The Resonate Podcast with Aideen

Breaking the Good Girl Spell With Julie Vander Meulen - Part 2

• Aideen Ni Riada/ Julie Vander Meulen • Season 3 • Episode 85

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What happens when you stop trying to be “good” and start listening to your body? In this intimate and eye-opening conversation, Aideen welcomes back empowerment coach Julie Vander Meulen to explore the hidden rules of Good Girl Syndrome—how it frays our nervous systems, shapes our relationships, and quietly erodes our joy.

Through real stories and practical, compassionate tools, Julie shares how a single word like“ouch” can soften conflict, why pausing to feel fear can change the entire direction of a conversation, and how circling back later can repair moments where panic once shut everything down. Together, we dig into the deeper roots: why so many of us confuse praise with love, why criticism can feel like exile, and how gentle self-acceptance practices can rebuild inner safety.

Julie offers grounded rituals for reclaiming your worth: mirror moments, affectionate self-talk, and giving yourself rest without permission slips. We challenge achievement as the measure of value and offer a truer anchor: your essence is worthy by existing. From that truth, your voice softens, your boundaries strengthen, and connection becomes a place of honesty rather than performance.

And then there’s joy. Joy as a practice, not a prize. If happiness feels far away, begin with a memory of laughter and let your body remember. Reclaim small delights you once dismissed as unproductive: music that moves you, simple meals, playful imitation. In a world that hurts, joy isn’t denial—it’s fuel. When we allow ourselves to feel fully and show up fully, we become safer for each other.

If this conversation resonates, subscribe, share it with someone who needs permission to be imperfect, and leave a review so more people can find their way back to their own voice. Your voice matters here.



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Thanks for listening! To book a free consultation with Aideen visit https://www.confidenceinsinging.com/contact/

Aideen Ni Riada:

Welcome to the Resonate Podcast with Aideen. I'm Aideen Ni Riada, and my guest today, Julie Van der Meulen, is coming back for part two of Breaking the Good Girl Spell. Julie is the founder of the Own Your Voice Academy and a leading voice on Good Girl Syndrome, the silent struggle of women who live by shoulds instead of what they truly want. As an empowerment coach, writer, and speaker, Julie helps women break free from the invisible cage and reconnect with who they really are so they can shine, not for approval, but for freedom. Just today I was on Facebook, Julie, and I saw your post about contracting in the face of other people's judgments.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Yeah.

Aideen Ni Riada:

And that's where I'd like to start because I feel we know women in the world have this resource of their physical body, you know, their their their thoughts, their their intuition, their feeling, right? They can they it can guide us, right? But a lot of the time when we are controlling our reactions to life so that we can just get on with things because people need us, we're not paying attention to the signals, right? So we someone says something we don't like and we feel it, but we gloss over it, we move too quickly through um the uncomfortable moments of life.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Yeah.

Aideen Ni Riada:

And I'd love to hear what your thoughts would be on how paying attention to that discomfort can become a very powerful practice in stepping out of the good girl syndrome.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Yeah. Um, that's a really good question. I actually think that listening to your body is pretty much everything, in a sense that um, in my experience with all the different types of good girls that I coach, um, all of them have some type of pattern where they're not listening to their body or to their heart. And the only thing that they listen to is their mind. And their mind has been programmed, let's say it like that, or conditioned in a way, um, to only listen to other people's approval, which means that in the example you were giving, it's say, for example, right now we have a conversation and I did something that you didn't like, and you say something back, right? And um, your tone, your tone and for some reason means something to me and I'm scared, right? But instead of feeling that I'm scared and saying, you know what, Aideen, I don't know why, but right now I'm feeling scared, I could say all of that. And most probably because you're a kind person, you would just listen and say, Oh, wait, like that, I'm sorry, that wasn't my intention, right? And we could lower the tension and we could be as friends, and you could tell me what you have to say, and I can hear it. But most of the times what we will do is it's my own reaction. I will toughen up, right? I will toughen up, I will put a smile on my face, I say, Yeah, good, good, cool, okay. I heard the feedback, and then afterwards, I can feel really terrible inside myself, not understand what is happening, feel hypersensitive, all these different things, and have physical symptoms as well, right? When if I were able to be in my body in a moment when you say the thing and just feel the thing and pause, right? Pause and think this is okay, this is normal for me to feel this way. It's just how I feel. I don't have to judge it. And then if I'm able to also express it, which is a different step, right? Not everyone is able to.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Um and it's not always appropriate to either.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Yeah.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Um, sometimes I know for myself, someone may have said something to me. Um, for instance, this might have been not meant the way it came across, but I was at a party and someone said I asked, offer to help, and the person said, Go over there and look pretty. Oh, oh yeah. Okay, yeah. So um I had to breathe through that because there were other people there. Yes, it's not something I've ever brought up with that person. Um, but I I tried not to take it personally and acknowledge that whatever their comparative thinking or something was going on, um, and I chose not to speak up about that at that moment. And that is the the thing is that you have to be able to self-soothe and acknowledge yourself in that moment so that you don't carry that then further. And if you can, and when you can, you can just say something. I I remember um a workshop I did recently, and um and Devereaux Mills, she said that she learned just to say the word ouch.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Oh, that's beautiful, yeah. Simple. Yeah.

Aideen Ni Riada:

So if I had just gone ouch, yeah, then she would have known, oh, Aidine felt whatever, yeah, pushed aside or not valued or not seen for what you know her offer was, whatever it might have been. So that's kind of in the back of my mind that as a resource now. Yeah, to say because it's simple, it's quick.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Yeah. And I what I'm thinking too is oftentimes, I don't know if it's true for you, but it is definitely, definitely true for me. It's been a learning curve for me to understand that just because in the moment I can't express the same thing, because it's often the case, I feel things and then my walls go up, right? And so that's okay too. That like if I can't say the thing right now, it doesn't mean that afterwards I can have a little bit of courage, right, and compassion for myself and go back to the person when I'm not that angry, you know, when I don't have the rage and just say whatever comes to me. I can go back. There's always a moment and it can be weeks after, it can be months after, right? And you can resolve that thing so that you don't carry it, you don't carry the pain, but also so that you don't feel resentment towards the other person. I'm not saying this is what you have, right? But this is my ten, my own tendency. And I see that in a lot of the women that I coach. And I'm like, have you said that to the person? Like, oh no, like it was years ago. And I'm like, but you're still holding it. And apparently it's not so easy to let go of it, right? Which I don't judge, but then if why are you carrying it alone? It's both, it's in a relationship, right? There's always a possibility if we want to, we can always, you know, say that. Plus, we might also be um, it could be an act of service, because usually good girls, we're afraid of conflict and we don't want to hurt others and all these beautiful things, right? But also sometimes we forget that um it's a it's a lesson for this person. Perhaps they would be doing it to other people, right? Who might not be able to express it, or their intention is not bad and they just don't realize that by saying this little thing that they said to you, just be pretty, right? That they're actually offending people they love or they care about, right? So there's also that perspective that I find is very, very interesting. I use both of these tools that I just said, I use them all the time because my tendency would be to hide and to be with my own pain, right? And so that helps me to kind of just lit again listen to my body, listen to what my heart is saying. If my heart is feeling heavy around something, I need to say something at some point for me and the other.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Yeah, if we can be gentle with ourselves because our own reaction is hurt or we could be angry. And I know that we tend not to give feedback when we don't care, right? So you go to a restaurant, you get a bad meal, you're like, oh, this sucks. And then you're, you know, you tell every you tell a few people it wasn't good, don't go there. But you don't say anything to the management, right? Unless you love the place. Yeah, and then you'll be like, this doesn't feel right. They they shouldn't have it like this. And no, I I I care about them enough to say something. Exactly. And and that's why what you're saying there is your feedback is valuable to the friend. Yes. I have another little practical story I can share. A friend of mine, um, Marianne, she won't mind me saying her name. She and I fell out over something. I said something to her, and I still don't know what it was, right? And she said, Um, I feel hurt, I can't speak to you. We need to take a break, right? And I was like, what did I even say? Like, I could I couldn't even think what it was. She did not speak to me for months, months, which was very painful for me. And around that time, I was talking to a relationship coach, and she taught me a phrase because this is the thing. If we don't have words to say, if we can't think of what to say, it's hard to know what to say. But she taught me this phrase was um, for the sake of our friendship, would you be willing to consider not shutting me out if we have a disagreement, but keeping the conversation open. And I said something like, I don't think I could survive another like, you know, break the way we took a break just now.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Yeah.

Aideen Ni Riada:

And it was very powerful.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Yeah. I was gonna say before that because I was saying when you give feedback, it's for you and it's for the other. And then afterwards I was thinking, and it's also for the relationship. If you want the relationship to grow, right, it's the same when you have a partner or if you like you have family members and you want to keep a good relationship with them, things are gonna come up, right? Things are gonna come up, and there's gonna be moments when you don't want to talk to them, there's gonna be moments when you're angry with them, sad, like all these different things. And then you still need to, it's not push through. I wouldn't say push through because we live in a culture that loves that. You push through things, I would say it's just process things and just learn to communicate. And when you feel guilty because you don't want to express your things because you're afraid it will hurt the other person, it's not just about you, it's also about the other person and it's about the relationship. I love what you just said, and I love the framework.

Aideen Ni Riada:

And the relationship is it's precious, it's incredible.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Yeah, yeah. Our relationships, I find I I wasn't thinking that before, but now I really find that relationships are the cornerstone of my life, that many things could disappear in my life, right? Um, that used to be so important to me. And I'm thinking if I have the right people in my life, the people that I love and who love me, right, through everything, I have everything I need, actually. Right. Um yeah, I believe that too.

Aideen Ni Riada:

I I think that those connections are what we take with us.

Julie Vander Meulen:

I think so.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Beyond beyond. Yeah. That's and that's the only thing.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Yeah. Yeah. And I I think it's also part of the the the whole journey, I think, of healing. Like most of my healing doesn't happen. I love coaching, I love therapy, I've I've healed a lot in all those things. I love books, I love seminars, but most of my practical practical healing happens in relationships. Like I learned something about myself and then I see it in practice. I'm like, oh my god, this pattern is here again. I need to choose again, or I see someone else and they irritate me in a specific way, right? And it's yeah, I think it's also the most beautiful way to heal.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Not easy, but very, very beautiful. It has to be that evolution, right? Because we're all becoming a more expanded, deeper version of ourselves. Yeah, and when we reject a person, it can sometimes be a reflection of something we're rejecting in ourselves.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think it's also a learning process that in that in itself, because I think uh in in case we have some good girls listening to us, I also want to say that I think it's normal in the beginning. So if you've been a people pleaser your whole life, it's normal in the beginning when you're reclaiming your voice, right, reclaiming what is true for you, that you don't know how to have these types of conversations and have nuance and like be able to compose yourself. And so sometimes your reactions can be extreme, and that is normal too. And so if that does happen, that you shut someone out, right? I'm not saying continue to do that for your whole life if you can avoid it, right? But sometimes it's what you need to do, and sometimes you can't do any better in the moment. And that's already a huge step from like stepping all your boundaries and trying to please everyone, right? So I think life is also in terms of steps. Sometimes that's the best thing that you can do in the moment, and that's okay too. And like if you are with other people who are mature, they can understand that you can repair a lot of things in relationships as well, even when you weren't perfect, right? Um, so yeah, yeah, for sure.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Yeah, we're not perfect, exactly. Yeah, it's accepted. It's feedback, is it's it can be hard to take, you know. I I know that um coming back to the whole restaurant analogy, um, I used to get very irritated when I would get a cold cup of tea in a restaurant, and um I wouldn't be shy about expressing that in a certain way. And my husband mentioned it to me more than once that the waiter or the waitress would look physically shocked. Yes, because I was I seemed like such a nice person, but now I was expressing displeasure in a way that was very it's like a rejection. Yeah, it was direct and very direct and very um, and because of that dynamic of oh well, I'm paying to be here, so something in my energy field was like, I deserve this, whatever, hot cup of tea. And um, he said it to me a few times and I had to go in and have a think about it. And that's you know, we if we're if we're planning to to be more direct and like a little face some of these conflicts ourselves, we have to also be prepared that sometimes we're gonna hear that we've hurt someone's feelings, or exactly we have some work to do on ourselves. But it took, I think he said it to me two or three times. And in the end, I used prayer to help me. So I was like, Oh dear God, please help me uh to always have kindness in my voice, even when I'm really annoyed. Please let me just let my voice in its tone be kind.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Yeah.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Okay. And I think I said it a few times, but the next time I went somewhere and I got something I didn't want, I actually it didn't bother me. I was like, I actually don't mind that I got something. It changed me, the prayer changed me, but it didn't, it changed it at the root. Yes. The root was me being annoyed that I didn't get what I want when I was paying for it. And somehow the next time I went out and I got, I don't know, there was dressing on the salad when I asked for no dressing or something like that. I just went, no worries, I'm gonna eat it anyway. Because for some reason in me it didn't matter.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Yeah. But you know what's interesting in what you said? I don't know if it's the case in what you said at all. It just makes me think of something else related, is oftentimes I find that when I react in ways that I do not like afterwards, right? Or I'm like, why did I react this way? Oftentimes it has less to do about the situation itself than my buildup, my internal buildup of situations that are the same, you know what I mean? And that I didn't express in some way, or that I felt, let's say it's a question of respect, right? Um, I didn't feel respect and in different situations, and it can go over for months. But in that instant, I feel irritated, right? And then all these different moments, when not in the moment when I'm angry with someone, but afterwards when I'm alone in my room, then there's like this voice in my head that goes back to all the moments when I was disrespected. I'm like, where is this coming from? And then I realize it's like things that are unresolved. And so sometimes it also comes out to the person who's listening, right? And who is sometimes hesitating to give feedback and say what they think. I think that's also worth thinking about. That like, what are you building up and who's paying the price for it? Because oftentimes I don't know in your life, but in my life, the people who pay for that are the people that I love the most and who are closest to me. And so who, and I'm gonna say it in an impolite way, but who I can hurt, you know what I mean? That in the moment, if I'm hurting, it's like it comes out, and they're the ones who will pay the price of something that I haven't expressed or dealt with before. So I think that's also something that is really important. If you care about people and you don't want to hurt them, sometimes speaking up, you know, regularly is the best thing to do.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Absolutely. And uh, but I think we don't gloss over this reflection phase where you know don't just plow ahead with life.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Exactly.

Aideen Ni Riada:

If we have a conflict, if we have a moment, if we have a discomfort, let yourself receive the message in that situation.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Yeah.

Aideen Ni Riada:

What can I learn? What is this telling me? It's a beautiful um process to take yourself on.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Yeah. And also because there are layers I would say in that. I'm sorry interrupting to interrupt you, but I would say that to me, oftentimes, especially if it's with my partner, I will feel something and I don't exactly know what I'm feeling. And I would much, much rather, and I have to tell tell that to my partner, to say, please give me some like around this topic, not in general, but around this, I will I promise I will come back with it when I'm ready. But I need a little more time to understand what's really going on. And when I do that, there's because I was seeing you going inward, right? And you were reflecting and going inward, and that's exactly the process that I was thinking about is that there are layers to what I'm feeling. Because I think it's a surface thing that bothered me. But then actually I'm not angry, I'm hurt. And actually I'm hurt because right, and there's like layers and layers and layers. And if I don't take the time, and I think it's it's the same for pretty much everyone to some degree, if you don't take the time to be with yourself and really ask yourself these questions and allow the hurt and all the different emotions that are perhaps negative, we perceive as negative, then you don't go to the bottom of it. And what you express is not what is actually happening with you. So I think that was really valuable what you just said about taking the time. And yeah.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Taking time, but also the phrase that you used. This is what I do a lot with my work is like finding the the words, right?

Julie Vander Meulen:

Yes.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Can you repeat that phrase, that that sentence that you would say to your partner?

Julie Vander Meulen:

Oh, I don't remember exactly what I said, but I will always say some version of because he will want to resolve things, right? Um, he loves to resolve things, which I understand is he feels uncomfortable if if he understands that I'm hurt, and then I will say, please give me some time or give me some space um to resolve this or to understand what's going on inside myself, and I promise I will get back to you. Like I'm not so that he's promise I will get back to you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so sometimes I don't even have to come back because he facilitates that for me, right? He comes back and he because he's like a little detective, so he will think about things in the background. He will be he will be like, Oh, did I hurt you when I did that? And then if us it makes it easy for me to open up. Then in the meantime, he's given me, I don't know, 30 minutes, an hour, sometimes more, sometimes a night to think about it, and it changes everything for me. And what I can do at that moment that I cannot do if I'm in the moment, in the moment I have all my walls up. And so what comes out is anger when actually I'm oftentimes I'm feeling hurt. And so the next day or an hour later, what comes out is tears. I want to cry because I'm hurt, right? Which is a whole different thing.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Yep. And it also gives the other person time too. Like you said, he goes away and he thinks about it, he's wondering why the reaction was so strong or what was going on, and he starts to see the truth exactly as well.

Julie Vander Meulen:

And um, I would also add a last thing because we were talking about the importance of relationships, right? And that that is also why we want to express things and so on and so forth. I think that what often happens in my partnership, but also in other relationships, is that when I have a little bit of time, when the anger and the the impulsive part of me goes, you know, is is gone, uh, she's had time to express herself inside myself. Um, afterwards, when I remember what's most Important to me. And what's most important to me is this relationship. So yes, I will say the thing, but I also remember that this person is someone that I love and they probably didn't mean to hurt me. You know, and that changes also my whole perspective. It reminds me of what you said about when you pray, right? I do that too. But it's kind of the same thing where you go back and you remember what's most important, you go really deep inside yourself. And there's a sensation of peace. You can still feel the grief or the anger, but there's also peace with it. And I think that changes everything.

Aideen Ni Riada:

And isn't one of the key reasons for good girl syndrome to do with a need for belonging and a need for love?

Julie Vander Meulen:

I think so. How I see it is I think most women who suffer from good girl syndrome, me too, right? And it's how I started studying it. Um, I think we crave love. In some way, we didn't receive love. A lot of us have a have some big drama in our early life, right? And so what we learned is that we have confused love with approval. And so we think that if we're being praised, we love praise. And so if we think we think that if we're being praised, we are being loved, right? And so then the opposite is if I receive the opposite of praise, so if I'm being criticized, is something I can't handle really well, right? Because I think I'm losing love. And so if I think I'm losing love, right, it becomes this whole thing about love. You think in your mind, it's not the actual thing, right? Because you confuse things, but in your mind, then you always try to avoid losing love, which means you will try to people please, which means you will not say what you really think, which means you will try to conform, which means so many, many different things, right? Um you will not listen to your body saying I'm exhausted because your kids need you, right? Or because whatever scenario it is, right? Um Yeah.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Yeah. We need love, don't we? Where does that start? If we can if we can start with the self self-love and the self-acceptance, which is is what we're exp we're you know, talking about really when we talk about feeling discomfort, going away and thinking about it, acknowledging how you feel, um, allowing yourself to feel how you feel. That's a all a form of self-acceptance and self-compassion.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Absolutely. Yeah, I think it starts with that. At least that's the work that I do in my coaching. The first step is not why women come to me. They come with a specific situation, but after one or two sessions, we go to the root of it, which is you don't feel love. Usually there's tears, right? And they start to feel things they don't allow themselves to feel. And I think to me, that's the first step at least to giving yourself some love and to learning to receive your own love. It's like for 30 minutes an hour, right? My sessions are usually two hours, but you don't have to do it in a coaching session. You can do it any setting. It's like allowing the space to feel what you feel. And like it it in the moment it's painful, but there's also a release of like things you've been carrying and carrying. And I think that's one of the most loving things you can do, especially if you you feel that your life is not aligned, right? You are your emotions are all over the place and stuff like that. There's nothing wrong with you. The uh the only thing that seems wrong to me is that you are not listening to yourself, and so your body is crying, right? It's like making a lot of noise so that you would finally listen to it. And so I find to me that's the first step to to self-love would be that like listen to the pain, listen to what comes up, but also listen to the joy. But usually the even if you listen to the joy, you'll be drained by the things that you are carrying that aren't you know that you should release, it would do you good to release it.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Yeah, but it's lovely. Something very powerful in self-acceptance. Yeah, because we we don't always receive unconditional love as kids, do we? No. No. So if we haven't, and if our parents or caregivers, many of them didn't you know, give us that kind of of acceptance, we may have to learn that as adults.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Exactly.

Aideen Ni Riada:

But yeah, nobody's perfect.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Yeah.

Aideen Ni Riada:

And most people are really trying very hard and intending for things to be good and to treat people well. We don't always succeed, but we are we're all on a journey and it's tough sometimes, yeah, right?

Julie Vander Meulen:

Yeah, exactly. I think it I love what you just said that it's tough sometimes because I think that one of the things that uh good girls tend to do is be really hard on themselves. And so, you know, this this whole conversation that you just this whole thing that you just explained about um, you know, we we haven't received unconditional love. So what we will try to do as good girls, usually we care a lot about everything, including other people and how they feel. And so if we have kids or even our partners or our friends, we will try to give them what we have not received. And so that it's a beautiful intention. There's a lot of beauty in that. The issue with that is that sometimes then you become really, really hard on yourself because loving someone unconditionally all the time is impossible. If you want to respect your own feelings and what's going on with you, sometimes, even if we're friends and I adore you, sometimes without wanting to, I will reject you. I will not mean to, but because I'm busy, I'm doing something else, you will feel that you are less important than the thing that is in front of me. So in it could feel like rejection. Sometimes, you know what I mean? And I am trying my best, right? I can be trying my best and still feel like I'm failing if this is the standard that I have for myself. So I think that there's also something there to realize that life is tough and like it's impossible to be perfect, and that's not the goal. The goal is to do the best we can, right? For us and also for our children, so that our children can see we they try their best, they really, really love us, right? And they're also human, so I'm allowed to be human too, right? Which is also important. That's beautiful. You are allowed to be human too, Julie. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. I need the reminder sometimes. I really do. Sometimes I need the reminder because my standards are very high, and so I try to learn you know other ways of being most of the time in the works, but then if I'm anxious, if something happens, go right back into the high standards and you know, push, push, push, and all these different things. So thank you.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Yes. I mean, the one of the things that I my my work as a singing coach, voice coach, it taught me so much about the power of self-acceptance because we don't learn quickly when we are criticizing ourselves when we're being hard on ourselves.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Yes.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Um, we wanted to talk about joy in this session as well. And one of the things I would want for my students, especially my singing students, would be to connect with the joy of singing. And if they're listening to their voice and criticizing anything that doesn't sound perfect, or trying to sound like the, you know, like Cher or you know, Madonna or whatever it is, the singer, you know, trying to imitate a recording, which possibly had like hours of takes to get it right. Um, and we are so hard on ourselves when we're learning, but children they don't judge themselves through the learning process and it becomes playful, yeah. And they just are in the moment, and being in the moment doesn't leave room for being hard on yourself.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Yeah. Yeah, that's true, completely true. And I would also say why you're doing it is important to at least for me now. So I I do exactly what you say. I try to stay in the moment most of the time, but sometimes my little mind can still be get in the way, and being present doesn't feel accessible to me in the moment. I don't know if that's for anyone else, but for me it happens sometimes that I can't do it because you know my mind is racing. And so what then brings me back to what matters to me is remembering my why. Why am I doing this? You know, why am I putting myself in this discomfort and so on and so forth, right? Why you saw that now I have been posting on social media. Sometimes my posts go really well, most of the time they don't. And so the the perfect girl inside of me, right, the one who's always trying to achieve, she hates that. So I can either avoid it, you know, it's the truth, right? I really do not like it. Me too. Yeah, it's it's it's not a nice sensation. Um, and then, but then if I remember, so I can see in my mind when I'm being hypercritical, because then I keep comparing myself, like what you said with a singing example, I keep comparing myself to the influencers, the teachers who have like two million followers and who have this type of thing. But then if I remember why I'm doing it, I'm actually not doing it for that. I'm doing it because I have a mission. I'm doing it because I'm trying to change one person's life. That's what's important. That if you read my post one, and even if you are my friend, you read my post or you listened to the podcast, you did the one thing, read my newsletter, whatever it is, and for some reason it it alleviated some pain you were having, my job is done. And when I can remember that, back in the present moment, back in the little child who's just doing whatever she feels is the right thing to do. It's a completely different space for me.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Yeah. And you know, achievement is not why we're valuable. Exactly.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Hard, hard one to hard one to integrate, I find for me at least.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Well, I think it's if you imagine when watching a child play and how valuable they are in your eyes. Yes, yeah, and all they're doing is playing. Yeah, that's true. Right? And all they're doing is being in the moment, all they're doing is is showing what joy looks like. That's valuable, that's your value.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Your value is so simple. Yeah, it's who you are. I I have an example, and perhaps I can share. My my boyfriend has incredible skills. Funny that we're talking together about that in voice. So he loves imitating. We watch a movie, he can imitate any character. He does it really, really well. And he keeps saying, Yeah, I love it because it makes me laugh, right? And he keeps saying, I keep saying, You're fantastic at this. And he says, Yeah, it's a useless skill. And I'm and I keep trying to tell him, I don't find that this is useful, even if you don't use it, like the amount of joy you bring to me every time you use that is just I can't, like it's part of who you are for me, and it's part of the fun now of watching movies. I've never loved watching movies more than now, because he's imitated, you know, and then we have so it's like sometimes why I'm bringing this up is because I have countless examples of things like that that I do that I'm good at, right? I can cook pretty well, I can do, and I find them useless when I'm doing my posts on Instagram, but they're not useless, right? It's not useless, it's beautiful, it's part of me, it's things I love, right? And if the only purpose of something is to bring you joy or someone else's joy, that's an achievement in itself, right? If you can't get out of the achievement loop. So yeah.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Oh, I love that. And that makes me want to request that you do a little video post of you cooking. I want to see you doing joy, joyful stuff. You know what I want. Um, yeah, so just this idea that you have value for just being you, you know, because a baby is born, it does nothing but cry, poop, eat. Yeah, everyone loves it. Everyone loves the baby. Yeah. And that was that was us at one time.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Yeah.

Aideen Ni Riada:

You know, and at some point we obviously we want to grow and we want to evolve and we want to express that love in our hearts in the way that that nourishes us. Um, but that's not why we're valuable. Yeah, we're valuable just for being alive, for existing. A tree is valuable and just stands there. Yeah, it whispers in the breeze, it grows really slowly. We don't even notice it. Yeah, it changes, it's got like it's got it's it the seasons affect it. Sometimes it's just standing there with no leaves for months on end. Yeah, yeah. But we don't give ourselves a chance to be doing nothing, right?

Julie Vander Meulen:

True.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Sometimes we don't allow ourselves to to just be without without being in motion. Because if we think of the cycles of the seasons, there's rest is so important.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Absolutely.

Aideen Ni Riada:

And good girls do not give themselves enough rest. I am pretty sure that is a given.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Absolutely. I just want to say something about what you just said before. I'm thinking that what love is, like if you think of people who love you the most, or perhaps it's easier when you think of who you love, the people that I love the most, or the amount of love that I have for you, have nothing to do with whether you're a great podcaster, or because you can sing like no one else, or because you're a fantastic teacher, or because your hair looks flawless, or whatever it is, you know, that I can like about you and it's part of like something you did, right? The love that I have for you in this moment is based on your essence. It's because I love your presence. It's nothing specific you do, it's just the essence of you that I can feel and I'm connected to, right? And I think like all the people that I love, it's really that. And that's what you want. I suppose most people are like that. When I love someone, I want to tell them it's not about what you do, it's just who you are. You could do anything. I really, really love the essence of you. And going back to self-love, I think it's a later step, right? But that would be the ideal, is that I can look at myself, I can see myself now on the screen, and I can look at myself with however my hair is and whatever judgments I have, right? On myself, and I can think, you know what? I love the essence of you, right? The the essence of who you are is beautiful, and that's what matters. Um, and I think a lot of times we forget that. It's just like with what you were saying with the tree. It doesn't have to do anything, it's just so beautiful because it's there, right?

Aideen Ni Riada:

Yes. And you know, the last podcast episode we did together, I picked a sound bite, and the one I picked was the one where you say, Remember, you are lovely just as you are.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Yes, yes, you know lovely. I love that sound bite because of course I can't remember what I say, I say whatever comes to me in the moment. So I had forgotten about that, and all my friends, right, uh came back to me and said, Oh my god, this dude did me so much good to hear someone say to me, right, you are you are lovely as you are, you know. I'm cool. So that was lovely. Thank you for that.

Aideen Ni Riada:

That's worth remembering.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Yeah, yeah.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Yep.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Yes, beautiful.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Sometimes I practice this, um, you know, looking at myself in the mirror. You know, when you kind of look at yourself in the mirror and you can kind of just let yourself just be there with yourself and without judgment, see yourself. Yeah, um, there's a real benefit in that. I I was reading in a book, I think it might have been a gay Hendrix book, and he was talking about a friend, and his friend would always go, Hey buddy, to himself in the mirror. Hey, buddy. And so there's I when I heard about that, I I went on Amazon and I bought one of those little decal things to put on the mirror that says, Hello, beautiful, or hello gorgeous. Now I can't I mustn't be bother looking at it very much because I can't remember which it is now. Hello, gorgeous. And it's just a lovely thing to do to acknowledge ourselves when we look in the mirror.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Yeah.

Aideen Ni Riada:

You know, and I would actually, yeah, go ahead.

Julie Vander Meulen:

No, you go ahead. Go ahead.

Aideen Ni Riada:

I was just remembering interesting thing can happen when you look in one eye and then and see the acceptance you have, and then we look in the other eye, and you'll see maybe there's not as much acceptance, which I think is really bizarre. And I know we talk about left and right brain balance and creativity versus logic, and you know, this this ability to um be whole, right? Yeah, um, and to bring all parts of you together. So when I first started that practice, I would have acceptance with when I looked in one eye and not in the other. And now I have acceptance when I look into both eyes, which I think if I if that's all I achieve in this lifetime, oh, I'm so happy for you.

Julie Vander Meulen:

I love hearing that. I love hearing these types of stories, and I'm sure for someone else who's listening, it's really valuable just to know that, right? It's inspiring to me when someone can do something that perhaps I cannot yet do. Um, yeah, I love that you shared that. Thank you. And I had never thought about it.

Aideen Ni Riada:

I start saying hello, lovely, because I love that. I'm lovely. I'm lovely.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Oh, um, what came to me, there were two things. So the first thing about the hello, lovely in the mirror. I have a friend that I adore. Her name is Lily, Liliana is her name, but I call her Lily. Uh, and we used to live together. We were we were roommates. Um, and in the in the beginning, I was hearing her, she speaks quite loudly. And so I was hearing her saying, Hi, gorgeous, I love you. You're incredible. And I was like, who is she talking to? I could not understand who she was talking to. I thought she was talking to her dog or something. And one day I saw her, and she did not see that I was there. I saw her and she was actually talking to herself in the mirror. So, first thing she did in the morning, she gets out of her room. There's a there was a huge mirror there in a hole, and she would go, Oh my god, you're so and she was talking to herself, but in such a beautiful and vivid way, right? That I would have feeled because I'm I'm a little shy sometimes with things, I'm more reserved. Uh, and so it would never have occurred to me to do that, but I loved seeing her do that. That was my first thing. And the second thing that I was thinking about when you said about the two different eyes, um, it makes a lot of sense to me because uh my boyfriend used to be a pro golfer, and so he keeps telling me, What is your dominant eye? And I'm like, what does that even mean, a dominant eye? And so he says, like, if you it's something with a triangle, you do, I can't remember exactly how you do it, but there's something where you put a triangle and you close your eyes and you try to see which one is correct. One of them, when you close one of your eyes, one of them sees the aim where it is, the other one sees it somewhere else, right? And so this reminds me of that, that perhaps even for our emotions, I don't know, I've never read about this, I'm just riffing now. But I'm thinking perhaps we also have a dominant eye, you know what I mean in terms of our emotions. One of them is anchored in something that you know has evolved, and perhaps the other one needs some time to catch up, right? Or we need to.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Absolutely, and it brings me brings us beautifully to the phrase beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Oh, true. Oh, I never thought about that with one eye. You know, I will I would try after this podcast.

Aideen Ni Riada:

So this eye, do you see my beauty? This eye, do you see my beauty? That's so beautiful. You know, we're talking, I wanted to to connect back into joy, right? How do how would you recommend um someone who is trying to break through the good girl spell and wants to find joy, what would you say to them?

Julie Vander Meulen:

Um there's a lot of things, but I would say um usually the the easiest way to do that is to remember a time when you laughed, not a time when you were happy, because some people can find that in the early process, right? When you're processing, you know, you are healing. Sometimes you can't remember a specific scene in your life where you were truly happy, but you have laughed in your life. There's at least a moment when you laughed in your life and you remember that because it's an intense emotion. And so I would say that the easiest first way is to remember that memory or like allow yourself to be flooded with memories of when you really laughed and remember the situation. And I think that just in that, you can feel the joy, even if you're not doing something specific, even if Your life is exactly the same as it was two seconds ago. Your sensation inside of you is that you are connected to something that is real, that you remember, that is yours, it's your memory, and it's joyful. And I think that just this practice in itself to begin with is a beautiful way to remember that you are in control of your emotions. Not always, right? But if you want to feel a specific way, because you need to or you want to, right? It's accessible. It's somewhere inside of you, and you can learn, right? You can train yourself to do it more and more easily, but it's somewhere inside of you, and you can choose to go and pick that emotion from inside of you, right? And it's the same for joy, it's the same for something else. Perhaps it's awe, perhaps it's magic, perhaps it's and you can play around, like after you can expand that, right, with different um variations of joy. So for me, I'm I'm an excited person. So joy means something, but then when I feel excited, it's something you can say to my smile now, right? It's something different. And so I have other memories. And so you start having a beautiful landscape in your in your mind that is not just with the shoulds and what is happening now and the darkness from your past, but you start to color your inner world with beautiful things that happened in your life, with things you actually really, really enjoyed, right? Um, I would say that to me, that would be the first step. It's how in sessions, how I connect someone who feels extremely dark, who hasn't smiled or laughed in a long time, right? And yet we I can find that little thing. It's not me, it's not the magic that I do. They have that inside of them. They just need to trigger it.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Yes, and so important to find a spark within you that that it is that is still there.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Exactly. Exactly. That's the point, is that you can because you can feel some joy from something external and then go back to your home and feel miserable again, which is not the, I mean, for me, it's not the goal, because some of the women that I have helped, they really suffer from from darker things, right? And so my goal is not for them to have a nice session with me and then afterwards leave and feel miserable again, right? I can heal everything, but my desire would be for them to feel more and more autonomous and more and more capable of pulling their own joy, their own love, all the beautiful things that make up a human being who is feeling okay within themselves, right? So really important what you just said. Very, very important. Yeah.

Aideen Ni Riada:

And to reconnect with the things that we enjoy to do as well. I mean, I know sometimes I'll ask someone, well, what do you what did you want to do when you were a kid? Or what what do you like try to bring up good memories? I know this can be really good as well if we are um visiting someone in hospital or something, or someone at their deathbed, and you can kind of ask them about a memory. Like, do you remember where your first day that you went to school? Or yeah, do you remember and we get people talking about a memory of something beautiful, something that they that will bring them back to a happier moment. Yes, it can be a very beautiful thing, especially when someone is actually going through something difficult with their health.

Julie Vander Meulen:

I I 100% agree. You know, I live with my grandma when I'm in Belgium, and so my grandma is 84 years old, so she has been a long time in this life, which means that usually when you are um that age, you have quite a few things with your health that are going on. It's not the same as when you were younger, and so um I always not have to, but I love doing that exercise with her of when things are not going so well with her with her health and she's feeling scared or whatever it is, to reconnect her with beautiful things from her past. And I would add to that that um oftentimes it's not even something that you need to speak. You can just put you love music, right? So putting a music that they love, asking them like what is one of the music that you know, in your when you were young and you were dancing, I know my grandma loved to dance, and so what was one music that you loved? And then I go on the internet and I find it, and it's like what puts her back in that state, and then all the stories, you know, sometimes it's as easy as that. And I would add that um, if I go back to the to good girls, I would add that oftentimes what good girls do is because they are so much in this state of trying to do everything as they should, right? And being perfect and all of that, is that they purposefully stop doing the things that bring them joy because it's not allowed, because they don't deserve it, because there's no time. And so sometimes it's just saying, what is your favorite music? What, right? What is your favorite, do you love to what did you used to love to do? What is your favorite movie? It doesn't have to be something really complicated, just you know, reconnect and allow yourself to go back to this happy place, even if the rest of your life isn't fixed. Um, I think sometimes we need to give ourselves permission to just, you know, I I'm allowed to feel joy even in the middle of grief, right? I'm I'm allowed to, you know, all these different things. I think there's something absolutely and it's definitely because if we can't switch into that supportive feeling, yeah, how can we cope? Exactly.

Aideen Ni Riada:

How can we cope with everything that we're dealing with?

Julie Vander Meulen:

Exactly.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Yeah, I know that in the world today there's a lot of suffering, you know, there's a lot of there's a lot of people around around the world suffering, and we know about that.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Yeah.

Aideen Ni Riada:

And I would um because I do classes, you know, meditation and stuff, and my students will come and they'll be so sad for the world. And and we pray for them and we send all of our love right there. Hold, we hold that energy. Yeah, we're holding an energy. To hold that energy is to also live a good life because those people would get they would want to be us. Yeah, yeah, and we need to live the best we can. Um, and that we are the people that they aspire to be. There will, they are moving toward that again, yeah, um, within some time. I think our joy creates an energy as well around us, and it can be a little bit contagious, and it gives others permission then to do the same. We just talked about I give myself permission to sing. Like the fact that I've recorded songs and I have a YouTube channel. My students come to me and they're like, I want a YouTube channel, right? So I have students that have a YouTube channel or they've recorded songs. Yeah, um, I have students that went on to set up, you know, open mic nights, and they kind of like follow, they they see that someone else is doing something that they would they love around music, and then they go, Well, I can't do right.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Yeah, so we become inspiration. We don't have to be a Brene Brown, we don't have to have the millions of followers, but like you say, even one person goes, Whoa, I get what she's saying, I like that, and then they make it as just a small change in their choice, they make it change, yeah. That changes everything over time because even a small change in our behavior now creates huge differences in our lives down the road.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Absolutely. Um, I often tell myself, and I tell most of my clients and my friends, um, that the most beautiful gift that I can give myself and the world is to be fully alive. And to be fully alive means to feel everything, right, that exists in my world, like you were saying, the grief for other people and what they're going through, and also my joy because my life is beautiful, and I don't know, the fear of other things that are happening in my life, my grandma's health sometimes, right? And at the same time, right, all these different things. I'm excited because there's this, and there's so many different things. And I would say with that is also the gift is also to be fully yourself. Because when I'm fully myself with everything that I have to bring, then you can see yourself in some parts of me, right? There's something in me that will resonate with you. Something doesn't have to be something beautiful. It can be, most oftentimes, is the things that are imperfect about me that other people like, right? And it that also creates a ripple effect that the more me I am, the more you you can be with me. And then if you have that experience, then you can go in the in the in the outside world and do that for yourself in different contexts. Same for me, right? The more you you are, the more you express yourself, the more I'm thinking, okay, I love this experience, right? I loved expressing myself so fully with Aideen. Let me do that, you know. I do it automatically because you know, it this small little moment opens something in me, and now I can do something else, right? And after months, you're like, oh my god, I have a YouTube channel, I have this, or I didn't even think it was possible, right?

Aideen Ni Riada:

Absolutely. It's uh it's a beautiful journey we go on. Yeah, it's about courage, yeah. A lot of courage, a lot of courage and connection, and you know, not being afraid to lean into friends and to share what's truthful, yeah, what's real for us. Yeah, yeah, I think that's extremely important. We are getting to the end of our session today, Julie. Is there one last thing that you want to say to our listeners that you want to reiterate or encourage them with?

Julie Vander Meulen:

I think that from our conversation, I would just say that um, and I say this not from a place of being a guru, I'm learning alongside everyone who's listening, um, that uh allow yourself to be imperfect, allow and allow life to be imperfect too. Uh, that the less we put uh rules and standards on ourselves and other people, and I'm not saying I'm a I'm a self-help, you know, a junkie, I love all these types of things, but I'm saying if you remove a lot of the rules that you think are very necessary for you to be lovable or for the world to be good and different things, you you remove a lot of the suffering that you are going through. And so if you allow things to be messy, and by things I also mean you, um, then you will see that um, you know, people love you even more, number one, right? The the real people that you need in your life will love you even more and they will express it even more to you, but also life becomes much easier to go through when you have less rules to go about. So yeah, that's what that's what I would love for the person who's listening to us to to remember. That's absolutely beautiful.

Aideen Ni Riada:

I love that. Because we were talking about finding your value. I want to also remind people or let you know that I have a book called Discover Your True Value available on Amazon, which is a short 30-minute read with a 21-day journal and affirmations and guidance on finding gratitude um and you know, reflecting. And it's um it has uh a message that I have learned through my years of struggling to um to see my own value and the things that really help me, like staying in the moment, being present. I have a whole section on being present, which we talked about today. So I would love if you would um check that out if you're listening and um get in touch with Julie or myself if you'd like any support. We would love to hear from you. And thank you all so much for listening.

Julie Vander Meulen:

Thank you.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Just listening to our podcast makes you valuable. And us too, and us too. There's value in it all. Thank you, everyone, for listening to the Resonate Podcast with Aiden. Thank you so much to Judy Vandermulen. Her contact details will be in the show notes, and please get in touch. We look forward to having you listen in again very soon. Bye bye.