Rosalyn Palmer
Rosalyn Palmer, an award-winning transformational coach, therapist, and acclaimed author with 20+ years in corporate roles, including founding an award-winning PR agency. Specialising in Advanced Rapid Transformational Therapy (RTT), Clinical Hypnotherapy, and NLP-based coaching, she empowers high achievers to create authentic, balanced lives. Her coaching blends practical business insight with intuition, resonating from her work with Tony Robbins and personal struggles like cancer and divorce. As a well-being expert in print and radio, Rosalyn offers authentic and accessible mindset wisdom. She is the author of the award-winning “Reset!” and co-author of four Amazon bestsellers, leveraging deep understanding to ignite lasting change.
What were your initial years of growing up like? Tell us about your life before starting your corporate journey/venture/initiative.
As a therapist I find myself saying to clients regularly that, ‘You live what you learn and you learn what you live’. In other words, many of our values, strengths and weaknesses are due to the way we were brought up.
I was a grocer’s daughter. My early years were spent living above the shop in a run-down suburb of Nottingham. The back to back terraces were torn down when I was five but my memory is of an Aladdin’s cave of food and hardware.
Glass apothecary jars filled with sweets and unknowns, huge hams cooked and sold by the slice.
To the locals it was the social services of its day. My parents knew whose husband gambled his wages away. The women, heads down to hide blackened eyes, opened threadbare purses as tears rolled down their cheeks.
I recall looking up at my mother who would raise a finger to her lips to stop me from saying anything, while passing them wax-wrapped packages. I remember the women clutching my mother’s hand and exchanging ‘looks’ but often no money. Compassion in action so not surprising I ended up working for several major charities. I read no books on leadership or business. I lived it.
Pocket money was earned weighing out 56-pound bags of muddy potatoes into smaller brown paper bags. It was my job to cut huge blocks of cheese, with a large wire on a marble block, into small predetermined packs. (I hardly ever need to weigh anything as I estimate so well. My mental math is brilliant.) My father would create special offers: buy one, get one free, 10% off… etc. He’d create leaflets run off a Banda machine that I would post through every letterbox in the neighbourhood.
In our living room, we had two huge Indian vases (I still have them in my home today). The vases, cobalt-blue with gold paintings of smoky hills, were always stuffed with money as the banks closed before our shop. Every day I saw the physical reciprocity for hard work but at weekends I would see the toll it took on my father as he often was forced to bed on a Sunday with a migraine. He found it hard to delegate. Early seeds were planted in me to work hard and also to get balance and let go of responsibility to others when you can. Life-lessons drove me. As early as a 7-year-old, I pushed until I was a Brownie Guide pack leader. At 16, I was chosen as the Girl Guide from Nottingham to meet the Queen.
For me, business was more than a means of making money or a way of feeding my ego. I didn’t really crave success. I wanted to make my parents proud and to honour the service to the community that my grandparents had given. I employed a cleaner who had been in prison and couldn’t find work anywhere else. She was loyal, brave and kind.
Now I help others to live their best lives and guide them to keep the good lessons from their childhood and let the others go.
Every industry that is now a large-scale, top-notch business once started as a small idea in the minds of entrepreneurs. What was that idea or motivation that made you start your business /initiative? What motivated you within to say YES, go for it!”
I was contacted by the UK’s leading therapist Marisa Peer nine years ago to ask me to be on her inaugural intake to train therapists in the new methodology, then called The Marisa Peer Method and now world renowned as RTT: Rapid Transformational Therapy. In Marisa’s own words she said: “I met Rosalyn in the 90s when she came to me for therapy and we stayed in touch and remained friends and I knew that her experiences and her wisdom could make an excellent therapist. The life lessons and wisdom she has gained in her interesting and connected life has taught her that changing your attitude begins as something you do and then becomes who you are. That is why I invited her to my very first RTT training and she is now one of my top trainers and therapists. |She has followed my training, and now helps others to live happy full lives free from pain.”
When Marisa contacted me I was feeling less than satisfied with my former career in Marketing & PR. As Head of Marcomms for an International Charity I felt good about the work I was doing but it did not feel deep enough. My soul longed for deeper connection and to make deeper changes in the lives of others. My prayers were answered with this invitation and pure synchronicity at a time in my life when I needed more ( I was going through a divorce and the menopause) and being a therapist immediately showed me that this was my calling and this was what all the struggles and pain I had come through were for. To allow me to be conscious and compassionate to those I help. And also to leverage my communication skills to touch more lives with my understanding and wisdom.
Would you like to share with our young budding women entrepreneurs the change you would like to see in the world if given an opportunity?
I want them to be and live and show the change they want to see in the world around them. Remember ‘the price of admission’. What price are you willing to pay for your success?
Is it worth it?
It is no good ending up like this poem: ‘She gave her health to gain her wealth, and then with might and main, she turned around and spent her wealth to gain her health again!’.
What everyone really wants is a wealthy and balanced life. To gain this you need 5Fs. So think of five fingers as your 5Fs: Faith, Fitness, Family & Friends, Finance (career) and Fun. It is like a compassionate To-Do list when you stretch out your hand each morning and check in against each category.
Doing this exercise across all the five categories will give you a values list that is true to you and moves you to want to live by these values or improve them. Keep your list handy and remind yourself of it daily.
Repeating this exercise each week lets you dig a little deeper. On a scaleof 1 – 10 (with 10 being the absolute best place) rank each category in your life right now. Perhaps one category is a 6 or a 7, but you want that one to be a 10/10. Once you have your score for each, ask yourself, “What are my
overarching goals in each?”
Faith: Ask yourself: “What will I do today to build my faith in myself?
What is there that is beyond me that holds me and all humanity together?
What does God hold dear, and how can I fill my heart and soul and life with
the pure love and guidance of this source?”
Fitness and Health: Perhaps this would be something like, “If I were totally fit, I’d have more energy, feel better about my body, be sexier and love life better.” This is getting to your ‘why,’ so now ask yourself “Why is it important for me to have better, uncompromised health?” The answers
might be what you want, such as feeling sexy, and what you don’t want, such as having to take sick time off work or being unable to enjoy walks as your back hurts too much. What actions will help you be fit in body and mind?
Family: “How can I connect with my family today? Have I reached out to my family? Is there a family member, or someone I count as my family, who might need a call? Have I got everyone’s birthday down? Am I remembering special occasions during the year? Do I make them feel they are in my thoughts by my everyday actions?”
Friends: “Which friend shall I reach out to and make time for? Who are the five most important friends for challenging me and holding me accountable for my own growth in every way I wish to grow? Do I need to reconnect with any friends? Are there friends who are now just a number on my phone? Do I reach out to them, or do I accept we were together for a season and a reason, and let them go with my blessing?”
Finance: “What steps shall I take to attract and allow the energy that is money and reward flow to me? Do I need to work on my relationship with that energy? Do I need to take steps to change my career, or around the value that I put upon my services? Are there any blocks standing in my way?Who do I need to reach out to in order to remove those blocks? How can I benefit others from my good fortune and good finances? Do I remember to be altruistic and pay it forward?”
Fun: We are meant to do more than just endure life. This one is like caviar. Remember to have fun in the process. Life is to be enjoyed! You deserve it.
Women are a growing force in the workplaces worldwide, standing shoulder to shoulder with their male counterparts. There are cracks in glass ceilings everywhere, with many women breaking through to carve out a space right at the top of the pyramid. What are your thoughts about women leadership today?
Lead from your heart. Inspire from your actions. I’m sharing with you what I now know to be true: your authentic value is the glue that holds you, and others, together. Leadership is having the vision to know when, and where, to apply that glue and the courage to do so. Then, it’s in reapplying that glue and holding the centre, the truth, the love and the decency together always.I learned to trust my instincts but question my prejudices. After interviewing an excellent candidate, as she left I overheard a member of staff say to another: “She’s great. It’s a shame that Ros won’t employ her as she is so tall.” What?! What could they mean? It troubled me deeply and I sat with it for a while. Yes, it was true. At 5 foot 3 inches, I felt intimidated by tall women. I had unwittingly been prejudiced against them. So… I hired Tracey. She didn’t have relevant PR experience but she did have courage, humour, insight and a thirst for knowledge. She proved to be one of my best hires ever.
Tracey and others of my team also taught me about self-care. I was so driven in business that I felt that all should be sacrificed for it and that collapsing on the sofa after a long day, clutching a gin & tonic, while mindlessly eating pasta, was OK. My fragile immune system had other plans so I learned to embrace a host of self-care strategies to balance out the stress, sleepless nights, alcohol-driven media-culture and meals on the run. My path to wellness was, and still is, carefully trodden. Now as an emotional wellbeing expert, I find myself in the business of healing others in body and mind. Women in leadership are one of my key client cohorts as they face up to how stressed, exhausted and overwhelmed they’ve become and finally turn to therapists who are wellness-warriors. True wellness like leadership starts from within, being open and willing to share with others is key. I see it as my new leadership role to liberate those trapped in painful patterns of emotion and behavior. To speak publicly about mental health and challenge the systems and beliefs that hold us prisoner. There is a new softer, more emotionally intelligent form of leadership and self-leadership emerging. Female Leaders are designed to ignite what is already within you. Trust that. Embrace that. Own that. Nurture that! Listen to your inner leadership wisdom. Learn what makes your heart sing.
What’s the most important thing you have learned in your personal life and professional journey? What is your personal motto in life?
All that I need is within. The answers you seek, the balance and centre you crave is already within you. Like a diamond it can get covered in the debris of pain and the challenges of life but when you regain your centre, find out who you are, breathe, become centred, stop the mind chatter, trust and love the greater part of you and celebrate what makes you unique then you will shine like a diamond again.
With your grit and determination, you are making a considerable impact, breaking through, and serving as role models for many budding entrepreneurs. What would you want to say to our young women leaders/audience reading this?
Change yourself. Then change the world. If you’re not living the life you would like to be living, if you want to change your life and stop the Groundhog Day of being trapped, then start inside. Ask yourself every day: What inspires me? Can I do some or all of that today? Perhaps it is only a question of what you can do. What you can change. So, the MOST important question every day is to ask yourself first: What is achievable TODAY? If you have external restrictions placed on you, you can still achieve the following (that spells CHANGE):
- Choose your thoughts and change the meaning. Reframe how you think about your circumstances. Get enough sleep to reset your brain pattern.
- Hydrate your body well. Keep drinking water or similar.
- Always exercise and move your body. I love yoga and this can be done almost anywhere. There are wonderful free online courses such as Yoga with Adrienne. Just dance around your kitchen or go for a walk. Whatever you do, just MOVE.
- Never do anything that is not good for you or those around you or the World. Ask yourself if it is a good thing before you do it. In your heart you will know and make the right choice.
- Go inside: meditate or be still. If you can’t sit and meditate, download one of the hundreds of meditation or hypnosis recordings available. I have a great selection!
- Eat well. Eliminate sugary junk foods. Treat your body like it is your best friend. And feed your mind good thoughts too.