Tune into Episode 1 – My origin story, right here in your browser, find it on your favourite platform (head here for the links) or keep reading for a transcript.
Hi, hello and welcome to this first ever episode of the Rules are made up – a podcast for the curious overthinkers and perfectionists out there.
I’m your host, Nina Hannert-Nimmo – but please call me Neens. I think when you call me Nina, I know I’m in trouble so hopefully that’s not going to be the case – often…
Anyway, in this first episode I wanted to introduce myself a little bit, give you a bit of background on myself, what I do, why I do it and also talk about what to expect from this podcast, from the show and what my aim is in recording it and talking to you.
If you don’t know me already from Instagram or the podcast I previously co-hosted with my friend Brandy (Two Worlds Collide), or you don’t know me in real life, you might be wondering why I sound the way I do.
It’s a bit of a funny accent for some of us, and that’s because I live in Aotearoa (New Zealand). I live in Wellington, which is the capital city – it’s lovely on a good day (can get really really windy here) but I moved here almost 16 years ago from Germany, so I was actually born and grew up in Germany.
My family still lives there – I don’t know why I don’t have a German accent, I think I must have just…
My mom had a knack for languages at one point in time, she was able to speak several languages fluently, so I think I’ve just really, I’ve inherited that talent but I’ve used it to perfect one language as opposed to speaking multiple. I’m not sure – honestly, I don’t know. It’s it’s a weird little fun fact about me, although every so often I have a bit of a twang, but mostly I just sound like I sound like I could be from here.
Some of you might be wondering why I moved here: it’s because I did not see a future for myself in Germany. I had this weird like in a feeling of “I just don’t want to be here. I don’t want to do the whole adulting thing here.” So when I was in my teens I started to, you know, research and look into living elsewhere and how to do that – You know, do I want to fully migrate and move or do I want to do a gap year? All of those things I looked into it.
In the end, I decided: Firstly I decided are moved to New Zealand, like that was the country and Wellington was the city I chose and then I decided you know what I mean as well just, you know, start here as opposed to doing, gap years and trying to figure things out. So I ended up going to university here so I did my degree here, my first one.
I still work full time, so I run a coaching business but I also work full time for a local bank in technology.
I am an Agile Coach so I am a coach across the board in a way. But being an Agile Coach, I help individuals and teams improve their ways of working, that’s probably a basic way to explain it.
It’s just helping make change in small doses and small tweaks, which is also what I do as part of my own coaching practice let’s be honest, we also focus on making changes and improvements and small tweaks, but on a more individual level and maybe more closely related to your goals as opposed to helping the organization.
So that’s kind of what I do – I’m a coach.
A lot of my focus and my own coaching practice and my own coaching and when I support clients has really evolved to encompass sort of mental health, mental well being and mind management
Because I think our brains are fucking fascinating, let’s just get that out of the way.
But we also don’t learn a lot of the tools to take care of ourselves and like the mind chatter and the self talk and we don’t learn the tools to refrain to start to do things differently, right?
We often fall into patterns and existing ways of thinking, and we don’t learn how to challenge those either, and so that’s what I want to change. I want to help you learn and understand the different tools and concepts that you can apply to your own life, maybe a particular goal. Maybe it’s just a bit, you know, maybe you’re just going through a freaking shit time. Some of those tools you can apply in in various contexts, and that’s what I want to help you with.
Because a lot of the shit that that we often fall into and myself included, like the all or nothing thinking right, like only thinking you either have to do it perfectly or you can’t, you’re not going to do it at all, right? That is such a fraught way of thinking and I want to help you realize that you know most of the time, you do have more than those two options.
A lot of our choices exist on a continuum and I that’s part of what I want to help you realize and help you help you understand both as part of this podcast and also as part of my own coaching.
In terms of why I ended up here – doing this podcast, becoming a coach.
I’m one of those – sorry, let me rephrase that: I am not one of those people who like that was my life long dream and vision, I knew when I was six that I wanted to do this – I’m not one of those people. I’ve come to entrepreneurship, and even coaching very, very late well no not actually late in life, ’cause that’s actually fucking bullshit ’cause that just applies this paradigm that you know being in your 30s means it’s late, it’s not!
But I’ve come to it fairly recently, let’s say in the last several years, and whereas you know some people start that journey a little bit earlier, not me.
I’ve had my own challenges and I’m one of those coaches who’s navigated their own stuff and then really realized “I’ve learned a lot that I think more people need to learn.” And that that’s what drove me to start a business, right is wanting to share what I’ve learned and helping other people because it’s just so fucking powerful.
I’d be lying if I said that the industry or the Health and Wellness space in general isn’t probably also partly contributing to me really doing this podcast or wanting to talk about it a lot more because I think there’s still so much bullshit messaging out there that makes us think we have to go about things in a particular way or the only way to do something is you know to do it the way that particular influencer, or guru or whatever is doing.
And I want to do my bit to start dismantling that right, to start to help you and it goes back to what I said earlier – I want to help YOU challenge your own thinking because what you think isn’t always true.
And I learned that the hard way too right, and maybe this is where I will go into the my origin story a little bit more because I navigated, I had a bunch of injuries several years ago that really kick started my own journey into personal development and growth and this mindset and mind management work. I was throwing myself pity parties left, right, and center. I had adult sized temper tantrums because I just could not believe that this fucking injury was happening to me and you know “why can’t my body just be fine?” I didn’t know how to navigate that and I learned and started to look into podcasts and books and blogs and Ted talks at all the things and I started to realize that “Oh hold on – what I’m thinking isn’t always fact!”. Right, it’s not necessarily reality, it’s my perceived reality.
But also I can change that, right? If it’s not a fact, I can change it. I can reframe how I view a situation.
I can start to think or to talk to myself in a different way – and that’s what I really want to help you do and realize and understand as well is that what’s going on in our minds can be like it’s incredibly, incredibly powerful, but a lot of us, unless you know are a psych nerd like me or a coach, or you, learn about these things. A lot of this basic shit we just don’t learn how to do some of this.
Because we also don’t fucking talk about it, we don’t talk about mental health enough. We don’t talk about you know things not being perfect all the time often enough, we only we see you know what other people want us to see on social media.
And even in the office or wherever else, we just don’t talk about shit enough when it’s not going great when it’s you know when it’s going like shit ’cause it’s always easier to talk about things when they’re going well. When we’re having successes, when we’re making progress, when we’re reaching milestones. Because talking about the shit that isn’t going well, even though it’s actually a lot easier for our brains to react and to notice the stuff and all the things that are going wrong, it feels uncomfortable as fuck to actually talk about it, and so that is partly what I want do with this podcast, right?
It’s not going to be a “here’s just all the shit that’s going wrong”, that’s not what I’m trying to say, but I want us to open more of this conversation. I want I want to help you understand that you don’t have to believe all the things that your brain is trying to tell you but also the should, the rules, the expectations that you put on yourself because of what you see in society, on social media, in your – even in your family and friends.
You get to decide and create your own, your own version of YOU of what and how you want to live your life and how you want to navigate it and a lot of the so-called rules and should, you don’t have to take them at face value.
That’s why this podcast is called The Rules Are Made Up – because they fucking are.
Aside from laws and regulations, we’re not going to talk about those, but you know the the rules that tell you that you have to – I for the longest time I’m going to pull my hand out right now (not that you can see it) I thought I had to, you know, do this business thing in a particular way because that’s what you see other people do, it’s what you see people coaching on and you know that’s just how things have always been or have evolved to being or whatever.
That doesn’t fucking mean that I have to do it that way, right?
I get to create this business, this coaching thing the way I want to – and for example part of that is this podcast and talking about these things because they’re important to me and I believe they’re so important now we need to talk about them more and I want you to understand the same thing that you and whether that’s going after a particular health, wellness, fitness goal or you’re freaking 38 and you want to change careers and everyone’s like oh, you shouldn’t do that. You know you need to set your career when you’re freaking 20.
BULLSHIT! Fucking bullshit!!! That’s what that’s what this podcast is about, it’s to call bullshit on a lot of the should and the rules and just how we go about life and to help you understand that you can do it in the way that you want to, that works for you.
Now I do want to acknowledge that there is a fuckton of privilege in what I’ve just said and I fully acknowledge that. What I’ve said comes from a place of privilege, it comes from a place of being able to make my own rules so to speak or start to question them. Not everyone is able to do that, and we need to acknowledge that, so I did want to make sure to cover that really because we don’t talk about that either. It’s uncomfortable and part of my aim with this podcast is to have some of those uncomfortable conversations. It really is and I think I’ve said it, so this is the third time I’m saying it is to challenge you’re thinking and mine as well, right?
So that’s what you can expect. You can expect me to talk about, you know, some of the areas where the rules show up a lot of the time, and walking through how to how to approach that and how to start to think about things differently, but we’ll also be talking about mental health a lot.
I am going to bring on guests and we’re going to talk about, you know, some of their expertise in terms of other areas, but also how mental health and wellbeing plays a massive part there. And how they’ve seen rules and should’s show up in their work and what they’re doing to help dismantle that. And we’re going to be talking about, you know, some of the concepts that I coach on in my coaching practice. As much as this is a free resource and I want to help you challenge your thinking by listening to it, I do also run a business and I’d be remiss to say that there are opportunities to work with me and I’ll put them in the show notes.
So we’ll be talking about the stuff that I, you know, sometimes we might even be talking about something I’ve seen with clients or something I’ve seen, you know in myself and then coaching you or coaching myself through it while recording, while pressing record and having a microphone next to me.
So I’ve been talking for a bit, so I’m going to call it here.
I want to thank you again for tuning in to this first episode. I am stoked to be going on this journey and to see where it will take me and to get a little bit uncomfortable and I can’t wait to keep going and to have you listen to the next episode.
So until then, stay curious!
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