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Life, Health & The Universe
Life, health and the universe are all connected. In a world where we are more connected than ever, we have become disconnected from ourselves. In this podcast, along with guests, I discuss ideas in a celebration of life, an exploration of health and some wonderment of the universe.
Contact Nadine: https://lifehealththeuniverse.podcastpage.io/contact
Life, Health & The Universe
Authentic Living: The Pursuit of Well-Being
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What if you could transform your life simply by listening to the wisdom of those who've walked a similar path?
Join us on "Life, Health, and the Universe" for a heartwarming reunion between Nadine and her dear friend Stevie Smilas. From their humble beginnings in a business women's network to their enduring online friendship, Stevie's story is nothing short of inspirational.
Her diverse career path—from running an organic fruit and veg delivery service to corporate real estate, yoga instruction, and now personal coaching—paints a vivid picture of resilience and passion for healthy living.
This episode brings to light the trials and triumphs of entrepreneurship and balancing life's myriad demands. Stevie shares her enriching journey with Ivanhoe Community Grocers, showcasing the indispensable role of community support and ethical business practices.
She opens up about her battle with Lyme disease and chronic fatigue, offering a raw and emotional account of her recovery through lifestyle changes and integrative health practices. The narrative underscores the importance of mental health, especially during times of extreme stress, and the profound impact of faith and perseverance in overcoming daunting challenges.
Stevie's reflections on transitioning from high-stress business roles to more fulfilling work that aligns with her values provide invaluable insights for listeners. Her experience as a single parent navigating career transitions highlights the unique challenges and rewards of balancing personal and professional aspirations.
As Stevie reclaims her entrepreneurial dreams, her story and her coaching serve as a beacon of hope and practical wisdom for anyone seeking a balanced, meaningful life.
Tune in for a conversation rich with authentic connections, self-care, and the pursuit of happiness.
You can find Stevie's full profile and in our Guest Directory here
If you're interested in the benefits of NAD+ that Stevie shares with us in this episode, you can check it out here
Hello, it's Nadine and I'm here with this week's episode of Life, health and the Universe, and today I'm joined by my friend, stevie Smilus. Hey, stevie, we've just had a little catch up before we hit record. So we haven't like spoken in person for a while and we've never met in like real life. But you know, we're still friends.
Speaker 1:So Steve and I we met in a business women's network. We were in a small group called a goals group and we used to meet fortnightly. So this was like a couple years ago, maybe even three years ago I didn't even look in my calendar to see how long it's been but gradually, over time, things changed. We kind of dropped out of the group and our lives evolved in different ways and we went in different directions, in contact via the interwebs, which is always, you know, the big win of social media is making friends and staying in contact with friends. So here we are today. We've got lots to talk about. We've just had a little chat about what we're going to cover off on. But I'm going to hand over to you, stevie, and yeah, you can kind give us stevie in a nutshell and then we'll go from there thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you, gosh, it's always an interesting stevie. In a nutshell, where do you start? What do you cover, what do you not? You know it's always, uh, an interesting one, I think. Yeah, so I reckon it probably has been three years since we've spoken, spoken rather than just, you know, messaging back and forth. But I think when you're in those kind of particularly goals groups, it's such an incubator right. You spend, even if it's once every fortnight sometimes, some of your really good friends you might not catch up with at length once a fortnight. So you really do form quite um close bonds, I think, and you become a big part of each other's lives. So, um, it was a great group. It was a really great group and, yeah, we definitely have gone our different ways.
Speaker 2:So, um, at the time, I was running a organic fruit and veg delivery service business in Melbourne, which I absolutely loved. Healthy eating and making great choices and organic farming are things I'm really passionate about, and feeding ourselves the best that we can in order to get the best that we can out of life is really important to me. That business ran for about four years and I genuinely loved every moment of it. It was amazing. I stepped away from it, probably two years ago now, I think, and for various reasons.
Speaker 2:And prior to that, I did my stint in the corporate world for many years working in and around real estate so not doing real estate, but working with real estate agents and property developers and that kind of thing and I also taught yoga for more than a decade whilst I was doing all of those things. So always a busy bee. And now I'm just I've spent a little while doing nothing, which has been absolutely amazing. I've really really needed that and enjoyed that. And then I went into more recently I was doing a sales kind of a role which I enjoyed learning about, and I'm sure we'll talk more about that later. And now I've come back to my true passion of just working with people, which is what I really love to do Having great conversations and spending time just finding out what makes people tick, I guess, and helping them really connect better with themselves and just have those conversations that are sometimes really hard to have, and encouraging that and celebrating that as well. So if I was going for a nutshell, that would be it.
Speaker 1:That was a pretty good nutshell. You didn't throw in there your mother, yes, mum of one, one big human yes, he, he just turned 21, which actually blows my mind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, this year, yep, which is, uh gosh, my, my biggest joy. I mean, I feel very much like an empty nester, which is also a lovely stage of life to be at. I'm spending some time travelling and he's spending time travelling as well, which is fantastic to see him. Kind of, he's doing his first, you know, euro trip on his own and discovering, you know, nearly missing flights and working out directions and all things and just having fun, you know, yeah, just having fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you come from the UK, right, and you're in the UK at the moment, but we met and you were in Australia when we met in Melbourne.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Are you still kind of considering yourself based in Australia? Is that home for?
Speaker 2:you, yeah. Yeah, I mean Melbourne will always be home, because it's where my son lives right, so we'll always be home and it's a great city. You know it's such a good city. Um, I am just escaping the winter and spending time in England. So, my my, what I've been creating over the last couple of years is a life where I can skip the winter regularly. This is the third winter I've been able to skip most of, and that is an absolute joy.
Speaker 2:So, that's definitely what I'm working towards. So a lot of time in Melbourne, a bit of time in Europe, a bit of time here in London and then back to Melbourne just when the frost picks up and leaves.
Speaker 1:Cool, that sounds like a pretty good plan, yes.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 1:You've given us a whole bunch of stuff that we can talk about, and I kind of when we were kind of having a little bit of a back and forth about what we would cover today. Obviously the podcast is called Life, health and the Universe, so we can talk about any of those things and they kind of all interconnect right and that's why it has its name. But I thought like we might start with entrepreneurship, because I feel like you kind of embody the entrepreneur. But I think often when we think entrepreneur, we think well, I think when someone says that they're an entrepreneur, you know lots of money, you know living the life, but it's not always like that right, it can have some really big fluctuations yeah, do you?
Speaker 1:consider, I think you're. You consider yourself an entrepreneur, don't you?
Speaker 2:yeah, I definitely do. And I do because, um, because starting and building businesses is one of the things I genuinely love doing, like I enjoy it so much, I have so much fun. You know, putting things together, thinking of ideas. You know I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine that was in corporate not long ago actually and he was saying, oh, I'd love to leave the corporate world. I just never had that one idea that is good enough and is interesting enough for me to leave it and go into it. And I remember just being a little bit confused and I said there's no shortage of good ideas, there's a million good ideas out there. I could give you five ideas right now that you could run and start a business with.
Speaker 2:It's the dedication and it's the um, the actual getting it done, which is the hyper and committing to a life that is very risky. It's not. You're not going to get a paycheck every month and you have to be okay with that. You have to be okay with, you know, high risk reward. That's the entrepreneur's life often, and it's the same in the sales world, it's the same in entrepreneurial land, and if you need more than that or if you can't 100% back yourself, then stay in the job, because that's the difference, right, that's the difference.
Speaker 2:And it doesn't mean that, even when you do, I back myself 100%. It doesn't mean I get it right every time Definitely not. And if I did, then I wouldn't be able to back myself 100, because it's not actually that I back myself that I will get it right. It's that I back myself, that even when I get it wrong, I'll work it out. That's the difference, right? So when you know that, whatever happens, you'll work it out and it will and also be honest, coming around to the universe part of what you're saying there's a lot of faith, right, you just have to have faith that it will work out exactly the way that it's supposed to and there's no point fighting against that. That doesn't mean. What a lot of people think that means is that you don't try really hard and you don't fight for it, because what will happen will happen, which is a cop-out and um, just um. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to swear, but yeah, you can swear really right.
Speaker 2:It's a bullshit excuse not to not to back yourself. So I think you have to be able to 100 back yourself and you have to be able to 100 still have faith that it will work out exactly the way that it's supposed to. All I can do is my best in everything I have control over, and that's a real beauty in that it's a real, really peaceful place, even though it can feel like on the outside it can feel like a really stressful place.
Speaker 1:It's actually a really peaceful, beautiful balance when you, when you get it right it's interesting and I've um just want to kind of highlight that wording um about everything will happen is exactly as it's supposed to be, and it's kind of like that's not necessarily what you expected it to be right, but and um, I've been um digging into human design and the gene keys over the last couple of years and one of my gene keys is, uh, the gene key of desire, or a gene key 30, and it's desire is the shadow and the and the gift is, um, lightness, and it's like, okay, you can desire all of the things that you want, but life's going to give you whatever life's going to give you, and it's almost like it's all already mapped out. Yep, um, yep, so you know, you can, you can desire all you want, but we don't. But okay, so I guess the you have to have peace with it as well.
Speaker 2:Right, there has to be a certain amount of peace with it yeah, it's a real balancing act, isn't it?
Speaker 1:because, like, you're putting your, you're basically putting everything on the line. When you, you're, you know, starting a business, you've got a new idea, um, just as you described, um, and it might not turn out because the universe has, um, yeah, and you've got a kind of trust that, exactly what you said, trust that it's going to give you whatever it needs to give you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think it always gives you what you need, even if you don't know that that's what you need, right, because it might not be. You could put everything into something and it might not work out. But you know what you learn along the way. Like it's not about the working out or the not working out along the way. Like it's not about the working out or the not working out. It's about what you learned along the way who you became, who you unbecame from who you were before. You know, and it teaches us something. So there are always, there's always a lesson to be had and I know that sounds really like a bit woo-woo, you know, but there is. There's always something for you to learn.
Speaker 2:And if things don't work out, I genuinely, genuinely believe it is always because there's something better coming. You just haven't quite found it yet or it's not quite the time for it. So it's like my cousin that I'm staying with here. You know she's applying for this big thing and it's really, really important, and you know it's been awesome to watch her go through that. But the conversation is always, if it doesn't work out, it is because there is something so much better coming, and it's not about preparing for failure, because I really don't like that. I don't like when people do that, because that that's not quite the same thing. Right? Like someone said to me the other day, you know, if this doesn't work out, it's not a reflection on you, it's a reflection on you. Know, something else, something else. And I was like stop, we're not preparing for failure, we're preparing for success, and it's important that we notice the difference between the two. Right? If it doesn't work out, it's because there is something better coming, and that's a matter of having faith that that will be the case.
Speaker 1:Yes, because you can't, and just moving with it. Yeah, because you can't always. Well, you can't always picture what that's going to be right and what that's going to look like.
Speaker 2:It's really hard. No, go, go, go. I was just going to say it's really hard when things are very difficult, when you're in a really difficult place or when everything feels like it's going wrong, or, for example, when people have health issues. It's really hard to kind of come back to that faith of you know there's a reason. I am where I am. What do I need to learn here? How do I make peace with this? What do I need to learn here? How do I make peace with this? What am I needing to be present with right now, in an understanding that it will pass?
Speaker 1:You know that's really hard, that's really hard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but maybe that's the lesson also you know.
Speaker 1:Yes, all right. So you talked about your community gro grocers, ivanhoe community grocers, which is one of the reasons that you were in the goals group, that we were in yeah and um.
Speaker 1:It was a great little business, hard yakka, but you had a perfect example of you having a passion for what you were doing and continually pushing to get it done, perfect, it make it work. Can you give us any inklings or examples of the lessons that you learned from that and, like the, the experience from, like, deciding to to not do that anymore? Um, and how that is part of your journey of, yeah, improvement, getting something better, yeah absolutely so.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, I genuinely loved the veggie box business. It was awesome. I got to really build something from absolute scratch. And, um, uh, I had friends that were doing a similar business on the other side of town and I remember seeing them and thinking, gosh, this is a great business and it would be so great in my community. They were very happy to kind of open their doors and show me what they were doing. I did things quite differently in the end, but just even having that foundation was super helpful. So you know credit where it's due.
Speaker 2:I think the reason I mentioned that also is because I think particularly small community business does best when it's supporting each other right, and when there were other, you know, younger people and younger groups that were doing as in smaller, younger businesses that were doing similar things in and around my area, I was always happy to help them and show them the way as well, because, particularly with food, particularly with sourcing good quality food, the more people doing it the better. There's no such thing as competition right, unless you're delivering in exactly the same space to exactly the same customer and are exactly the same kind of business, which, you know, there's ethical questions on why someone would do that anyway, but that's another conversation. I don't believe in competition in that way. I think we can always help each other. There's enough business, there's enough money in the world, there's enough people in the world. We can always support each other and I think that's really important, particularly in community-based businesses. We operated as a social enterprise and gave a lot back to local kindergartens and schools and other organisations as well, and for me, a big part of that business was educating people on the reasons for eating organic and how the farming system and industrially grown crops is just broken and again a conversation for another day. But the business for me because I could go on to a rant about that and I won't today the business for me was awesome because it really showed me that and it's interesting because it wasn't the first time I'd done it.
Speaker 2:But this business particularly really showed me that I could build something from nothing and, um, you know, get that to. You know it was, you know, doing six figures very quickly, very easily and profitable within the first, even four months, which is pretty unheard of in the small business world and just putting the systems into place and working, you know, finding out what worked and what didn't. I'm a big fan of the whole. I'm not sure what their actual name is, but there's a thing called, like the Toyota kind of methodology, where you make every single step of the process as easy as possible and at least less barriers to getting it done in the fastest time possible. And then, um, and then, even if you make every part one percent easier over the 10 parts that make that business, that's actually 10 percent easier, right, and it's so. It's so easy to make very small changes that collectively have a massive impact. So I really enjoyed playing with that theory in that business, um, and really really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2:Difficulty wise it's. You know, fruit and veg in Australia is an overnight business, right, so the wholesale markets are open from like 2am until 6am, so that means that you need to be there between that time to collect all of your fruit and veg, to choose your fruit and veg, to interact with your suppliers and and build those relationships and and do all of those things. So, um, I we only delivered one day a week, which was a blessing, a curse, I do now realize, because most of the other businesses that I interacted with there were doing it three or four times a week, or just had shops and, would you know, go two or three times a week to collect their stock. Um, doing it once a week, that meant that one day a week, on a Monday, my day started at 3am and the rest of the week normal. So I think that in hindsight I understand that actually that was very detrimental to my body and my um wellness, because you're basically changing your body clock once a week, every single week, ongoing. It's like it was like, um, it was almost like having jet lag all the time yeah, you know, all the time and it was very, very detrimental to my sleep.
Speaker 2:My sleep was never good. To be honest. My whole adult life I didn't have very good sleep and, um, during that business I had to really focus on getting good sleep. So I learned a lot about sleep. I learned a lot about what I needed, about, you know, all the sleep hygiene things which were fascinating. And although I was um having such crazy alternating hours most of the time other than the Sunday and the Monday, my sleep was actually really good. It got probably the best it's ever been in my whole adult life. But then that constant change on Monday just messed everything up every single week. So I learned a lot from that. And it wasn't until much later on when I took a pause from the business and I looked, maybe three months later, at starting again and I just realised that it just wasn't in me to go back to that that early early morning even, you know, once a week, or potentially even more than that. So that was definitely one of the main reasons, like understanding once you're not doing it anymore, understanding just how detrimental it was not only to the sleep but, um, to your mentality.
Speaker 2:Right, because for me, um, I think you know slightly changing subjects you know, self-talk is the most important part of your mental health. I mean, obviously I'm talking about people that don't have diagnosed problems, because that's a whole different thing, but I think your self-talk is incredibly powerful and incredibly impactful, right, and I had spent a lot of time, many years before, working on my self-talk and making it not negative, making it a very happy, healthy, communicative, um, collaborative space inside my head, right, and what I found was that, you know, on those Sunday evenings when I'd, you know, gone to bed at 7 pm to try and wake up at you know three and I couldn't sleep and there was nothing really stopping me from sleeping other than my body clock and my brain just switching on and just not not allowing me to sleep in any way. Though, at those times when it gets to like 11 and then it gets to midnight and you're still awake, there was absolutely no way that I could control my self-talk. I just couldn't. It became absolutely toxic because it would always occur to me that there was nothing stopping me from sleeping except myself, which isn't necessarily fair or true. Um, I wasn't able to control it any other point in the day. Any other day of the week awesome, no problem. But it was such a hard thing to control when you're overtired, when you're under pressure, when you know that, like, if you don't get to sleep, your whole day is going to be so difficult, and then you've got that whole day ahead of you confirming all of those things. It was very, very difficult, and I think I really had to learn to recognize what I physically could and couldn't do.
Speaker 2:I was also running another business at the same time, which was, ironically, mindfulness and meditation based, teaching people how to do that, and so I was constantly being pulled in the two different directions and having lots and lots of demands on my time and I remember hearing a really simple, simple quote that, like you know, lured me. You know, when you hear something and like the whole ground opens and you're like, oh my God, how did this happen? What am I doing? And it was. I wish I could remember it word for word.
Speaker 2:I think it was something like you know, if you chase two rabbits, catch none right, and just that imagery of my businesses being two rabbits running in opposite directions and me constantly trying to chase the two of them, and it was like such a such a light bulb moment of this is my life and that is what am I doing. How do I intend to succeed in doing both of these at the same time? So I stopped the one and I was. I was doing the veggie box business on its own, um, but by then I was already much too close to burnout to to be able to, you know, succeed in the way that I wanted to so the.
Speaker 1:So you quit the the mindfulness and meditation business. First then the veggie box business and the biggest kind of takeaway in hindsight was that your the the like the physical um and mental kind of like challenges that came with it, and that you basically wasn't healthy. It wasn't unhealthy?
Speaker 2:yeah, and I and, to be honest, I would love to say that I had that. I was able to to see that and make the decision to step away from the veggie box business, um, but it ended up being a complete physical burnout that I had to stop.
Speaker 1:I was forced to stop.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, yeah, wow.
Speaker 1:You know.
Speaker 2:And there's that saying of if you, you know. If you, if you don't learn to rest, your body will teach you Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, and that's exactly that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a massive, yeah, massive burnout, and I've I've always been a very, very go, go go person and I've fortunately got well into my forties without having any major health issues, and so I've never been in the situation where my health was like taken away from me. You know, I didn't work for a year, holy shit.
Speaker 1:What did it feel like? Was it kind of like, did it just stop you dead in your tracks one day, or was it like a gradual thing?
Speaker 2:It was a few really stressful events that happened kind of all at the same time, okay, and then, um, the final thing that kind of tipped it all over the edge was I went to queensland and um, to do some work and, uh, I got bitten by a tick, oh, and I had a really adverse reaction to it, really bad vertigo which I've never had before in my life. And then when I came back to Melbourne, I was doing some other work and I had another like really stressful event which was unexpected, and after that my body just literally gave up, like I felt like I was stoned the entire time and I had no complete brain fog, tired muscle aches, like I couldn't do anything. I felt like I had some kind of virus or something, and the doctors were like, nope, there's nothing wrong with you, and I just had no energy, absolutely no energy. Since then I've learned a lot about exactly what happened and in hindsight I know that sometimes, when you have prolonged exposure to stress which my body did through the not sleeping and the changing, constantly changing body clocks, and then sudden big amounts of stress or stressful events that raise your cortisol level quite drastically, um, what can happen is that your, as a defense mechanism, your brain cuts all communication to your adrenal glands because your adrenal glands are creating so much cortisol that your brain is like this is not healthy and we need to protect you from the adrenal glands which are not working properly. So it cuts all communication. So now I know that's what happened.
Speaker 2:So, um, that meant that my adrenal glands were not functioning properly, they were adrenal dysfunction, and it took me from October, when I had that last event that really kind of stopped everything in its tracks, until April to get a diagnosis of adrenal dysfunction and Lyme disease. And then I had to move through a process of just massive amounts of rest and being okay with that and acceptance in what I could and couldn't do, and lots and lots of supplements and lots of really good food and, being a caffeine, I could not even abide in any way, shape or form. That whole wired and tired feeling was constant even without caffeine. You know lots of adaptogens which made a massive difference, and some really good health care, um, integrative health, people who know their stuff and are interested.
Speaker 2:I remember going to my regular gp back in october and saying, look, I've just had this, this is all all started and I just, you know, was bitten by a tick up in Queensland and the GP literally said to me yeah, lyme disease doesn't exist in Australia. So fortunately it won't be that. But you know we can. We can test for some other things. When I saw the integrative health GP in April, her exact words were we'll test you for Lyme disease, would you believe? Some doctors still believe it doesn't exist in Australia yeah, wow, I've heard that too.
Speaker 1:I've heard, wow, doctors say that there's no. There's no proof that it exists and, yes, there are probably some things that ticks carry, but we don't have the evidence to support it.
Speaker 2:So because people's testimony of their experiences is not enough evidence. You know there are so many people having similar issues, but you know it's and the thing is. One of the problems actually is that as a society society in general glamorizes and idealizes this whole being busy and being exhausted.
Speaker 2:Totally, it's not normal, yeah, and particularly women will often. I can't tell you how many friends well-meaning friends said to me I'm exhausted all the time, it's just normal. I'm exhausted all the time, it's just normal, yeah. And it's so hard to explain. Like this is not exhaustion, this is fatigue. Like this is the biggest. Like you can't do anything. Like you're. You know, if I managed to walk the the dog, I was happy. That was one thing that I could do. I was like I'll get out every day to walk the dog. If I managed to do something else as well, like get to the supermarket and back, or get to the post office or whatever, that was an absolute win have you still got Lyme's disease?
Speaker 1:does it? Can you get it? Get rid of it?
Speaker 2:so I haven't been tested for it recently because my gp who is amazing um said to me look, we can keep testing you for it, but realistically managing your body and being like doing all the things that you need to do will keep it in check. So just having that knowledge in your brain of, yes, it's still present, yes, it's still present, is not helpful. It doesn't change anything, so there's no point. And actually, that's really true. Right, it's really really true. It's a great way to look at it. So there's not really any need like if I know that.
Speaker 2:Um, there's a lot of things that I've done to kind of fix the problem as such, and a lot of it is, as I said, supplements, eating really good food, resting enough, and also I had a whole um thing of iv therapy, which is not cheap but absolutely made the final difference. Um, to give you a bit of context, from October, when I got really sick, until August, I probably managed to get myself back to about 60% of my normal. Right Through the very, very stringent rest, supplements, food, all of those things, things I got back to about 60 percent normal. And then I did the iv therapy. Um, it's called the nad protocol. Oh yeah, highly recommend it for for people that do have particularly autoimmune problems. Um over 10 days. You do five treatments over 10 days. I was back to 100% Wow.
Speaker 1:Does it make you feel a bit vomity while you're having it done with NAD. I thought I've heard it's awful yeah. It's absolutely awful when you're having it done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, very intense. Like you get quite a lot of nausea, very nauseous. You know what it's like. It's like like, you know, when you have a really bad flu and all of your joints and your muscles ache. It's like that. It's like the worst flu you've ever had, but you're in the middle of the ocean on a really stormy day and being thrown around that's what it's like.
Speaker 1:That is the best description, but it's worth of having NAD therapy, but the moment it stops, it's gone.
Speaker 2:Like there's no hangover, there's no. The moment the infusion stops, the feeling stops as well. Like, even if you need to get up and go to the bathroom mid-treatment I would end up always doing that just to get a bit of a break. A break it stops the moment it's not going into your vein anymore. Wow, it's's bizarre, quite bizarre, yeah, and so I've had been having, um, I have subsequent treatments every now and then, probably every couple of months um, and that that has made all the difference.
Speaker 2:Like, and the thing is, yes, it is expensive, but if it brings you back to being able to earn, which which I wasn't previously, then for me it was worth every dime and also, as I said, it really taught me about self-care. I remember going to see my osteopath back when I was running the veggie box business and the other business, and he kept saying to me look, your stress levels are just way too high, way too high. And I kept arguing with him and saying look, the thing is, I've had lots of stressful times in my life. I don't feel particularly stressed right now, so I'm not sure that I agree with you. And I remember him just looking me dead in the eyes and saying I understand you believe that, but your body is not saying that and I didn't listen.
Speaker 1:And you probably didn't feel it If your adrenals weren't working properly.
Speaker 2:you're not getting that kind of heightened stress feeling I guess. My baseline was already way higher. So the baseline I was going off was significantly stress, but it was my baseline. So do you know what I mean? It didn't feel stressed to me, but compared to someone else, it was very, very stressed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow yeah, so was that like that whole experience like you, you obviously didn't have much of a choice body was like the end I'm done, not doing exactly, not doing anything else. Thank you very much. You're not listening. So I'm taking some serious action. Absolutely big wake up call, huge. So part of your current um living summer to summer is that because of that experience is, did you get like a, a bit of a? Have you had a bit of a kind of like fuck it, life's too short, I need to do the things that I want to do.
Speaker 2:Since that happened, like yes, I know, I think um previously when I ran the mindfulness and the meditation business, a big part of that was helping people to um go through a process of um evaluating how happy they were in their lives and how much fulfillment they had right, and really getting people to think about what was actually important to them intrinsically and what they wanted to achieve, as opposed to what, like, society or family or anyone else expected them to achieve. And so that's always been really important to me and for me, those businesses really kind of gave me that in. You know, starting successful businesses working within the community, earning a certain amount of money, like doing all of those things. It met a lot of my needs, but in meeting those needs I completely missed a whole bunch of my other needs. Right or neglected is even a fair word to say. And so when all of this happened, once I had kind of gotten past the just being an acceptance because for me it was very much a learning curve of accepting where I was and what I could and couldn't do Once I started getting better, I decided that I genuinely was going to create a life that I wanted to live, first and foremost above everything else, and it's not that I hadn't done that before, to live first and foremost above everything else. And it's not that I hadn't done that before it's that I hadn't done it completely transparently with myself right. And that's because ideas other ideas get in the way. However good we are at connecting with ourselves and talking to ourselves, we still have our blind spots right. Connecting with ourselves and talking to ourselves, we still we have our blind spots right. And so I think, being able to kind of reconnect really in like transparently with myself, I could think about what I wanted to achieve and how I wanted to live life through this phase. It also did coincide with my son kind of being ready to move out of home and going off to uni and doing his own thing. So prior to that, living country to country wasn't really an option for me.
Speaker 2:But once I got unwell, I spent some time. I came back to England. Actually, I came on a one-way ticket. I didn't know what I was doing or where I was going. I was just like I'm just, you know, there were some family problems here with my grandfather who was very old, and I thought well, you know, I'm just going to go and see what happens.
Speaker 2:So over that period, I decided that, you know, melbourne definitely was home and I wanted to go back, but I just didn't want to be there for winter and wanted to really cultivate a life that I genuinely loved in every way, and so for me, that is very much about being able to move freely, you know, where I want to, when I want to, and being able to work from wherever I am and being able to do the kind of work that I really really love. And that comes back to again that connection with people, and that you know I always joke, and you know it's not a joke at all. It's entirely true that you know, my favorite pastime is robust conversations, and it genuinely is. If I could do that, if I could do this every single day, I'm the happiest person in the world, you know, because connecting with people, helping them have those realizations and just being, um, a bit of a sounding board, is such a pleasure and such a joy.
Speaker 2:You know, and I think there are lots of you know, there are lots of ways in which we can do that, and I think, for me, having you know a lot of you know, lived experience, I guess, you know in the corporate world, in the entrepreneurial world in.
Speaker 2:You know, I feel like even when I was running the mindfulness meditation business before, the people that I worked with, you know, really enjoyed the work and were really impacted by the choices that they then made and how they adjusted things in their lives.
Speaker 2:And so now coming back to that kind of work in a, with so much more awareness even than I had before, feels so aligned and so um, right, you know, like now feels like the the right time to be doing this kind of work and, to be honest, the reason I one of the reasons that I moved away from it before was, you know, the veggie box business was taking up so much of my time. But also I didn't enjoy all the bits that you need to do around a business. In that business, right, I didn't enjoy the marketing, I didn't enjoy the sales, I didn't enjoy the feeling like you were trying to, you know, convince people to do something. The vegg VeggieBox business was so much more clear-cut, it was easy, it was like, you know, we had great conversations you get 10 oranges and a lettuce and it costs this much money.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we still got to have great conversations about educating people, but it was just so much easier. It's a product right. Product-based businesses were so much easier. But I feel now now particularly after these experiences and after moving more into it like a sales role and and understanding sales much more, it feels like all of those things are not as much of a barrier as they were before so, um, yeah, it feels like the right, the right time and the right thing and just gosh, it's just so much, it's such a joyful way to work that it it absolutely feels like the right thing to
Speaker 1:be doing and to be yeah, it's been great to step back and do so great yeah, great I was, you touched on it, um, but I was going to ask you about um, your son, and now he's grown up, and how that's sort of changed and how, like the, do you feel like you've got a different outlook? Or I don't know if outlook's the right word, like I wrote it down, like Like a responsibility shift, because your kids are always your kids, right, and the older they get I mean mine are only 10 and 8, but the older they get, the more you realize that actually it's a lifetime. It's a lifetime Absolutely. You're going to help them out.
Speaker 1:When they get to their you know well, like your son, early 20s, they want to borrow some money to go travelling for example you know you'll be there for them, but obviously you're still in your 40s, like you're a young woman and your son's off doing his own thing. Do you feel like that has shifted the parenting situation a bit?
Speaker 2:yeah, I think it has definitely, and like me even your like how you see different possibilities.
Speaker 1:Like because when you even when you were doing the veggie box business, he was still living at home, he was at school, right, and so you've got that kind of like that going on as well you've got to take care of absolutely the kids, feed the family, pay the rent or, you know, mortgage, whatever it is. But when now he's left, do you?
Speaker 2:kind of go now I can do things for myself or not, really and do things for myself or not really, there's definitely an aspect of that, 100% I think, for me. I married and had him quite young, so I always had in my mind that I didn't really have my 20s to kind of travel as much as I wanted to. I was fortunate that I had done some travel, but certainly not as much as I would have wanted. And you know, yeah, my 20s was spent, you know, raising him and being married, and then my 30s was spent, you know, not being married anymore but still raising him and having all of those responsibilities. And so I always kind of had in my mind that I would have my 40s to kind of do a little bit more and enjoy and be free and have less responsibility.
Speaker 2:Absolutely and I think you know it's a little bit like when people have babies and things are so full on and they take so much of your time and there's so much responsibility, and you always say it gets easier, it gets easier. The thing is it just keeps getting easier right until they're teenagers and it's not so easy again, but then it gets easier, it gets easier. The thing is it just keeps getting easier right until they're teenagers and it's not so easy again, but then it gets easier again once they come out of that. So I think there's definitely it meant for me that there were different possibilities that I could do the shifting summers thing, certainly when, like as a single parent, that's just not going to be an option. Potentially there are ways that it could be, but it certainly wasn't an option that I was able to choose.
Speaker 2:Um, but also there is, you know it is, it is a lifetime job. You know they are always gonna um want your input and and and then there is for me certainly a certain amount of guilt associated with, particularly while I was sick, he was living elsewhere and I wasn't able to provide that family home for him in the same way, which sits with you even if you want to shake it off, and you know that there's no expectation and they're an adult technically and can, you know, be doing their own thing. Um, you still want to be able to, you know, provide that family home and be a, you know, really stable resource, I guess, for them, but I think also it in our situation, um, particularly me uh, me being quite unwell really actually gave my son the opportunity to kind of step up almost in a way and support me for the first time. It was the first time he'd had to do anything like that and that was obviously not planned and unexpected, but it was really beautiful to see. You know, it was all of a sudden, he was checking in on me and you know being like how are you, mum? You know, can I help you with this? Or, you know, if you're going to go and do that, let me know and I'll come with you and you know I'll help you out.
Speaker 2:And that was really beautiful. And I think that you know there were obviously really lovely lessons for him in that too, and opportunities to do things in a different way, take a different role almost, which, yeah, again, it's not something you plan, but it certainly is positive in a way for him, you know, to have that lesson, I guess. So yeah, and that's, I mean, that's the reason that, as I said before, melbourne will always be home, because he'll always be there, unless he isn't, unless he's travelling around Europe Unless he's travelling or doing the same as me.
Speaker 2:Potentially I am providing an example of how he can do things differently. You know, potentially I am providing an example of how he can do things differently. You know there are always who knows the impact that my choices have. You know, hopefully they're positive and that's all you can hope for. You know, if you I think, if you're if you genuinely got good intentions, like that's all you can really hope for. You know, you just keep doing your own thing and it is as I said it is. It's a very different level of responsibility now, but you know I'm very fortunate. I have a fantastic relationship with my son. He really does. We have great conversations and he does, you know, often come to me with. You know the big life troubles and you know we have big, long conversations about it and that's a real blessing for me. That feels absolutely amazing to be in that position as that kind of guide.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's lovely. Oh, I can only hope that the that I have the same experience with my babes. So you mentioned your new venture, um, but we didn't go into any detail about it Before. Like I've got, we obviously want to get that word out, but before we do, I feel like I saw something on your socials when you were talking about like, like divine timing or something, and um, did you like get, did you get fired from? Did you get fired from your job or lose your job, and how you saw that as a blessing. I was absolutely a sign that it was time to to do something new.
Speaker 2:So I I, I, um, in my last corporate job many years ago, um, I knew I'd had like three jobs in a row that had not worked out very unexpectedly, for very for different reasons, and I had the very clear understanding that this would continue to happen until I decided to work for myself. I knew that. Every part of my being knew that, but I was a single parent and I was not bold enough or maybe silly enough even, depending on how you want to say it to leave a very well-paying corporate job in order to start my own business. As a single parent, it just wasn't something that I could choose. Then I was made redundant, which was amazing, and I was able to start my business and jumped into the veggie box thing.
Speaker 2:Fast forward to many years later, having worked for myself for a long time and then taken a big break from not doing anything, when I looked at what my options were ongoing, it occurred to me that perhaps just working for someone else and getting a paycheck was the next step for me for a little while, and so I did that with one business. It didn't really work out the way I wanted it to. I chose to leave at one. There wasn't quite an alignment with the business. And then I went into another role and my again intuition absolutely said this is not the role, do not take this role, even when they offered me a second interview.
Speaker 2:I actually said, no, I don't want a second interview, this is not the right role for me. And then they talked me into it and I went for the second interview and then I just decided I was going to be really harsh and abrasive and ask all of the questions that I wanted to and really put them on the spot and interview them, which I did, and they really wanted me to work for them. And I didn't have a job and I was feeling a bit of pressure and I thought you know what, I'm just going to take it and see what happens. Another lesson in always listening to intuition. Anyway, it wasn't. It wasn't a nice experience, let's say that. Um, and then I, very unceremoniously, got fired you're fired.
Speaker 2:Which was like oh, wow, okay, yeah, and to be fair, it was a sales role and in sales, if you don't get the sales, you don't have a role it's that simple um, but there was no support and various things wrong with the way that they were doing business and the way that I was able to learn and um be supported.
Speaker 2:that's what I'll say, um, and so then, yeah, it was made very clear to me that I wouldn't have a job at the end of the month, um, and and I thought, wow, okay, where do I go from here? And I wouldn't have a job at the end of the month. And I thought, wow, okay, where do I go from here? And I thought, you know what? It's the same lesson from more than a decade ago. You're just not built for working for someone else. You have to do your own thing because you know you.
Speaker 2:Just there's a saying which I think is quite evident for some people and it's that, um, some people work too hard to work for anyone else, right? And I think that that really applies to me in that when I'm in, I'm all in and I just genuinely enjoy the build, right building of a business, crafting it the way that you want to, really enjoying that whole process and also having that freedom to make the final decisions, because not in a way of I always know the right thing to do. It's that I will always. You know, there's a guy who I really enjoy his podcasts. What's his name? Stephen Bartlett.
Speaker 2:He always says just fail fast, right, fail really fast, and then learn and move on. And I'm a big fan of that. I think you just have to try and if you get it wrong, you learn, you move on, you learn, you move on, and that's how you build a successful business. It's not about and for me, not being able to do that is a problem, and I think when you work for someone else, you can't necessarily do that because you're working under someone else's ideas of how things should be done. So I come back to forget working for someone else. And someone else said to me the other day you can build your own rocket ship or you can jump onto someone else's, and jumping onto someone else's is always easier, and I completely disagree with that. For me personally I'm not saying that's the case for everyone for me personally, I just need to be doing my own thing, and I think that I have to come back to that realization and just run with it, and whatever happens happens, you know yeah cool yeah, so what is it?
Speaker 1:I mean, you've touched on it, but what is it? Um, so you're going back into coaching. That's where your heart is. You said that you know you love working with people and, um, um, what does that look like? Who is it for?
Speaker 2:Like, is it for like?
Speaker 1:other entrepreneurs. Is it for? Well, I don't know who is it for?
Speaker 2:Who is it for? It's, for me, like coaching is very much my like first passion. It's definitely the thing that I love to do, in that it is what we said before. The thing that I love to do in that it is what we said before it's having those really robust conversations that are impactful. Right, we're not just talking about the weather, or who said what, or conversation is built for more than that.
Speaker 2:I genuinely believe there's so much power in honest, authentic conversations and we don't get to have them enough. We don't get to have them. Many people don't get to have them in their social circles and they don't get to have them with really good mentors, right. So where does that leave people? It leaves them just not having those conversations, which doesn't help us progress.
Speaker 2:I know that I've been incredibly fortunate to have some amazing friends who we're all about these conversations all the time, but I understand very clearly that that's not everybody's situation and I think, having that person that you can bounce ideas off, that you can be super honest and vulnerable with um in your like, your, your fears and also in your behaviors right, because a lot of people you know self-sabotage is such a massive thing for so many people and fear of you know the unknown or fear of judgment of other people when you do make a different decision, that people can't often even voice that they want to make a different decision. So mostly it's very much going back to the kind of coaching I was doing before, but just focusing specifically more on fulfillment and having that authentic connection with yourself. So mostly it's working generally with professionals who are very successful but feeling really unfulfilled or just not sure what they want to do next or if they want to do something different, and I guess the goal is to create a more balanced life where the success that they've had aligns with their personal beliefs right. So it's about identifying the gap between where they are currently and their deeper dreams and aspirations and what's missing, and helping them to reconnect to what their core values are.
Speaker 2:Because I think if you can connect to your core values some people, so many people, have not really been through that process of identifying their own core values and what that means, and I think you do that you can make very different decisions on how you want to move forward. And then it's just about implementing. You know there are really basic strategies and simple strategies that are tried and tested and people have been doing them for a long time that help you kind of move towards that more authentic life and just having more joy in your everyday, in your work as well as your personal life. But if you don't know any of that, you don't know any of that. So where do you even begin to start?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, there's so much focus on when it comes to like, work, career, success. It's external, isn't it? It's's like how much money do you earn, what do you have? But in fact, yeah, if the balance isn't there internally, then it doesn't necessarily. Those. Those things, those external things, don't necessarily lead to happiness, satisfaction or fulfillment they don't.
Speaker 2:And it doesn't mean that. It doesn't always mean that you need to change your entire life either, right? People often like, particularly you know, like I have one client who's a lawyer and they're like, why I just don't, I can't leave law, law is what I do. And it's like, well, you don't, if you don't want to, you don't to. But you can perhaps look at the other things, like you know, like what was the last thing that you did that you just felt absolutely joyful. You know where were you, what were you doing, how did it feel? Can you do more of that? Would you like to do more of that, you know? And how do we? Or, if you can't, how do we recreate that in other areas of your life so that it feels more balanced? Because if you're just working, working, working, hello, you know it doesn't work. It doesn't work. We need that balance, we need that joy, and there's a bit of a stigma.
Speaker 2:I think now, after this whole, there's been this whole kind of like wellness revolution, of mindfulness and happiness and all of of that, and I think it's almost become a little bit cliche and people like, well, happy is not the most important thing, like, I want more happiness. What does it matter? And it's like, well, it's not really about happiness. It's like it's almost become like a dirty word, you know, which is such a weird thing that's happening in in culture like pop culture at the moment. I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting more joy in your life. You know, more wonder, more awe, more wow. You know there's nothing wrong with that, and I think that we've kind of become overexposed to like people just want to be happy and quit their jobs. It's not about that. It's about balance and it's about feeling fulfilled.
Speaker 2:And if you genuinely love your work, go for it Totally, you know. And if you really don't love your work, but it provides you with other things that you love, like stability, or like the holidays that you take, however many times a year, and you're you're happy with that structure, great. No one's saying you have to change that, but let's look at how we bring more joy into every day so that you feel more fulfilled. That's what it's about. Fulfillment is much more important than happiness, in my opinion, and I think that that's where the focus needs to be more and and again. Even more important than that is the connection to your authentic self and those core values and what makes the difference to you personally, because that's different to anyone else in the world, and that's what we need to focus on wow, that's a whole nother conversation as well, isn't it?
Speaker 1:I'm gonna have to get you back on, yeah, that whole idea of authenticity and like going back to the human design stuff that I've been following, I you know, are we living our, are we living our true selves? Like are we living our design or are we living what other people expect of us? And and like really trying to figure that stuff out can be quite, um, quite a mission, because it's all absolutely, isn't it?
Speaker 2:and I think there's a lot to do with uh, you know unlearning yes, because so often.
Speaker 2:We have particular patterns that we've just had for a very long time and I think when you question them, um, you get to learn a lot more about why we do things and why we don't. And it's not to say that we're moving towards like a therapy type thing, because we're absolutely not. This is entirely different and that's a very different ballgame, but it's more of an understanding our behaviour and our predisposition to certain behaviours, and whether they actually serve us or whether they don't. Yeah, right, yeah, so if you can work that out, then you can come back to again.
Speaker 2:Core values is so, so important and even just going through an exercise of what is really important to me, what are the things that I'm always looking for, what makes me, you know, what lights me up, what makes me feel safe and secure, what do I need as opposed to what do I want? Those are really interesting conversations, right, and just being able to have them. And you know, the thing about coaching is that it doesn't mean that people often think that you just have the answers for them and you don't, right, I don't have the answers. What I have is potentially better questions. Yeah, and that's the difference. Asking yourself really good quality questions is. And, and then the responsibility of being really radically honest with the answers.
Speaker 2:That's the discipline, because it's very easy and probably 90% of the population will just do that. I'm fine, it's no problem, you know, I don't really, you know, think that's a problem. Or you know, my parents did it like that, so I'll do it like that too, and it's fine. Come on, you know, if parents did it like that, so I'll do it like that too, and it's fine. Come on, you know, if you want different, do different. It's that simple. Yeah, so it's not hard, actually, it's just having the right framework.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it sounds good, like good stuff, but definitely don't think about our values. That you. You know it's not something you do very often, really, and probably when you get into it you probably look at your values and go are they actually my values or are they things that someone else told me should be my values?
Speaker 2:yeah, absolutely, absolutely yeah, and sometimes it's hard to understand exactly what the values are. Like you, you know, like someone recently said to me. Well, I guess what's important to me is, you know, um, like they were identifying specific things that had happened, that were moments in life that really meant a lot to them, that were really impactful to them, and once we looked at each of those like three events I think they couldn't identify their values, right? But I said, well, you know, if you're looking at this like, that clearly shows that your connection is really important to you, right, that family is really important to you, because these are the things that matter. These are the events.
Speaker 2:Like, when you think the most impactful events of my life positively and people come up with these different events, you can pick out of that what the important values are, and then, when you spread them out, you're like, oh, okay, yes, actually those things are really important to me. That does make up who I am or what I'm looking for, how I'm trying to interact with people to gain this feeling of connection or feeling of communication or celebration or whatever it might be. Um, then you can start to craft a life that includes more of that, right? Yeah, you know, it can be that simple sometimes yeah, yeah, amazing.
Speaker 1:So your coaching, for are you doing your coaching online? Is that, is that the the deal?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, so we're doing it, doing it online. Um, I'm doing some one-on-one at the moment that I probably won't take on many more one-on-one clients.
Speaker 2:It will be more group coaching, which I think is so powerful as well, because it does lend to having other people's input and life experiences and you know, we learn so much. You don't always need to make the mistakes yourself. Sometimes you can learn from other people's mistakes is the wrong word, but experiences right and learnings and lessons, and so I think that there's so much power in group coaching. Actually, sometimes people think that it has to be one-on-one in order to be impactful. There's room for both. But actually there's so much impact in group coaching. I think people you know it's vastly underrated.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, but there's definitely online at the moment. Everything will be online and then, once I'm back in Australia, we might do some in-person things. Yeah, great, we'll leave that for a few months and see what happens.
Speaker 1:Cool, are we? We have, like we've hit the hour, gone over the hour, and which is not a it's not a problem, but I'm just uh mindful of our time. Yeah, um, yeah, and so, like I think this is a great um time to. If you've got a website or if you want people to to head to your um socials, is there somewhere that they can um reach out to you and find out more about what you're doing?
Speaker 2:yeah, so definitely uh. Socials on instagram or on linkedin you can just search my name and it comes up, um and the. The website is the same. It is just a landing page at the moment. So again, just bb, smileyscom, cool, um, and I'm sure you can add a link or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll put all of the links in and? Um, I'm just building, creating a website at the moment and it's got a guest directory in it, so we'll get you to to put your um okay info in there as well so that people can access you website. Um, that's lifehealththeuniversepodcastpageio cool. Thank you so much. It's been really great to have you. Have you um come on the show.
Speaker 2:Yeah, tell us all good to catch up properly. Yeah, it's great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really good, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2:I wish you the best of luck with this phase of your life yeah, thank you, and thank you for asking great questions as well throughout the podcast. It's been lovely to chat. Yeah, it's been great to catch up. Thank you, take care.
Speaker 1:Yep, see you soon. Thanks, stevie.