Moment 24 - Mary Portas on Finding Your Truth When You’re Feeling Lost

Foreign. More stuff. We thought that was it. Which leads me into something else I want to talk to you about. I read you'd said that you're in the public eye, you're making more money than ever, and it was extraordinarily exciting. But at the age of 48, you found yourself crying almost every day.

Probably physically exhausted. I just didn't get that joy, you know, I just was on this. I was doing TV shows, radio shows, I had my own collection, I had the business, I had two kids. And there were parts of it that was just, you know, incredible. I look back and think, what some great years. But I was exhausted. And you're not allowed to say that. Actually, I was thinking about that at that time, there would be those, you know, women on the front of the Sunday Times Magazine, like that. We can't show our pose, but it'll be like that. You can have it all. They got eight kids and they would get up and they would be doing, you know, yoga at 6am and then having a global call with China or whatever. Then, you know, they'd be bringing. Dropping the kids off at school while chatting to God knows whoever, sorting out the day, and you just thought, oh, God, how shit is that life? Where are you? Where are you? And I lost me in that. There wasn't times where it wasn't fantastic. There was, but where was I? I didn't stop to breathe. I didn't stop to truly connect, truly connect with me. And I remember I went away to some very expensive spa place where it was all shanty and downward dogs and eating stuff and everyone's all this. You know, you go where rich people are because you got money and you go and you discover you and. And I remember sitting in this yoga session and I just was crying and I was like, please stop. Please stop, Mary, please stop. And there's all these sort of women in their Lululemon. And I was going. Just crying and I thought. And I went in to. There was this wonderful Indian guru who used to sit in this little room she could go and meet and chat with. And I remember going in to see him and he didn't say a word. And I just was crying and I didn't want. But I wanted to go to the bookshelf that was behind him because I knew there were some books there. And I picked up Eckhart Tolle's New Earth and I just took it. And as I left, he went, that's the right one. And I went back to my room and I read it and I read it on the beach days. I was like, oh my God, I've got the world wrong. I've just completely got this wrong. And that was a start of my journey. I took money. Yummy. I'm still, you know, getting. Still partly hybriding that life. I'm never going to sit in an ashram, but I. I discovered how to connect back truly with me and stop loading this stuff in your life. Mary.

And. And saying no two questions there, which is regarding this book, this Eckhart Tolle book that you. You talk about a new earth. What was it? What was the key lessons that imparted on you about life and how you were living?

I was living totally outwardly to my ego and my Persona. Mary Porters, Mary with Bob, Mary the businesswoman, Mary the mother. I was not connecting truly with who my spirit, my soul. So everything was done to feed that. And you believe that that is you. You believe that that is your personality. You believe all of that you talk.

About, you thought you'd become a bit of a caricature.

Oh, for sure. But I also milked that. That was very profitable. You know, I knew it was brand, Mary. The red bob, the rings. You know, I've always loved fashion. I was lucky. But it was very much, you know, a signature. So. And yeah, of course, I mean, I advise businesses globally on brands. I was, I suppose, a brand my own self. And I. I just didn't want to be that anymore.

Philosophy is very clear on this idea of like abandoning your true self and the consequences.

Your ego, your outer ego.

Yeah. And it seems like such a clearly losing game. And I think people listening to this are probably have to. You're. Well, you are some stage in the process. You've either. You're probably. You're either at the start and you've not yet tried to abandon yourself because you think that, you know, because the outside world has convinced you and incentivized you to do so, especially social media. That'll have you trying to abandon yourself and become the Kardashians. Whatever, whatever. Or you are in the process of abandoning yourself or trying to. And you're feeling the sense of despair and probably lack of orientation that comes with that, or you've come out the other end, which it kind of sounds like you've. You've got to where you've realized that you try to abandon yourself and the only true answer is to. To be yourself, because everything else is despair. You either succeed in abandoning yourself, as this one, I think it's called Stoddard, This Swedish philosopher used to say, if you succeed in abandoning yourself, then you end up in despair. If you fail in abandoning yourself, then you end up in despair. So the only true, true path to joy is to accept who you are?

Yes. I think the thing is, it's knowing what the truth is. It doesn't mean that we're not going to have this. We are truly connecting on a truth here. I don't think we're, you know, performing, but part of it is performative because we are doing a job that's going to be this podcast, but it's being on the path. Some people never even know that path's there. You know, most people don't. And that, you know, I remember when I first discovered it, and people don't, you know, don't talk about that because you might sound a bit odd on, you know, spirituality. Don't talk. And you're like. And I didn't for a long while. You know, I even was chatting to a great producer at the BBC saying, why isn't there a show on something like this on the BBC night? No, don't mention spirituality in the BBC at the moment. You're like, what? This needs to get out there? And it's not hokey pokey stuff. This is our truth. And I think what I've tried to do is to allow the people who work with me express that and know about it, and we share it. We share it in the business, and it just opens this whole thing up. And there are times when you have to be, as I say, performative and be. I'm Mary Portas, you know, going out, I'm working, I'm writing a piece or I'm doing, of course, but I'm rooted in who I am deeply. And I think it isn't whatever we call it, whether it's spirituality, whether it's our soul, whether it's our spirit, whether it's our truth, whether it's our vibration, whether it's our. Whether it's our, you know, whatever. Our vortex or our frequency, as Oprah says, whatever. Getting back to that, you know, I remember I was listening to the lovely Irish, Irish poet, and I'll think of his own, and I'll think about it, and they'll all come to me after I've done this. But anyway, I remember him talking about when he used to give the last rights. He used to be in Ireland, and he'd go to give the last rights to whoever was dying. And he'd go in and he'd see these little pinched Faces that had lived a life that wasn't in line with their true self because they couldn't, they had no choice. And he just said it used to make him feel so, so sad. And then he would give them the last rights and he would literally see the pain on their faces, their skin just un. Unstress and unwrinkled, because they were able just to be. And that is the greatest gift I think we can give to anything. And to our kids, you know, I mean, I put them through a great academic system because I could. But I always said, you choose. I remember my daughter coming to me when she just finished Oxford, she got into Oxford and she was like, I was deeply proud. And she finished her degree and she said, mom, I know everyone's going to expect me to go in and make a lot of money. I don't want to do that. I said, why? You explain that to me. Like, you know, I'm really gonna judge you on that. And she wanted to do something that just connected not with what, but with where her truth was. And that's the only thing I think we need to try and find in life now. Your truth probably was that, you know, you wanted to get to that place where you were able to say, I did this, because that's the truth. That was important to you because everyone else was telling, you can't do something, you're not sitting in this system. I was much the same, much the same. I met some old school friends, they were like, whoa, you know my life. Because I was just always the one in trouble. Or I remember getting 17% in physics and thinking, I don't give a, I don't give a. And God, I was like, 17. I never felt embarrassed. I was just like. I knew I was a bit different as well, though, you know, you felt different. I felt different, but I wanted to be like the middle class girls that were living in Chorleywood. And I came from the working class, so it was the kids from Watford that got into the grammar school that, that were the sort of. That parents didn't have the money. We used to get the bus out. And then the middle class from Chorleywood and all those areas, their parents used to drop them off in cars and then they'd get to the sixth one and they drive in themselves. I was like, oh, my God, I want to be this. And then I went, nah, nah, I don't want to be that life. I want my life. I want my life.