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I believe that we all have the ability to completely change our lives in an instant…🪄💫
To stop playing small.
It only takes one moment to gain a resilient, no-fucks-to-spare sense of purpose, confidence, and commitment that wasn’t there the moment before.
Sometimes, all it takes is one missing piece—one insight—that tips us over the edge into action.
But too many brilliant, unconventional women and neurospicy, gender-diverse creatives are still waiting for permission to take up space.
Still talking themselves out of their dreams of an alternative, self-reliant AF lifestyle.
Still shrinking to fit inside a conventional one that slowly smothers their creativity.
So I want to share with you here why I believe it only takes one moment – one powerful personal insight – to become a different person.
You don’t have to have a five-year plan (though they are amazing too!.
It may be that all you need is one moment of clarity and the courage to act on it.
Because while I hate seeing anyone struggle to live life on their own terms, what really breaks me is watching wildly creative people with so much brilliance believe they can’t have the life that they want.❌
Not because they’re afraid they won’t make enough money or they don’t have a plan. Those are legit concerns, but are also totally solvable with a strategy.
But because they haven’t yet built the confidence to think BIGGER. To take up more SPACE.
So I want to fan the flame of your ambition—and help you believe you’ve got what it takes to play a much bigger game at a much bolder level.
I’m going to share 3 personal insights that permanently changed the direction of my thinking and my habits.
And helped me stop playing small. Three different times!
Because you can learn to stop shrinking. You learn how to go after the life you want.
No waiting for anyone’s permission or worrying about what other people may think.
This is especially for you if you have a big, delusional-level daydream and a tiny seed of ambition to make it real…
But your self-belief and self-trust haven’t caught up yet.
Maybe this’ll give you the spark you need. The micro-enlightenment that helps flip your inner belief switch and helps you shift into the more self-reliant AF version of yourself that has the confidence to pursue an alternative lifestyle. 💜
Keep reading, OR if you prefer listening because you’ve got places to be and you’re on the go, click below for the podcast version. 🪄 🎧💫
Prefer to watch instead of read? Watch the YouTube version here if you want to see my caffeinated-up self and catch my dogs staging a surprise cameo!🪄 📺💫
Confidence Isn’t a Personality Trait. It’s a Muscle
One of the worst things we can believe about ourselves is that any of our behaviours are just ‘personality traits’ that can never be changed.
We say shit like, ”This is just how I am.”
This is personal growth-gatekeeping, endorsed and reinforced by personality tests. I love a good personality test, and I am not disputing their helpfulness or even accuracy…
But I think they should all come with a warning label that none of the traits you currently have are permanent.
We all have the ability to change any of the traits about ourselves that we do not like.
I know this because I entirely changed what I thought was once my dominant personality trait: shyness.
Up until I was 22, I had low self-esteem and crippling shyness.
Growing up, I had struggled with severe social anxiety, but by my sophomore year at the University of Georgia, I had finally broken through it. I enjoyed relative social confidence from graduation to my first few professional jobs working as an English teacher in Japan, Boston, and New York, until I landed in Melbourne in 2001.
That was the year I had to figure out what to do with my life again because I could not work in Australia without an English as a Second Language certificate. The problem was, I no longer wanted to be a teacher! It didn’t fulfill me creatively, and I craved more daily novelty (as you do when you have ADHD).
I dreamed of starting my own business selling my handmade costume jewelry. So I got a full-time job at a wholesale jewelry company to start learning more about the costume jewelry industry. They had a small retail storefront where they invited me to sell my designs.
One weekend, after 9 months of working there, I went to a party.
I was in the middle of a group of people talking when someone turned their attention to me and I experienced a complete freeze. Once again, I did not know what to say! I think I mumbled something stupid, feeling absolutely mortified at myself.
I never expected my shyness would ever return after all the years I had struggled to overcome it. But to my abject HORROR, it had returned with full force, obviously.
I couldn’t see it back then, but looking back, I now understand why.
Working full-time in a foreign country far away from my friends and family had taken a toll on my confidence. I felt isolated and alone again, having left my entire social network behind in Atlanta.
I realized for the first time that my social confidence was never going to be like a completed project.
It was a muscle.
Something you had to work on to keep. Something that could grow or weaken depending on how you used it.
But the deeper revelation came after that:
If confidence could rise and fall based on what was happening in my life…then it was malleable.
It wasn’t fixed. It was buildable.
That meant I could engineer however much I wanted of it.
And not just “enough” confidence to get by…
But massive, unreasonable, delusional-level confidence.
The kind of confidence that could carry me through risks and self-reinvention.
I realized I could create limitless confidence. A version of it far bigger, bolder, and more grounded than anything I’d ever known.
And that the only real limit to my confidence would ALWAYS be self-imposed.
My own mental blocks.
That meant having confidence…was a CHOICE. 🤯
Confidence ISN’T something we HAVE and then we feel confident.
We can simply choose to BE confident.
That revelation blew my mind. It helped me make some bold life choices.
Like starting my jewelry business.
Surrounding myself with creative people who I found interesting and fun.
Traveling across South East Asia for 3 months on my own at the age of 27.
Of course, there’s a difference between KNOWING something is possible and realising that potential…
Gaining confidence was still going to take a lot of WORK, just like working out at a gym.
But realizing that a personality trait I’d previously thought was unchangeable was merely a choice was incredibly empowering.
So, my question for you is, what personality traits do you have that you’d just rather not?
Have you convinced yourself that it’s just who you are?
What if it wasn’t at all who you are, but was just a habit?
A way of thinking that you’ve never thought to challenge?
What if you could choose to replace a personal trait that you don’t like with something you’d like to have?
Confidence is accessible to anyone who wants to have it.
There’s no certification, test, no permission required.
Stop playing small and become the most confident person you know. 🙌
Be the Inspiring Leader You Wish You Had
Here’s another moment of clarity that profoundly changed my outlook on life in an INSTANT.
This one came at quite possibly the darkest time in my life, too…
It was in 2016 when I was 40 years old, living in my own 2-bedroom apartment in Melbourne’s western suburbs.
I had just been laid off from my full-time job at a laser cutting company. It had been a fantastic job; the first where I had used both my skills in e-commerce and in social media management.
The layoff didn’t bother me too much because I was keen to get back into growing my own side-hustle.
But the issue was my realization that I no longer wanted to continue my side-hustle accessories business. It just didn’t fit with my love for travel. Or, my long-held dream of being a pet-sitting digital nomad.
On top of these two massive upheavals, I was still nursing a broken heart after yet ANOTHER failed relationship. (I’d had a LOT!)
This was a gloomy period for me. There were days I spent just staring out the window watching the little brown thrushes and black Minor birds from this big red velvet chair I own.
It was a crazy period of job searching and soul-searching. One huge insight was discovering I had an Avoidant Attachment issue, which explained all the short relationships.
I did a lot of heavy drinking with bouts of yoga and meditation, because, you know, those TOTALLY go together! 😂
Then one day, I discovered the YouTube spiritual guru, Gabby Bernstein. I devoured hours and hours of her content. She was the BEST thing I could have come across at that time.
And this is back when she was just filming from her couch, before she famously manifested being invited on Oprah’s Soul Sunday.
Something she said that would forever change my life in a single moment was, to paraphrase, because I can’t find the exact statement, ”There are fewer people stepping up to help others than there are people in need.”
And I don’t know why, but this felt like a calling to me.
I remember screaming, ”YES! YES! YES!” and dancing around my apartment.
The revelation hit me hard.
She said that while there are many people who are struggling and in need of support, not enough individuals are rising to offer the help needed.
That there was a big gap between need and leadership as a helping service.
This profoundly changed how I saw my place in life.
It was a moment where I realized that no matter how wretched we may feel, we could be of service to others who were either feeling as shit as we were or worse.
So once again, I realized that something I had thought was set in stone (my unfortunate situation) was also a choice.
The roles we choose in life don’t have to be small. They can be BIG.
I could choose to continue to wallow in my own misery, or I could choose to not only lead myself out of it, but also lead others as well.
This is true self-leadership, which I believe is the highest form of self-love.
That’s why I found it so healing.
It helped to begin trusting my own inner wisdom.
This gave me the courage to completely close the side-hustle accessories business I’d been building for 8 years.
That was a massive move for me, like killing my baby.
Then I bought a course to become a social media manager, became self-employed within only 4 months, and finally became a pet-sitting digital nomad within the next year!
I’ve never had to have another job since, and that was 9 years ago now. 🤗
So another question for you is, where in your life can you step up as a leader?
Because when you stop playing small for yourself, you stop playing small for the entire world around you as well.
You give yourself permission to take up space, and you begin to lead.
Just remember: there are far more people in need of help and support than there are people willing to offer that help and support.
Stop playing small for them, and you’ll uncover the unlimited joy of being of service.
Self-leadership is the highest form of self-love.
Self-Discipline = Witchy AF Magic for Wild Freedom!🪄💫
Now, here’s my final personal example where a single moment of clarity and insight can completely change who you are…
A lot of people are too afraid to start their own business or work for themselves because they worry they lack self-discipline, right?
And they may ALSO believe that too much self-discipline is a cage. A rigid, stifling way to live.
I used to believe both ideas myself.
Then, a few years into working for myself, I came across this quote by the philosopher and theologian, Mortimer J Adler:
“True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline.”
This really blew my mind! 🤯
I realized my concept of self-discipline was ass-backwards.
Up until that moment, I had poo-pooed the concept of time-blocking as annoying and impossible for someone like me to follow.
Those first few years of being a freelance social media manager were fn messy.
A lot of late mornings sleeping in, late nights working, and working on weekends. I used to have to bring my laptop EVERYWHERE with me. The work was all over the shop.
But everything changed after hearing this one concept.
I’d started my entire business to gain more freedom, yet here I was LIMITING my own freedom!
I also started learning from productivity coaches who taught that one way to create more freedom in our day-to-day lives was to be more self-disciplined.
So around year 3, I got serious about time-blocking.
And I was able to start taking every weekend off again, like normal people.
Since then, I’ve also learned how to gamify my days to suit my ADHD brain. Gamification is extremely motivating to me.
It’s my secret productivity weapon now!
Self-discipline CREATES freedom.
And it can also help us achieve anything we set our minds to by making success the inevitable result of our habits.
When all of our intentional habits become easy and natural, it makes self-discipline easy and natural.
I wish I had known this when I was younger!
But even if I had, I’m not sure it would have stuck. Sometimes, clarity comes at just the right time when we’re ready for it.
One of my favorite books on this is ‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear.
In his book, he says,
“…the best way to change your entire life is by not changing your entire life. Instead, it is best to focus on one specific habit, work on it until you master it, and make it an automatic part of your daily life. Then, repeat the process for the next habit.”
That’s the easiest, fastest path to mind-blowing self-discipline that even the laziest, least motivated person can follow!
Start with small, incremental improvements in your habits if you want to build your self-discipline.
And ultimately more FREEDOM! ⚡
It’s Never Too Late to Stop Playing Small And Start Playing BIG!
So if you’re still coming up to your own self-imposed limitations in life, keep learning.
You never know what single statement could blow your whole sense of being up, changing how you live in just a few seconds.
You never know what single ”ah-ha!” moment awaits you.
It may be from your own experiences, from a YouTube guru, or in a book.
The common denominator is self-reflection. All the answers to life and what you desire are already within you.
All you need to do is allow yourself to reflect and take action on what feels right.
And what inspires you.
Because that could be your calling in life.
Ready to craft a self-reliant AF bada$$ alternative lifestyle?
If gaining more confidence to stop playing small and go after what you want in life is your jam, there’s nothing better than getting inspired by confident bada$$ women who did amazing shit throughout history.
I love hearing the life stories of badasses so much that I have an entire themed newsletter focused on them!
It’s called Badass Women Don’t Give AF.
It’s a sequence of 10 emails, each covering one BADA$$ woman from herstory.
We break down what makes her a badass and what we can learn from her. Season 1 is complete and out now.
So sign up for Badass Women DGAF and fuel your fire with the women who’ve done it before you.👇
Stop shrinking.
Stop playing small.
You and the whole world need the boldest, bada$$ version of yourself right NOW. In this moment. 🔥
