Welcome to the rest of your life.

The poo to change the course of history.

Or maybe the future for me and my family.

Not because of what I did, but how I did it.

My dentist disclosed to me that he doesn’t take his phone into the bathroom cos he finds it unhygienic. This is the man I want working on my mouth.

As for me, today I took my phone into the loo and casually bought some stocks in the same time it took me to do a ‘ninja-poop’ (the way women poo where we’re swift and you’d never know that we’ve gone, unless we send someone an email about it to tell them!).

It was on my list of things to do, I’d done it more than a few times before and it was a convenient time to do it.

By the time the toilet flushed, I was getting an email confirmation.

Well done to me.

Something that was a big deal to me a couple of years ago is now no thang.

But sometimes everything is a big deal.

And it brings our dreams to a screeching halt.

I writhed and cried on the floor of my parents’ house and agonised about competing in karate for YEARSSSS before I started (winning a couple of World Titles when I did).

If you know me from karate, this may be hard to believe, but let me tell you my painfully drawn-out process of beginning to compete seriously.

The nesting wave hasn’t hit me yet, but I have been getting prepped for my new life in ways that will improve family and business. I’m sharing these in the hope that they may spark a few ideas for you, because, as you’ll see, most of this is just better living.

My husband does not give a flying fuck about the dust on top of fridge.

Considering it is practically at his eye-level, it perplexes me that he can know it is there, but it would never occur to him to clean it without explicit instructions from lil Shortty over here. I have a very high tolerance for mess, so perhaps we are the same that way!

When it comes to our little domestic world, we have vastly different care-factors. He will pause our conversation until he works out how to make the PC fan not quite as loud. I will pull out all the food from the pantry, clean and then devise a plan to masterchef the shit out of the edamame bean linguine and can of tuna tucked away in the back corner.

We also have very different waking hours. I’m more of a 6.30am til 10.30pm daylight dweller, whereas hubby is a 1pm til 3am creature of the night when left to his own devices. There are just some things that make sense to do during the day, like hanging washing on the line. And taking the garbage out is more suited to a night owl. You might start to see some logistics issues in our coupledom. There are!

Here is the big one.

A couple of years ago, around the time I felt like super-coach and that life couldn’t be better, I arrived at 7.50am outside the doctor’s surgery as a Sunday walk-in client. There were a few people there already, sitting on the doorstep and leaning against the gums and their cars. There was no queue, and when the surgery doors finally opened, we civilly arranged ourselves in a line from first arrived to last arrived.

With three people in front of me waiting to register, I received a tap on the shoulder from a bob-cut, teacher/mum-voiced woman who said imploringly:

‘I’m sorry but I can’t not say anything and I’ve been holding off, but this man was ahead of you and you’ve pushed in.’

I immediately apologised to the man and told him to go ahead and said no problem.

I’m the queen of chill.

Or am I?

If you were first enchanted by the Kon Mari method of discarding ‘that which does not spark joy’, you may find that right about now, during the perfect time of ‘decluttering’, you are at a total loss.

Why? Two reasons.

1. The method seems totally at odds with the little pressing issue called ‘sustainability’ and the future of our planet! Everything that is trashed will likely end up in landfill, even if it is sent to be recycled and reused, not everything makes the cut. Can you even in good conscience lovingly say goodbye to that which doesn’t spark joy and send it to the graveyard of items that don’t make aspirational millionaire feel abundant? Research shows that even the repurposing that happens at places that recycle can be its own strain on resources. This makes me think twice before sending off the clothing that I will probably miss in a couple of years’ time.

2. Right now, places aren’t accepting donated, preloved items. That would be the c-word’s doing. Understandably so. I peeped into our local clothing bin and had several stuffed bags nearly fall ontop of me. In good conscience, I called the 1800 number on the bin, with no reply. Business is looking very different for places like this.

That’s not to say that you can’t set aside all that you are willing to give away, repurpose or discard if you wish. It might be sitting in your garage for months (especially if driving it to the nearest charity never hit the top of your to-do list!).

But how to approach the mentality of all this decluttering in this new world?

Most self-help gurus & coaches will agree that a clearing process must take place during the manifesting process. Some say it should happen before you even know what you want (or are willing to write it down) and some say that it should happen after you state what you want.

This is where the double-declutter is amazing for taking care of both sides of the equation. Here would be the sequence:

Having recently gone on hiatus (aka dropped off Insta and Facebook), I’ve felt the strange relief of not being on social media, even after growing to love it in recent years. After all, it was the main way I could get my message across, have my music heard and give greater meaning to the food I ate (is my butter chicken immortal if it lives in my story archives?).

But like anything dubbed as a modern-day addiction, it comes with its dark side, not because it is inherently evil, but because it amplifies all of our own issues. Individually and collectively. I would never need to take a break from it again if I consistently applied these rules to social media and my whole life. And maybe these will help you too. (Skip to the lessons, or keep reading to learn about a collection of my experiences)

I help fallible humans exist in their brightest light.

I help them uncover the treasure of being their unique and greatest selves so they can transform their world, make an impact and feel fulfilled and finally connected.

I ask the questions that lead to life-changing insights. Words to live by. Little saviours.

I do this because I know what it feels like to live into this light. And I know the feelings and beliefs that threaten our happiness and success, especially for big-hearted, do-gooder types.

Here are three things that hold us back that I rarely talk about here. For some, they are at the forefront of your mind. And for some, you may not know that they are there, tugging you back when you think just maybe it is your time.

The air of a not-too-distant spring has brought me outside.

I’ve strategically positioned myself to place the sun on back and the glare off this laptop screen (that is revealing the residue of the wet paper towel I used to clean it, much to my husband’s disapproval). I am in the same ‘slounge’ pants I’ve been wearing every second day of lockdown, and I am sad they are wearing thin enough for me to feel a breeze coming through the underside of this chair.

But it’s a beautiful day.

Maybe too beautiful for what I wanted to write about, or maybe just what I need.

I’ve been thinking so much about getting older and contrasting my 20-something self to the person I am today. Fundamentally, I feel the same, as we all do with age. But there is something that can happen (something I feel perilously close to at times) when we get older.

Instead of becoming more confident, more trusting and more aware of all the experience we bring to our world, we can feel the weight and the overwhelm of life nagging at us, erring us to the side of caution, keeping us small and sometimes making us feel foolish.

If it’s worth it, it truly is worth waiting for.

This wisdom has been passed to me through a beautiful lineage of coaches, and as with all these pithy words, has been rediscovered over and over again while living life and using hindsight.

Whilst these can be the most comforting and empowering words you can recite to yourself, and FEEL, when seeking the love of your life or pursuing your dream job, or home, it is also wildly practical when looking at skill accumulation.

If you wanna play and dabble, this isn’t really what we need to hear, but if you want to seriously upskill or learn something completely new, it’s the best way to:

a) Know you are making the best decision

b) Have courage to stick with it