[00:00 – 05:00] Hayley introduced Carolyn Apostolou and the SHINE framework.
[05:00 – 10:00] The discussion covered sleep, hydration, intention, nutrition, and exercise.
[10:00 – 15:00] Carolyn stressed that leaders should model boundaries and recovery at work.
[15:00 – 20:00] She described depletion signs like fatigue, skipped meals, irritability, and poor focus.
[20:00 – 30:00] Routines were framed as flexible supports that should adapt during busy periods.
[30:00 – 36:00] Carolyn outlined workshops, coaching, and retreats on sleep, boundaries, resilience, and grief.
[36:00 – 45:24] She closed by recommending walks, friendships, and her website and social profiles.
Hayley Osborne: Carolyn, welcome to the Hayley Osborne Show. I’m so glad that you’re here.
Carolyn Apostolou: Thanks, Hayley. Thank you so much for having me.
Hayley Osborne: I feel like it was time to press record because you and I have so much in common that if we didn’t press record, I would just we could talk all day. And if you if we lived in the same state, ah, I think that like we would like be very good friends. Well, that’s my take. I’m usually like good with like gut feel and you know all the things. So, look, welcome to the podcast. And for the listeners of mine that don’t know who you are and what you do, are you able to give us a 101 on all of that.
Carolyn Apostolou: Absolutely, yep. Well, hi everyone. I’m Carolyn Apostoloo. I’m based in Melbourne. I’m a busy mum of four children. Hayley and I’ve just been chatting about that. I’ve got two daughters and two sons that keep me very busy. I like to say it’s organized chaos. And as much as I love being a mum and I love everything to do with home life and just supporting them and nurturing them. I really, really love having my own business, and my business revolves around workplace well-being. So I have a background in psychology. I ended up teaching psychology for many years, and now I’m running mental health workshops and anything to do with well-being, supporting employees, supporting senior management, executive teams, taking teams away on retreat, coaching beautiful professional women who lead their own business and senior executives in the in the busy workplace. Really about simple, easy habits that can support their well-being, so they’re really functioning and feeling amazing. And when they are feeling amazing, and like we were just saying, Hayley, they’re a better parent, they’re a better partner, they’re a better friend, they’re a better boss, and everything has a flow-on effect.
Hayley Osborne: Yeah, it sounds like you’ve got it like through the line. So especially with the retreats, so you, where do you go? Like that would obviously be Melbourne based. Yes. Yeah.
Carolyn Apostolou: Yeah. I mean, I’ve thought about going overseas, but for the majority of my clients that come to the retreats, they are local. So we have had interstate people come. Yeah. We run them down on the Mornington Peninsula here in Victoria. So we hire a beautiful home in Red Hill, and we’ve hired a beautiful one in Cape Shank in the past. And it’s a wonderful space for women who are in leadership roles, but who also really value well-being and want to take some time out and be with similar type women, so we can mastermind challenges, and we can work through you know any issues that they may be facing, but also really how can they prioritize their well being? And I think you know running them once or twice a year can be really great. We’ve had some attendees come every single time we’ve run them, and that’s just they say this is just my six monthly reset. Like if I don’t do it, I know I’ll be better. I’ll be worse off for not doing it. So by by coming and investing a little bit of time into myself and into my business and thinking about goals for me personally and career wise, it’s just a really beautiful thing to have to do. Beautiful collaborations happen too, which is wonderful.
Hayley Osborne: Oh, I know. I think
Carolyn Apostolou: that’s
Hayley Osborne: yeah. I think that’s the underrated thing that happens when you connect women. Like not not as the connector as yourself, but when you go there. So I’ve I had a conversation with someone just like last week about it’s not it’s not now that you’re you’re attending this event. It’s not now that you you don’t go there to get clients and get work. It’s like three years time when you know you realize you’re still connected with someone, and then it’s like, oh, I met that person. She’s amazing. You should get her to help you, right? And and so it’s like you. I like to call it little fairy dust. You’re always sprinkling all of those beautiful, you know, things around, and then eventually they flower and they come back to you tenfold. Especially when you’re a good person. So, when did you realize that like the energy and the well-being were leadership issues, like rather than simply health issues? Because you like talk about that law, and that kind of fits in with like my world. So obviously, I teach you know personal brand marketing mostly to health and wellness businesses, but not that’s not just who my listeners are. But I like to pull out like that leadership, that high performing person versus like the energy and the well being side. Like, what was that realization? Because you could just be like a career, you know, like a coach of yeah,
Carolyn Apostolou: yeah. I guess I was starting to see people around me exhausted, and we don’t like to use the word burnout, but I was starting to see that in the school playground with stay-at-home mums just as much as I was seeing it with my husband and. His contacts and professional men and women that you know were family friends and that had their own businesses or that were really progressing their career, and I think when our leaders are modeling well-being, that then has a flow-on effect to all other staff and junior staff, and it’s just like you know that your kids are watching you all the time, right? Yes. So it’s the decisions that you’re making that they’re watching, that they’re seeing modeled, that they then pick up and become ingrained to them. And so I just started teaching that leadership has to embody well-being. Our leaders need to be doing the right thing. They need to be, you know, setting good work boundaries. They need to be putting on their sneakers at recess or at lunchtime, you know, and leaving the office space if they can. Recess
Hayley Osborne: and lunch, we love that. Yeah,
Carolyn Apostolou: you know, and and if when we’re modeling that, like it’s it’s a leadership discipline, absolutely, and it has a wonderful flow and effect. So the organizations that I’m seeing that do this well, their leaders are really in tune with well being. Like they’re the first ones to support mental health and well-being days in the workplace. They are also making time for catch-ups with staff. They are taking walking meetings. They’re putting their runners on. They’re getting out of the office, even if it’s only for five or 10 minutes. They are interested in thinking about better culture at the workplace and modeling all those well-being sort of pillars that we could talk about all day.
Hayley Osborne: Yeah. So you know, I think well, as business owners, because that’s obviously my audience, but I think this is you know across the board, regardless. So someone who’s got obviously clients, a team, like kids, deadlines, and you know, a personal brand to continuously show up for. Like, what does real self care actually look like? Because I feel like there’s a lot of talk, like you know, well being and blah blah, mental health. But what does it actually look like? I know what it looks like for me, but I don’t teach. Like, I’m not in that world. So, what does it look like? What are you in your world?
Carolyn Apostolou: Yeah. Well, everybody that I speak to, whether it be private coaching clients, whether it’s big businesses, small businesses, I’d love to teach your listeners the same today, and that is the shine framework or a formula. And so I really want everybody to really shine. So remember the word shine, because each letter stands for something. And I’m just going to go through it really quickly. Yeah. But it’s so easy to remember, and you can take away so many good tips from that. So
Hayley Osborne: that was my next question. But go ahead.
Carolyn Apostolou: Well, the S stands for sleep, and I think sleep is really many people think it’s so underrated when they are burning the candle at both ends, when they’ve got deadlines, when they’ve got emails, they’ve got things to do for the kids around the house. Like we tend to think, oh, you know what? I won’t go to bed at 10 o’clock tonight. I’ll just push it out till 11, and then you find yourself at midnight still doing stuff, right? So sleep really needs to be protected, and it’s almost golden sleep-the amount of hours you can get before midnight. So the goal is to sleep definitely before midnight and be trying to get at least seven hours, closer to eight, if possible. Now I know at different times and with different age kids, or even no kids and fur babies, they can also wake you up at three and all hours of the morning. So, generally speaking, we really want to be trying to get seven plus solid hours sleep, and that does help if we go to bed at the same time every night and we wake up around the same time every morning, but try to remember that sleep before midnight is golden sleep, and so try to not cut your sleep and reduce the amount of time you do sleep because it is really important for people that say to me, “I really want to lose weight. Well, you can’t release weight if you’re not sleeping. Sleeping is a massive building block for releasing weight in terms of people’s energy and vitality, sleep is super duper important. We could talk about sleep for a whole episode, but the S in Shine stands for sleep, so that’s one thing to try to you know have some more awareness around.
Hayley Osborne: Yeah, yeah.
Carolyn Apostolou: H stands for hydration. So I saw you having a drink before of some tea. Perfect tea. I’ve got herbal tea. I’ve got a glass. I’ve always got a glass of water nearby me.
Hayley Osborne: Yeah.
Carolyn Apostolou: I’m in the car. I’ve also got a drink bottle with me.
Hayley Osborne: Yes.
Carolyn Apostolou: To teach people that hydration, many of us are all dehydrated. So the average person should be drinking at least two liters of water a day. And most people say to me, “I wouldn’t even come close. You know, when you think about it, if you get up in the morning and the first thing you do is you have one glass of water as you put the coffee machine on.
Hayley Osborne: Yep,
Carolyn Apostolou: 50 mils. I have four kids that are in three different schools, so I jump in the car quarter to eight, and I bring my liter drink bottle. Now, every red light I get in that hour of school drop-offs, I’m taking a sip. Now, I am well and truly through my liter of water, and I’m back home for the bathroom quite easily. And if you try to think of kind of the goalposts of one liter of water by 11 o’clock in the morning, and a second liter of water by 2o’clock in the afternoon. Just as a guide, doesn’t go
Hayley Osborne: easy,
Carolyn Apostolou: right? Now, water that is in a smoothie, perhaps that you would have for breakfast, can definitely count. Water in your tea this morning can definitely count, so have that as a bit of an idea. If we can get the majority of our hydration done by early afternoon, we are not going to be up all night going to the bathroom, which is perfect because we don’t want to interfere with our sleep. So have a think about hydration. The H in shine is for hydration.
Hayley Osborne: I love those little tips too because, like, if you take one thing from like each conversation that you have with someone, it’s like, oh, I could actually do that, and it is achievable, and that would make me a better human. Exactly. You know, especially if you’re really busy.
Carolyn Apostolou: Implement all five tips today. I’m going to say to you, choose the one that you feel needs the most support right now. Yeah, that one, and if that’s the hydration one, you go right. Okay, I will have a glass of water before I hit the coffee machine to go in the morning, and I’ll take my drink bottle in the car when I’m also taking kids out. And you’ve had a leader without even really making too many changes, and that then becomes second nature. And then once the hydration’s you know, going well. Then you tack on another one, and I think when you can tack on all five, that’s amazing. That is going to be so good for your well-being, and it’s not just mental health and you know random well-being stuff. They’re going to have a really significant impact on you. The
Hayley Osborne: practical stuff is my jam. Like if it’s not practical, if it sounds too hard, then it probably is. Just don’t implement
Carolyn Apostolou: it straight away because the sooner we can implement things, the quick, more quickly it’s going. The habit’s going to become, you know, more than just a every day. You know, every so often, it’s going to stick. So that’s really great.
Hayley Osborne: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the eye, the
Carolyn Apostolou: eye for intention. Yeah. So when you wake up in the morning, and it could even just take 10 seconds, where do I want my energy to be today? Or how do I want to start my morning? Or what am I grateful for that’s going to happen today? You know, when we first jumped on before we started recording, I said, Hayley, I’m so happy today because my kids are all back at school. You’re like I’m not. Everyone’s back at school, and I’m like, thank goodness, I can actually breathe and like think for myself today. You know, otherwise you look happy too. Yeah, yeah. I did that on my Instagram story, something like that over the weekend. Who’s excited about kids back on school, you know, or you know, you’re going to miss the kids. Of course, I’m going to miss the kids, but you know what? And I’ve over lunchboxes. I quite like that.
Hayley Osborne: Yeah,
Carolyn Apostolou: yeah. So the eyes for intention, like how how do I want today to be? What am I grateful for today? Where is my energy going today? Being aware of things. Some people like to journal as part of their intention, and some people don’t like to do it at the start of the day, and that is completely fine. If the end of the day is better for you, I have many clients that do struggle with sleep, and I often say, “Look, five minutes journaling before the light goes out can be really, really valuable because it’s almost like a brain dump, and psychologically, when you can write down what you are grateful for, what’s worked well today, things that I’m thankful for that have happened today, or what didn’t get done that I want to focus on tomorrow, close the journal and you can almost go, oh, okay, I can go to sleep now, and and usually they do because they feel like, yeah, I’m not trying to remember five things first thing in the morning when I wake up that I need to focus on tomorrow. Yeah,
Hayley Osborne: I often find that helps a lot. Not necessarily journaling, but I do keep a list like it’s just on a piece of paper. I don’t have a notebook or anything. I hate clutter on my desk. Yes, don’t like clutter on my desk. And then every week I kind of replace it, so it’s usually typed out and things get crossed out, and then I delete, and then I write on it through the week, and so it just gets it out of my head. I cannot retain everything.
Hayley Osborne: impossible, like with everything in that’s going on, and so it’s just I find it so much easier. So, you know, it’s I feel like when you say like the words like intention, it they could be kind of you know similar to the words like strategy and marketing and like it’s a little bit like eh. But when you explain it like that, it’s like very practical, which I love, and it’s it makes it quite easy. It’s like oh, I could actually. That that could actually help me to get what’s in my head out of my head, whether it’s a to do list, whether it’s something you’re grateful for, or you want to start doing, like just get it out. Yeah, I love that so much.
Carolyn Apostolou: Asking yourself, you know, what am I thankful for that has happened today? So we’re not just always saying, “Oh, I’m grateful for my family. I’m grateful. Yeah,
Hayley Osborne: that’s right.
Carolyn Apostolou: You know, I’m really thankful that I had the conversation with Hayley today. I’m really thankful that I made time to check in on an elderly relative. You know, I know that meant the world to her. Right, those sorts of things. And if you are not somebody that’s journaled, don’t be freaked out by oh my gosh, I’ve got to buy a special journal. Oh goodness, like find an exercise book and just commit to half a page or one page. You could use the notes section on your phone whilst you’re waiting for a barista to make you a cappuccino, or you know, in the morning, whatever it might be. Just use the note section and just do.dot.so. it doesn’t have to be overwhelming, and you don’t have to have special questions that you answer. Of course, you can Google some journal prompts if you want that, and that can be helpful. But just thinking about, you know, well, what am I thankful for that’s happened today? What went well for me today? What do I need to focus on tomorrow?
Hayley Osborne: Yeah,
Carolyn Apostolou: you know those sorts of things.
Hayley Osborne: Yeah, yeah, and it just creates. It does. It kind of it’s like a seal breaker, but also compartmentalizing. It’s like now you’re here, okay. Now you get to move on, and you’ve kind of it’s like the morning coffee. It’s like you know, yeah, yeah.
Carolyn Apostolou: Also, really great to do around the dinner table with kids. So it’s not like, well, tell me about school today. It’s like, well, how was
Hayley Osborne: school?
Carolyn Apostolou: You know, went well for you today.
Hayley Osborne: Yeah,
Carolyn Apostolou: those sorts of things. So that can be another way to do and to share that kind of intention with the family.
Hayley Osborne: That’s lovely. Yeah. Right. So,
Carolyn Apostolou: but the N in China is all to do with nutrition. So, are we making good choices whenever we eat? Are we fueling ourselves with good food that’s going to give us energy, that’s going to give us clarity with our cognitive thinking, all of those things. And I think we’ve come a long way in the last 20 years around food, around awareness, around nutrition, and and we all grew up, you know, having cereal for breakfast and toast, and I think we know better now, so we do better. And look, there’s definitely people that are still having cereal and toast, and that’s okay. But I think we could be having more nutritious food in what we eat. And I’m not a nutritionist by training, but I know a lot about what we should and we shouldn’t. Yeah,
Hayley Osborne: I think is that the Greek in you? Because I know my Italian household is like we are very big on food. Food is like the first thing, and then it’s like okay, and who are we inviting?
Carolyn Apostolou: That’s right. How many? I’m married to a Greek, gorgeous man, and so yes, food is central to everything. And you know, you can’t give if some if my mother in law comes with a dish. It’s laden with food, and if I wash that, I can’t give it back to her empty. I have to load it up with something, whether it’s you know leftovers from the lunch or a brownie that I may have made. She can’t take it back empty-handed. So food is a big thing, and you know protein, protein, protein. I saw something hilarious on Instagram on the weekend. It was like toilet paper, like branded with extra protein, and I think that is so funny because it feels like everywhere you look in the shops, everything has got protein, protein, protein. But we can be making some much better food choices. And I just ask you and your listeners to think: What is on the end of my fork today? If you are just having a salad for lunch, can you add a tin of tuna? Can you add some hard-boiled eggs? Have you got any leftover chicken schnitzels from last night that you can put along the side? So we really do want to make sure that we are having protein, some source of protein for breakfast, some sort of protein with our lunch, some sort of protein with our dinner. And for the vegetarians and the vegans out there, there are options, and you would know about them. So just you know, think about what am I eating? Because when we don’t fuel ourselves well, we do eat the kids’ leftover toast. We do eat you know something else, and we grab some sugary, snacky foods. Whereas we really could be making better options. Yes, and I can give you some examples if you want. I can tell you what I like to eat, what the kids like to eat. You know, like food is a big thing, and and you know, my daughter says to me, “Oh, like the teachers are looking in the lunchboxes and making good. Yeah, I’m like great because I’m like I’m so proud of her lunchbox. They’ll
Hayley Osborne: find really good things in my kids like
Carolyn Apostolou: this, but you know, some unfortunately everybody knows better. But knowledge
Hayley Osborne: is power, right? Yeah, knowledge is power. Yeah, and I just the way the world is moving. Like I saw something crazy about like screen printing. Mints or something in the U.S. and I was just like, oh, here’s me thinking about where am I going to get a cow from, and then like that’s the opposite because you know we go we live like in the CBD like we live in the suburbs close to the city, and but we still go out to buy our olive oil in like the you know the the like I don’t even know how I can’t carry it’s too heavy for me yeah and we still try and make good choices like for the fundamentals but like I just feel like with consumerism and everything that’s out there it is getting harder and one of my clients they are keto, and they’ve got doctors and nutritionists and health coaches that work in the business, and like it’s incredible. It more from a point of like I was like, wow, I’ve been making these choices and giving my my kids these choices well before you were my clients, and now it just kind of solidifies that, like, and you know, like, as a business owner, when you have eaten shit, you cannot think straight. Like, you have the most brain fog, and you might not realize it because it’s subconscious. It’s like, oh, I’m just not feeling good today, and it’s like what you’re talking about with your framework, you know, S H I N, and we’ll get to the E, but those things are so important. If you’re if you are a high performing business owner or a high performing leader, these are fundamentals that you have to get right. And if you’ve got young, you’ve got children, like, and they’re you know like you going through year 12. It’s like I was talking to my nephew the other day about he’s leading up. He’s got like one month to go, and I was telling, I was sort of saying to him how he should structure his day and food wise. And I said like even fasting for a little bit because your brain is just so much better, and you get through things faster, and just with the alertness, and he was like, “Oh, that’s a really good idea. I was like, “Yes, it is a good idea. There are
Carolyn Apostolou: lots of snacks that happen with my year 12 daughter, you know. But that’s just you’ve been working so hard, you know. Totally,
Hayley Osborne: I get that, but you got to feel like the you know the main meals is like, and the raw the rewards can be like okay, I got that far now. I’m going to go and say, but yeah. Okay, so nutrition nutrition.
Carolyn Apostolou: Yep, tick E for exercise. Yeah, this does not mean that you must have a gym membership. This means thinking about just moving your body every day in whatever capacity you can. If you only have 10 minutes, do something for 10 minutes. If you love to dance, dance. If you love to swim, swim. If you love to ride a bike, ride a bike. Okay. We do know that women over 40 need to be doing some form of resistance training, and we want to be thinking about exercise that will prevent us falling over when we’re 80 years old. We are exercising now to prevent those sorts of injuries, right? So we want to be doing some form of resistance training if possible. And if you hate it, and I can totally relate, I never, I’ve only recently, well, in the last sort of three, four years, have I become a gym junkie. Never in my past ever was I. I was very fit, and I would walk like 10,000 steps daily. Not an issue. I’ve got four kids, right? I’m running after them all the time, even as they’re teenagers. But it’s not enough. It’s actually not enough. It’s not going to protect me and protect my bones and everything for me in the long term. So we’re talking about exercise now for longevity into the future. And I see this with my mum, and I see this with my auntie in their 70s, and they’re not they’re not overweight in any way.
Hayley Osborne: No,
Carolyn Apostolou: strong women, right? And one little fall, and they’ve cracked a bone in their their wrist, right? And so we want to be making sure we are really doing whatever we can at whatever capacity we can. But we are really aware of how we are now and what age we are now and how we are going to continue exercising into the future because we can’t ignore it. We can’t do nothing.
Hayley Osborne: Yeah, I love the gym too.
Carolyn Apostolou: I’m yeah,
Hayley Osborne: yeah, and it’s a sacrifice. Like I’m in the gym at 530 a.m. because like the the world, my house has to move on, and I’ve got to do it before they get up. Otherwise, at the end of the day, I’m just like, I just I can’t do anything. So it’s you have to sacrifice and lifting. Like I used to be a runner, probably, or I do still run, but I never used to lift as many weights as like as heavy as what I do now. And you can get that same high from like weights, and I’m I’m it’s. The game over the last like six years. I just love it so much, and I can I did that through my pregnancies, and I kept pretty. I was really fit before, but three kids in three and a half years, like if I wasn’t super fit, it is insane thinking like thinking saying it out loud. I’m like, oh my god, how did you do that? That’s crazy talk, but it was you know well
Carolyn Apostolou: do what you have to do. We want
Hayley Osborne: to that was just yeah that it just worked out that way and like yeah but people say to me like how have you have where like and you know where where do they come from? Do they come from your body? Like yes, but I it’s the weight training that is like significant change in your body, and like that strong never leaves muscle has memory.
Carolyn Apostolou: Absolutely, yeah. I can’t rate it highly enough, so I would encourage anybody that’s never given it a go to start thinking about it, and that could just mean buying a couple of weights from Kmart next time you’re there. Yeah, there are so many online free trainings that go for 10 minutes. Start small and build it up. You don’t need to have a personal trainer. You don’t need to belong to a gym if you don’t want to. Just start somewhere and then start to make some progress and start to change how you do things. But be more aware with all of these shine things. Once we become more aware of everything, we’re just so much better. And like I said, I don’t want you to implement all five things today. I want you to think, well, what is the one pillar that I should really start with and get that going consistently, and then think about another because we want to shine. We want to shine in our marriages. We want to shine in our parenting skills. We want to shine as small business owners, we want to shine in every aspect of our life.
Hayley Osborne: Yeah, and I
Carolyn Apostolou: think that once we’ve got those five pillars, we really like the world is our oyster.
Hayley Osborne: So I, with when it comes to like high performing women and like whether you have that in your career or you’re running a business, like I’ve personally become a little bit obsessed more with my energy and managing that rather than just managing my time, and I probably got the time bit right first, and then the energy kind of flowed. But can you kind of explain like what is the difference between like managing your energy and rather than just managing your time?
Carolyn Apostolou: Oh, that’s a good question.
Hayley Osborne: Because yeah,
Carolyn Apostolou: yeah. Well, I feel like when I’m sleeping well, when I am moving my body, when I’m doing all of those shine pillars, my energy is really high. You know, now given that as women during our cycle we have a progression. You know, obviously through different stages, and some of the stages our energy can dip. But I feel like when I’m really conscious, and and pretty much I am most of the time, of my hydration, my sleep is pretty much the same all the time. You know, I’m eating well, I’m moving my body. It’s only you know when we get like a really wet day in Melbourne, for example, and we’re homebound, or it’s the school holidays, and I’m in the car driving kids here, then everywhere that I haven’t been able to meet my own, you know, requirements around my my health pillars. That I start to feel my energy dip, but also being around other people that have got sort of low energy that can sort of fester, can’t it as well? So I think being aware and you know, having good people around you can be wonderful for you too.
Hayley Osborne: Yeah. So, what out of like the like the shit key?
Carolyn Apostolou: Yeah.
Hayley Osborne: What do you find that is the commonality of like people neglecting? Which one do people neglect the most? Just because, like, there might be people listening thinking, oh yeah, but I just can’t see. And you know, I think there’s safety numbers. I guess like this is common. Like you’re not the only one, kind of thing.
Carolyn Apostolou: Well, I think most people trim from sleep the most. So if they’re feeling overwhelmed, they go, oh, I’ll cut the gym or I’ll just cut time for sleep. I know nearly everyone I speak to says that they are not drinking two liters of water.
Hayley Osborne: Yeah, many
Carolyn Apostolou: people get bothered with intention. It’s just like, oh, it’s a bit too woo woo. I don’t need journaling. And then I have other people say to me, journaling, like I never really believed in it. Totally changed my life. I can’t believe it. I’ve been journaling now for years. I would never not journal it. So to pick what is like the one, I would say definitely people will say, “Oh, I won’t bother going to the gym. I won’t bother doing my exercise, or I’ll cut on sleep. Those would be like, yeah,
Hayley Osborne: yeah. I don’t know. For me, like I operate in kind of a sprint mode, so like if there’s deadlines or things I have to do for clients, and I know I’m like right, okay. So Monday I’m gonna, and this might sound psycho, probably not to you, but Monday I’m gonna get up at because I’m really tired at Sunday night, so I’m gonna go to bed early. Monday I’m gonna get up at four, and I’m gonna work from four. Until eight, my husband can do lunches and and then I get a good solid work of uninterrupted like time done, and then I’ll go to bed early like on the Monday night and I’ll get up and train on the Tuesday, and so like that’s the balance. Am I wrecked? Yes, yes. Except that like I have no choice. Like I have to that balance, but that’s my choice. And sometimes, and so I think for me, like that’s the sprint. It’s like peaks and trough, peaks and troughs, and then I know that the the Monday to Friday, like it will end up being really balanced. Yes. So I’m not too hard on myself if I miss something or I’m because I know that right I’m going to do this, but then I have to do that. Yes, to account for that.
Carolyn Apostolou: I think you’re probably somebody also, and we have to give ourselves grace. You know, like not every day is perfect. And I was saying earlier, you know, I think the more kids I’ve had, or I’ve been able to let go on something. Yeah, and that’s that’s not to say that you know women that only have one or two children, you know, are more particular about things. Oh, different. It’s just different. I just know for me, definitely. By the time I got to the fourth child, I was letting go many things because I just, I literally couldn’t manage everything to the standard that I had when I only had one child. And I’ve got like three year gaps between my kids and two and a half years, so much more spaced out, which meant that it’s just gone on forever, like.
Hayley Osborne: But they start to take care of each other. They
Carolyn Apostolou: are now up an 18-year-old, right, who’s driving, which is wonderful. The youngest is only 10, and I’m like, oh, still another eight years of school, right? Yeah. Anyway, like
Hayley Osborne: she might be making lunches for like helping you with the, you know. So it’s like
Carolyn Apostolou: going to state for uni next year, so I’m like about to lose my driver and my wonderful helper. But anyway, that’s another whole step.
Hayley Osborne: Yeah. So
Carolyn Apostolou: I think getting back to it, I think that yeah, there’s definitely we don’t no no days perfect, right? So definitely having the right intention and definitely thinking about your well being. And if you need to diarise, going to the gym or doing a walk, and if you can meet a friend for a walk, if you can grab a coffee and walk rather than sitting in a cafe and having a coffee, like be clever about interjecting movement into your day and taking snippets when you can. Sometimes I drop kids to a basketball training, and it’s only a 45 minute training, so I can do a walking meeting at that time. I can chat to a client on the phone. I can sneak a gym session in. Now, normally I allow an hour when I go to the gym, but if I’ve only got like that 45 minute gap, well, hey, I’ll just walk on the treadmill for 30 minutes, and I’ll have it at a really steep incline, and we’ll be going pretty fast, and I’ll burn lots of calories, and I’ll get that cardiac kind of workout done, and it will do weights the next day, right? So it doesn’t have to be perfect. I would just really encourage your listeners to start being more aware and just you know see what you can make fit, where you can make fit. We don’t want you to be overwhelmed by well-being as an extra thing added on top of everything else, but it is so important. And know that when you are more aware of your well-being, it really will have a flow and effect to everything. So it’s so important that it is something that you, you know, are thinking about on a daily basis.
Hayley Osborne: Do you think that people can actually feel like through our marketing and like our leadership, you know, in the workplace or our marketing in it, like for our business, even if we’re like depleted, like do you think people can feel if we’re trying to hide it? Like,
Carolyn Apostolou: yeah, I
Hayley Osborne: find it so interesting because I I can see it, but I know
Carolyn Apostolou: I know that. Well, I love doing in-person workshops. There’s nothing better for me than a you know organization saying, “Yep, we want you in-house, but can we also team, you know, put you on teams to our people working hybrid? I’m like, “That’s absolutely fine. But the energy in the room, people can feel that. I mean, I think you’re probably getting that from me on Zoom today anyway. But people absolutely can see your energy, and that they feed off that too. So if you’ve got good energy, they then pick up good energy.
Hayley Osborne: Yeah, it’s funny. Yeah, I can see that you have a lot of energy. Your kids are back at school, and your day is like the best. My kids have another week of school holidays, so
Carolyn Apostolou: yeah.
Hayley Osborne: Speak to me next week. No, you know it’s I, I, you know it’s it’s just different. Like I’ll be clicking my heels come Sunday, but I know that we’re gonna have a nice little like time this week, and yeah. So just yeah, the energy you definitely can. I think you can feel it, and you can feel it through people’s marketing. And you know, for people that are like, oh, I’m I’m just high energy, like I’m just I’m I thrive. But what you’d see this a lot. But what are some of the early signs I think that someone’s like running on empty before they hit the wall? Because there’d probably be people listening going, not me, not me. But you can’t see it when you’re so close, right?
Carolyn Apostolou: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, and often they’re just trying to grab some daytime sleeps, or they’re just trying to close their eyes, cat nap. I see people even when I’m out driving, people at the traffic lights with their eyes closed, and they, oh my god.
Carolyn Apostolou: yes, right, just like given a micro second, you know, close my eyes. So you you will see people even when you’re talking to them and eye contact. Sometimes they’ll just glaze off into the future, you know, into the distance, and they won’t really be listening. I feel like people skipping meals a lot, like just got to get to the next thing. Like I can’t, I’m going to only focus on one or two things. And you can be snappy, unfortunately, with partners and with kids, and we see that you know, and we don’t mean to be like that, but often it’s because we’re just you know really at an extreme level of overwhelm, and we’re just out of control with our emotions and our emotional well being, right? And and how we’re reading the room and and the situation.
Hayley Osborne: Yeah, we’ve all been there. I mean, I do get upset with my kids just because, like, especially the little guy. It’s like you just don’t want them to kill themselves, and so you have to be very like, stop. And I, I always, you don’t want me to turn into a monster, do you? No. So do the right thing. Stop hitting your brother.
Carolyn Apostolou: Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.
Hayley Osborne: Yeah. So you’ve worked with some pretty big. I was like, obviously, I’ve had a big stalk, but you’ve worked with some pretty big organizations. You know, like
Carolyn Apostolou: yeah. But I love the small organizations just as much. You know, nothing better than just going into a boardroom with eight employees, right? And the manager of that business, and just reminding them about looking after themselves and prioritizing themselves ultimately for the business, they’re far more productive, right? And you know that’s why I’m often a keynote speaker at sales conferences because the managing partners know that if people are sleeping well, if they’re looking after themselves, if the company culture is good, they’re going to make way more money. They’re going to be way more productive.
Hayley Osborne: 100% So, like, you’ve worked with Telstra, like Kmart. Am I right? Yeah. Okay. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. And
Carolyn Apostolou: but plenty of small companies. Yeah.
Hayley Osborne: No. No. But my question’s more around like, what’s the difference in people? I guess at these levels, like in corporate and in high performing in their own businesses, like what have you noticed? Because you would see a lot, right? You’re close to it about people who perform like quite high for a long period of time. In like, what are they doing differently to be able to operate at that level?
Carolyn Apostolou: Well, a lot of those big businesses are very, very proactive wealth wellbeing. So they spend a lot of money, and the culture is really good at those places because they have got lunch and learn things happening all the time. They’ve got staff days. They’ve got lots of social things. They really do staff wellbeing very, very well. And it’s not to say that small businesses can’t, but not on the same level. You just have
Hayley Osborne: to get it differently,
Carolyn Apostolou: right? Like the budget, right? When you’ve got that, you’re that big a company, you’ve got much more money to spend on the staff and on the employees to make them feel like they love their workplace, right?
Hayley Osborne: Yes.
Carolyn Apostolou: Have a turnover of staff, right? But it feels really good. It’s a. It seems like those places are really great places to work.
Hayley Osborne: Yes. Small
Carolyn Apostolou: organizations, the hands are a little bit tied. It’s trickier to get them to spend any money on well-being, and it’s that’s always like, well, you know, how much is this going to cost me? And I’m like, yeah, but you’re going to get it back tenfold, right? Yeah. And the ideal is for me to go in once a quarter, and so four times during the year, I’m seeing the staff and I’m reminding them about key things. Now I talk to staff and organizations about all sorts of things, and it can be neurodiversity in the workplace and how that can impact on well-being and the culture of the business, as well as just sleep. We can talk for an hour just on.
Hayley Osborne: Oh, yeah. We
Carolyn Apostolou: can talk on boundaries, you know, workplace boundaries. I did so much of that online when we were here in Melbourne during COVID lockdowns, and it was it merely came out of me seeing so many organizations now suddenly having to work from home. No one had worked from home hardly before, right? Yeah, was you know seen like you were taking a cop out. You were working from home. Suddenly, we were working from home, and we-I mean, I had four kids, and I was homeschooling at the same time. It was a nightmare, right? I had a massive like cross on the door saying, “Don’t come in” when I was doing these Zooms. Oh my gosh, you know, and all the rules that we had before about no devices up. So I think we had one device back then, right? Yeah.
Hayley Osborne: See, my kids were just being born. They weren’t. I wasn’t.
Carolyn Apostolou: We had one iPad because my eldest daughter was in grade five then, and it was you know bring the device to school. We had no desks, you know. Though she was doing any homework at the kitchen table, we suddenly had five, you know, four IKEA desks and all these devices, and they had to be up in their. Room on the device doing the home learning because they were all on at the same time and we couldn’t all be talking around the same time. So you know that’s where you just have to be flexible and you have to go with the flow and go right. Okay, all right. Anyway, so the mental health workshops transpired into anything to do with health and well-being and the Shine formula. And I also speak a lot about resilience and just sustainable habits, and so yeah, I like to sort of call it rise and shine. And different organizations want different things. I had an organization say we’ve got all remote staff, which is happening a lot these days. So they’re based in Sydney, but all their staff are somewhere in Asia in different places. They get together for a retreat in person once a year, which is fantastic. But he said to me, “We need something on grief. Well, it took me back to my psych uni days and grief counseling, and and it was great. And so I took them all through that whole topic on what is grief, what are the five stages of grief that we go through. Very famous psych research that I was able to share with them, and then what does that look like? Because you know, when you have a friend that’s going through a challenging time, I don’t know. You’re like me. You probably drop meals on their doorstep, right? Because we’re foodies, right? We love food. We know, like, showing love is like feeding people. And so, but how do you do that when you’re remote? Well, yeah, there’s companies that can deliver food, you know, anywhere you want, and but there’s other ways of showing that you care, even when you’ve got remote staff. So that was a great topic. I loved presenting on that.
Hayley Osborne: Oh yeah, the just the food. I just remember every baby I had. I just I wasn’t even worried about the food thing because the food just came to me. It was great, but that’s reciprocated, right? Because of course, yeah, that’s right.
Carolyn Apostolou: It’s the first thing I think of when I hear it. I’m like, right, okay.
Hayley Osborne: What am I taking? Okay, or have I got a
Carolyn Apostolou: whisk in the oven? I’ve also got brownies going on. There’s chopped chip cookies. There’s always something else going into the oven while the oven’s on.
Hayley Osborne: Yeah, 100. And that’s something I’ve been doing more and more, actually. Like when the oven’s on, there’s always something else that’s about to go in there. Why
Carolyn Apostolou: not? It’s just economical. It’s like, well, I may as well because it’s going to be in there because
Hayley Osborne: yeah. Oh, that’s so funny that you said that. Um, I don’t talk a lot about this on my podcast, but like, obviously, I have three little boys, and obviously they eat, and you know, there’s always yeah something. So I’d rather them have homemade X, Y, and Z as opposed to store bought like cookies, cake, and whatever. Like they’re gonna want it, so it’s like, and they, I try and encourage them to help me too, and it’s kind of not great for my like into when they’re so little. I know, I know, but they want to help, and I’m like, all right, we can do this. I’m gonna try and stay as calm as possible, but you know, and then they’re so proud when it comes out of the oven, and so that’s like the moment. Anyway, so I want to ask you a couple more questions because I try and keep these podcasts to, you know, my solo episodes are around like a car ride, so 20-ish minutes, and then when I have beautiful guests in, like yourself, even an hour, I think that’s like perfect. But what is the one thing that you do to like personally protect like your energy? And you know, what do you do?
Carolyn Apostolou: Yeah, I schedule walks with close friends a couple of times a week because I know that really fills my cup. I can only usually get my husband, you know, one on one at another, you know, time. Of course, we chat and we, you know, connect every day. But like an hour, you know, long walk with a friend whilst we’ve got a coffee that fills my cup. That really. Oh, that’s great. Yeah, yeah,
Hayley Osborne: yeah. That’s really. And I’ve got a friend
Carolyn Apostolou: in Sydney, and so you know we’ll do a phone video chat every fortnight on a Friday morning, and that’s fantastic. So we’ll be usually chatting, walking our dogs, but catching up that way. And I feel like that you know at different points in our life there are different friends that need us more. And yeah, she’s somebody I’m checking in on every fortnight, and that’s really lovely. That’s so
Hayley Osborne: nice. That’s really being intentional, isn’t it? About correct how you spend your days. So, where can everybody find you? I know on your website that you have a health and well-being audit. Yes. Because I know that there’ll be a few people listening that are like really resonate with you and love what you’ve had to say, and they’re like, want to stalk you a bit more. So tell us. Oh, obviously have everything in the show notes. But for people that are like, tell me right now.
Carolyn Apostolou: Yes. Well, I think Instagram is probably the best place to find me. If you’re not on Instagram, you could find me on LinkedIn. I love LinkedIn as a platform. It’s really fabulous. Yeah. And I pretty much post the same sort of content every week. Yes, from my website, just book a free chat. I’m more than happy to chat to any of your listeners, and we can have just a conversation around what’s working well for them. Any of the Shine principles, if they want advice or specific tips, we can have a chat. That’s no problem.
Hayley Osborne: So your. Instagram is
Carolyn Apostolou: Carolyn Apostolou Coaching.
Hayley Osborne: Coaching, yep, beautiful. Correct. Yes, a bit of a
Carolyn Apostolou: mouthful, but that’s what it is.
Hayley Osborne: Yep, that’s what it is. All right, Carolyn, thank you so much for joining us today. I hope I know that I got a lot out of this episode, and I’m sure like everybody else will too.
Carolyn Apostolou: Yeah, terrific! Thank you so much again for having me.
Hayley Osborne: Okay, bye.
Carolyn Apostolou: Bye.
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