April 2021

Hey friends,

Welcome to another Newsletter. It's also the first in a new series called Mindset Mastery - where the goal is to help you master your mindset so you can achieve more peace, fulfilment and success.

This is actually the first newsletter I've sent out since March 2020!!

I guess that tells me it's been a big 12-months. I think we all know what happened 12-months ago! Yep. Covid hit Australia around February 2020. I remember being out for dinner with my family, and we were just hearing about it. At that point, I certainly wasn't taking it very seriously. I really thought it would blow over in no time. How wrong I was! And quite soon it became clear that Coronavirus was here to stay.

Life as we knew it changed rapidly. Over the past year many businesses have closed their doors or have been forced to pivot massively, many people have been laid off, the Government stepped in to provide folks with financial handouts, we had toilet paper and hand gel insanity in the shops, lockdowns, lockdowns and more lockdowns, and masks became our new everyday accessory.

Let's face it, we've all required a resilient mindset to deal with the challenges...

A Resilient Mindset...

1. Accepts the change that is happening

2. Focuses on the things it can control

3. Keeps taking action and never stops

4. Gets support wherever it can

5. Takes care of you as best it can

6. Doesn't buy into FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt)

Big Changes.

For me personally, it's been a year of massive change. I am incredibly grateful to say, it's mostly been positive changes - although there's been no shortage of challenges in the past 12-months. Yes, even positive change brings its own set of challenges!!

One huge change for me came when I had to move house. I knew this was going to happen, but hadn't expected it would happen until March 2021. Then it was brought forward to December 2020, and everything had to happen real fast and in the lead up to Christmas.

I was sad to be moving, unsure whether it would be easy to find a suitable place, everything was absolutely hectic. I was overwhelmed, tired and knew that it meant that my end-of-year break (which I'd been looking forward to all year) was not going to happen.

On the upside, moving house has enabled me to set myself up working full-time from home, in a really lovely new space and one big advantage of that is that I get to spend more time with my dog Harry, who is loving having me home all day long. He also loves meeting all the people I work with!!

I couldn't have done it without the support of my family and friends, who helped me with the move.

So now I'm based in Ferny Grove, on Brisbane's north side and it's quiet, private and very comfortable - and you are very welcome to come and see me for in-person sessions - just use the new option when you book online through my Calendar.

Here's a few pics of the new space... (you'll spot Harry who photo-bombed one photo)

New Space.

Book an In-Person Coaching Session with Michelle

Living With(out) Stress.

Inspired by my article on 'Befriending Stress' (see link below), I set myself a challenge at the beginning of 2020 - before Covid was even a thing - that I was going to try and have a "stress-free" year.

I knew stress would happen, but I basically wanted to see if I could recognise when stress was starting, and make a mindset shift to embrace whatever was coming at me in that moment, and see if emotional acceptance could transform stress, overwhelm and frustration.

Well, the Universe sure served up a great year to run this experiment!!

And there was plenty of moments where I felt the stress-response kick-in. But armed with my new approach, I was, for the most part, able to re-centre myself and move through the stressful situation without feeling "stressed" or bothered by it.

Of course, I can easily call to mind a couple of times where my old familiar stress reaction took a hold of me, and I became frustrated, upset or overwhelmed (like when I was prepping to move, packing, cleaning, and working full-time across 3 different locations).

But that's okay, I wasn't expecting perfection. I just wanted to see improvement.

And overall, setting this intention to "not allow stress to take over", made a huge difference to what could have been a massively stressful year.

This showed me that we can manage our stress differently, and I've been using the insights of this in my coaching sessions!

Read my article on Befriending Stress