Have you ever stopped to wonder if you are truly living the life you want?
Like, really… how do you feel right now?
On a scale of 1 to 10?
Do you feel like each day is groundhog day and you are in a sleeper cell?
Is there a knowing that there is more to life but you just aren’t sure how to tap into it?
Are you just going through the motions, committed to making it through dinner, bath, bed so you can have 10 minutes of peace before you crash out and do it all again tomorrow?
Or are you waking up feeling fresh, fulfilled, inspired and motivated?
(Don’t WTF me through the keyboard for saying that!)
I know, it’s hard to wake up like that with little ones crawling around your feet or into your bed.
But, I promise you this. There is light at the end of the tunnel.
Do you spend your days being forced into doing all the things you wish you didn’t have to?
Are you feeling fulfilled?
Is life turning out how you thought it would?
Have you fast forwarded to five years down the track and wondered whether anything will change? Have you considered that if nothing does change, whether you will be happy?
Will you have regrets?
Whether you are in a soul destroying 9-5 job, or running a business that sucks the life out of you or even a SAHM who has bigger dreams, the power to convert your life lies with you and the actions you are brave enough to take.
Knowledge is nothing, without action.
Fear will always win unless we find the courage to side step it.
I’ll always remember the morning it dawned on me that I had recalibrated the direction of my life.
Being fired with no warning from my 9-5 was the moment where my life pivoted.
As I watched my husband get ready for work a year later I remembered all the feels.
I thought I’d forgotten.
That dread knowing each morning I had to sell my life and dreams for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.
The compounding feeling of monotony of having to find something office-like to wear, iron it, slap on makeup, get my hair done and pull myself together, leave my daughter with someone else for the day and set out for a relentless day of working to benefit someone else’s business.
I would sit in my car on the way to work and dream that there was a better way.
The emotions would wash over me.
In my heart, I knew there was another life for me to live, I just had to work out those first few steps and for sure, I could change my trajectory.
My husband kissed me goodbye and I took an extra moment to snuggle into my daughter who had snuck into bed with us in the middle of the night.
I breathed her in and felt such gratitude because somewhere along the way, six-years ago, the Universe and I reshuffled my fate.
My reliance on the 9-5 income was broken.
I grabbed the silver lining and used it to reset my life and start my own online business.
It wasn’t easy and at times the fear literally shook me like a leaf.
But, I put my trust in the Universe and decided to create my own fate.
There was blood, sweat and tears.
At times when my faith wavered, I would step outside, gather myself and remind myself there was no return.
When I look back on those times before I had my business, I can’t believe how close I was.
The power to use my business as a vehicle to create an extraordinary life was always just around the corner.
Just last month (April 2017) I decided to step out of my mum shell and start living for me. Now that my kids are 8 and 4, I knew it was time.
Time to invest in me.
So, I booked a flight to LA and went to the Supersoul Sessions hosted by Oprah. As I learned in my PND days a few years ago, mindset is everything. And I wanted to be inspired by the best of the best.
Supersoul hosts an all-new group of thought-leaders, change-makers, and wisdom-teachers. It was intense and all kinds of amazing.
As if sitting front row to Oprah wasn’t enough, Tony Robbins, Gabby Bernstein, Glennon Melton Doyle and other thought leaders were there too.
It was a day of tracking the markers to a successful mind and body.
What I didn’t expect was there to be some pretty big names in the audience too.
I spotted Lewis Howes who just recently appeared on the Ellen Show, chatting about his rise to fame in the entrepreneur world. He has built several multimillion-dollar online businesses and hosts the School of Greatness, which has had over 30 million downloads since it launched in 2013. He was also recognized by The White House and President Obama as one of the top 100 entrepreneurs in the country.
If it wasn’t for my friend marching up to him and asking for a photo, I wouldn’t have been able to muster the courage to meet him. But, you can tell I am totally fangirling it right?
Lewis has a book which I started reading straight away and instantly I related to four key points that have led me to my success today. I want to share those with you now.
Dream it, feel it, live it
I have always been a daydreamer. When I was a teenager I used to dream of meeting my future husband and for some reason he was from overseas.
I used to imagine going back to his home country and hanging out with his family.
Sure enough, when I was 20, I met a disheveled backpacker from Scotland with ripped jeans from Lowes and a hicky on his neck. He also looked like he hadn’t showered for a while. He was on the run from his life and chose to come to Australia because it was the furthest destination he could go to get away from his home.
I married him a year later in Glasgow, when I was 21.
Turns out that backpacker was my soul mate.
The one that had been in my daydreams.
Fast forward almost 14 years later and we have a beautiful, but not perfect, life in Sydney with two children and we regularly fly back to Scotland to hangout with my in-laws who I adore.
The house that I live in now, I went to sleep every night dreaming of it and woke up every morning thinking about it.
I visualised what it looked like, how it felt getting the keys, the look of pride on my dad’s face, my children running and giggling throughout. The feeling of contentment, knowing I did it.
So, listen in.
In order to create the life you want, you first need to visualise it and take steps of action to start the ball rolling, even before you feel ready.
You need to show the Universe you are committed before it will commit to you and deliver what you want.
Instead of waiting for it to happen, make it happen and everything else will fall into place behind you as you lead the way.
It doesn’t happen to you, it happens for you.
After the fire ravages through the bush, disintegrating all in its path, everything goes quiet.
The animals are gone, the leaves are ash and the trees are mostly lifeless black stumps.
Black is everywhere.
Through the stillness, the sun starts to flicker in and the rain falls gently on the delicate matter left behind.
Life starts to grow out of the deadness: trees sprout their new leaves, the birds cautiously begin to sing again and green life becomes more common than dead black.
Taking a deep breath and stopping for a second to live in the moment is truly joyful again.
What is done is done is done is done.
My littlest didn’t sleep through the night until he was over two-years-old.
He cried. A lot.
Incessantly.
Relentlessly.
I cried a lot.
We both cried a lot.
The constant disturbance to my mind and body meant I was never able to fully recover and repair.
Little by little, piece by piece, it chipped away at me and my mind decayed.
Since then, I have worked hard to put my life back together.
I put a plan in place involving self-care, exercise, mindfulness, fulfilment, love and peace.
Using my adversity and turning it into my power has been my biggest advantage.
Instead of being a victim of PND I decided to see it as a blessing.
It showed me the truth. It stripped everything away, repacked it and evolved who I was.
I learned how to truly live in the moment.
To be present and to be grateful for it all.
The good, the bad, the uncomfortable, the painful. I use it all to make myself, my life and my business stronger and stronger every day so I can continue designing the life I want and showing lovely people like you, how to do it too.
I want you to know that even out of the most painful times, beautiful things can grow. Don’t resist uncomfortable times in your life. Instead breathe through them knowing they could be the catalyst for the most extraordinary times of your life.
First, we must mindset
Tony Robbins says that success is 80% mindset and 20% strategy and it is so true. In fact, when I was at a training day with one of Australia’s biggest coaches, one of the first things he said was that mindset has nothing to do with success. I was so blown away that I honestly felt like getting up and walking out.
Business is not always rainbows and lollipops. It pushes us beyond our limits, it challenges us to see how determined we are, it asks us if we are really ready to commit. In order to make it through these ebbs and flows we need to have a strong and always learning mindset because I promise you this, if you can stand still in the storm, success is there for the last people standing.
Recently, I invited business and mindset coach, Yvonne Hiltz to do a masterclass.
For those that don’t know, every month I invite an expert to come and do a live training for my Business Jump clients.
This one was all about mindset, and leveraging off it to not only grow in business but as a person.
Yvonne took us through her above the line and below the line framework.
Essentially, it all starts with being aware.
Aware of ourselves, aware of our actions, aware of our thoughts.
Aware of whether we are being an arsehole or not.
It is no secret that this last week there has been a lot of ugly out there in the interwebz.
Some of it directed at me for something I stuffed up on. Shit does happen. To everyone.
At first, I wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out.
When you put yourself out there as much as I do, shit starts to feel vulnerable.
When you get eaten alive in front of masses of people it doesn’t feel good.
But, here is the thing. We all have a choice in how we decide to respond.
I could have played the victim and blame card, closed down and never put myself out there again.
In a flood of tears, I felt like it. But only for a second or two.
And then I choose again. I chose to look at it differently.
Like how I think of my PND, as a blessing.
So much more beauty came out of it than ugly.
Messages of support, friendships formed, my biz sisters were there for me, bonds strengthened in unity.
From an innocent mistake, I grew stronger and wiser.
A new perspective on how I can be wiser to guide my clients.
So, what I know for sure is don’t run away from your pain.
Learn to sit in the uncomfortableness.
For there lies the message to take you to the next level.
Hustle Smartly
Running your own business is not for the faint-hearted.
Isolated desire won’t get you through your fuck ups, embarrassing mistakes in front of your audience, lost clients, business lessons learned the hard way and weeks or months with no sales and quiet periods where no one replies to anything you send or put out there.
All of the above have happened to me, plus I have lost a best friend of 15 years because whilst we were amazing friends, we were shit business partners with too much pride.
I’ve had to fight my way out of a lot of ‘tests’ in my business story.
So, I know that ‘desire’ is just the tip of the iceberg of what you need to run your own successful business.
Consider it more of a calling to see if you can man up.
Under that desire, you need to have a big massive block of ice hard grit, determination and drive to get you through said hard times plus a stack of courage and bravery to stay true to yourself and your wants and needs.
The Universe is asking, ‘Are you SURE, like REALLY SURE, you really want to do this?’
‘Prove it to me, get back up when you fall down,’ it is saying.
Research. Learn. Watch. Breathe.
Educate your way through it.
Keep your eyes on the prize.
There is no reward without hard work.
And, now that I am on the other side, I can tell you the rewards are every kind of utterly amazing you could ever dream of.
But, I still have shit days.
It is part of the game.
Steel up, learn from what the Universe is teaching you, follow those who have made it and learn their secrets. Ask yourself what you can do better next time….
What can I learn, how can I improve?
You will, at some point come into the light and you will feel what success, freedom and earning the income you dreamed of feels like.
If I had given up when I had my fails, I never would have known I could achieve the freedom, wins and income I have experienced running my own business.
Being successful is not about talent, smarts or some secret magic formula only found on the black market that you can buy via cash along with your first born and your left lung.
Success is for those who are brave enough to give it a try, despite their fears.
Success is waiting for those who fight their way out of the dark holes.
Success is there for those who stand still in the current washing around them.
Success is there for the last people standing.
