I'm told I'm optimistic, but I shouldn't be.

And today I'd like to tell you a story.

Don't worry, it won't be a 20 hour story.

It won't be when I was five, et cetera, et cetera.

But it does help explain Why I lean into optimism.

So bear with me as we work through I am the victim.

I'm actually not really, but I, I was the victim of parents who split.

And when I was 14 or so, my parents split a couple of years later,

they remarried a week apart.

If you can fathom that a week apart.

One week I was going to my dad's.

Wedding with a lady and her two daughters.

The next week I was going to a wedding with my mum and her

husband and their three children.

Wow.

If you're watching this on YouTube, you'll see my movements, but my mind was blown.

What happened after that, unfortunately, and this happens a lot, I just

don't think it's talked about much, is that I found myself homeless.

It sounds much more dramatic than what it is, but what we know

about kids from divorced parents is sometimes divorced parents.

You know, behave in interesting ways.

And they forget.

They forget that they have biological children.

uh, so neither of our parents wanted us.

now I say that laughing now, but I have to tell you, I have been through many years

of therapy to work this through right?

Because it's not great.

You're 14 years old, you are, you've got hormones running through you, uh,

your parents decide to split and then remarry, and then you don't have a house.

I was very, very blessed to actually go and live with a beautiful

family, and I was not able to live there without paying my way.

I had to pay my way.

just for some context, I also went to a private school.

I had repeated grade 10 because.

Parents divorce all the things, and so school fees were quite expensive.

And I was also ashamed, oh my goodness, was I ashamed?

I was ashamed that my parents are divorced.

I was ashamed that no one really wanted me and I was ashamed that I

wasn't able to pay my school fees.

So.

I did what any normal ordinary kid would do, and I went out and I got a job.

I got an after school job for three hours a day after school,

and then I went babysitting.

So you can imagine that I was one tired human being, and so I was doing

grade 10 at school and I was working.

In a bakery, and I was babysitting every the evening.

And then I was working Saturday and Sunday from six till six in

the smelly deli I like to call it.

This period of my life was pure survival.

Pure survival mode.

And I did what I needed to do to make sure that I could front up at the

school office and pay the school fees.

Uh, I had some beautiful teachers who helped me, by letting

me sleep in their classes.

Look, I wasn't the best student anyway.

Let's not, uh, sugarcoat this in any way, but I did wanna finish year 12, and

then I just wanted to go and get a job.

And so I really had no choice except to work as hard as

what I did and it showed me.

Now, now that I can see it in hindsight, so much resilience.

Back then, I was just in survival mode.

I didn't speak to my dad for a couple of years.

I was really hurt by my mom.

All the things.

And my mom, bless her soul.

She has gone to heaven now, but she also struggled with, I would say menopause,

but also, uh, deep, deep bipolar.

And so some days she was great and some days she wasn't.

And she married someone who was not good for her at all.

And so mum was living on the other side of the city.

Dad was living on the other side of the city, and I was somewhere in the

middle near school, which was great.

I don't know if you've ever had those really challenging situations where

you feel like there's no choice.

That was me.

I had no choice but to work as hard as I did.

No choice but to manage every single cent that came into my purse, and no choice but

to just be in survival mode over those.

The course of those couple of years though, I met some amazing people

and without that, Without that, I would've ended up barefoot and

pregnant without the type of nature that I have, which is, it'll be fine.

Without that type of nature, I think I would've.

Spiraled into a whole, woe is me, negativity spinning off

me, all that kind of stuff.

And when you are in survival mode, you don't get a choice.

You don't get a choice to stop and think about what's happening.

You just keep moving.

Have you ever been in that space?

We, you just in survival mode and you just have to keep moving.

So.

I made some good choices, but also ladies, I made some poor choices.

Uh, I grew up way too early.

I have a very strong mind.

I still do now.

I think things are a certain way and I want 'em to be a certain way,

so I create them a certain way.

and that is just my survival technique.

I didn't go to uni until I was 25.

I didn't go to uni until I was 25 because I couldn't afford it.

I went straight to to work from school and I wanted to make enough money that

I'd got outta this survival situation when I graduated from high school.

I'll never forget this.

If you have a bipolar parent, you will relate.

I woke up the day of my graduation and it was also my birthday and my

mom was staying with me so random.

But anyway, she was staying with me.

She had, I. What I would call a manic episode, and she had turned

off all the water and all the electricity and hadn't told me.

She also told me that Elvis was coming out of the sky, and that when I got

home that day after graduation, that I would have a massive surprise party.

You know what?

I so wanted to believe all those things,

And by the end of the day,

I was putting her in the back of a paddy wagon.

She was so, so sick.

And I went to my graduation and I pretended everything was fine and I

ate the lunch and I did the graduation and I went straight to the hospital.

She was a very, very sick woman.

This pattern played out in our lives for years and years to come.

My mum was a very sick woman.

When she was on her meds, she was great.

When she was feeling great, she went off her meds and she, in

the end, she split with her.

She had.

Three or four husbands, see, I can't even remember now, but this

was her second husband and they split and she had nowhere to live.

So I went out and found us a house and she lived with me.

And there were days when I would leave her at home to go to my

full-time job and wonder what the heck she was going to do with her day.

And

There were days when there wasn't enough money to put food on the table.

There were days when I wondered how the heck I was gonna pay rent and help her.

Oh my goodness.

Talk about parental adult swap, right?

Oh my goodness.

If you have lived with any of this behavior in, in a parent or in

someone that you love, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

It sucks.

It's confusing and all you're doing is just surviving.

So it feel, felt like I went from survival mode, being

homeless to then actually moving.

Out of that feeling like I was moving out of that to then taking

her back in to help her, and that was to escape domestic violence.

Very complicated in and of itself.

Right.

So there was that.

I know what it's like to feel like you have no choices.

I know what it feels like to have no money.

I know what it feels like to have to, work, put groceries back, work to a

budget, do all those things, right?

I know what that's like, and I can tell you there is no sense of freedom in that.

No sense of freedom.

So am I optimistic now?

Yeah.

Hell yes I am.

But I've also had use of therapy to help me through that, and I also did not wanna

bring it into my marriage or with my children, and so I had to make a choice.

Do I sit in victimhood?

Or do I make sure that I will never, ever be in that survival space again?

And I made that choice.

I made the choice, I will never be here again.

It sucked.

It hurt.

And I am optimistic I'm optimistic now.

And so people think I've got, I've had a charmed life and we all have a story to

tell, and mine is probably no different from thousands of people who just

don't have this platform to speak out.

But I've got this platform, and I wanna say to you, if you're feeling like

you're sitting there and you're a victim, How do we make a different choice?

How do you show up with more optimism and not sitting in the negativity that

is or could be your current experience?

How do you fight to get out of survival mode and get into thrive mode?

I didn't realize it because I can be a slow learner.

I did not realize that.

Going into coaching, going into my own business, I knew it would give me

financial freedom and I knew that it would help me, help women make more money.

And it's not about the money, it's about choice.

If you have enough money,

you have choice and you have freedom.

And it wasn't until a few years ago that someone said to me when they heard my

story, no wonder you do what you do.

I'm like, really?

And that's absolutely my why.

I have seen firsthand what happens when someone pulls themselves out, gets the

support they need, and builds a life.

By design, and that's what I'm now trying to help women do.

I don't want women to ever feel like they have to go somewhere and ask for money.

I don't ever want people to feel like they don't have enough money in their

bank account to make some choices.

I certainly don't want women to feel like they can't go to the supermarket and buy

three loaves of bread, and it's okay.

Ladies, I, I don't know if you can feel this or hear this, but I am deeply,

deeply in the trenches with a stack of women trying to create the best life they

possibly can and have better choices.

But in doing that, We have to talk about cash.

And I know no one wants to talk about cash and revenue and profit and all the things.

But all it does is allow us to have choices, and I want everyone that I work

with to have choices, to feel supported, even if they don't work with me, even

if we're just on a clarity call and I help them through getting through.

If they're stuck on something, even if they come to one of

my events and they feel heard.

They feel listened to.

They feel seen, right?

Because I craved that.

All those years ago.

And so I'm on the other side of it now, and so I feel like I can show

up and serve without all the baggage, without all the crap, but Just being

able to help one woman at a time.

And when I first went into business, my husband said to

me, what does success look like?

I'm like, oh, I've got no idea.

I did, of course, you know, flexibility, making some decent money, all the

things, but actually, actually, how do we impact one woman at a time?

To help them with whatever stage they are at.

And so I think it's really important to go, yep, I've got this story.

What does that actually mean?

How do I, for me it was, How do I use the story to serve others?

And until this point, I haven't worked out how to do that.

But now I've worked out that my why,

My deep desire to help women make more money

is because of the circumstances that I faced all those years ago.

And my optimism comes knowing that you can get through the other end of it

and actually be a nice human being.

And also not barefoot and pregnant.

'cause no one wants that.

Ladies, there's so many management books out there that says, oh, your

past performance indicates future behavior, but it doesn't have to.

Your past shapes you.

My past has absolutely shaped me, but am I gonna bring the trauma forward?

No.

I'm gonna call, put a line in the sand and go.

Actually, my past has been really useful.

And it can help me with the future, but I don't have to do a repeat of that.

I can break the patterns of that.

I can make sure that I do something different I am the type of coach

who will always be in your corner when it's too hard, when it's

going well, it doesn't matter.

I will always be in your corner.

And I hear from people who tell me, they tell me that I'm, you know, tough love.

I can be tough love.

and I will always meet you where you're at because that's

how we move forward together.

Don't you reckon?