Grief, Goals & Roundabouts — A Very Human Check‑In With Me, Heather Masters
Intro
The main point: as the year winds down, we’re deciding where to put our time and energy, and I’m digging into how modelling — from neuro‑linguistic programming — can help us make those choices and actually follow through.
I’m Heather Masters, checking in after a bit of radio silence to share what’s been happening (loss of my lovely dog, a significant birthday, a bout of Wi‑Fi drama) and how those life bits have pushed me up against boundaries I’m reconsidering. I talk honestly about grief and capacity — you can have big plans and still need gentler care — and I share a proper lived example of moving from “absolutely not” to “I drove in France” (yes, the roundabouts were as dramatic as you imagine).
I explain why noticing what worked when things did go well — the tiny practical details we usually ignore — is a brilliant strategy for tackling new challenges. I’ve also been recording interviews with people doing exceptional things, and I’ll be sharing those conversations soon, but for now I offer a small experiment: pick a manageable win, map out what you actually did, and try one piece of that on something you’re considering now. Come join me as we choose happy, get less stuck, and maybe practise another roundabout or two for good measure.
Details:
When I say I’m back, I mean properly back — with interviews lined up and a pocketful of reflections after a patchy break.
This summary leans into the practical: modelling, the NLP idea of studying excellence, and how to extract real-world tactics from successes you barely even noticed at the time. I walk you through what modelling actually looks like — paying attention to decisions, patterns, conversations, how someone recovers when plans go sideways — and suggest you apply that same curious detective energy to your own wins.
If your first instinct is "I was more confident," I challenge you (gently!) to pin down what that actually looked like in behaviour and prep. That’s the useful stuff you can copy-and-paste into new situations. To make it properly usable, I give a tiny, doable journalling exercise: pick a small boundary you crossed in the past, list the exact moves that got you through, and borrow one micro-strategy for something you’re considering now.
My own borrowed strategies included remembering why the freedom mattered, noticing other nervous drivers (and not being alone in the panic), and leaning on the courage I’ve seen in clients. It’s practical, low-drama, and exactly the kind of thing that helps you choose happiness without feeling pressured to reinvent yourself overnight.
Chapters:
- 00:06 - Catching Up — My Recent Break and What’s Ahead
- 03:13 - Acknowledging grief — losing my dog and moving forward
- 05:53 - Driving in France — Embracing the Unknown
- 10:11 - Modeling Ourselves — Using NLP to Learn from Success
- 15:24 - Exploring the Decisions Available to You
- 18:14 - Back and Looking Ahead — Upcoming Interviews & Listener Questions
Takeaways:
- I acknowledge grief and practical life at the same time, reminding us that happiness includes holding sorrow.
- I drove in France despite decades of avoidance, and that roundabout marathon taught me useful courage strategies (and a funny new skill).
- We can model success by examining exactly what people do — the decisions, attention, habits and behaviours — not just vague confidence.
- I'm asking whether I'm ready to put a commercial value on my experience and bid for bigger corporate work, while keeping my worth separate from outcomes.
- I invite you to try a tiny experiment: pick a small past win, unpack what you actually did, and test one specific part now.
- I'm bringing interviews about NLP, modelling and practical strategies to help us choose happy and navigate life's nonsense over these final months.
Podcast Details and Links
Heather Masters
Copyright 2026 Heather Masters
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Transcript
Hello and welcome back to Choosing Happy.
Speaker A:I'm your host, Heather Masters.
Speaker A:Now the last episode I published was way back on the 26th of August.
Speaker A:It's the 6th of October today when I'm recording and I just wanted to check in and have a conversation with you before we move into what I've been preparing for the final few months of the year, I wanted some time to think about what would be really useful to share with you.
Speaker A:As the year comes to an end and there is so much content available.
Speaker A:I wanted to be really thoughtful about what I was adding to the content that's out in the world, particularly at a time when so many of us are asking questions about our work, our future and where we put our energy, as well as how do we maintain that joy and aliveness in our lives now, over the past few weeks I've been recording interviews around achieving exceptional things while exploring neuro linguistic programming and modeling and how we can learn from both other people and ourselves.
Speaker A:And I'm looking forward to sharing those conversations with you in the coming weeks.
Speaker A:And alongside that, I've been living through some of those questions myself.
Speaker A:I've lost my dog and been keeping going with work.
Speaker A:I've had a significant birthday.
Speaker A:I've been considering where I want to put my time and whether I'm ready to acknowledge the value of my own experience enough to put myself forward for bigger work back into the corporate arena.
Speaker A:And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I drove in France for the first time.
Speaker A:I've also been battling Wi Fi and at last I have a stable service.
Speaker A:So it might sound like a slightly odd collection of things to bring into one episode, but each of them has brought me up against a boundary of some kind and made me look at what I believe is possible for me now.
Speaker A:And perhaps you've been having your own version of of that conversation.
Speaker A:What is it time to let go of?
Speaker A:What is it time to embrace?
Speaker A:And what's the opportunities and the perspectives that maybe you've been resisting looking at?
Speaker A:You might be looking at the last few months of the year and wondering what you want to do with them.
Speaker A:And something may have changed in your life, or you might be recognizing that that a decision you've put off deserves your attention.
Speaker A:So I thought we could begin there.
Speaker A:So stay tuned and join me in today's Choosing Happy podcast.
Speaker A:Losing my wonderful, beautiful dog belongs in this conversation because it's part of what's been happening in my life and I want to acknowledge it.
Speaker A:It's exactly two months today as of this recording that my Girl crossed the rainbow bridge.
Speaker A:And there can be an expectation, particularly when you work for yourself, that you somehow keep functioning through whatever is happening.
Speaker A:Personally, there is work to do and people are expecting things from, and those responsibilities continue.
Speaker A:Grief can be there in partnership.
Speaker A:And I'm aware that in talking about happiness, I want to leave a space and acknowledge that, that some periods of our lives ask a great deal of us.
Speaker A:And that ask doesn't simply dissolve at a set time each day.
Speaker A:And if you're listening while going through a loss of your own or a challenge of your own, you get to that into account when you think about what you want from the rest of this year.
Speaker A:You can have ambitions and hopes and dreams and still recognize that your own capacity, your own emotions, need care.
Speaker A:And that's part of the question I've been asking about where to put my time, what deserves my attention, given the life I'm actually living and the one I want to move forward into now.
Speaker A:A significant birthday adds another dimension to that question.
Speaker A:It's a number, of course, and usually I don't even consider the number.
Speaker A:And whatever you happen to think about that number, I don't usually make it important.
Speaker A:However, with this birthday, there's been an opportunity to look at what's really important, what's really important now, and how I want to spend my time from here.
Speaker A:And what about you?
Speaker A:What do you want to keep doing?
Speaker A:What are you ready to try?
Speaker A:What do you want to release?
Speaker A:And this is a lovely question.
Speaker A:What if it's all working out?
Speaker A:And if your dreams, your hopes and your goals for the next three months, what would that look like if they all worked out?
Speaker A:Are there possibilities you've been dismissing for so long that you've stopped noticing that you're actually dismissing them?
Speaker A:And that all brings me to the car now.
Speaker A:If you'd asked me in July whether I was going to drive in France, I would have said absolutely not.
Speaker A:I've avoided driving on the other side of the road for years.
Speaker A:Even when I've been to places like Canada and the U.S. i knew there would be roundabouts in France and going what felt like to be the wrong way round.
Speaker A:And I had plenty of time to imagine how uncomfortable that whole experience would be.
Speaker A:And I hummed and hawed, I put it off, I procrastinated, I worried about it.
Speaker A:I rehearsed all the bad things that could happen absolutely perfectly.
Speaker A:But for this time, having a car mattered, because it gave not just me, but my son, the freedom to explore a new country and it gave us opportunities we wouldn't otherwise have.
Speaker A:So eventually I booked it the night before we were due to travel.
Speaker A:That's how much I was resisting it now.
Speaker A:Booking a car and sitting in that car at the airport, two different experiences.
Speaker A:Though I have to say I'm probably more resistant to booking it.
Speaker A:But there I was, sitting in the car, taking a few deep breaths, having a few prayers directed towards my travel agents who were sitting in the backseat, preparing to do something I literally had spent decades avoiding.
Speaker A:And then I glanced to my right and noticed the English tourists in the car next to me, and they were so nervous and hot and bothered that they got out and swapped drivers.
Speaker A:And I'm sad to say, there was something rather reassuring about discovering that I wasn't the only one who was finding it all a bit much.
Speaker A:Unfortunately, swapping drivers wasn't an option for me.
Speaker A:There wasn't another qualified driver with us.
Speaker A:And as we left the airport, there were six roundabouts.
Speaker A:Six roundabouts by the time we'd been round all of them.
Speaker A:I was a professional.
Speaker A:Well, maybe that's overstating it a bit, but I was sure that the universe had given me a task to get used to the roundabouts.
Speaker A:Before we got into the main traffic, I was driving in France.
Speaker A:I was doing the thing I'd previously ruled out.
Speaker A:And one of the things that helped me to make that decision and to drive was remembering the women I've worked with this year and the changes they've made in their own lives.
Speaker A:I have watched them begin moving towards things that mattered deeply to them.
Speaker A:After feeling blocked and truly held back, and thinking about them helped me keep going, I could see a connection between what I'd witnessed in their lives and what I was asking of myself in that car.
Speaker A:I wanted the freedom that that driving experience would give me.
Speaker A:And here was the uncomfortable part I needed to learn how to do.
Speaker A:Now that experience has given me something quite specific to examine, because I can look back and ask what helped me move from absolutely not to actually doing it, to actually driving.
Speaker A:Now I know that the freedom mattered.
Speaker A:I know that my son mattered, that the whole experience was going to be better because we had the car.
Speaker A:So when I got there and I took some breaths and seeing that nervous driver all helped me feel less alone.
Speaker A:And then remembering my clients gave me the encouragement I needed to recognize that I could do this.
Speaker A:And those are the things I can identify and consider using again.
Speaker A:They're a strategy, if you like, for moving beyond something I'm resisting or fearful of.
Speaker A:That's A useful introduction to what I mean when I talk about modeling ourselves.
Speaker A:Because within neuro linguistic programming, modeling involves exploring how someone does something, something, what they pay attention to, how they approach it, the decisions they make that are conscious and unconscious, their patterns, their conversations and the final steps they take.
Speaker A:And for our purposes here, we can begin with a very ordinary piece of curiosity about an experience that went well.
Speaker A:Often we're giving attention to what went wrong and we can describe the mistake in considerable detail.
Speaker A:We can remember what we should have said and what we didn't do and the moment we wish we could have again.
Speaker A:But when something goes well, we may barely stop to notice our contribution.
Speaker A:We got through it and now there's something else to do, something else to aim for, to move forward to.
Speaker A:However, there may be useful information here.
Speaker A:Perhaps you prepared in a way that really helped you succeed.
Speaker A:Perhaps you asked someone for support early enough for it to make a difference.
Speaker A:Or perhaps you gave yourself time to learn or stay focused on something that made the effort worthwhile.
Speaker A:You can investigate that in your own experience.
Speaker A:When we're learning from someone else, we can bring that same curiosity.
Speaker A:I want to understand what they actually did, including the practice, the strategy, the support, the decision, the conscious, the conscious that contributed to the results.
Speaker A:And what happened when things didn't go to plan.
Speaker A:What decisions did they make then?
Speaker A:Then we can consider what fits our own circumstances and try it for ourselves.
Speaker A:And this is the whole basis of nlp, the the study of excellence, the study of experience and how someone else's experience gives us something to explore that we can use for ourselves.
Speaker A:That's part of what interests me about the interviews I've been recording.
Speaker A:I want us to be able to get close enough to happiness, to choosing happy, and to how we achieve, to understand something useful about it.
Speaker A:What can we learn?
Speaker A:What can we practice?
Speaker A:What might we recognize in ourselves that we've been overlooking?
Speaker A:For me, the last question connects very directly to work.
Speaker A:And I've been asking myself whether I'm ready to acknowledge my own worth and bid for higher value, work back in leadership roles in the corporate environment.
Speaker A:Even saying that brings up an interesting distinction.
Speaker A:My worth as a person doesn't depend on a proposal being accepted.
Speaker A:Yet at the same time, putting a commercial value on my work asks me to be very clear about the experience I bring, about the solution and about the problems I can help someone solve.
Speaker A:I need to be able to describe that value and allow someone to consider it, to recognize it.
Speaker A:There are practical questions involved.
Speaker A:You know, is the work a good fit?
Speaker A:Can I deliver what's required?
Speaker A:What evidence supports what I'm saying, and what would the commitment mean for my time and for my life?
Speaker A:Alongside those, it's a more personal question.
Speaker A:Am I actually willing to put myself forward in the first place?
Speaker A:And that's a boundary I've been looking at.
Speaker A:I'm sharing it while it's a live question because I suspect some of you might recognize it.
Speaker A:In this ever changing world where we may be considering things that we haven't considered before, you may have years of experience that you've taken for granted because it feels familiar to you, and you might be considering new opportunities and finding it much easier to see what you still need to learn than what you are are already contributing.
Speaker A:There is room to assess both honestly now.
Speaker A:These questions feel especially relevant when, as I say, the world is shifting around us.
Speaker A:We still have to make decisions about our own lives.
Speaker A:While circumstances are uncertain and the world around us seems more uncertain.
Speaker A:We still need to earn a living.
Speaker A:We still need to decide what to learn and work out, where our efforts are most likely to help, and also where our efforts bring us the most satisfaction and fulfillment.
Speaker A:External circumstances do affect our choices, our responsibilities and our resources matter, and any useful conversation about success needs to make room for those realities as well as how and what we want for our lives.
Speaker A:Within that, I want to explore the decisions that remain available to us.
Speaker A:What does a successful path look like for you now, and how much of it have you chosen and how much of it are you continuing?
Speaker A:Because it once seemed like the sensible thing to do, your answer may have changed.
Speaker A:You may want more demanding work or more freedom in how you do it.
Speaker A:You may want to begin something you've been postponing.
Speaker A:You may need a gentler pace while dealing with something difficult in your world, and it's worth giving yourself enough attention to find out.
Speaker A: ring to these final months of: Speaker A:Useful conversations that help us make those choices and to try things in our actual lives to add that aliveness, that happiness, that Jo While navigating the nonsense, as I call it.
Speaker A:Before we finish, I'd like to offer you a small experiment.
Speaker A:You can do this later with a notebook if you like, and just choose an ordinary, manageable example of something you did that you once found difficult and give yourself a moment to remember what happened and ask yourself, what did you do that actually helped you get through it, that helped you succeed, that helped you cross that boundary and try to be specific.
Speaker A:If your first answer is I was more confident, see whether you can remember what more confident actually meant.
Speaker A:What did you actually do?
Speaker A:What was going through your mind?
Speaker A:How did you feel?
Speaker A:How did you prepare?
Speaker A:Where did you put your attention and did you ask someone to help you and what did that help job look like?
Speaker A:What did the outcome look like and what was the decisions that you made in those moments and choose one part of that experience you could try and something you're considering to do now, something new, a new challenge.
Speaker A:For me, remembering why I wanted the car helped me make the discomfort worth facing, remembering others people's courage as well, or also helps for you, it could be something entirely different.
Speaker A:The value is in discovering a useful detail from your own life and seeing whether it helps.
Speaker A:Again, you can keep this small.
Speaker A:There's no requirement to choose the biggest unresolved issue in your life, but choose something that will make a difference.
Speaker A:I'm pleased to be back and I'm looking forward to sharing the interviews with you.
Speaker A: for these last few months of: Speaker A:Is there something you're ready to give your attention to or something you've done recently that surprised you?
Speaker A:Thank you so much for being here, for listening, and for choosing to spend time with me.
Speaker A:I'm Heather Masters and this is Choosing Happy, and I'll leave you with the knowledge that if your next adventure happens to involve driving out of a French Air airport, you may get rather more roundabout practice than you were originally expecting.
Speaker A:Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to this week's episode.
Speaker A:If you enjoyed it or think it would be valuable to others, please do share.
Speaker A:And if you really enjoyed it, please leave me a review.
Speaker A:It really helps the podcast.
Speaker A:All of the links are in the show notes and I look forward to seeing you next week on the Choosing Happy podcast.
Speaker A:Sam.
