CWL Ep 148 – Trusting through transitions

Welcome back. It’s 2024 and it’s a brand new year. I’m really happy to have you here. The conversations on the road is taking a break at home. I want to go back, but for now, this is where I am and I’m going to, just going to be totally honest with you, this podcast, I actually hadn’t known if it was going to be coming back this year because a friend of mine and I were actually signed to a major podcast network for a brand new podcast. Super duper exciting. I mean all the bells and whistles, fancy production like in the studio with the light boxes, all the branding. And that podcast along with every new commissioned podcast for that network was pulled about three days before Christmas, Merry Christmas team. And so it meant that all my plans for this year kind of went whoosh. And it reminded me I have been doing my own thing in my own business for a very long time.

I started working for myself back in 2009 as a contractor, and since then I’ve always done things on my own. And this was the first time going back into the fold and working with a big company and all of that sort of thing. And it was just a reminder like, oh dear, when we are relying on other people, the entrepreneur in me gets a little bit frustrated with the scenario. Anyway, here we are, and this is what I wanted to talk about on the podcast today and over the next few episodes is these periods of transition where it’s not what you are going to be doing anymore and you’re not quite sure yet what it is going to be. Those transition periods can be really kind of unsettling and mucky. And to be quite honest, I mean I’ve been in one for a little while. All of 2023 was a period of allowing myself to be in a transition to let go of drop to shift out of old modes of being and looking at the models that

Construct my life and really taking a bird’s eye view of things. And it’s been so, so great. And yet I thought that there was going to be a particular structure to 2024 based around this exciting new project. Now, it might still happen. Obviously we’re looking at ways, other ways in which to get it off the ground in the capacity that we saw this at the level that we saw this. And that’s just taking a little bit of time. And so I’ve realised that I kind of come a long way in this allowing transitions to be just this wonderfully curious, expansive growth field time instead of the feeling like you’re kind of walking through mud or you’re not too sure how to step forward. And I remember when I wrote Harvest last year, which was the story that I wrote about the harvest that has been reaped through the years of loving and losing my husband, that I knew I was in this state of transition at that stage last year that I was really letting go of a few things. And I was finding it frustrating because I liked to be on the move.

I just like to be in motion and I didn’t feel like I was in motion. I think that there’s a lot of reasons for that. And now I’m talking to you almost a year later and it’s like, wow, I’ve cultivated this trust of myself to be able to transition and to even find it joyful, which is weird, but it’s true. There’s a kind of almost playful, youthful joy in the not knowing in the living for right now, in the being present to what is right now. And the best part about it all is that there’s absolutely no rules. And this has been a really big part of my own personal realisation of where I am in life right now. It’s like I look at all of the formulas for how to do things or what’s expected and other people do their own work and then figure out a way that to share what’s helped them in order to be able to help others.

I think I’ve been in that place for a very long time and it comes very naturally to me. I get interested in something, I get very interested in it, and then I want to share it. That is Lisa’s business in a nutshell over the last 12 years. And so suddenly, so I’ve learned a lot throughout that process. I’ve learned a lot about what helps people, and a lot of the time what they’re looking for is some kind of framework, something to follow that makes sense. It’s simple, it’s actionable, gives them an attainable result. Yeah, I see that If I follow that, then I might have that thing that I want. And you see this everywhere. I mean, it’s just a saturation of people doing the same thing. And although I’ve never positioned myself as an expert on anything much at all, in fact, most of the time until very recently, I just bring the experts into my programmes to help me teach the things.

And I’ve realised that my time for wanting that type of thing is just well and truly over, and that’s because I’ve probably done a lot of it and it helps us all so much in a certain time in our lives. And then there’s just a time where it’s like, oh, I don’t care about your three-step system or anything. What I have found in this time and space of transition is in fact the work or the joy of the whole thing is dropping any expectation that anyone else has any idea. The best thing for me, how cool is that? But I think I had to do a lot of things to get to that point. And it’s interesting because right before I started recording this, I saw a post from, I must still follow because I mean, what do we actually see in our social feeds anymore?

But something came up from the medical medium, and I’m not too sure if you ever followed the medical medium or saw the celery juice craze, but it was a reel about this woman had chronic eczema, chronic acne. I mean, she got shingles, she had chronic fatigue, all the things. She was not a well person. She didn’t feel well her whole life. And then at 26, she found the medical medium and she followed the protocol and she healed. And I love that that stuff exists for certain elements of our life. For certain moments in time when we can call on experts and go, I just need the steps. Just tell me what to do here. And there’s a lot that you can choose from and that’s wonderful. And I’ve definitely benefited from those sorts of things, although just my particular personality, my particular brain and all the things means I kind of run away from anything that is going to tell me what I need to do.

I like to feed off people. I like to be inspired, but please, I’m never going to follow your formula. It’s just sort of I am. And yet I have created some things that absolutely offer. I mean, I’ve got a programme now like the change method because I know after all these years, I know that people, when they’re looking for an outcome, they just want to know that they can trust a particular model and they’re super helpful when you can bitesize chunk down complex information in a way that people get a result. I feel like I’ve been able to do that very, very well over the years. That’s why people keep coming back to my programmes. However, for me right now and where I am in my life, just none of that is of any interest at all. Is it midlife? Is it like I’ll turn 45 later this year and just have a different level of acceptance of myself?

I don’t feel like there’s anything particularly wrong with me, and I just have a love for all of the messy parts, all of the parts that drive me nuts and all of the bits that seem to make me who I am that to move through this transition. It wasn’t about me finding a model. I remember I was really reading a lot about Ikigai, the Japanese model for living a good life. And it’s great. You can just have a look at something like that. Something will pop out and you’ll go, oh, you’re sort of missing that in that area. And I remember talking to the kids about it and we were talking about the idea of being 80% full instead of really, really like, oh my God, I’m so far and how we got into talking about the blue zones and which are the places in the world that have the most amount of centenarians.

And what I kept talking to them about was we get to find our own version of that. It’s great to see what works for other people, but at the end of the day, we are our best judge of when we feel good, when we feel purposeful or all of that sort of stuff. And I think it’s a really great conversation because as kids grow up, and the school system in particular has an expectation of what success looks like, what winning looks like, what achieving looks like, and I think we’re just living in such a great time that all of that stuff is being completely turned on. Its head in loads and loads of different ways. And I think my period of stepping outside of things last year and having a look at what’s really going on and how I really want to live and what really matters to me and the system that we’re living amongst right now and how conducive it is to health and happiness and really putting a question mark over all of that. And it’s been fascinating and I’ve done it in every single area of my life, and I’d needed to because the wheels weren’t turning in the way that they usually turned. It was like, okay, so here we are. How did we even get here, Lisa? Seriously, how did we get here?

And what do we actually really want out of this next phase? How cool to be in the position of contemplating that. But the key has been to just trust myself as I move through this transition trust. It’s all just kind of working its way through. And the finding out that we won’t be moving ahead, or at least in the time that we thought we would with this new podcast was like, yeah, that’s interesting, really frustrating. And then it must just mean that that wasn’t going to be the thing. Stay curious, Lisa. Stay trusting. Stay open to all of this. And I’m so glad that I had the trip last year and kind of reset my centre point because if something like that had happened at the start of last, it would’ve just thrown me on a not great trajectory. Whereas this time it was like, okay, that’s annoying.

And okay, what’s next? And I think that loads of us find ourselves here where we might have even just followed the path of go to school. Maybe we get an extra qualification, we enter the workforce, we’re on the path of maybe seeking a partner to have a family with and buying houses and having babies and doing all those things. And then I think that it’s pretty normal to go, oh, now hang on, is this working? Is this actually what I want? It’s sort of all happened a little bit by default. And now I want to get intentional about things. And I have taught about, I’ve been fascinated by change for a really, really long time. And I remember talking to a friend while I was overseas and I was just saying to her, what do you reckon that I talk about anymore? Because I fully gave myself permission last year to just drop any expectation of fitting what I say online into a box.

Just kind of feel a little bit done with that as well, which is not super helpful many ways, but it’s been the most extraordinary journey anyway. She’s like, I think the thing when I think about you, Lisa, is you’ve gone through a lot and it’s how you transition through change. Not that you actively create the change always. It’s just like, fuck, how did she get through that and how are you navigating this? And I thought that that was so interesting, a reflection because I hadn’t necessarily seen it for myself. And that’s why I thought I’d do this little series about transitioning through change and what’s actually helping me now is very, very different to what it was, I don’t know, four or five years ago. I mean, I think I read my first what would be considered self-help book in 2013. I reckon it was, no, it was probably 2011 actually when I did that course. Yeah, it was probably 2011. And so there’s been a lot that’s been read. There’s a lot that I’ve been exposed to. There’s some brilliant people that I’ve learned from, and I’m just at a completely different stage right now, and it’s exciting

And it’s really fun to be here. And I actually wonder if it was ever going to be possible for me to fully get here if I had kept myself in the constraints of the life that I was living. Sometimes I think really big, huge changes just offer us such an opportunity for growth. I mean, it’s not, maybe it’s like they just do. They just absolutely do. If you embrace the opportunity that they present, it’s like cataclysmic foundations shift. But we have to embrace it and be curious to it. And most importantly, what I wanted to share in this episode was to really try and cultivate a sense of trust, because there’s no point pushing against what is a lesson I’ve had to learn. Sometimes we just don’t want to be where we are. It’s annoying when we know we can be somewhere different, but can you, because there you are in the position you’re in. I’m like, oh, Lisa, here we are. Damnit. I didn’t really want to be here. I didn’t really want to be in a position where I was questioning what I taught my business and all of that sort of stuff. I just sort of wanted to just be doing the things. I liked doing the things, but here we are with this amazing moment to craft something really intentionally with everything that I’ve learned about myself.

So I think that there’s a real benefit to knowing yourself in these moments. I think that there’s a real level of uncertainty, and I think that that’s what my friend was saying was, people don’t like the uncertainty, and yet you kind of seem to thrive in the uncertainty or the not knowing brings out the best in you. I’m like, I don’t know if it does actually bring out the best in me, but I think the years of living with an addict, everything was always uncertain, everything. It was really up and down. We could have periods where of sobriety, where it was all like, oh, and everything’s cool, and here we go and we’re rolling along and this feels really good, and maybe we can plan and maybe, and then it would just go pu and it was chaos. It was really, really hard. But it primed me. It reminded me that nothing is certain in life, nothing, anything can change at any moment. And when we embrace that and roll with it, life just feels a whole lot easier to live.

And so here I am in a period of uncertainty of not knowing, just embracing it for what it is, learning the lessons amongst it, and sharing with you as I will in the next episode, the way of being that is helping me most right now because I am not heading to the books. I am not looking for someone to guide me. I am that compass. And when I just sort of, well, okay, tune into the next episode and I’ll tell you all about what has been helping me most through this transition period. But also PS is life just one big freaking transition. I just think sometimes we know what we’re doing and then most of the time we don’t. But that’s just between you and me. I’ll see you in the next episode.