This week I am shifting gears, and instead of talking from the expert space, I am having a personal episode and sharing the lessons and mistakes I have made from my journey. After doing a number of different podcast episodes as a guest I have identified some key takeaways from my story that can serve as lessons you can learn, rather than have to experience yourself.
In this episode I share:
- The time period 27 years ago that started my life trajectory
- The point where I started to get very run down because of how hard I was working
- How this experience helped me become a sports dietitian
- The first sports opportunity I got after graduating
- The impact that my mentor had on my career
- The first mistake I made around the idea of hard work
- How I made the mistake of thinking I was invincible
- The danger of prioritising other people before yourself
- How we can have it all and not burn out
- Why I thought I was being healthy when I wasn’t
- How sickness was a big warning sign that I was doing things wrong
- How all the ways I wasn’t caring for myself caused an 18 month recovery journey post covid
Key Quotes
“This isn’t about dedicating all of your time and energy to health and wellbeing, but this is about having your life work for you.”
“There is no job, no business, no career that should come at the cost of your happiness as a human.”
Episode Resources
Jessica Spendlove Website – www.jessicaspendlove.com
Jessica Spendlove Keynotes – JessicaspendloveKeynotes – Jessica Spendlove
The High-Performance Profile Quiz https://jessicaspendlove.com/quiz/
Jess Spendlove Instagram https://www.instagram.com/jess_spendlove_dietitian/?hl=en
Jess Spendlove LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-spendlove-64173bb8/
About Your Host
Jessica Spendlove | Wellbeing Speaker & High Performance Strategist
Jess Spendlove is an international wellbeing and high performance speaker, coach, and advisor. With over 15 years of experience across corporate leadership, elite sport and the military she is known for helping ambitious leaders and teams optimise energy, build resilience, and sustain peak performance.
As one of Australia’s leading performance dietitians and a trusted voice in executive wellbeing, Jess delivers science-backed strategies that empower individuals, teams and organisations to thrive under pressure and achieve long-term success.
Episode Transcript
The following transcript has been automatically generated and not checked for accuracy
Jess (00:02.798)
Welcome to Stay at the Top. This week I am shifting gears for my regular listeners and rather than wearing my expert hat where I am dropping tips and tactics to help you sustain your success and enhance your longevity, today I wanted to have a bit of a personal episode. This week I am sharing lessons that I’ve learned, the mistakes that I’ve made, more insights into my journey.
For those listening, I don’t know how long you’ve been following me on socials or where you came across Stay At The Top, but I thought it would be really, but after doing a number of different podcast episodes recently where I was the guest and I shared more about my experiences and the life lessons and the amazing feedback that I’ve had, I wanted to, I guess, get a little bit more vulnerable today and see how this type of episode goes. I…
Jess (01:01.037)
At least.
Jess (01:06.926)
For those unaware, the current chapter of work and life that I am in has changed quite considerably over the last few years, which I’ll share more information on in the episode. And those experiences has really led me to re -prioritize myself, my values, and the type of work I will and I won’t, will and won’t do. I really hope you get a lot out of today’s episode. And as I said, I really hope it helps you not make the same mistakes that I made.
Jess (01:56.173)
stop this.
Jess (02:08.878)
Team, aside from the podcast, the majority of where I spend my time is coaching, consulting, and speaking. Now, I love the mix of work that I…
Jess (02:33.038)
Team, the best place for me to start today’s episode is to wind back the clock 27 years.
Sorry Sam, I don’t know how to start this episode.
Jess (02:48.43)
Team, before I get into the, Team, before I dive into the.
Jess (02:57.646)
Team, before I take you through the mistakes that I’ve made that I don’t want you to make, for this all to make sense, I really need to wind the clock back 26 to 27 years. The catalyst for me to… Oh.
Jess (03:18.574)
Ultimately, this was the time point in my life that ultimately this was the time point in my life that set me off on the trajectory that I was to follow. When I was 10, 11 years old in year five or six in primary school, I was a very high level swimmer and that carried forth for the whole of high school. Now, whether you…
Now, if we think back to the swimming carnival days, so we all had the school carnival, which then goes on to like Metro or State. Now, we’re… Fuck.
Jess (04:03.341)
Now, if we think back to our school swimming carnivals, or maybe we’re parents listening and it’s school carnival season at the moment, or if we’re parents listening, it’s recently been school carnival season and we have the school swimming carnival and then that moves on into Metro and then state and then past that is nationals. So in year five and six, as well as all of high school, I was swimming school nationals. And I was…
And I wasn’t only swimming school nationals, but I was winning medals and winning gold medals at those events. Now, as I tell people, I was a very sporty child. I did a lot of different sports. I did dancing and netball and soccer and swimming. But swimming is one of those sports that when you do start to compete at a high level, you do really need to dedicate yourself to it. And it was in primary school that I started swimming before school. So.
And it was in primary and high school where I was swimming before and after school. Now, naturally, I was a very talented swimmer. I don’t, I definitely didn’t choose swimming. I don’t think I would have chosen a sport that you have to get up at 4 a .m. and swim before and after school. It definitely chose me, but I loved it. And it taught me so.
many valuable lessons and principles and it taught me the value of having goals and being dedicated. It definitely brought out my competitive side as well and it was an experience which I am very grateful for. There did come a point in time early on in high school that I started to get really run down and really sick. I would often get like ear infections and throat infections. I would often get colds and flus.
I would often also get colds and flus, which we refer to as upper respiratory tract infections. And we were searching for answers. Why was this happening? Once we started to dig deep and I had the blood test and I saw the GPs and the sports doctors, they then referred me to see a sports dietitian. And this is where everything changed for me. So not only did this sports dietitian help teach me the power of nutrition, help teach me how much I should be eating and how to use nutrition for school.
Jess (06:27.232)
sport and life, but this was the catalyst for where I decided that I wanted to be a sports dietitian and I wanted to work with athletes. So what I like to say is that I was getting it wrong before I was getting it right. So I have walked in the shoes of the junior and the elite athletes that I’ve worked with and I really understand what it feels like when you are not using nutrition.
to help you perform and you’re unintentionally under -fueling and then how that feels to also get it right. This experience.
Jess (07:17.709)
Now having this experience, I became laser focused on what my mission was. I wanted to work with elite athletes and I wanted to be a sports dietician. And I am really fortunate that within a few years of graduating and thanks to a mentor who took me under her wing, who I should say…
Jess (07:39.181)
And thanks to a mentor who took me under her wing, who I should say was actually the sports dietician that I saw when I was like 10, 11, 12 years old, which…
Scrap that bit, Sam. Now, I was really fortunate to, I was really fortunate a few years after graduating from my master’s, I got my first opportunity in professional sport. That.
First opportunity came from a referral from a mentor who I should say was actually the same dietitian that I saw 10 or 15 years earlier who was my sports dietitian who was the inspiration for me wanting to do the work that I do. So when I had an opportunity at the end of my masters to…
do a research project with her with elite athletes. I still kind of get goosebumps now when I talk about it because it just feels so meant to be. And I get a little bit emotional because she has now passed and she was such a kind and giving and generous person and…
I do really have a lot of what I have done and I guess the mission that I’m still on today, I do have her.
Jess (08:55.309)
getting emotional. I do have her to thank for a lot of that. I also have myself to thank because I was hardworking, I was dedicated, I was consistent. But she not only inspired me to do this work, but she was really monumental in me getting the opportunities that I had quite early on in my career. So for those listening unaware, I…
So for those listening who may be unaware, I’ve spent the majority of my professional career working in professional sports. So I’ve now been a dietitian for 15 years and for 10 plus years, I was entrenched in basically every single professional team sport in the country. Outside of that, I was also working one -on -one with Olympic athletes and professional athletes in all different sports. And I then built a business of
off the back of that. I, with another dietitian, we built a business and we had a team of dietitians and I headed up the professional sports arm. I was the head of nutrition. I got the contracts. They were my protocols and my principles. And then I started to have junior dietitians and interns that helped me roll them out. And…
This brings me to a lot of what I want to talk about today, which is the mistakes that I learned throughout all of that. And even looking back to when I was at high school and in university, I was always, I was always the person who was working outside of school and university, which I’ll never forget at the very end of university, like the last few days when they’re getting you ready to get out into the world and we had a lecturer come along and…
She said, put your hand up if no one in your family has been to university before that, no one in your immediate family. And I was in an auditorium of hundreds of people at Sydney University. And I remember putting my hand up and I was one of only like two people who put their hands up. And I guess there was this element of always being a hard worker. That was definitely a story that I was told. If you worked hard, you would be rewarded for your hard work. It was definitely something that my parents role modeled. I remember my dad having multiple jobs at a point in time.
Jess (11:11.488)
time and I guess this was just ingrained in me. Add that to someone who’s competitive, motivated and driven and that really served me. I became really focused, really dedicated. I went above and beyond in all of the contracts that I had started to accrue, which was the Cronulla Sharks was the first contract. The next one was the the GWS Giants, the AFL, then came the netball and so on. But…
there definitely came a point in time that I thought I was superwoman.
I thought I was invincible. And I guess that brings me to the first mistake that I made was thinking that I was invincible. Now, whoever you are, we are not invincible. And if we are giving to everybody else other than ourself, if we are not setting our weeks up for success, if we are not allowing periods of rest and recovery, then that is going to come at a cost sooner or later, which it definitely came at a cost for me later on. If I fast forward,
five, six, seven years. At that point in time, I had accrued seven different professional sports team contracts and my business had an eighth, which also came from a connection that I had, although I wasn’t working in that one at that point in time. I was honestly working seven days a week. There were days where I would go to one team and then I would drive across Sydney and go to the other. And I was honestly working seven days a week.
I sacrificed my social life, I sacrificed time with family, I sacrificed trying to find a partner. At that point in time, I hadn’t met my partner now. And that was something that I was happy to do. I thought this is the price that I am willing to pay and that you have to pay to have the opportunities that I was afforded. And I guess that’s another mistake that there is no job, no business, no career.
Jess (13:09.709)
that should come at the cost of your happiness as a human. If all you have is work, that is a really big red flag that things are gonna come crashing down sooner or later. We need to be…
Optimal well -being is about emotional health, spiritual health. We know that social connection is such an important part of being, such an important part of our well -being. For those of you that watch the Blue Zones, that was one of the core factors when it came to living to 100, community and social connection and social relationships. So that’s really something which if you are feeling
focus and feeling really motivated. So that’s really something if you’re sacrificing. I just hope this serves as a little bit of a circuit breaker for you to think about what’s important to you. It’s really clunky.
Jess (14:22.637)
So I’m just going to edit that wherever, it makes sense, it just feels a bit concrete. I’m going to move on to something else.
Jess (14:34.541)
Now, one of the points that I mentioned before was around this mindset that I could outwork anyone and I had this hard work ethic underneath. And for a lot of motivated and driven people that I work with,
For a lot of the clients that I work with this rings true to them. These are not types of people that need motivation. Often they might need accountability and they need coaching and they need someone to help them find a rhythm that works for them. But it’s not that they’re lacking in motivation or dedication. Not in all areas of their life anyway. Potentially they’re prioritizing their family and their work or their business and their own health and wellbeing is just taking a bit of a backseat. So…
It’s not that they need motivation or dedication, it’s just how do you fit all of the things in? In 2024, we have a lot of responsibility and it’s really easy and common for us to put everybody else before ourselves. So…
It’s really easy for us to prioritize other people. And I guess that’s another mistake that I definitely made. I prioritized so many people before myself. I prioritized all of the contracts that I had and all of the athletes that I had. I was like, you can reach out to me at any time that you like, weekends, nights, mornings. And I allowed that because I thought that was what was gonna help me be better at my job. But what that…
all that that deep but
Jess (16:08.782)
But all that created was an inability for me to switch off. I never had a opportunity where I switched off. I just was on 24 seven. I remember I lived with a friend at the time who I remember her telling, I remember her saying to me that you couldn’t even sit down and watch a full episode of TV because I was always getting up and doing something or I thought of something or I had to do something. I had no ability to switch off and really having that distinct start work time and switch off.
time is so important no matter who you are, no matter if you’re an employee, no matter if you have your own business, you need to create boundaries and I remember I used to get myself so worked up the narratives that I used to tell myself are quite ridiculous and…
are quite ridiculous. And if an athlete wasn’t sure what to have for breakfast the next morning, that conversation could actually wait till the next day. It didn’t have to be at 8 .30 at night when I was at home after leaving home at 6 a .m. and getting home at 7 p .m., which was my time. So if you’re someone who is prioritizing everyone else but yourself first, please, if you’re listening to this,
I hope this serves as a circuit breaker. I hope this serves as a message that there is a way that you can do it all. And that is also something which I fundamentally believe. I do believe we can have it all, but it does take, it does take knowing. I do believe we can have it all, but it does take.
I am someone who believes that we can have it all, but having it all doesn’t mean that you need to be on all the time, doing a thousand things, running yourself into the ground. That was how I used to operate and that is not how I operate now. That is fundamentally against how I operate my life now. And that has also been a huge catalyst for me shifting away from my old business, shifting away from all of the professional sports team contracts and moving into a business and work that allows me to
Jess (18:21.024)
me to teach the lessons and the to teach the lessons and the principles and to share the knowledge that I’ve gained in all of those years in professional sport and spread them into my coaching clients, my upcoming group coaching program which is brand new. This is the first time I am taking on a small group and teaching my methodology on how to maximize your health, maximize your well -being, how to find those opportunities for rest, how to re –
wire your limiting beliefs, how to reset and recalibrate and create your own operating system that is tailored to your life, your goals and exactly where you’re starting from.
Jess (19:20.046)
Another key mistake I made at that point in time was I thought…
I was being healthy, I was ticking the box. I was eating well, you’d hope, given what I do for a job, that I was still prioritizing that, which I was. I was moving my body. Look, it wasn’t always every single day. As I said, there would be days where I would be getting to the club at 6 .30 in the morning, leaving at like 6 .37 PM at night. So there would be days where I wouldn’t necessarily be moving, but then I started to prioritize that. So I was getting the nutrition right. I was getting the movement piece right. I was prioritizing my sleep as much as possible.
possible but there were definitely elements of if I didn’t sleep properly I felt broken the next day and that was a huge warning sign that I was on the brink of burnout which I totally ignored.
The next warning sign, which I spoke about warning signs in last week’s episode. So if you haven’t listened to that, go and tune in. But I was getting sick a few times a year and getting sick regularly is the number one indicator that the red light, the empty light is on in your fuel tank. Now, whether that is your physical fuel, your food, whether that is your energy, whether that is your rest, your battery pack, your inability to switch off, take the fact that you’re getting sick.
regularly as a big red flag that you are starting to push yourself beyond the limit and potentially push yourself into burnout. Looking back I definitely was in a state of burnout for years and I again I thought it was the price that I paid. Looking back…
Jess (20:56.302)
there were years. Looking back at the end of every single year, I was burnt out. I didn’t realise I was burnt out at the time. Like I said, I thought it was just the price that I had to pay for the opportunities that I was afforded. And actually, I feel really sad thinking about that now. It was just, I was running myself into the ground. And the second part of that was when I started to get more and more contracts because word was getting out about the good work that I was doing and I was building a good reputation in the industry. I also thought,
but how do you turn down these opportunities? These are opportunities that I dreamt of from.
15 years ago, this is the reason I got in to do this and how lucky in my mid to late 20s and early 30s I was having these opportunities. And to be honest, it wasn’t until COVID struck and the contracts were significantly reduced or a lot of the contracts were put on hold that I had an opportunity to pause and I realised how exhausted I was and to be honest, how unhappy I was. I was on the hamster wheel. I was just doing all of the things and honestly,
I was petrified that the dream job and the dream career that I’d wanted wasn’t actually the dream career that I had wanted and worked so hard for had left me feeling really empty, really exhausted and wasn’t exactly what had left me feeling exhausted and to be honest quite empty as a person. Now,
I don’t necessarily share that too often because I don’t want people to think that I ever regretted the work that I did, as I said, for 15 years of my life. That was the career that I’d dreamt of. And for 10 years, I was really lucky to do that. But probably what started to happen, if I look back and if I’m honest with myself, was the last few years, I was pretty over it. And maybe I wouldn’t have gotten over it if I was better at taking care of myself, but…
Jess (22:57.806)
If I think back to the type of person that I am, you know, and the type of people listening, we are.
We are hard workers or it’s easy for us to be hard workers and we’re generally pretty motivated and dedicated. And for people like us, it’s often not about doing more, it’s often about doing less and being really strategic. And like I said, I was ticking the box with my nutrition and movement and like those kinds of surface level, healthy, wellbeing and performance principles, but I was not prioritizing rest. I was not switching off. I was not working in cycles which allowed for physical,
and cognitive regeneration and rest. I was not having brain breaks. I didn’t know what a brain break was, but I was also in a career that didn’t really allow for that. Now, part of me didn’t need to, like part of me thinks, well, maybe if I just took on two or three contracts rather than six or seven, but that’s just my personality. And when opportunities like that were coming at me, I couldn’t say no. And that’s also why I then went and built the business and built a team of dieticians because I was starting to get
ready to step out of some of those roles. Now, I mentioned COVID really put a halt on everything and…
Honestly, it took me six months when COVID first hit and we were at home to get back to being what I would describe as human, to get back to my energy levels being at a good point, to get back to not feeling fatigued every day.
Jess (24:31.342)
it really took a long period of time. Now, off the back of that, when I did actually get COVID, as well as being in a really high stress period of time, which was when my old business was ending and a lot of decisions were getting made, I…
Sorry, scrap that bit, Sam. Now, when I did actually eventually get COVID, I was really sick for 12 to 18 months after that. Initially, they thought it was long COVID, but then there was just this cascade of symptoms that ended up happening. To be honest, I was chasing answers for months and months. I was going to the GP and they were doing blood tests and chest x -rays and everything was fine. But I had to really advocate for more answers because I knew that I was not fine.
multiple days or weeks I was in bed. I had this heavy chest and this horrendous cough and I was searching for answers. Fortunately, I advocated for myself.
and I was able to find them after seeing a few specialists. I developed a type of asthma, which then triggered chronic sinusitis, which I do have a history of. I then had to have an operation on that, but that took many, many months. I was on so much medication. I was on steroid puffers. I was on multiple doses of steroids for my sinusitis. And looking back, this went on for 18 months. From the moment I got COVID to the end point where I had recovered and been
discharged from seeing my respiratory doctor and also my ear, nose and throat specialist, it was 18 months. And while COVID was the catalyst for all of that, I look back and I know within my soul that…
Jess (26:17.582)
for the 10, 15 years for my entire life of just thinking that I was superwoman, thinking that I was invincible, prioritizing everybody else before myself and not valuing rest, I know that.
That was what resulted that I know that that was a factor. I know that that was a huge factor, if not the entire factor for what then went on for the next 12 or 18 months. It took a lot for me to get the memo from the universe that you need to start prioritizing yourself first. And this is why I feel so passionate and this is why I feel so passionate about the work that I do now. This is why.
This is why in the work that I do now, I’m so passionate about teaching other people who are motivated and driven how to prioritize themselves because it does come at a cost and unfortunately I experienced that but I want to help you avoid that. I want to help you have more energy. I want to help you have more energy to achieve the goals that you want in life but also just to be a happier person, to have time with your friends, time with your family, time with your loved ones. I want you to feel good every day. I want you to be
you to…
I want you to feel good every day. I want you to have strategies in your toolkit that you can call on when you start to feel fatigued because you know what that means. I also want you to be able to detect the warning signs that your body’s telling you and be able to rectify that. It’s not about never feeling these things, but it is about becoming more in tune with yourself and what you need and knowing how to rectify that. And that is exactly what I’m gonna be teaching in my brand new group coaching program, which is going to be the very first time I’m running something like this, which…
Jess (27:59.31)
which is the very first time I’m running something like this.
Because of that, the group is going to be kept extremely small. It’s also going to be the highest touch and highest support from myself and the accountability. What you will be walking away from is an entire new operating system in how you eat, how you move, the recovery practices that you’ve got. You’ll have strategies to optimize your sleep and you will feel for the first time in a long time, if not ever, that your health and your wellbeing is totally in your control. This isn’t about dedicating all of your time and energy to that.
I get it, you’re busy, you’ve got a lot of things going on, but this is about having your life work for you. This is about you being reactive and taking back control. This is about you knowing the most important dominoes that you need to push. And this is about you starting to prioritise yourself because for so long, it’s my birthday on the weekend, depending on this episode, mid -April, sorry, it was my birthday a few weeks ago, and looking back,
It’s taken me up until the last one to two years to really get this message. And unfortunately for me, I ran myself into the ground, I burnt myself out, I got sick, and I was chasing answers for a really long time for me to get this memo, and I don’t want the same thing to happen to you. I want you to achieve your goals, I want you to have good health now, I want you to consider future you as well, and…
I want you to take back control. So if that is of interest to you, I’d love for you to join the wait list. The group program is going to be launching in the end of May.
Jess (29:33.07)
I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode. For me, it’s felt a little bit disjointed. I guess it’s, I feel really comfortable sitting wearing my expert hat, giving you the tips and the tactics that I know that work from that lens, but getting a little bit more vulnerable and sharing a bit more of my story and also the mistakes that I’ve made is something which isn’t as familiar to myself. So I really hope that anyone hearing this that…
something spoken to them, whether that’s one thing or a few things. I hope this episode served as an opportunity to reflect on that. I’d love for you to reach out to me and let me know how you found the episode or let me know what’s resonated. If it has, please share it with a friend or on social media. If you haven’t…
subscribe to the podcast or giving it a rating and a review, make sure you do that so you don’t miss a new episode each week and the rating and the review really helps me get my message out there. And also it’s just really nice to read that people are finding value in these episodes. Other than that, I will be back again next week team with another episode helping you not only kick goals, reach the top, but how to do it sustainably and stay there.