Many successful people reinvented themselves in a later period in their lives. Jeff Bezos worked on Wall Street before he reinvented himself and started Amazon. Sara Blakely sold office supplies before she started Spanx. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was a WWE wrestler before he became a successful actor and filmmaker. Arnold Schwarzenegger went from a bodybuilder, to an actor to a Governor. McDonald's founder Ray Kroc was a milkshake-device salesman before starting the McDonalds franchise in his 50s.
How does one reinvent themselves? What hurdles have to be overcome to take life in a new direction? How do you overcome those challenges? How do you ignore the naysayers? How do you push through the paralyzing fear?
In this series called "Second Chapters; How I Reinvented Myself In The Second Chapter Of My Life " we are interviewing successful people who reinvented themselves in a second chapter in life, to share their story and help empower others.
As a part of this interview series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Gill McKay.
Gill McKay runs Inquisitive Coaching helping professional, successful mid-life women to break free from the hold of alcohol and start living a life on their own terms – a life they don’t want to escape from. She also works with teams and organisations to open up the conversation around alcohol and stop the stigma around sobriety and sober curiosity.
With a background in neuroscience, Gill is also a mental health first aider, award-winning TEDx speaker and a best-selling author of “STUCK: Brain Smart Insights for Coaches”.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we start, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?
I was born to a very close family with an elder sister and younger brother. My family are Scottish and it is very common to live in a three generation household. I loved having my grandmother living with us as my parents were both hard working doctors. I do describe my childhood as happy, however, it was also challenging because I was born with a heart condition which meant I was treated with kid gloves by everyone around me and included attending school for half days not full days. I also had to have regular hospital visits and I felt very different from my friends – a bit of an outlier. That certainly built a sense of resilience from a young age!
I was fortunate to have heart surgery at Great Ormond Street Hospital at the age of 12 which, despite being a risky procedure, cured my heart defect and put me on track for a healthy life. (I was the 5th child in the UK with my specific heart defect to be operated on in Great Ormond Street Hospital and discharged, completely cured, for which I am eternally grateful).
Can you please give us your favorite "Life Lesson Quote"? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
I am a great fan of the author and researcher Brene Brown. In her book “The Gifts of Imperfection” she shares this perspective about being real and true.
“Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It's about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen”.
I have had several experiences in life where I have strongly recognised that honesty is one of my values. Honesty from others, but more importantly, honesty in myself. The reason I stopped drinking alcohol was that I recognised that I was living a life in dissonance with who I really was. I was in denial about how much I was drinking, making excuses and lying to myself. Being honest was what set me free.
You have been blessed with much success. In your opinion, what are the top three qualities that you possess that have helped you accomplish so much? If you can, please share a story or example for each.
Empathy
I am a natural empath and while that can have its downsides, I honour this trait as a strength. I have spent much of my time in my career facilitating sessions with groups, both in the context of work and also volunteering. A few years ago, I delivered a presentation skills workshop with a group of new graduates, with varying levels of confidence and self-belief. My compassionate and empathic approach ensured that everyone was able to contribute in a safe and inclusive space and each participant recognised that this was a room of equals, the ego was parked at the door and we could all learn from each other.
Curiosity
My curiosity has given me a mindset of life-long learning and I believe it is my superpower!
As mentioned above, as a child, I always felt different to my friends as I was born with a heart defect and attended school part time. So, I found a way of honouring my difference and being proud of it by becoming curious about myself, my illness and the world around me when I was at home in the afternoon while my friends remained at school. I discovered that all our brains are unique and as a child I thought I would become a brain or a heart surgeon!
Whilst I didn’t pursue a medical career, I was able to learn about neuroscience and integrate it into leadership learning programmes in my work in the late 1990s, when the research was moving beyond just the clinical application and bringing a view to the physiological basis to human behaviour. Neuroscience as a modality helps clients to understand their differences, their strengths and their patterns – and it is fun to learn about too!
Self-Awareness
My training as a facilitator, executive coach, NLP master practitioner, somatic coach and more recently a sober coach and mentor, have all offered experiences for me to learn about myself. Understanding my motivations as well as my strengths and putting a language to my blind spots has been liberating. As a result, I trust my intuition and take time to pause and reflect if something feels “off”. Most recently, following my TEDx talk and another conference speech, I listened to my intuition and took the decision to reduce the amount of time spent coaching clients on a one-to-one basis, and to connect to more people who may be struggling with drinking, through speaking engagements. I am also able to “give back” by running a volunteer mentor programme with a Community Interest Company called Women Who Don’t Drink.
Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about ‘Second Chapters’. Can you tell our readers about your career experience before your Second Chapter?
I have enjoyed every part of my career, which evolved in the early days as I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I left university. I studied maths and business at Manchester University, followed by a Master’s degree in Marketing. I then decided it would be fun to move to London to a company in the emerging technology sector. An initial Marketing Communications role became Head of Internal Communications. In the 1980s there were more traditional methods of communicating with employees, such as newsletters and site visits for company updates. I really enjoyed facilitating the “all hands” communications meetings around Europe which led me into roles in Learning and Development.
For many years I worked in Leadership and Talent Development in Europe and Asia, developing an interest in understanding human behaviour through the study of neuroscience. I left the corporate world when I had my third child and as well as running my own training and coaching business, I also went into partnership with an ex colleague training coaches and trainers in how to integrate neuroscience into their work. It was a fascinating area!
And how did you “reinvent yourself” in your Second Chapter?
I quit drinking alcohol nearly eight years ago, which changed my life. I had started drinking regularly as a way of “coping” with a busy and stressful life. I was a classic midlife woman looking after aging parents, parents-in-law and three children alongside running a business. I thought a few glasses of wine every evening helped. But the truth was that it didn’t. I quit drinking as I realised that I didn’t like the way I was living my life. In fact, I didn’t like myself. The first part of the reinvention was a new habit I brought into my life from day one of stopping drinking. At 5pm every day – the time when I would be thinking about drinking – I moved to a lovely writing desk in our spare bedroom and worked on my book. I call this my healing book. As well as achieving a long held ambition to be a best selling published author, this stage of my life gave me the gift of the love of writing.
As the weeks and months passed, I felt so much better physically and mentally and recognised that I was showing up more authentically in all my relationships. I knew I was giving more of my real self, not just to my family and friends, but also to my clients. I recognised I could use all my skills and qualifications to help other mid-life women struggling with their drinking to change their relationship with alcohol, if they were ready to do so. I could use my lived experience in the service of others.
Can you tell us about the specific trigger that made you decide that you were going to “take the plunge” and make your huge transition?
Frankly, my age! I was three years sober and wanting to become qualified in a new specialism – sobriety coaching. If I didn’t do it now, when would I? I knew I could help so many people through coaching, mentoring, speaking and training.
What did you do to discover that you had a new skillset inside of you that you haven't been maximizing? How did you find that and how did you ultimately overcome the barriers to help manifest those powers?
I knew I already had skills and strengths in coaching and training from my decades of experience, however, they needed channelling in the niche of sobriety and I recognised I needed a mentor to help me offer my skills in this area. In addition, I needed a community of other coaches and mentors who work in the sobriety field as a means of supervision and accountability for ongoing learning.
How are things going with this new initiative? We would love to hear some specific examples or stories.
I believe I have found the right balance now with my work. I have developed my own programme called ‘Sober Joy’, which supports people through their early and ongoing sobriety journey. I offer this both one-to-one as a coach and also with small groups. I also want to reach more people through speaking and education, so I don’t coach full time. I work increasingly with organisations to encourage support of employees who may be struggling with alcohol misuse and to recognise that alcohol needs to be discussed and included as part of any wellness programme. I also work with a Community Interest Company called Women Who Don’t Drink, running a free mentoring service for women who want to take a break from drinking, cut down or stop completely. I enjoy this mix of working for others in tandem with my private clients.
Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
It took me weeks of research to find a mentor I wanted to work with to help me move initially into sobriety coaching, before finally deciding to work with Jolene Park who’s based in the US. Like me, she has an interest in neuroscience and as a functional nutritionist specialising in gray area drinking, she offered me broader learning about the impact of alcohol on our brain chemistry and the craving brain. I am really grateful for her mentorship and all she has taught me over the years. She, and the community she has put together, gave me the confidence to start coaching people struggling with their alcohol relationship.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started in this new direction?
I really love the one-to-one work with coaching clients, to help them change their alcohol patterns and it is incredibly rewarding to be a small part of them making changes in their lives for the better. I also love working with groups and feel that fundamentally, I am an educator more so than a coach. Last year I decided I wanted to start talking publicly about topics that people rarely surface – topics like shame, guilt, lying, stigma, living secret lives. So I applied for the TEDx stage and was successful at Edinburgh University.
My talk title was “The Surprising Stigma of Sobriety” where I shared that many people assume that if you choose a sober life, then you must have lived a dreadful life of addiction and alcoholism. Sure, sometimes that is true, alcohol is a complex addictive drug, but the reality is that most people drink as a way of coping with life. It becomes a prop or a crutch in some way, or a way to numb out pain. In my case, I drank because I was grieving for the loss of my parents and was struggling to help one of my children who had been diagnosed with OCD. Often, like me, people find company in the bottle and they feel less lonely. At the end of my TEDx talk I had a few people come and talk to me about their story and thanked me for talking about shame. They felt less ashamed as I had shared my story of shame. I realised that public speaking could reach more people and help them see that their drinking wasn’t unique to them, that they are not alone and there is another way if they choose it. I am able to talk about those difficult topics and if it helps others feel less alone, then I will continue to do so.
Did you ever struggle with believing in yourself? If so, how did you overcome that limiting belief about yourself? Can you share a story or example?
Absolutely I struggle with believing in myself at times – it is human nature, particularly in the fast moving, competitive world we live in today. It is an enormous privilege to walk alongside another person on their journey to sobriety and yet addiction is a really complex beast. I sometimes doubt that I am the right person to help others, after all, I am not a medical doctor. Yet I also recognise that I have my own lived experience which can offer others hope on their own journey.
I mentioned before that often people drink to numb out their emotions and pain. One of the hardest things my clients report, and that I experienced too, is to learn to sit with emotions, to pause and work out a response that feels safe without the drink. I remind myself daily of the strength I have shown, the self-awareness I have built through my own journey to sobriety and all the insights I have gained en route to where I am today. I am grateful for all of it! Daily gratitude helps me to overcome limiting beliefs about myself.
In my own work I usually encourage my clients to ask for support before they embark on something new. How did you create your support system before you moved to your new chapter?
My support network of other professionals working in the addiction field grew and evolved through the training I initially took with Jolene and then further on with Janey Lee Grace. Before I started my training I was involved with another community called Soberistas, run by Lucy Rocca, where I met many amazing women on the same path as myself, wanting to stop drinking and learn how to navigate the ups and down of sobriety and how to prosper in a world obsessed with with alcohol.
Starting a new chapter usually means getting out of your comfort zone, how did you do that? Can you share a story or example of that?
My own experience of drinking at its heaviest collided with my menopause. I have no doubt that my drinking exacerbated my menopausal symptoms and vice versa – that my menopause felt so rubbish that I wanted to drink more to drown it out!
I initially set out to work with mid- life women who were dealing with the added challenges of menopause on top of drinking too much and wanting to make a change to help both of these issues. A male psychotherapist friend of mine referred a client to me as he had been following me on LinkedIn for a while and felt I was the right coach for his client. While I have coached men in the past, this was a new experience in the sobriety field. Where I found that my female clients had common challenges, including the menopause, there were many parts of this male client’s drinking history that were different. Initially I felt out of my comfort zone but was of course fully committed to helping him. We built a strong coaching relationship and I learned a lot about a different alcohol experience and motivations through working alongside him. Now, in the coaching side of my business, while I predominantly work with women, I do work with men too and I am very grateful to have had the experience of working with my first male client in this context.
What are your "5 things I wish someone told me before I started" and why? Please share a story or example for each.
1. Done is better than perfect
My three-month programme, ‘Sober Joy’ took a lot of creative energy and weeks to complete. The experience reminded me of when I was writing my book and when to press the “publish” button. The format was bite sized videos for clients to watch each week alongside coaching reflection questions and live coaching. However, differently to a book being published and the editing process having to have a final date, I realised that with my own programme I could change it whenever I wanted so there was no reason to wait for perfection (which doesn’t exist anyway!)
2. Take action
I took a “leaf out of my own book” from when I stopped drinking to apply to building my sobriety coaching business. On my sobriety journey I operated on the principle that as long as I was making one step each day and taking action, then I was moving in a positive direction. As I have mentioned, alcohol is complex and sometimes conversations are hard to have when clients are emotional, in pain and stuck. Many prospective clients want to have an initial conversation and then feel they aren’t ready to do something about their drinking as it can feel scary to embark on such a change. As a coach, there are times when I have thought that it is challenging to gain clients in this sector, yet I stick with what I learned on my own sobriety journey and I take action every day in my business. Whether that is writing a LinkedIn post, a chapter of my next book or recording a video for people to watch.
3. Goals can change and flex
When I started my training with Jolene Park, I felt 100% that I had found my vocation within sobriety coaching. Yet I now have a broader offering. As I have gained experience I have applied my skills in various contexts. All my work, both now and in the past, shares a common thread of enabling people to find their voice, whether that is learning who they are as they become alcohol-free or as a new leader in business or a speaker on stage.
4. Small steps create massive change
Tiny habits compound into larger change. I am currently writing my second book “Goodbye Hangover, Hello Life, Busting the Myths around becoming Alcohol-Free”. Recently, I felt at a crossroads with the direction it was going so I took a break for a week. And then I got busy with other work and simply got out of the habit of writing. I gave myself a good talking to and am now back into the habit of writing every day. Even if it is only for 10 minutes, that equates to progress. I am now halfway through and feeling motivated to submit my manuscript to my publisher next year.
5. It’s ok to say no
Many people who drink have let go of any boundaries and don’t know how to prioritise themselves. I certainly didn’t when I was drinking! I spend time with my clients to help them recognise their people-pleasing patterns and how to become unapologetic about considering themselves first. No is a complete sentence! I have to remind myself of this in my business. I can’t be all things to all people and spread myself too thin. I now know I need a balance of coaching, mentoring, public speaking and working with companies to feel truly fulfilled and that means that sometimes I need to say no.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?
Let’s stop the stigma and shame around addiction and recovery. Let’s stop the assumptions we have about people who have struggled in the past or who are struggling now. Anyone who is making an attempt to change their life in whatever context is brave, courageous and deserves support and connection. As the author Johan Hari says “The opposite of addiction is not sobriety but is human connection”. It is human connection and kindness that helps us on our path not just to sobriety, but also to collaboration and success.
We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them. :-)
I am a huge fan of the Diary of A CEO podcast with Stephen Bartlett. I think he has an incredible inquiring, curious mind and a knack for asking unexpected questions to get to the “meat” of any topic. I feel any conversation with him would bring many insights and potentially go off at multiple tangents!
How can our readers further follow your work online?
LinkedIn and Instagram:
https://linkedin.com/in/gillmckay
https://instagram.com/gillmmckay
Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!
