Hello, and welcome to episode number 151 of The Shine Show. Today, I'm going to share with you how I'm slowing down so that I can speed up. And I just want to say a giant thank you to everyone who has been part of our successful A-Lister online course launch. I have had a blast doing this with all of you. I thank you, if you've been hanging in there waiting for us to close the cart, so we can talk about some other things. And I want to welcome all of my new A-Listers to our Flapper Club, and to our amazing community. I can't wait to be part of that journey of yours, of finding your people online and making your first sale. So thank you, thank you, thank you.

Giving up your time and freedom to make money is so 2009. Hi, I'm your host Salome Schillack, and I help online course creators launch, grow, and scale their businesses with Facebook and Instagram ads, so that they can make more money, and have an even bigger impact in the world. If you are ready to be inspired, to dream bigger, launch sooner, and grow your online business faster, then tune in. Because you are ready to shine, and this is The Shine Show.

Hello. Hello, everyone. It is so nice for me to just hang out with you today. I hope you're having a lovely day. I hope the weather is as nice where you are at as it is right here for me now. I'm recording this on, I want to say, a lazy Friday morning. The sun is out. I'm looking out my office window and I see the swimming pool, and I hear the birds, and I just have this really warm feeling in my heart, because it's a beautiful day. It's a beautiful day to be alive. I went swimming this morning, and I'm feeling good. I hope you are feeling good too.

Have you ever seen Brené Brown's TED Talk? I hope so. I know it was, at one point, the most viewed TED Talk ever, so you probably have seen it. If you're like me, you've probably seen it multiple times. And if you haven't seen it yet, just go to YouTube and Google, Brené Brown TED Talk, or Brené Brown power of vulnerability, I think that's what it's called.

So my favorite part of that talk is where she shares about her, what she calls, she says, "I had a little breakdown," and on the slides behind her, she's crossed out the word breakdown, and written breakthrough. I can associate with that feeling a lot. And I've shared with you before about my little breakthrough that I had last year. I would love to talk more honestly about it and share with you, I think, what led up to that. How I didn't see the raid flags. And how, in hindsight, I can see the red flags, but I didn't see them right then.

And today I want to share with you a little bit of the things that I've changed in my business and in my life, mostly, in my life. I've changed a lot of things in the business as well, but I think I want to share with you mostly today, the things that I've changed in my life that is helping me really slow down, and turn that little breakdown into a breakthrough. And I hope that you find something that you can relate it today. And that in today's episode, there's something you can take and use in your life right now to slow down and be a little bit more mindful of the journey, and take a bit better care of yourself, because that's what it's about.

It's ironic, because last year on the 1st of January, 1st of January 2022, Emil and I, my husband, we went over to our best friends, and we were sitting around a table just having some tea, recovering from our hangovers from the big party we were at the night before. And my friends said, "So what's our theme for this year.' And this is, we're going back the beginning of 2021, we were all still hoping that COVID would go away sooner.

And I said, "This year, 2021, is going to be my year of a radical self-love." Man, was I in for it. Should never have said that. You know the little saying, be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it. Yeah, radical self-love, what I intended when I said, "2021 will be my year of radical self-love," was I intended for that to mean that I am going to take better care of myself. What ended up happening is the world knocked me upside down, inside out, put me in the freaking spin cycle of the washing machine to show me how bad I am at nurturing myself.

And it might be a female thing, a little bit. We tend to nurture the other people more than ourselves. And I never thought that was a problem for me, until I got knocked on my head. So I want to share with you a little bit of that today. You know how much I love of learning and absorbing new information. My life is just a series of obsessions, really. And I think it comes a little bit with leaning towards having ADD or having ADD, I'm still mid-diagnosis. I haven't had a formal psychiatrist tell me that I do have it. My psychologist believes I do have it. I believe I do have it, but we'll see what the jury's... the jury's still out from the psychiatrist.

They're all booked up until October here in Brisbane. I can't get an appointment at a psychiatrist until October. Man, what a good time to be a psychiatrist. So my life is a series of obsessions. I develop obsessions with online course launching, and with Facebook ads, and with coaching and with personal development. But I noticed over time that I can't have a moment of silence without feeling the need to fill it with more information. And the thing that started doing it for me, that was my drug of choice was audiobooks and podcasts. And I love audiobooks and podcasts, because I can feed my obsession obsessively all day long.

And that's where the problem is. I found myself increasing my own anxiety levels with the amount of information I was pumping into my head on a daily basis. And it got so bad that my brain just couldn't cope with processing all the information. I got this sensory overload, where I would be in the kitchen and my husband would sit down and turn on any TV show where there shooting or cars chasing or superheroes with loud action music in the background or the rugby or the Formula One, my senses became so overloaded that I had this auditory overstimulation. Where, as soon as the noise gets to that pitch that it has at a sporting event or the loudness of the car chases and the music that goes with that, I want to leave the room and go lie down on my bed and curl up in a ball.

But I never connected that to the rate at which I was pumping information into my ears. And it got to a point where one day I got out of the shower, and, of course, I have a Bluetooth speaker in my bathroom, because that's the best way to blast more information into my ears while I'm getting dressed and putting my makeup on. And I switched on a podcast, and as soon as I switched that podcast on, my heart started racing, my stomach felt like it jumped into my chest. And I started to get that feeling with that severe anxiety feeling where I'm kind of like seeing stars and almost shaking, and my heart starts racing. And all I did was turned a podcast on. Holy cow, that was a massive, massive red flag moment for me.

So I made a commitment to myself that I was going to turn the audiobooks off, turn the podcasts off, and fill the moments between the moments when I'm getting dressed, the moments when I'm putting my makeup on the moments, when I'm driving the kids around or driving to pick up the kids or drop the kids off or driving anywhere, I'm going to stop pumping information into my ears. And I'm going to go back to one of my favorite, favorite, favorite things, listening to music.

And I just started listening to music again. And it was like, I went, when did I stop listening to music? I have always, always loved listening to music. When did I stop? And it has made me so happy, music makes me happy. Now I can't wait to go into the bathroom in the morning and blast the music, and do a happy dance and sing. And some days it's Beyonce, and some days it's The Greatest Showman, and some days it is Hamilton, and some days it is Ella Fitzgerald, and some days it is country music.

I'm listening to the Yellowstone, the music from the show Yellowstone, I love it. There's a version of the song Wicked Game, which is one of my all time favorite songs. There's a story there, because there was a boy that played it for me, but that's a story for another day, the boy and the wicked game. But I do love that song. I do love that song. I don't think he loves it anymore, because he's pretty much told me I was his wicked game. That's a story for another day.

The music is blasting in my bathroom in the morning and makes me really, really, really, really, really happy. So maybe you have been blasting your ears with too many podcasts, too many audiobooks, I don't know. Maybe for you, it's something else. Maybe for you, it's buying all the online courses. I've been there. Maybe for you, it's watching YouTube videos or checking out Reels or TikTok, or maybe for you, it's something else. It might not be auditory for you. It might be visual. It might be something else. But I just want to make you aware of your senses, because my senses was screaming at me to slow down, and I didn't pay attention to it.

The other thing that has been so amazing for me is for those of you who've hung around me long enough, you'll have heard me talking about my experimentations with meditation for a long time. I actually started meditating around the time I started the business, because I was failing so hard, and everyone kept telling me that it's a mindset issue. And I was like, what is this limiting beliefs everyone keeps talking about? If I can just get over these limiting beliefs. And of course, today, I know that, the mindset people say, "All you need is the right mindset." And the strategy people say, "All you need is the right strategy. And, in fact, you need both.

The best mindset is not going to work if you don't have a plan, and the best plan is not going to work if you can't overcome roadblocks, because you don't have the right mindset. So I just find it really hilarious when I now see all the marketing that I fell for in the beginning that told me, "You are not succeeding because you don't have the right money mindset." And I go, "Sure, but that's not the only reason I wasn't succeeding. I also didn't have an offer that converted." Wisdom comes with age. Today, I'm grateful for the three years I failed, because I really, really, really understand the challenge of getting started from the bottom up.

A tangent, again, I keep going off on these tangents. Meditation, we were talking about meditation. So my psychologist suggested to me... So meditation had been going on and off for a while, and sometimes I love it, and sometimes I feel like it is 10 minute exercise in just having my brain scream at me. Because I don't know if you associate with this, but I sometimes literally have so many thoughts running through my brain at once that it feels like there's voices screaming at me.

And I think when I was getting to the place where my little breakthrough happened, those voices were getting louder and louder and louder and louder and unkinder. Is that a word? They were mean, and they were loud, and they never ever shot up. And so trying to meditate with voices in your head shouting at you, I sound like I'm a little bit cray cray, but cray cray is also normal. I am a little bit cray cray, and I'm also totally, completely normal, which is why I want to have this conversation with you. Because I want you to know that I am completely normal, and I'm also completely cray cray just like you.

And so we have to normalize these things. The voices were screaming so loudly. So whenever I would meditate, I feel like it is just an exercise in sitting there and letting the voices scream at me, which happens all day anyway, so what am I actually here meditating? And then my psychologist suggested to me that, instead of sitting there and listening to the voices, and letting them scream, how about we try to create a few buckets? And whenever the thought comes up, just identify which bucket it goes into, and then put it in the bucket. And then go back to just focusing on breathing, and within a second, the next voice will come up, and then just think about that voice for a second and put it in the bucket it belongs.

So I ended up with a bucket were to-do lists. I ended up with a bucket for things I have to tell my husband. I ended up with a bucket for dreams, ways that I want things to be. I ended up with a bucket for things I'm worried about. I ended up with a bucket for ideas. There was definitely, I can, for sure say, there was a bucket for client work that I was stressed about. I can definitely say there was a bucket for stress about building my team. My team went from, we were four people at the end of 2020, and today there's, including my husband, who's like an honorary member of the team, we're 11.

So my team grew a lot, and I had to make sure I can take care of them. I had to make sure I can pay them. I had to make sure I'm creating structures and processes and a safe space for them. And I had to protect them from just customer service sort of things. There's a degree of protection involved with the team that comes from having templates for emails, and those sorts of things. So there was a bucket for stress about clients. There was a bucket for stress about team. There was a bucket for stress about students. There was a bucket for stress about money. There was a bucket for stress about my kids.

I mean you get the picture, right? The nice thing about the buckets is I started to see patterns in the things my brain was dishing up to worry about. I started to see patterns in the beliefs and the self talk coming out of my brain, which were all, when I paid attention to the patterns, it was so much easier for me to then take that to my therapy sessions, and say, 'I noticed, I think a lot about this, this, and this, and it stresses me out because I think I feel I need to please these people. Or I'm not worthy, if I'm not the best. Or I'm not good enough, if someone doesn't value the work we do the same way I value it."

There's a lot of worthiness things for me that always comes up. And I'm still in the middle of dealing with it and digging into it. But one of the things around worthiness, if I can go on another tangent for a second, one of the things I also... I think I've said this to you before, I currently have a psychologist and spiritual guides. And I'll bring them on at some point on the podcast, because it's really fascinating for me the parallels between what the psychologist who is very scientific and very educated... Not that they're very educated, my spiritual guides, but it's woo, woo stuff, right? It's more woo, woo.

But what I've realized is everything is magic before science proves it to be true. And then it's not magic anymore, then it's just science. So I'm kind of leaning into the whole woo, woo thing, because I don't need science to prove something that I can feel in my heart. And plus, I mean, gravity was magic until it was scientifically proven. They thought the earth is flat until they proved, no, it's actually round and is such a thing as gravity. I think you get what I'm saying.

The spiritual guides, we were talking about worthiness, and I've said to you that worthiness is a big, big, big theme for me. And I'm exploring with my psychologist, how ADD feeds into that, because when you get the message over and over and over and over and over and over and over every single day, thousands of times a day. For years and years and years and years that you are not smart, that you are not capable, that you don't understand, that you are late again because you can't manage your time, or forgot about something, because you weren't listening or paying attention. Or annoyed, because someone interrupted you, because you were focused and you were concentrated.

There's all sorts of ADD stuff that goes along with... in a world where it is not understood, it gets shamed a lot. And I carry with me a tremendous amount of shame over things like being late, things like forgetting details, things like complete, absolute, total lapses in memory after having... I had lunch with someone and I forgot who they were. And I know it's mostly, because I tuned out for most of the conversation, because it wasn't in line with one of my obsessions. And it's just something that, we just become overly obsessed with certain things.

Anyway, I'm not making excuses for forgetting someone's face, but I tuned out. Entertained them because it was socially acceptable, and then I tuned out, and then I forgot them. And then a year later when they came up to me and they were like, "Oh, Salome," I was like, I have no idea who you are. Lots of tangents today.

So the worthiness thing, I think you see where the worthiness thing comes in. The spiritual coaches that I was working with helped me understand for the first time ever that the mere existence of the concept worthiness is a complete lie. There is no such thing as being unworthy. Unworthy is a lie, because we are all part of the same thing. We are all made up of the same thing. And our worthiness is related not to our work or to our ability to do something, not do it, achieve it, be it, manage it, get it, attain it, collect it, work at it, achieve it. That has absolutely diddly-squat to do with worthiness.

We are worthy by nature, and so therefore unworthiness can't even be a thing. Do you feel it? Do you feel it? I feel it. That realization was huge for me. So meditation, if you are meditating, try putting your thoughts that come up... So it starts with breathing, and I asked, "Well, why does everyone keep going back to the breathing thing?" And my psychologist explained to me that it's because it's one of the only things we can consciously do and subconsciously do.

So it's the thing that links our little animal brain with our smart brain, because it's the one thing that we do both automatically and we can do it consciously. So it links both our... I want to say both our brains, so that's the breathing thing. And then when the thoughts come up, put them in buckets, and look for patterns in the type of buckets you're creating.

And then the thing that I'm loving is theta waves. So I have an app on my phone called Insight Timer. It's a free app with thousands of meditations, thousands of tracks with different theta waves and different sorts of music you can listen to. And I just love of it. It's free and you use it, and it just really helps me. And now I can sit down, put my theta waves on, and start meditating. And it's uncanny, because I don't time myself. I don't sit there and put a timer on. But now with the theta wives, I go most 20 minutes every single time. It's always within 19 to 21 minutes. It's weird. So try meditation. And remember you are worthy by nature.

The other day, my friend, my close friend, she's a dentist, she works Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday is when she works. So Wednesdays and Fridays, she has the day off and we go swimming. She swims with me on a Wednesday and a Friday. She swims with me Monday, Wednesday, Friday, but I swim on Wednesday and Friday with her. And every day I ask her, "What are you up to today?" She's got some radical self-love think plan. Like she's going for a facial or she's doing yoga or she's just staying home and renovating the kitchen or working in the garden.

And the one day she said to me, wow, she had the best Friday. She just dropped the kids off at school, and then went to our local coffee shop just around the corner. And she said, she sat there the whole day, reading her book. My first instinct, when she said that was how excruciatingly boring would that have been, ouch. And I thought about the idea of sitting in a coffee shop for six hours, even three hours, sitting in a coffee shop, reading a book. And at my made my skin crawl.

That is how over stimulated I was. That is how anxious my nervous system was that the thought of sitting in a coffee shop, reading a book, literally, made my skin crawl. And now I look back at it, and I think, oh, that sounds amazing. And you know what I remembered, when I thought about this, I remembered when I was in my 20s, when I lived in London, my favorite thing to do, my absolute favorite thing to do was to go to what is that big, giant bookshop called in Oxford Street? I can't remember the name of that bookshop. I wonder if it's still there?

There was this like four or five, six story bookshop, stories, like you have levels of books and there was a coffee shop. And I would go there and spend every Saturday just sitting in the bookshop, in the coffee shop, devouring books. My obsession with consuming information has come a long way, but it was the most relaxing and wonderful, wonderful thing.

And I remember how happy it used to make me. And here I am in my early 40s and my friends says she spent three hours in the coffee shop, reading a book, and it makes my skin crawl. And it kind of made me go, "I have lost myself somewhere in this." Now, I have fiction books. Not personal development, not business, not marketing, not all the things I've been cramming into my brain for seven years straight. Stories, stories. I have read Eleanor Oliphant. And I have read The Vanishing Half. And on our patio outside, we have a hammock, and we have a beautiful view over the suburb, because my house is kind of on a hill, and I have a beautiful view of this green, it's called Mount [Coot-tha 00:31:31]. And it's just this beautiful green hill, with beautiful green suburb. And now I'm lying in the hammock on a Saturday.

I've even created a day bed in my bedroom that is just stacked full of story books. And I just lie there and read on the weekends. And it is the most relaxing thing for me ever, reading actual real books, again. Not cramming as much audio information into my head as I can.

And the last thing I want to share with you that I have done that is making a difference for me. You already know I swim. So I swim three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I go swimming, just up at the local school. You know I'm not one of the best swimmers already. And you know that in October I am committing to doing the 100, 100 meters, 100 100s. I'm committed to doing it. I'm going to do it. But you know what else I have found that I loved. I bought an Oculus. An Oculus is that 3D thing that Facebook makes that you put on your head and then you are immersed in a virtual reality.

And I love it. And on my Oculus, I have signed up for Les Mills' kickboxing classes, and I have done so much kickboxing that I actually injured my neck the other day, and had to go see a physiotherapist to get my neck fixed. And do you think, have you ever seen a physiotherapist laugh about an injury when you walk in, and you say, "I injured my neck doing boxing with the Oculus. I have an Oculus injury." Yeah, the physiotherapist cracked up. I had to explain to him what the Oculus is, because those dudes are out running and cycling all day. They're not screen like me.

And then the other thing that I did was I signed up for a running challenge. For my Aussies who know who Turia Pitt is, everybody should know who Turia Pitt it is. Turia is just the most inspirational woman ever. I will link to Turia's website in the show notes, because Turia is someone you should know. She is a marathon runner who got caught in a Bush fire at a marathon, and sustained severe, severe burns to 80% of her body, and went into rehab and was probably in rehab for about, I think, it's two or three years it took her. And now she's running marathons again. And she's just had her second baby, and she's written books, and she's a motivational speaker and she's just the most incredible woman.

And every time I think, ugh, running sucks. I hate running. My knees hurt. My feet hurt. I can't breathe. I think about Turia, and I go, "Nope, if Turia can do it, you can do it." So I signed up for this running challenge with Turia, which I have to confess to you, I have fallen off a little bit. We got COVID just as I started. And then I was like, "Ugh, I can't breathe. I don't want to run." So between swimming and the Oculus kickboxing and Turia's running, I will start running again soon, I am doing a lot more exercise. And all of that has really, really, really helped me.

Oh, and of course, I'm taking medication, anti-anxiety medication. So I take Pristiq, that's the brand name here in Australia. Hang on, let me look up what the official name is, because I'm sure it's called something else. No, I just looked it up. It seems to be also called Pristiq in the US. It is a Desvenlafaxine, is the scientific name. And it is really, really helping me find balance. So between medication, psychologist, spiritual guides, meditation, exercise, eating, I've always eaten fairly healthy, but all these other things, I am one happy camper, and it is going really well.

And so I share all of this with you, because maybe, maybe you can pick up on some of these red flags earlier than I did. Maybe one of these things is a good idea to incorporate into your world. And I will continue need to share with you my journey about how I am becoming more myself, staying more true to myself, nurturing myself, loving myself, really finding what radical self-love really means.

So coming back to Brené Brown's TED talk and her breakthrough, I just wanted to share all my secrets to breaking through for a more Zen life with you as we all build businesses together. Because building a business is, it's an interesting journey. I want you to know that what I found to be true is that everywhere I go, there I am. And the mindset struggles I had when I made no money, still show up for me every day. They just have a different tint. They just have a different flavor. There is a resilience that comes from seeing yourself overcome challenges over and over and over.

And there's a trust that you build in yourself and in your ability to overcome challenges with time. A business gives you that gift, but it gives it to you, unfortunately, in the way that you have to overcome these challenges. Mindset, mind fields are everywhere, and I'm not here to tell you that there's a destination. That there's a place where we get to where we don't have mindset challenges. No amount of money in the bank guarantees you're not going to have mindset challenges or stress or anxiety.

My little breakdown happened at a time when I was making more money than I've ever made in the business, so it has nothing to do with money. It's always going to be there, but it doesn't have to be a breakdown. It can be a breakthrough. And I'm incredibly grateful that I've had that moment now because looking back at it, I can see all the changes I've made in the business, and in my life as a result of it. And I'm really grateful for that. I can see how I am setting healthier boundaries and changing relationships and nurturing things I hold dear more, and saying no to things I don't value.

I can see how this is really just the start of new, beautiful things. As I move forward in this journey to build something that comes out of my head, and out of my heart, and something that was born from creativity. And something that makes other people's lives better every single day. And that is my wish for you too.

May you have a beautiful week. May you have a restful week. May you be mindful of your feeling and your thoughts. And may you listen to your body, so that you can stay true to yourself, and stay true to fire inside you that is burning to make a difference in the world. Have a lovely week and I'll catch you again next week. Bye.

Thank you so much for listening. If you had fun, please come back next week. And remember to hit that subscribe button, so you never miss a thing.