I was recently interviewed for a podcast by Brent Price who runs a website called The Lifestyle Income. His mission is to inspire you to design a life you love, and for many, that involves leaving the corporate world behind, and pursuing their dream of working for themselves.
This is a huge passion project for me, because I truly believe that your personal wellness is a huge part of your professional life, and I’ve recently started speaking at many events and conferences about this very topic, in fact, I’ll be sharing more about that very soon.
One thing I may not have shared with you before, is that becoming a celebrant was something that happened quite by accident. I had no idea that the business would take off as much as it did, and if anything, it has been one of my greatest teachers when it comes to learning how to actually run a business.
After making the transition from dancer to yoga teacher, my classes started growing at a fast pace, and I knew that it was time to polish my public speaking skills if I wanted to make the shift into teaching workshops a little smoother.
Brent asked some great questions about how I made the change into becoming a yoga teacher, as well as ‘how does it felt wake up in the morning and do what you absolutely love, as opposed to working for somebody else in the 9-5 grind’?
And as freaking amazing as it is to wake up and absolutely LOVE what I do each day, I also wanted to share the difficult parts of my journey, because I truly believe that they hold the most medicine.
While my unhealthy work / life habits definitely began at an early age, I find it interesting (and used to find it embarrassing to admit this before I got over myself), that I got very ill with horrific migraines and 2 adrenal burnouts when I was already established as a yogi, healer and celebrant.
Despite the fact that my business was well and truly thriving, the irony of being unwell while working in the wellness industry is not lost on me. What was the point of knowing all of these health and wellness concepts intellectually, if I wasn’t consistent enough to embody them by living them in my personal life?
I learned the hard way that doing everything you absolutely love for a living doesn’t mean that you’re immune to burning out. Working hard doesn’t necessarily mean you’re making money or progress.
I didn’t have a great business sense when I first started to work for myself, but equally had no idea of how to manage my own energy. I had to learn to say no to great ‘opportunities’ and I still believe you’re much more defined by who and what you say no to versus what you say yes to.
If you’re reading this, it’s quite likely that you’ve attended one of my courses or workshops and have a sense of what constitutes a balanced chakra versus a deficient or excessive one – if not, head this way, and you’ll get a nice summary on one page.
Brent asked about the meaning of an energy balance and how i go about ‘fixing it‘. At one point he asked how we know we’re out of balance and I love that he answered the question himself by stating ‘well if we aren’t balanced, we’re not the person we want to be whether its personal or in business, right?’
Yep, that would be very right.
I truly believe that once we accept what out ‘triggers’ or ‘stressors’ are, we can take action to put support systems in place so that we can create a flow in our life that can support that for us. Most of us trip up on this by either dismissing our needs as being unimportant, or by comparing ourselves to others who ‘seemingly‘ breeze through life effortlessly.
In fact, doing things you feel you ‘should‘ do often means that we’re going against the grain of how our personality naturally flows and ignoring our body’s needs.
Can we become aligned to things we don’t like doing?
I believe if you really want to overcome a fear, you can, but if you’re in a situation that doesn’t bring out the best in your personality, you’re not going attract the right people around you because you’re simply not going to shine in a way that comes naturally to you.
And once we find that sense of balance, do we stay in alignment?
I guess that really depends.. Because life is about constant movement and growth, and usually once we clear something big, like a lack of confidence, or our sense of abundance, once our soul is ready to learn a deeper lesson, we often get the opportunity to clear another layer, because after all, we’re really only as balanced as our last trigger aren’t we?
You can listen to the full podcast over here, in fact, I’d really love to hear your thoughts on it, and as always, thanks for being part of my tribe. I’d love to hear how you’re going, and i I hope we get to cross paths soon! Lots and lots of love, Patty xx