Today I wanted to explore that moment that we all have, that moment of:
“What on earth am I going to do if I am NOT that, then, what am I?”
I think it’s an interesting space to begin and it facilitates major change in so many people’s lives and it definitely did in mine. It’s also how I got into full-time business mentoring and it is a moment that we have in the highs and the lows of being an entrepreneur and I wanted to share it with you guys to see where you guys are at in the rollercoaster that is entrepreneurship and running your own business.
There is going to be the highs of, you know, the wins of helping people and the wins of being able to sit in a space and create something amazing that something that is going to help somebody and be able to get paid for that.
And then there’s going to be the lows where you’re not quite sure of yourself and your confidence gets blown and you question what you’re doing and you aren’t being paid.
Maybe something goes wrong. You get sick, unwell, a landlord changes something. In those moments, getting out of those moments, is where the gold is, and the growth is.
I think in business it is one of the biggest personal growth journeys, as well as business growth journeys, that you could have in your life is running a business.
So my most recent growth journey. Found me standing on a cliff wondering what it would feel like to jump.
I had been creating Inspirational Health, my most amazing naturopathic practice. We had the most incredible staff. I’d seen and helped so many people, their families, their workplaces and it was an absolute gift and honour to be there. But I’d also burnt out multiple times running my practice.
Always wanted to strive to do better and in the striving, I would fill in the gaps where I could look after myself or eat lunch with new clients and really love that feeling of helping people. Until I had to take some time out and a month off in Bali to then come back refreshed and ready to go again. And then I’d do it again over another year.
What I noticed in that cycle was that there were things that I had learnt doing that, that I didn’t need to be doing anymore. I noticed that the striving and the pushing was actually where I needed to reign some things in. One of the other things I noticed was the mentoring that I was doing on the side for both students and other practitioners alike, was just so easy. There was so much ease and flow there. Whereas seeing clients was a strive and a drive and a push.
When I came to terms with what I actually really wanted to do, in that I knew it was my time, I’d seen the people that I wanted to see and I knew my time with Inspirational Health was changing, I decided I would sell the practice.
A sale of a practice sounds, in theory, like an amazing idea. And in the practice it’s a wonderful and exciting journey into numbers and details and things that honestly aren’t in my flow or my zone of genius. When I was selling my practice I had to go into conversations with lawyers and accountants and bookkeepers. I had to talk spreadsheets. I had to talk numbers. I had to sign 36 page documents in multiple different places in each page and it really felt out of my flow.
I’d had quite a number of these types of meetings and I was still seeing a full client load of 40 clients a week. I was still looking after my three kids. My husband was away for work. We’ve got a blended family so it’s a constant journey with that as well. And it got to a point where, because of all of these wonderful details, that I had to look after, I had forgotten something that I thought was a little bit minor that was my car insurance. It’s on my car registration. When I realised, it was actually a day overdue.
So it was a day past its rego date. I got my mechanic to come to the back of our clinic and he went in and did what needed to be done. Had to take it to get it registered, he got the blue slip, pink slip, green slip, all that stuff and then I had to get online and just get the insurance done. So I went online and it just wouldn’t go through and I thought, oh okay, this is a bit odd. I’ve used this system before. It should be fine. I tried a different card in between clients but it didn’t work.
After the clients had gone home I tried my phone to do it. I tried every possible combination. I thought, ah, maybe I’m just not looking at it right. I’ve had so much going on. I’ll just drive home and I’ll get it done tonight before I come to work tomorrow. I got home, husband’s away kids to look after and it didn’t get done. So I got up in the morning and I got ready, in early and I got in there and OK, I pumped all their numbers, in it wouldn’t take it. Okay I’ll do it on a different computer. No. Different credit card. No, oh my goodness! This is just infuriating! I don’t know what to do about this. More details, more numbers. Okay, maybe it’s just not meant to be. I’ll drive straight to the RTA as soon as I drop the kids off.
All three of our kids go to three different schools at this stage so I dropped our first one off to her high school and straight ahead of me I saw a highway patrol vehicle. I thought, oh I’ll miss that one. I’ll turn right here and as I turned right another highway patrol vehicle drives in the opposite direction. It should be checking on everybody on the other side of the street. But sure enough, sirens go on. It does a u-turn over the nature strip and pulls me over with my kids in the car. The female officer that came out, says to me, hi there, do you know why you got pulled over this morning? I said, yeah, I do. I didn’t get my registration through. I’ve been trying all last night and this morning. I can show you on the phone. She said, so you knowingly left the house in an unregistered vehicle with your children in the car.
Now it wasn’t like my car wasn’t roadworthy. It was just unregistered. But in that moment the heaviness of her words, the weight of what she was saying and then what I made that mean was, that I was failing as a mum.
What that brought up for me was failing as a business owner because I couldn’t keep a hold of all of these different balls I was struggling with. What I made that mean was that I was failing as a naturopath and I was failing at everything.
In that moment it took all my absolute strength to hold it together to call my mother-in-law to pick up my kids and take them to school. After the kids got out of the car, I drove to a side street in a relatively dodgy area and just bawled my head off.
I couldn’t stop crying. I was sobbing. It was like heaving crying. I thought to myself, my goodness, I’m just going to have to get this out. I kept crying and crying and crying. Bizarrely, the crying wouldn’t stop.
Now, this hasn’t happened to me ever before, where the crying just doesn’t stop. I thought to myself, my goodness, why is the crying not stopping? This doesn’t happen to me!
That police woman had given me a six hundred and eighty-seven dollar fine. And that six hundred and eighty-seven dollar fine was yet another number that I had to think about over all the other numbers that I’d had to think about that past fortnight to sell my practice.
All I could think about was the six hundred and eighty-seven dollars which at that point in time, I was paying for lawyers, accountants, bookkeeping all that kind of stuff. What you don’t know about selling a practice is that you don’t get that money for another couple of weeks. And in that moment, six hundred and eighty-seven dollars seemed like Mount Everest to me.
My tears wouldn’t stop so I got on the phone to my husband. He punched in the numbers. The same numbers I’d put in the night before in that morning and we had the car registered in a moment.
Well that didn’t help my crying really did it?
So I got out of the car. Tried to take some deep breaths and that wouldn’t work. I got back in the car and thought maybe it’s the area, maybe it’s the energy of this area. So I drove to the nearest beach. I thought maybe the beach, some fresh air, that’ll do it.
I got to the beach and got out of the car. The wind was up and I was still crying. I thought, okay, maybe I need that feeling that you get just closer to this little cliff face.
I stood right on the edge of the cliff and felt all of that air come up into my lungs and I breathed in I breathed out.
I was still crying.
The tears kept rolling and I wasn’t quite sure what else to do. I looked down at the edge of the cliff. This pain in my chest, I can’t stand this feeling, I’m a failure.
In that moment all I could think about with my curious mind, was… I wonder what it would be like if this pain was to stop; if I jumped.
I wonder if it would stop like halfway down because I’d be enraptured by the jump, or would it take all the way to the bottom for this pain to stop. And if it stopped, well, what it would it feel like after all this pain was gone.
98% of me was really curious. And then 2% of my brain went, hold on a second! If you were to do a mental health assessment on you right now, as your own client, I don’t think that would turn out too well.
I quickly took two steps back. I stepped away from the cliff and I had a moment.
I thought, “What would I tell my clients in this moment?”
I know what I would tell them! I’d tell them to call a friend, find a friend. So I phoned one of my old coaches. She wasn’t there. I phoned another friend, she wasn’t there. I even phoned my mum and she didn’t answer the phone. And then I had a moment and I thought, hold on a second. This has happened to me before. Particularly with my coaches. In these moments, what happens is, I need to figure out something for myself. The next time I speak to these people I can share with them the wisdom that I’ve gained from it.
So I step back a little, a couple of steps further, and then one of my coaches texted back. And she texted back and said, “I’m at the school assembly, are you okay?”
I looked at those three little words, “are you okay” and I thought, oh my gosh, I’m bawling my head off and it’s not stopping. I’m standing on the edge of a cliff. I’m not okay! I’m not a not-okay person. This is not okay for me to be not okay! I never the not-okay person! I’m the most okay person I know! How can I be the not-okay person? And I made it so not okay to be okay.
That didn’t help the crying. So sobbing, heaving, crying and as I sat down back on the park bench behind me, I had a little thought in my mind that said: “but what if it was okay to be not okay.”
You know years and years of personal development just pops into your brain all of a sudden and there’s just random thoughts swirling.
I went, oh well, if it’s okay to be not okay then I could be okay with that!
So we went down to a normal dribble in the in the crying situation. It still was consistent but it wasn’t the heaving crying that I had been experiencing. Then I had a little bit of a clarity of thought.
I was looking for answers. I was a bit curious about what was going on around me and I thought, hold on a second, maybe I could just check in with my body. Where do I feel not-okay? Oh I feel not-okay in my chest. I felt the heaving, and I felt the heaviness, and I felt it for what it was. I felt the darkness, and I felt the sensations and I thought, I wonder what it would take to shift this?
A man in a wheelchair rolled up the cliff face next to me. Brought up upwards ahead of me. And I at this moment. Why is he rolling up the hill? Like, of all the places for him to be, this is a really tall, high cliff. It’s, you know, it’s a bit of a struggle for me sometimes. Why was he rolling up the hill? And I looked at my feet and in that moment I had that thought about, okay, Dr Suess quote just popped into my mind:
“I’ve got feet in my shoes and I can go wherever I choose.”
All of a sudden I went, I’ve still got my feet, I’ve still got my legs, I’ve still got my gifts and my talents, I have still got every experience that I have learnt. From being a mother, from being a business owner, from being a naturopath. I still have all of this. And I’m sitting here worrying about six hundred and eighty-seven dollars! I could make that in the blink of an eye. And fifty percent of what I was feeling shifted and the sobbing stopped. I was still in tears but it really had shifted and I checked in with my body again.
I thought, oh my goodness, where do I still feel this? I felt it in my gut. That heaviness, you know, that pit sometimes. Kind of like acidic and I thought, oh no, it hasn’t moved. Oh dear! I started crying again. I thought, okay, what would it take for this to shift, you know? It’s not as bad as what it was before but what would it take for this to shift? And no word of a lie, a blind guy with a cane and a seeing-eye dog walked up behind the guy in a wheelchair.
I thought, okay, I get it. You can stop sending me signs, whoever you are, universe. I get it, I get it, I get it, I get it!
I looked, I slowly watched the guy walking up the hill. I honed in on the seeing-eye dog and he had a little jacket on. On the jacket, in big bold letters said, “I need space please”. Nonetheless my tummy relaxed. My breathing relaxed. My crying dissipated and I had a moment of absolute freedom that in actual fact I just need space.
I had concertinaed an entire series of events that I wouldn’t have gone through in a year, into two weeks. Bang bang bang bang bang and then all of a sudden all I needed was space.
I don’t downplay what depression feels like for others but in this situational depression and this moment of darkness that I had, it turned around so quickly just by being curious. It turned around so quickly by looking for the clues within my body.
I often talk about looking for the breadcrumbs and following the little breadcrumbs to the next breadcrumb to the next breadcrumb because eventually there’s going to be a gingerbread house. If I can go from essentially wanting to jump off a cliff to being completely at ease and getting the answers that I needed in the space of 90 minutes, then go on and see eight clients that day and finish up a week later to sell my award-winning practice. And then only a few weeks after that to find my next big vision, my next big goal in circumnavigating the globe in a helicopter.
To do all of that and shift that, it’s an absolutely incredible thing. And oh my goodness you can do that too!
It doesn’t have to be the way we make things mean. It doesn’t have to be the stuckness that we choose to feel sometimes. It can turn around quickly.
I’ve reinvigorated my love of aviation. I noticed after that really dark time, I started to see the light. I saw the light within the people that I was mentoring which turned into my dream. My absolute creation of my life. Being able to take naturopaths, nutritionists, herbalists away, help them with their businesses to the point of being award-winning practices, having amazing teams, being able to show up in their lives in ways that they haven’t before and then take
them away to retreats and places in Bali, whilst flying helicopters during the week… It felt (and still feels) so in alignment now and so in flow.
If you are in one of those moments; if you have had those moments in business where you’re just stuck and you’re just not sure, you’ve been crying in a heap and you’ve looked on Seek for another job, if you’re a practitioner who has taken on board only so much that it gets the point that you realize you’re in burnout, take the space. Go to the dark. Because the light is on the other side.
There’s a breakdown followed by a breakthrough.
But follow the breadcrumbs. Get really curious and it’ll take you on an entirely different journey.
You can turn it around so much quicker than you ever imagined. I want to invite you to the idea that you can have the life that you dream of and that you can create whatever you choose.
If you take those moments to really be with what is and be okay with not being okay, then there is okayness on the other side.
I hope you have found the answers you are seeking within this story today. Please feel feel to share your story in the comments below, and I will catch you again soon for another conversation to consider,
Tammy x
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