It’s a Dogs Life

“You must be so relaxed”.

I suppose sometimes living on the road, being parked in the bus watching the sun set over the ocean, can be quite relaxing.

But much of the time, it also means recruiting ALL of my tools to regulate my body and my nervous system to adapt to the ever changing parameters of our lifestyle. As someone with an anxiety disorder, travel is fraught with unknowns. Will we have enough fuel until the next destination? Where can I buy nappies? Will our planned accommodation have availability? Will we have internet signal so I can pay wages? Am I homeschooling Elodie enough? Are the dogs that Daisy meets going to be friendly?

There are new towns, new people, new experiences, and new challenges. The only thing that is safe and familiar is the inside of my bus - and even then, we might lose power, or the awning breaks in a storm, or we blow a tyre. I do not have the familiarity of a home town or house (or kids school or daycare) to keep me anchored and so, to experience things the same way as my husband or my kids, I have to tap into tools that work for me in times of agitation. Through my childhood, I have developed a propensity to be easily agitated or to be on alert for signs of potential stress. This conditioning runs deep, even on holiday.

..Are the dogs that Daisy meets going to be friendly....

Daisy is a generally social dog, under some conditions. That is, if the dog she meets is relaxed and not dominant, if they meet on neutral territory (eg she isn’t trying to guard the bus), and she’s not overwhelmed with a large number of dogs, she’s happy to play. Daisy is also different when walked by my husband, while with me she is more protective - always has been. Our travels have so far, been without incident. Daisy doesn’t bark, she adores all humans and is so good with kids, and she sleeps 80% of the day. So it caught me by surprise the morning she was attacked.

I’d taken her for a morning walk outside of the caravan park and was returning when a dog on another site slipped its lead and tore straight toward us. Daisy’s default was to put herself between me and the dog and give a warning bark. Which would have been enough, if the owner could catch this red kelpie which began to “round us up”. It was snapping and snarling at Daisys face and feet and running insane circles around us, while I tried to drag Daisy towards our bus. The owner and three others tried unsuccessfully to catch the speedy kelpie. It wasn’t going well, Daisy was escalating, she was now barking and lunging back, trying to drive the dog away from me.

7 years of life with Daisy, 7 years of walks & adventures, and I’d never had to fight to hold my ground. I've never had to release the lead to grab her collar instead, she was so insanely strong and the maddest I’d ever seen her. One hand looped with the lead, one hand gripping her collar for dear life. The kelpie didn’t let up, and Daisy pulled me to my knees in the mud. I was drenched with sweat, my hands were red raw, and the kelpie was running frantic laps trying to catch a bite of Daisys face. The more protective Daisy got, the more aggressive and determined the kelpie became. 

The whole caravan park had turned out to watch. No one could get to me to help me hold Daisy, and no one could catch the dog. I knew that if I let her go, a 40 kilo Bull Arab would hurt a 20 kilo Kelpie and she would be the bad dog.

After what felt like half an hour, someone caught the kelpie and dragged it away. In that very second, Daisy went still and quiet, her lead went slack, and she loped away with me on a loose and flapping lead. Her work, as far as she was concerned, was done. It was like a rollercoaster pulling in to stop at the end of the ride.

It wasn’t the same for me. I was in such a state of shock that I couldn’t climb the stairs to the bus. My back ached, I couldn’t form proper sentences, I couldn’t focus on one thing and I kept looking wildly around the bus, my legs shaking. My hands had cramped into fists and I was still breathing heavily. Outside, Daisy was snoozing in the sun like it had never happened. The drama was over, and yet I was on the verge of a panic attack.

Oh to be a dog in this moment.

Each side has even counts, so start with a low count (such as 2 or 3) and as your breathing settles and expands, stretch each side of the triangle to a count of 4 or 5.

---

I had an overwhelming urge to be low and safe, and I didn’t trust my legs. Climbing onto my bed, I took up Childs Pose, a yoga shape that folds me into myself. My room was also small and dark, and my doona smelled like sleep and comfort. Once here I began to breath - sharply at first, my breath jagging as I tried to make a triangular shape… breathe in for 4, hold for 4, exhale for 4…. Breathe in for 4, hold for 4, exhale for 4…. and so on.

It is the single most successful breath I have ever learned (and taught) in my yoga practice, for my anxiety. The retention of the breath creates a very small increase in blood pressure & carbon dioxide in the blood, it’s a tiny stressor that, when the exhale happens, has a very soothing effect on the nervous system. As I counted my inhales, holds, and exhales, I also folded each of my fingers in so that I knew I’d be doing at least 10 deep rounds. 

When I peeled out of Childs pose, the world had changed colour. It’s hard to explain to someone who has never experienced a panic attack but its a sense of the molecules in the air around you becoming less agitated sop it lights the world a more natural, softened colour. I went outside with a brush for Daisy, and spent 20 minutes brushing her and rubbing her down, another tool of mine - time spent with animals.

Then I began to stretch. The final piece of the puzzle. My body responds very well to physical therapies; massage, Bowen therapy, healing touch, dancing, and yoga - it tends to hold tension and stress in the muscles and connective tissue (it's why I so often cry after yoga). The fight to keep Daisy restrained had pulled every muscle in my back, shoulders and arms. I had a headache from bracing hard, so I was moving in a way that would help dissipate the lactic acid, soothe my nervous system, and help me re-pattern my breath. 

What works for me on any given day, is situation-dependant. For example, journalling is much better for me during generalised worry or catastrophising than say, navigating a panic attack.

Other tools I use:

• Journalling

• Making a drink or meal that feels ritualistic, such as a family lasagne recipe, or a slow brewed pot of Chai

• Dancing to music

• Listening to ASMR

• Going out into nature alone (and walking, not sitting)

• Wearing noise-reducing ear plugs around my kids - especially great for when I feel sensitive/overwhelmed

• Therapy (I can use Telehealth while travelling)

• And of course, medication.

On average, one in four people (one in three women and one in five men) – will experience disordered anxiety at some stage in their life. This is different to being worried about a particular scenario. But whether you have a clinical anxiety disorder like me, or sometimes you simply experience stress and want to respond appropriately to it, having a suite of tools at your disposal is a game changer. We can also, perhaps even more importantly, share these tools with our children. Yet we can only know what works for us, by trying things out! Some of what works for me, is abhorrent to others (not everyone is a fan of ASMR!). But practice - the beautiful art of trying - is what yields the results.

We grow through what we go through, as they say.

Today, I am ok. I have a lot of shoulder and lower back pain but I keep getting onto my yoga mat each day, and I have a whopping great bruise on my thigh and grazes on my knees, but it could have been a lot worse. And of course, Miss Daisy Duke is perfectly a-ok.

How one tyre cost $500 (and other biz lessons)

This Sunday emails comes to you from Lucky Bay in Yallabatharra, about 30 minutes south of Kalbarri in WA. The bus has been parked here for 3 days as we meander our way towards more sunshine. Signal is intermittent at best, so if you get this email it’s by some small miracle 😅

It wasn’t an easy drive up, and just past Badgingarra (middle of nowhere, if you’re not familiar) we discovered that one of our bus tyres was disintegrating, leaving rubber all over the road. We were two hours from the nearest major town so we parked up and limped into Geraldton the next day to discover that one very rare replacement tyre would be $500.

But what was most interesting to me, was that the tyre fitter gave us an alternative to buying rare $500 tyres (if we could even find them on our travels). He suggested changing our rims to commercial truck rims and getting a larger truck tyre which very often came secondhand off road trains. We could replace all 6 wheels on the bus for just $400. It would also mean the bus revved lower to turn the wheels AND we’d conserve fuel.

It was a future proofing strategy. 
There’s a great quote about entrepreneurship simply being the art of putting out fires. It makes me laugh because it feels so true. But maybe it’s also the skill of back-burning every season so those fires are less extreme.

Our insurance policies are like this. Contracts are like this. Waivers too.

When you start a business (unless you’re being guided by a professional) we tend to get started bringing in clients and growing our brand before we’ve build the systems and processes to support it. It’s not best practice of course, but it’s so very normal - especially if we’re growing a passion project or expanding from a hobby.

It might be selling your products wholesale without a wholesalers agreement. Or teaching clients without an indemnity waiver. Oops. We’ve all done it. But it’s not until a client disputes a contract, or a contractor steals your clients, that you realise something isn’t future proofed and water tight. You can’t prevent a blown tyre, but you can lessen the impact to your wallet (and the risk of being stranded).

Entrepreneurship requires the ability to put out those fires but then smart leadership means creating structures to prevent that happening again. Personally I like to imagine the worse possible scenario ever and then plan for that - fortunately for me I have an anxiety disorder so that comes easily to me! HAHA

We once had a client take us to consumer protection, over a contract term of 12 weeks that she had agreed to, but failed to read before purchasing. It was literally in bold on the payment screen.  Naturally consumer protection had zero issues about throwing out the case, but it gave us cause to tighten down our terms, change the font, simplify the language, and make it even more obvious than before. We can't stop people from challenging our terms, but we CAN make it harder for people to miss them.

Covid too was a stark reminder to really get clear on cancellation policies for events and programs. Businesses had to balance compassion with keeping their business going. Most of us began with super flexible terms because we didn’t know what we were dealing with and quickly learned that if we gave an inch, some people would take a mile. Setting professional (and personal) boundaries was the learning curve that came with that experience, and many Covid policies were drawn up.

And here’s a fun fact I learned recently from James Clear called the power of tiny gains…. If you improve by 1% every day… by the end of the year you are 37 TIMES better at the end of the year, than when you started.

When something happens within our businesses, we feel the impact of it like a reflection of ourselves. If someone criticises our business, we feel criticised. The old adage “its not personal, it’s just business” is frankly a load of bullshit. Of COURSE it’s personal. You cannot separate the work that I do, from the entity I have built. You cannot put everything into starting a small business and keep everything “strictly professional” when a client challenges a contract you created or someone steals from you.

What we can do, is use each blow to our confidence or cashflow, as an opportunity to ask the following questions;

1. Could I have prevented this? If so, how?

2. Could I have responded better to the scenario when it played out?

3. What can I do now to reduce the chance of it happening again?

4. Is there anything else that might happen SIMILAR to this, that I need to act on now too?

The answers to all of the above could of course be

1. No

2. No

3. Nothing

4. No

Although I very much doubt they would be! 😅 Regardless, getting into the habit of really assessing what went down, either with your staff or just in quiet contemplation, gets you into the habit of noticing opportunity for improvement. Growth comes in these 1% moments, the tweaks and refinements, the realisations and the amendments.

1% ...I'm down for that.

And honestly, if I just paid $500 for one tyre, and in 12 months time I haven’t made the changes based on my experience & advice, and then end up paying $500 for the next tyre? Well y'all, that's 100% on me.

Have a safe and gorgeous week,
Kaye

Protecting your digital assets

Apple Podcasts thinks I'm messy. They're probably right.

I was listening to a podcast recently about home organisation  (Clutterbugs in case you’re curious). I had stumbled across it on the recommendations page (what are you trying to say, Apple?!) and I was honestly amazed at what you can find podcasts about. 

This particular episode was about digital organisation and the home office. So while I have no desire to put cute coloured tabs on my bulletin board, or arrange my books by the colour of their spine, the idea of keeping my work life organised? Yes please

Data is important in business. Whether its the reviews your clients give you, your previous years P&L statements, employee contracts, invoices, or your passwords into literally everything, finding ways to file, store, and access this data is as important as the data itself. For me, digital data is very important because I travel so frequently and we store our important documents in a shipping container in Perth. This means we cannot have piles of paper in our bus, nor do we have the space for storing documents or having a scanner/printer! I need to be able to access anything, from anywhere and its part of our nomadic lifestyle to have our digital filing up to scratch. 

Here are some ways I file, store, and retrieve important information. 

Dropbox / Cloud Based Storage
There are two reasons I love dropbox. The first is that its cloud-based so I can access and store things easily without taking up space on my drive, and without the vulnerability of what happens if I leave my laptop or phone on the roof of my car (yes, its happened). 

Secondly, I can give direct access to a folder, to anyone in my team. For example, the images we use for social media are all stored in a folder that can be accessed by my team - I can also delete and add files as I need, or sort into subfolders.

Filing Systems
In a previous life I worked within a Melbourne Architecture firm. As anyone in the design or construction industries understandings, there is ALWAYS more than one file version, so they were very strict on correct naming protocols. I've taken these naming protocols into my entrepreneur life and it has saved me on SO many occasions. Especially at tax time ;) 

To start with, you enter the DATE in reverse: 20220530. Then you enter the RELATIONSHIP that is relevant to the document or file, this could be a clients business name, or the name of the person who issued the invoice, or the name of the event. Then you enter the CONTENT of the file which might be an invoice or a Canva design, or a resume etc, and finally, you enter the VERSION of that document. The date is key, especially for sorting by order to find a particular file or to group a collection of files into a new folder, but the client/relationship, and document type, are all important fields you can search by.

It’s important to remember that just having a sub-folder within sub-folders will not be of help when you need to find a particular file, and the file name is simply Invoice_22.pdf! When you’re searching for that file, it doesn’t matter if its stored 2022-2023_Invoices > Staff_Invoices > March_Invoices. All you can search by is the name. So putting as much accurate data into the file name is important. THEN you can use folders and subfolders to your heart’s content!

So lets look at some lists I have filed;
Staff Invoices

• 20220125_LeaF_Invoice22

• 20220131_LeaF_Invoice35

• 20220213_KateY_Invoice1

• 20220219_AxelR_Invoice109

Graphic Design

• 20220331_StudioOpenDay_A3Poster_v1

• 20220331_StudioOpenDay_A3Poster_v2

• 20220331_StudioOpenDay_A3Poster_v3_printed

• 20220404_StudioOpenDay_Instagram_v1

HR

• 20220501_JohnWest_Resume_Yoga

• 20220512_KatePatel_Resume_Pilates

• 20220512_KatePatel_InsurancePolicy_exp20221012

Essential Info
My phone also has access to a Dropbox and within that I have a specific folder and documents for information I need to recall quickly. This is especially helpful for the information I need when trying to complete government forms, school/daycare forms, or licensing info. This means that even if I lose my phone, I don't lose this info because it's in the cloud.

For my biz this includes; my ABN, my business BSB & Account numbers, policy numbers for my insurances and business registration details.

For my home life this includes; My Tax file number, my Drivers license & passport numbers, policy numbers for insurance, medicare number, and CRN numbers for the whole family, as well as “name and contact info” for Next of Kin/Emergency Contact info, and Doctors surgery - the stuff that usually goes on a child’s intake form for holiday care.

These folders do NOT contain passwords or credit card details, obviously.

For passwords, using an app like 1password.com  is a game-changer, especially since I need to be able to retrieve passwords quickly and efficiently. I have 4 people on my team who need to share passwords with me, so keeping them centralised (and safe!) with encrypted software not only enhances our security, but also helps me keep tabs on who is using what or if we have a breach. When it comes to task delegation, my BRAIN is not a safe space to retrieve a password from, to give at short notice to my VA. haha

In a more morbid sense, what if you were in a car accident and ended up in a coma - would your business wheels keep turning? Would your manager (or partner) be able to find important files without knowing what to search for?

I hope this has given you some things to think about this week, and if this has lit a fire under you to consider your digital systems, let me know!

x Kaye

When was your last hangover?

I’m going to ask… when was your last hangover? Well, it's been a very long time for me. While I do love a quality glass of red, there hasn't really been a social setting lately where a lot of consumption was on the cards, plus waking up to a toddler in the morning is just.not.worth.it. 

But I definitely have a Vulnerability Hangover MUCH more frequently.

A vulnerability hangover comes the day after a big event - it usually means you’ve been “on show”. It’s probably been a long day that you’re hosting or facilitating, or you’re being “seen intensely” in some way by people you don’t know well, such as running a class or being on stage (or both!). You’ve run on adrenalin and juggled multiple things - maybe you’ve even had to smile more than usual, and have physical contact! 

The next day however, you feel wiped out.

Well guess what? You’re not sick. And you’re not broken. You’re in recovery and it’s normal!

Understanding not only your natural biorhythms but also your personality type, is SO important when running a business.

Personally I’m an introvert (I know, you wouldn’t tell by the way I run a class or dance on Reels!) but interacting with groups is totally draining for me and I often avoid it. However when it comes to something I’m passionate about (ie. my business) then I can “switch on” my extroversion, almost like a performance.

How do you know if you’re extroverted or introverted? Well the big sign is how you recover. My husband is an extrovert; he feels invigorated and inspired by gathering with large groups of people and hosting big parties. Me on the other hand; I feel exhausted after events and I love intimate dinners.

For the longest time I thought I was getting sick after every event, until I read Quiet, by Susan Cain.
Absolute 
Game
Changer
If you think you’re an introvert, know you’re an introvert, or love an introvert - you have to read this book.

So what I (and most of us) need after a day (or days) where we give so much of ourselves, is a hangover.

Last Saturday I ran my Studio Open Day. 14 classes, hundreds of people through the doors, i taught 3 of the classes and then ran a meditation, mantra, and community gathering in the evening. I also had both my small children and then dog in tow. My face hurt from smiling, my legs hurt from standing, and my patience with my kids was whisper thin.

On the Sunday, I was wiped out. I wandered aimlessly around my house. Cuddled the dog. Scrolled the internet. And oscillated between my bed and my kitchen. I felt so exhausted that I took 2 RATs to test for Covid. I had planned to do laundry and clean my house. Instead I ate food and sat in the sunlight filtering through my window. If I HAD been drinking at all the day before, I would have deduced that it was a hangover. Yet I was simply just drained from too much “peopleing”.

I feel the same after running a large scale public yoga class, hosting a wellness retreat, or running a Yoga Teacher Training weekend. I have an intense need to withdraw & recalibrate. The hangover is my little white flag. It waves in the air and says “ok I’m done”. The hangover is my body saying “yo, you’re cooked”. I know the hangover so well now, that the hangover is built into my schedule.

If I’m running a YTT weekend, I don’t hold space for anyone on the Monday or Tuesday, because I have nothing left to give. If I’m running a retreat, I book an extra night away at the retreat location so I can decompress. If I’m hosting an event, I clear my social calendar the next day.

Granted it’s not perfection. I still need to parent, obviously. I still have to pay wages. But I let go of all the shoulds. I get my classes covered. We eat takeaway, the kids watch movies, I skip Elodie’s homeschooling, and any work I do on my laptop is things that don’t require my creativity or innovation. 

I learned very early on that if I forced myself to return to the status quo after an event, I am literally useless. It would be like going into your day job with a real hangover! Fatigue, brain fog, and even nausea or digestive upset, are all real effects of giving too much of yourself (or having too much Prosecco). When I don’t give myself time to languish, I make mistakes, my fuse is shorter, and my work just isn’t as good. 

So here’s my challenge to you over the next few days.

Take a look at your calendar. Note the work and social obligations coming in the next few months that might generate a vulnerability hangover. Look at the scale of the event and how much you need to be “on display” and schedule in some hangover time.

If you’re going to a kids birthday party and it’s going to be chaos and you don’t know the parents that well? You might just need the afternoon to be a potato.

But if you’re running a full day workshop, you might need to reduce your workload the following day to just the repetitive and mundane, outsource the food or the cleaning, or make time to potter aimlessly in the garden (and utilise flight mode on your phone).

Whether it’s a tech-free stroll in nature, or a staycation somewhere, consider what YOU need to recalibrate so that you’re bringing the best version of yourself back to work or life. It doesn’t mean forgoing all human contact - and frankly that’s often not possible (hello, small children) - but if we can do what the author Greg McKeown calls Essentialism, we are streamlining our life or business admin to the bare minimum. Don’t worry, it’s just for a day or two ;) And then life can go back to being wild, I promise.

Try it for me and let me know how you go.

So pick an event (personal or work related), pretend you’re gonna hit the Midori Illusion Shakers hard at that event (am I showing my age?!) and then plan for a hangover. It might just be the best hangover of your life.

x K

Having a baby made me successful

There is a story that society tells about women who have babies.
That they need to “get off the ride” of their career, business, or professional trajectory.

That they must step back from ambition and veer towards their children.

But what if for some of us, instead of disembarking, we’re simply recalibrating and what we really need isn’t support to give up what we love, but support to keep it. What if we are allowed to redefine our definitions of success, rather than giving up on it.

In studies of tribal communities a mother would spend, on average 7 hours of the day caring for her child. The rest of the time? That child is handled by up to 13 other caregivers including matriarchs, and other older children, with each caregiver naturally having their own influence & expertise on the upbringing of that child, while always ensuring the child was loved and cared for.

We don’t live in that world anymore. But maybe the reason you cannot juggle it all, is because we never ever did.

I realised I was successful after the birth of Darcy. But I feel like its important to define that, because success is relative. Success isn’t hit when your bank account reaches a magical number (unless thats how you personally define it). When I think about success, I think about a lifestyle of freedom & service. Where I can help people but not be tied down to a way of living, a place, or even a business. Running yoga studios isn’t about the money and NEVER has been. However if I can make good money to grow and move to a larger location to fit more people in, pay my staff sick leave (even though I don’t legally have to), and pay staff to run our free community events, or add more offerings to the timetable, and donate chunks of our takings to charity… that’s success. If I can make enough money to not even need to teach a class, while paying myself a living wage, and to travel with my family while the business runs itself… that’s success.

But I had been waiting for some sort of sign that THIS was it.

Before Darcy arrived, I’d been pushing through my pregnancy in a number of ways;

1. It wasn’t the pregnancy I’d hoped for and infinitely harder than my first. All the “time” I thought I had to prepare my new business location for my maternity leave was sucked up in pain, perinatal depression, and bed-ridden nausea.

2. I was absent from the business for weeks and weeks on end. It was surviving, but not thriving, so I felt like I was always chasing my tail.

Darcy arrived with a huge amount of turbulence in November 2019 and the giant hand of the universe smacked me down. Oh boy I remember, after I came out of the ICU, how long it would take me to walk just from my front door to the mailbox (a mere 20 metres). How could I possibly run two studios and manage 18 staff while drugged up to the eyeballs and unable to shower myself properly and feed a tiny human who needed me so?

As it turned out, I didn’t need to.

It was in the process of healing my way out of this hole, navigating newborn life again for the first time in 6 years, that I began to look objectively at my livelihood, how I operated, worked, lived, and what it meant for me to “thrive”. And as Darcy grew I was delighted with what grew in me too.

When you have a baby, alot of shit ceases to matter. You save your cares only for the most important things and either delegate or ignore the rest. Are they warm? Are they safe? Are they fed? Are all the basic needs met? Good… ok. Then that’ll do for today.

The same applies to business. When you start to prioritise things in your business out of absolute necessity & survival, it becomes part of your real world, your modus operandi. When I had no time and even less energy, when I was chronically sleep deprived, I focussed on the tasks or projects that either a) generated direct revenue or b) reduced our overheads. Everything else could bloody well wait. It forced me to streamline so many of our processes that my business literally thrives on processes now. It forced me to critically assess my financials month apon month to see where we could trim the wastage and thus correct hundreds of dollars of wasted funds a month. It forced me to delegate & hire to fill my gaps in time so that now I have a cracking team under me.

I realised, that I could work just 10 hours a week and still draw a wage.

I realised I didn’t have to work IN the business anymore, but ON the business. I could stop teaching yoga classes completely and the studios would carry on fine without me.

Like, what?!

How was it possible that I was working less yet achieving more.

I had been working so hard for so long, marinating in the “growth phase” of my business and get wholly used to that life that I didn’t realise that I’d tenderly moved into maturation phase. That I no longer need to push the cart, I can ride in it, and that was all thanks to a challenging pregnancy, birth trauma, and a newborn. Sometimes we don’t know what our life can look or feel like until we’re challenged to reassess it. Sometimes our children don’t highlight our shortcomings, sometimes they highlight our strength.

x Kaye
Imagery by Belle Verdiglione

On Reframing Failure

I spoke to this in my yoga classes recently, on this idea of reframing failure for what it really is: an opportunity for growth.

If you’re a parent in the WA school system, you’d be familiar with EduDance, a dance education program that runs at primary schools. Elodie was especially excited about this year, and wouldn’t even show us some of the routine, in anticipation of this grand reveal.

The morning arrived and a very nervous, shrinking Elodie walked into my room with tears in her eyes.

‘What’s wrong babe?’

‘I’m really really nervous about today’. She promptly burst into tears. 

After some digging, we ascertained that she was terrified of getting the dance wrong. The teacher had put her front and centre and Elodie was worried that everyone would see her make a mistake.

Her words, ‘I don’t want to be a failure’.

If you saw my Instagram stories, you’ll know that she absolutely KILLED it, but this dialogue of “failing” has been coming up a lot lately for Elodie. She’s going to be 7 in January, and through her schooling there are a lot more things like assessments & tests, sports carnivals, and performances - plenty of opportunities for a self-aware little girl to fail. She’s also worried about picking the wrong thing (like what after-school activity to do) or wearing the wrong thing (like to a birthday party). 

This pains me greatly because there are many things I didn’t start, do, or become, because I once thought I’d fail at it. There’s a finality in failure that belongs only to the word and how we use it in our language. Over the years, rather than trying to change the meaning of the word, I got rid of it altogether. I’ve been doing the work, unpacking this fear of failure and engaging in a practice of self-enquiry, so much to a point that this concept of failure is no longer in my vocabulary. I don’t entertain it, thereby being incapable of failure in its traditional sense.

And because I’ve been on this journey myself, I’ve been working hard on reframing this rhetoric with Elodie because, well we don’t fail in our family. I don’t fail, my husband doesn’t fail, and my children don’t fail. And this is the lesson we’re trying to impart on Elodie; 

1. It’s impossible for you to fail and 

2. You are never - even if you thought you failed at something - a failure.

Let me be absolutely clear… I’ve definitely fucked up. We’ve certainly made our fair share of mistakes in this family, but what might be called a failure, for me, is an important lesson or an opportunity for growth. We’re reframing failure through the lens of knowledge, of wisdom, of growth. To be on a path of learning is one of our familys’ values – to always be open to knowing something better, or differently. To read the books, take the leaps, listen to new perspectives – not because we’re perpetually changing our opinions (some things we feel very strongly rooted in and wont change) but because life shouldn’t exist in an echo chamber of familiarity, nodding heads, and mediocrity. 

“There’s a finality in failure that belongs only to the word”

My husband Jimmy recently left his cushy job. But that’s the thing about “cushy” ….when does it change from soft and yielding to beige and uninspired? Jimmy wanted to move on to a new role because he had stopped learning in his previous role and there wasn’t any real opportunity to progress. He could have stayed in that role for many years to come, making good money for very little input or brain power. Instead he moved to a role that has him busy every hour of the working day. He’s challenged, but he’s also motivated to learn something new and expand his skillset.

And his new role has MANY more opportunities to mess that shit up.

The last 5 years of teaching yoga (and running a business around it) has taught me many important lessons, primarily about HOW to run a business, but also, how to be a leader, how to navigate risk, how to pivot, how to recalibrate, and how to stop from going under. None of those things would have been possible without a number of *failures*. 

My very first one of these (of many) was when Vital Beat was 12 months old. We were in a prime growth phase – it felt like we could only go onwards and upwards. Only, I knew very little about my business financials or how to manage them, and when I finally caught up with my tax obligations (my quarterly BAS) the ATO then caught up with ME. Shortcut to 6 months of overdue GST plus a number of late lodgement fines and it was a painful financial hit. I took it on the chin and quickly moved on, I also

• learned that I had an unhealthy relationship with money and my “right to earn” and that I had stuff to work through around money as energy.

• learned that there were systems, software, and training, that would elevate me to the level I needed to be at, and quickly.

• learned the importance of making regular financial dates with myself to go over my numbers (something I now quite enjoy), and 

• learned that ATO fines are actually quite easy to get around/out of, if you have a good bookkeeper or accountant (and I found a new Accountant quick smart!)

It’s easy to step back from a $9000 lesson and say “that’s it, I’m not cut out for this. This was a failure / I’m a failure / who am I to attempt this”. It’s easy to use these experiences as defining moments, a “feather in our fuckup cap” so to speak.

‘I learned that I had an unhealthy relationship with money and my “right to earn”’

Without these experiences however, our life lacks colour. It’s a stretched canvas of straight edges and perfect circles and shading inside the lines. How mundane would our careers and relationships be if we hadn’t experienced the transformative qualities of knowing what we DON’T want? We need the bad boyfriend to appreciate the good one. We need the shitty boss to know what leadership SHOULD look like. We need the bunky first car, tiny first rental, and hey, maybe even get fired once, to know what’s not right for us. These aren’t failed careers, or failed relationships, they’re guideposts with lit signs pointing the way to say “Over here! This way to the lessons!”. And only then, when you follow those signs, can you see the person you’re becoming. 

The knowledge and wisdom that forms part of our family values, don’t come from formal education. We can only know firsthand from a lived experience – learning things about ourselves, and learning things FOR ourselves. So as Elodie sat on the end of my bed, willing the Earth to swallow her up, I made sure she knew what lessons were on the other side of the EduDance performance and we talked about both scenarios - if she got the dance wrong, AND if she got the dance perfect. 

“What would you have learned afterwards, Elodie?” And I let her write that story.