve been a PIH fan for the longest time, back from when I first started out with my parenting blog, Franglaise Mummy.
So for all those PIH readers who don’t know me, my name is Sophie Le Brozec, but don’t be fooled by the exotic-sounding surname – I’m a Brit who married a Frenchman. I am mum to two girls, Léna is 11 and Clémence is 5, and we live on the tropical island of Mauritius, in the middle of the Indian Ocean. In my 11 years of parenting I’ve been a working mum, a stay at home mum and a work at home mum, in France (where I lived for 12 years) then in the UK, and now in Mauritius where we moved to in 2015.
I am passionate about guiding, inspiring and motivating women – especially mums – to love the life they live, no matter what that life looks like. I do this through blog posts, a private membership club – Love Your Life Club and my Life Reboot Camp.
I absolutely love following your adventures, you really do seem to have such an adventurous and go getting spirit! What main piece of advice would you give to someone who is toying with the idea of making a huge change in their life but terrified to take action?
With the crazy risks and big decisions I’ve made over the years there are two very important things I’ve learnt:
1) You will always regret far more not doing that thing, than going for it and having it fail.
2) Your worst case scenario is never as bad as you think it will be (believe me – my first big one was losing my forever home, having to move from Nice, France back to my hometown in the UK, to live with my parents in my childhood home, with my husband and young daughter in tow).
You seem to live the most idyllic life now with your beautiful family in Mauritius, but I know life hasn’t always been so rosy for you. Can you tell us a little about your darkest days and how you managed to pull yourself out of them and go on to create a life that you absolutely love?
My natural default setting is happy, positive and upbeat but despite this I have gone through some very dark times. An emotionally abusive relationship, miscarriage, post-natal depression, business failure and more have brought me very low in the past.
Sometimes I wondered how I would ever get out and find ‘me’ again. I went on a quest for a better, happier life about a decade or so ago, and in the past ten years I have devoured information (books, documentaries, talks, events, podcasts, courses and more) on numerous different ways to overcome the dark times. And I have a cocktail of things that work for me, all of which I share in my Life Reboot Camp.
A key one for me a few years ago was expressing gratitude, and keeping a gratitude journal when nothing seemed to be working was what pulled me back from the brink. I also believe there is a lot to be said for digital detoxes and no screen time for lifting us up. I read Thrive by Arianna Huffington in 2014 and it was life-changing for me. Up until then I was a social media and online addict, but that book was a real wake-up call for me, and a couple of months after reading it I did a full two week digital detox.
Don’t get me wrong – I run several online businesses, I’m a blogger and I’m on social media, so I couldn’t actually survive without the online world but I force myself to do it all in moderation these days. Since changing my habits I have been reading an average of 52 books a year (because I’ve always been a book worm, and this is something I had lost through being online constantly). I sleep better, I’m far happier and more chilled out when I reduce my online time.
We’ve known each other for a while now and one of the things that I’m such a fan of when it comes to you and your work, is your honesty. Particularly when it comes to being a woman and juggling a fulfilling career with motherhood. Why do you think honesty is so important when it comes to sharing your life with others via the web?
Social media is incredibly false – people (especially women) can take fifty photos before sharing the only one they are happy with. And to be honest that scares the crap out of me. I have two daughters and I don’t want them to think that this is reality and that they are therefore somehow falling short of this online perfection.
So I share my honest stories on my blog – warts and all – and I share photos of me, a 40-something mum of two, in my bikini online. Because I want people to see what I say and the photos I share and say ‘phew, it’s not just me‘ and feel a little bit less alone in their struggle with life, career and motherhood.
What are the main challenges you face as a thoroughly modern woman and how do you best tackle them?
Balance. I want to feel fulfilled in my career but I want to be present for my kids and husband. I want to be there for my kids but equally I want my girls to see their mum doing something she loves and excelling at it. There are days when I feel shit because I chose to work on my business instead of going into my five year old’s school and she tells me, with her sad face, ‘all the other mummies were there’….until I ask around and discover that half the mummies weren’t actually there.
So first of all I don’t beat myself up. I remind myself ‘I am doing the best I can’. I am one of five children and whilst my mum was a stay at home mum until the youngest started school, there was no way she could be there for all of us. I was often left to entertain myself or dragged off as my mum taxied my siblings to swimming lessons or Girl Guides. And I only have happy memories of my childhood.
When Léna, our eldest, was five I was working full-time in central London. I left the house at 8am and came home at 7pm every day. I never took her to school or picked her up at the school gates. Her au pair took her on her first day in Reception and I missed her graduation from Reception at the end of the year. She is now 11 years old and has no recollection of either of these events. What she does remember is having dinner with me and her dad when we got home from work every day, me putting her to bed, reading her stories, giving her cuddles.
We beat ourselves up so much as we try and juggle the pressure and expectations we put on ourselves (and that society puts on us), but we’re doing fine. No we’re doing pretty damn well. And I remind myself of this all the time.
These days we’re surrounded by advice and inspirational quotes which is fantastic, but what advice do you hope to pass on to your two beautiful daughters as they learn to navigate the very complex world we live in?
Be kind and do your best. We might look back and regret things we did or didn’t do, but if it is the best we could do with what we had or knew at the time, then you can’t ask for more than that. And being kind is so important to me. Through my work I hope we can say goodbye to a world of bitchiness and inspire women to raise other women up. I hope that a world of sisterhood and kindness is the one my girls become adults in.
If someone reading this interview is feeling incredibly low right now about their lives, what would you to say to them? And what’s the first thing you would advice them to do to get out of the funk?
Talk to someone. A loved one or a stranger. A friend or a professional. It doesn’t matter who, just get it out there. It’s far less scary and daunting when it’s out not in. Don’t be afraid to feel your feelings. When I was a teen my mum was a volunteer bereavement counsellor and she instilled in me the importance of not running away from our painful feelings, as they have a habit of coming back and biting us on the bum otherwise.
So if you are angry, feel your anger – rant, scream, shout, punch pillows, go for a run, whatever you need to do. You can be all positive mental attitude afterwards, but first of all process all those negative feelings.
You need to create your magic bag of tricks that gets you out of your funk – does writing work for you? Running? A girls night out? Cuddles with your cat? Journalling? Build up a list or bag of tricks of what makes you feel better – this will be trial and error first of all. Try everything as you test what works for you, keep what works and ditch what doesn’t. I know for me running is no good as I’m not Sporty Spice. Watching or reading something uplifting whilst eating or drinking something I like works well for me. Cuddles with my husband, kids or furry friends are in my bag of tricks too. Walking and processing all the thoughts is top of my list too (I’m not sporty but I do love a good walk!).
Figure out what works for you and do that.
Your new Life Reboot Camp sounds absolutely brilliant and I for am SO looking forward to getting started. What can you tell us about it and why you decided to create it? What can women expect from it and how can it help them?
And I can’t wait to welcome you into it! I started my mummy blog in early 2012 and very quickly I had women from all over the world asking me questions, and for help with their own life issues. For years I replied to these messages and did my best to help, inspire and motivate via blog posts. But there’s only so much you can do to help in an email or in a blog post. I wanted to do more. I am passionate about helping women live their best life, and be happy and fulfilled in their own lives (I must be as I was doing it for free all those years!!) and I wanted to find a way to do more. On one of my ‘thought-processing’ walks the idea came to me, with the name and all the modules I wanted to cover. I quickly ran home and typed it all up before fleshing it out afterwards.
Women can expect to literally see their lives changed for the better. In early 2015 I was working as a full-time childminder and night-time blogger / author in London, by the end of that year I was living my dream life in Mauritius. Not because I came into any money, but because I looked at things differently. I asked questions and did research.
In Life Reboot Camp I share the ins and outs of my own experiences and teach you how to live your dream life, whether that means making one small tweak to your everyday routine or quitting your life as it is and hotfooting it to a tropical island!
Over the 6 week course we cover 6 modules:
1) YOU
2) Woo-Woo
3) Relationships and friendships
4) Parenting
5) Work & Career
6)Decision-making and facing fears
With 6 bonuses from a variety of experts
My aim being that we cover every aspect of your life so you have all the tools to live your best life – whatever that looks like for you.
Over the years I have bought and followed, created and run, numerous online courses, so Life Reboot Camp is (hopefully) the easiest programme to follow, thanks to these previous experiences. I am a busy mum so everything on the course is available online and offline. There are no fixed schedules to follow. You do the work in your own time, whenever and wherever suits you. You can follow the content via video, audio or text depending on what works for you, or a mix of all three. You can do bite-size 5-10 minute chunks or binge on it like your favourite Netflix series.
And because I hate the fear of disappointment when buying anything online the full course is 100% refundable if you find it didn’t help you, even if that’s right at the end after you have all the content. That’s how much I believe in what I’m teaching.
And final question! One thing that being a mum has brought to the forefront of my mind, is the thought of the legacy I will leave behind me when I’m gone. So I wonder lovely Sophie, how do you hope to be remembered?
As someone who brought change for the better. When I was a teen I told my parents I wanted to be the next female Prime Minister as I was so upset by various politicians’ actions, but quickly decided I wasn’t cut-throat enough to go into politics. I hope that via my corner of the online world I get to bring about change for the better. That through me women are happier, which makes for happier kids and families, happier business places, happier neighbourhoods and societies. That through me we all practise kindness to everyone around us – friends and strangers alike. That through me women say no to nastiness to other women and instead put their hand out to raise a fellow woman up. That’s what I hope for and that’s what I aim for every day.
Life Reboot Camp – SPECIAL OFFER!
Join Sophie and shake up your life by signing up on her *Life Reboot Camp. Packed full of oodles of information and inspiration, videos, audios and worksheets, the course starts on Monday 26th February.
The usual price for the camp is $497 but to make it as accessible as possible during this launch period you can join at $300 less – for just $197 or for $75 a month over 3 months. The discount ends on Sunday 25th February and if you’re one of the first to sign up, you’ll also get extra goodies too!
So what are you waiting for? If you’re stuck in a rut or wondering how on earth you can improve you life, this camp could well be exactly what you need. I’ll hopefully see you there!
* This post contains an affiliate link which means if you purchase the Life Boot Camp through this post, I’ll receive a little thank you.
It was so much fun to do this interview with you Katie. I hope that your readers get a lot from this and I’m here if anyone has any questions, or wants to know anything more about my journey or experiences. I can’t wait to welcome you on-board my Life Reboot Camp, along with any of your lovely readers who want to join us.
Big love, Sophie xx