My three part model
People sometimes ask me how I came to my three-part coaching model. After my separation I did some stuff, some of it good, some of it questionable, I made a whole lot of mistakes and I realised that really, there were three things I needed to master in order to create the life of my dreams.
1. CONFIDENCE IN MY ABILITY TO HANDLE MY FINANCES
When my divorce first settled I went to see a financial planner. I sat down to talk to them about my financial future and broke down in tears.
I cried because I was scared I would make a mistake with the money from my settlement. I cried because I felt like I didn't know what I was doing. And I probably cried because I was sad. The financial planner kindly handed me some tissues, asked me some questions, came up with some ideas and sent me off to have a think.
After a few days, I sat down, re-read their options, took a few breaths and "did the numbers": spreadsheets; budgets; short and long term financial scenarios and strategies. Things I knew how to do from years of working in finance, but which I had somehow forgotten about in the turmoil of the separation process.
I wondered.... if I have a Masters in Accounting and a 15 year career managing money and I had lost sight of the fundamentals of money, is it also daunting for women who have never managed their own money before, or who haven't had to for a long time because their partner had done it. Perhaps it's even more so?
This was the experience that led to the idea for the first module of my program - financial fundamentals.
2. CONFIDENCE IN MY FUTURE
Once I’d sorted out my money and bought myself a house, I wondered “what’s next?” What struck me so clearly after the divorce was that all my previous plans for my future had been tied to my ex-husband. And now they had all been obliterated, deleted, just wiped away and I realised I had none of my own. My whole future was blank and I had no idea what I wanted to fill it with.
So often, after divorce and separation, I hear women talk about how lost they've been in the roles of 'homemaker' and 'mother' and 'wife' and this was my experience too. After separation, some of those roles disappeared or were less significant and I was left wondering where did I want my life to go?
I spent a lot of time and money finding people to help me answer those questions and I see now that this period is SUCH a beautiful opportunity for redefining who we are and what we, as newly single women, want out of life.
This time is an opportunity to consciously, selfishly create the life of our dreams! And the process for how to do this, once I learnt it, was simple and one that could be easily repeated.
3. SELF LOVE AND CONFIDENCE
When my ex-husband said he no longer wanted to be married to me, I was devastated, I'm not going to lie. I spent weeks furtively walking around checking out how many women had wedding bands on - was I a lone loser or were there others like me? I looked at the women who were still married and wondered "what do they have that I don't?" Maybe I wasn't pretty enough. Or fun enough. Or good enough at cooking and cleaning. They were awful things to feel about myself and were definitely not things I wanted to carry around for the rest of my life.
Maybe you have those thoughts too?
And then came the clincher... the day I heard myself telling my daughter that "your dad will always earn more money than me..."
What I didn't say was "because he's a man" but my god it was RIGHT THERE, on the tip of my tongue, ready to slide out and damn a whole new generation of women to unequal pay. Wow! What a revelation! I REALLY had some limiting self-beliefs and conditioned thinking.
That moment was the breakthrough to the final piece of the puzzle for me. I went and found the best, quickest and most effective way I could for how to change unconscious core beliefs and I’ve never looked back.
I now live a life that I love, with amazing friends, close relationships with my family, wonderful, sensual romantic partners and a calling that makes my heart sing. I love and value myself, know what I want for my life and have long and short-term financial plans to support me in living the life I choose.
In hindsight, it would have been better to master those three in the reverse order (which is how I share it in my program) but life is not perfect or linear and I got there in the end, to my messy, glorious, fulfilling, rewarding life, and that is all that matters.