I am in control of my life and my health. It takes just a little awareness to get there, and you can do it, too.
Cecile Herman, wife, co-founder of Culture Emulsion, and mother of two beautiful daughters, conducted this interview to shed light on female entrepreneurs. She discussed how to find balance and how she uses Pilates as an exercise regime to help her deal with stress and handle tough times without compromising her health. She also spoke about the fear all women develop as we mature.
I’ve always admired Cecile’s ethics in how she handles her work and family. Last year, besides her duo class with her best friend Nadia (@theden), Cecile felt that she needed another time on her own to deepen her practice. This led her to challenge herself by taking advanced group classes, which opened her curiosity to the possibility of being a teacher. So, picking Cecile as the student of the year after seeing her hard work for the last three and half years was a no-brainer. I am so grateful that she agreed to do this interview for us.
What helps you stay focused?
Over the years, I’ve come up with two sets of core beliefs. They give me the drive to get out of bed and to pull through challenging times. Whether in sport, in the family, or at work:
1. To always have a goal. This helps me understand where I’m going and what I want.
2. Once I know what I want, I always focus my attention on achieving that goal with precision. With experience, I have found that these two sets of beliefs make my life feel less than ticking boxes. Putting effort into understanding how things work is precisely why I love Pilates. Because of the similarity in the way I ‘workout’. I use my mind to help me focus on achieving what I set out to do. In turn, this makes me feel that I can achieve anything and cope with the difficulties that come with it.
What does it take to live a healthy lifestyle?
We all hear that wisdom comes with age; this is true on every level. The wisdom for me was the moment I switched my attention from weight loss to taking better care of myself. Today, they call it self-care. Ageing doesn’t scare me, but what I do want is to age without pain. I want to embody it with grace and acceptance rather. I’m blessed to do the work that I love, and now I feel comfortable in my skin with what I have and who I have become. This inspires me every day to be more loving towards myself.
You know how, in the 20s, we take everything for granted, right? We drink too much, we eat junk food, and we sleep very little. Still, we can get up and go about our day, and the body says yes and keeps us moving, which is not so easy to do in the ’30s and ’40s. This is where nurturing is more important. Thanks to practising Pilates, I’ve gained a new awareness of my body and movement, which made me realise that it is not that hard to stay healthy. Without drugs and botox (if that’s the choice you want to pursue). It’s a matter of feeling happy with who you are and with what you have.
Here is how:
To practice Pilates, you need to focus your mind on feeling what’s going on inside yourself. By using your mind and every cell of your body, you can tell your body what you want, and in turn, you will get that feeling that you are one and whole. This was very, very empowering for me. Understanding how my body works and that I’m always in control of myself and my life was a huge awakening moment.
What helps you cope with life’s high demands?
Like every woman who has to juggle several plates every day, one of my many fears is balancing everything: Work, being a wife, motherhood, and even being a daughter to my parents. While you’re at it, there’s also that pressure that you have to be good at everything. But work rarely stresses me now. Because at some point, it became clear to me that when you love what you do, it makes a huge difference on every level. For one, it’s easier to wake up every morning. Also, there are so many things that are out of my control. And unexpected things always happen. But if, on my side, I do the very best that I can at any particular moment, things do fall into place. I have watched this happen over and over again. Because really that’s all one can only do – the best. That’s the real control that I have, and once I do that, I can relax and let things work on their own. So, please do your part, let go and let it happen.
How do you deal with your own negative and fearful thoughts?
When we love our family, we’ve fearful thoughts that tell us we are not doing enough for them. And not being there enough for them. Especially as women, we’re always feeling guilty even though we are doing everything we can. But the worst one so far for me, and this is something that I rarely share, is the fear of dying before my children. Now, I know that we are not immortal and that, somehow, we are all going to have to face our own death. But death in itself doesn’t scare me, but what it represents – the fear of dying and leaving my children alone. They are still at a very young age, you know, and they will have no support as they grow up. That’s my biggest fear.
But unfortunately, no matter how much I stress about it, there’s nothing that I can do. Because none of us know what’s going to happen. I’m particularly someone who doesn’t like to put my feelings out in the open 24/7. `because I don’t want to amplify the dark thoughts or to make them real. For me, the best thing is not to focus my attention on what is going wrong. Instead, I want to do the things that I can have a positive impact on. That helps me stay sane a lot. I’m grateful that my work gives me a lot of satisfaction and distracts me from thinking about it. I guess what we call workaholic is the decision of spending time doing things that’s worth giving energy. Rather than spending time on negative thoughts. Which, as I said, amplifies our fears and weaknesses. The mind is quite cunning, and it plays tricks on us. And if we stay in these negative thoughts all the time, we can actually make ourselves paranoid. Don’t get me wrong; it’s good to share how we feel, but then we have to do it once and then move on and not dwell on it. In that way, ‘the law of attraction’ has a point: don’t focus your mind on what you don’t want to attract in your life. It’s not about staying positive all the time but making better choices.
But if things don’t get well, and those thoughts get out of control, then we must seek professional help. It is wise is to see someone, to be able to verbalize what’s going on inside our head. To put it out in the open and let it go means to find a solution. This action is usually cleansing. To be clear, I’m not asking you to dig into childhood to analyze or find problems that don’t exist. In fact, psychologists should know that sometimes it’s not necessary to dig into the past. But to help us release the fears that hold us hostage. A way of reorganizing and rewiring our thoughts. I did a coaching session a few years ago for a career change. That action led me to co-found Culture Emulsion. It’s good to do the same thing when it comes to our personal lives when things get dark in our heads, and before making things bigger than they actually are. It’s good to step back and talk to someone to help us find some perspective. It’s a way to reflect on what we are actually thinking inside our heads -something that happens to all of us (overthinking). We all, from time to time, hit that wall, and we don’t want to confront the truth. That’s the one that starts to eat our happiness.
How did Pilates help you with your life?
Before I started Pilates, I was doing Body Balance, where I had a small Pilates taste. Little did I know, though, that there’s more to Pilates than I originally thought. When practising traditional Pilates, I have learned what integration meant: to connect the mind, the body, the fascia, and all the parts. Knowing that to truly control all these parts needs to be one and under my own conscious control. That’s also why I love this method so much. We are all, one way or another, trying to “ be in control “ of ourselves. Like I said before, we can rarely control the world. But by working on ourselves, which is the only control we really have, – we receive the internal strength. This makes us feel that we can handle life a little easier and any circumstances that come our way, big or small. I truly believe that every woman should know that – this is our superpower. By taking care of ourselves, we are nurturing that power and go about life with that thought. I love that with Pilates, I can tone my body, correct my posture, and keep all my joints healthy. But the most important thing for me is to keep my mind strong and centred, which Pilates helps me with.
Cecile Herman, Co-founder of Culture Emulsion
