#LifeLessons - Ann Marie McQueen

NAME: Ann Marie McQueen

AGE: 54

INSTAGRAM HANDLE: @annmariemcqueenAD / @hotflashinc

JOB TITLE: founder, early adopter, disrupt-her

Ann Marie McQueen is a UAE-based digital journalist and founder of her own global digital media platform, Hotflash inc. Across a newsletter, podcast, social media and online and IRL events, Ann Marie provides information and inspiration to a fast-growing community of 50,000 people making their way through the perimenopause, menopause and midlife transition. She is former founding editor of Livehealthy, features editor at The National and a national columnist for Sun Media in Canada.

Today Ann Marie shares her top 3 life learnings to-date with us:

#LIFELESSON – 1

Inner guidance and intuition is quiet, subtle, gentle. It just knows. And you have to be ready and willing to hear it. My understanding of all this came together in a yoga class dozens of floors above the ground at a luxury hotel in Abu Dhabi. It was PR stunt, a class designed to get attention and photos, in launching a new service. Five minutes in, in puppy pose, both of my shoulders dislocated. I sat up on my heels, unable to speak, unable to move my body. The teacher came by, noticed, but clearly – with all the photographers and PR people milling about – didn’t want to stop the entire class to help. She patted my shoulder and suggested I ‘go downstairs. And then kept teaching the class. I felt helpless and I began to panic. And then, in the chaos, I heard the calmest voice of my life: ‘You can put them back.’ There was nothing else to do. The words I heard assured me there was only one path, only one outcome. Like the poem: The heroine saves herself in this one. So I took a deep breath and hurled one, then the other shoulder back into place. I still can’t believe it happened. The orthopedic surgeon and physiotherapist I consulted were also sceptical. The only one who knew for sure was yoga teacher. She commented on it after, in a sort of congratulatory way. (I am not impressed with her, if you can’t tell.) I learned to trust myself that day. And I’ve been slowly learning to trust that quiet, calm voice – the part of me that’s connected to all the things I cannot see or know – ever since.

#LIFELESSON – 2

Sometimes the only thing you can do is recognize a difficult person and give them as little access to you as possible. Activate your aura, protect your energy, and put your head down. You can’t make a difficult person treat you well. You can’t make a difficult person happy. You can’t give a difficult person enough attention for them to be no longer difficult. Until they address whatever inner battle they are having – and some of them are on the narcissistic spectrum, so it’s likely they never will – they will remain difficult. Far too much energy is expended in relationships, in social circles and in the workplace making excuses for difficult people, making allowances for them, and trying to make them happy. Difficult people have a way of treating you badly and then making you feel wrong because you don’t react well to it. You can’t convince a difficult person not to be difficult. But you can stop trying to make them act un-difficult, and that will set you free.

#LIFELESSON – 3

I love driving my 2008 BMW. It’s a great car and I got it for an unbelievable price (Dh8,000, four years ago, from a friend). You can save so much much money not caring about having the latest model of this or that. Which brings me to my life lesson: The biggest waste of time and money is trying to earn the appreciation and respect of other people by buying and doing things that you can’t afford, to present an image of yourself that isn’t real. True power is in doing what’s right for you, no matter what anyone else thinks. When you try to do this with things by flexing and by bragging, you will get a life, but won't get what your soul needs. You won’t be authentic, which is the biggest flex of all. Respect is earned by the person that you are. Your relationships, your caring, your word and your actions. It’s great to have nice things, but we live in a culture where everyone is buying things they can't afford. Why? The thrill is gone in hours. People buying things they can’t afford to impress other people is the saddest thing in the world to me. Our whole culture is built on telling us this is what we need. We need to step outside this matrix. The last thing any of us needs to be doing is creating a mirage for each other, an ever higher set of standards, upping the ante, leaving us all empty and used up and broke at the end of the day.