Episode 112: 10 Lessons Fiona Killackey Learned From Her First Year In Her 40’s
Fiona recently celebrated her 41st birthday, so for this special episode, she talks about the 10 important lessons she learned during her first year in her 40’s. Whether it’s about finding your real friends who will celebrate your wins or knowing the importance of having hard conversations, listen to what wisdom she can share after turning 41.
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
Fiona’s reflection of her year
10 Lessons She Learned
#1 You know more than you think you do.
#2 Be confident in your decision-making.
#3 Real friends celebrate your wins.
#4 Have those hard conversations.
#5 Be you, everyone else has taken.
#6 Spend the money, get the money.
#7 Perspective and gratitude
#8 Prioritize sleep.
#10 Ride your own wave.
Conclusion
Links/Resources Mentioned in this episode:
Episode transcript:
Hello, and welcome to episode 112 of the, My Daily Business Coach podcast. So today it is a coaching episode. Yeah. It's with me, it's where we kind of dive into one sort of life or business element in a bit more detail. And today it's quite a personal one. So I hope you stick around.
I know that sometimes people think, oh, this is a business podcast. Why is she getting so, you know, deep, meaningful, or why is she talking about lifestyle stuff? But I just think that life and business are so intertwined these days. Uh, I don't believe in a work-life balance. I think sometimes your work will be balanced and sometimes your life's balanced and, you know, miraculously, sometimes they both might feel really good, but a lot of the time it's just about figuring out how they can both work together. Side-by-side parallel sometimes crossing over other times, but yeah.
And so I do think that on this podcast and I definitely do it a lot in my Sunday email life has to come into it. The personal parts of your life are so influenced by your business and vice versa. Yeah. So today I'm really going to talk about for things yeah. That I've learned 10 things in particular that I've learned from my first year of my forties, because this time last year I turned 40, the big four. Oh, it was a really crazy 2020. And I had planned so many things for my 40th year. I had, you know, I was going to launch a book. I was going to go to New York. I was going to see my uncle in the U S who I desperately want to see. And I'm really upset at the moment that I can't see him. Um, and there were so many things that were on the horizon, just like for so many other people, you know, 2020, it was going to be the big year.
And I've talked about this, you know, many times, but the three years prior to that, I have lost both of my parents and gone through a pretty hard time trying to get pregnant for the second time. Also had a baby, thankfully miraculously. And he was, you know, he had to have operations. So it was just, I wanted 2020 to be this starting point of like a clean slate and everything being great. And of course, I think universe had other plans, but 2020’s still an amazing and a big year for me.
I launched this podcast, which is just blowing my mind all the time. I launched my first book, had it published by Hardie Grant, Passion, Purpose, Profit. Um, but yeah, we also had a pandemic and I had to ride the rollercoaster just like everybody else that was in business. I mean, like everyone else in the world in general, but especially for people in business, I had to figure out, you know, how can I run this business in a way that I can step back from it more because you know, they canceled childcare, they shut down schools.
And I had to look at my own systems and processes and, you know, these are things that I teach other people all the time. And I had to look at my own. I had to look at the way I was managing my staff and really allow them a lot more autonomy than I had been. So many things came up in 2020. But another thing that came up in 2020 was that, and really the year before as well, I was doing a lot of this was that in my 39th and my 40th year, I really began to invest more time and more money into learning about Australia's first nations people. So I read, I read all the books. I contacted lots of people. I followed lots of accounts. I reached out to various indigenous groups. I set up monthly donations to places like pay the rent and places like Sisters Inside. And I invested in cultural insights, trainings, and different courses, and I changed things and I still have a huge, huge, huge way to go.
But I wanted to acknowledge that, you know, I'm running this podcast and I run my business. I make my money predominantly whilst being in Warrandyte. And I want to acknowledge that the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation are the traditional custodians of the land on which I work and I make my money and it's stolen land. And I want to pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging. Also, acknowledge that sovereignty has never been seated. And when we first moved to North Warrandyte back in 2015, I did some research into its history. I'd grown up around here. So I sort of knew it, but I hadn't really taken the time to, and I'm kind of ashamed that I hadn't done that, but I hadn't really looked into the history of Warrandyte. Where does the name come from? All of that sort of stuff.
And I did some research back in 2015, and I found out some pretty amazing stuff. And in the last year, I'd kind of gone back through that information and I've shared it more widely with my children and with my family. And I've tried to be more vocal with my son's school. I've emailed his teachers to sort of say, Hey, what are you doing for NAIDOC week? What are you doing for this? What are you doing for reconciliation? Um, and really wanting to understand how he is going to get this information outside of, you know, learning from me and my, my husband and what I found out when I was kind of going through all of this is the fact that, you know, I'm in a very important place, work from a very important place in Aboriginal history, um, information like the fact that the Wurundjeri people often hosted into tribal events and they involve thousands of guests coming from, you know, different countries.
And the last of these, um, at lb band was actually held in Warren diet in 1852. And it was here that they had this inter-tribal game of man and Brook, which is the original Australian football, and that was played there. But unfortunately soon after the government withdrew Aboriginal people's right to practice traditional life, and they relocated a lot of this tribe to the current deck, Aboriginal mission in Healesville and reading that. And, you know, even now I get really like teary and, and it's it's. So we have so much work to do here in Australia to rectify and to acknowledge and to apologize and to figure out how we can go forward together so that everybody feels acknowledged and respected. And I personally have a long way to go in this regard, and I'm embarrassed that it's taken so long for me to do this, but I'm starting and I'm committed.
And I hope that by listening to this, that if you are an indigenous person in this country, that it helps in some tiny way. And that if you are non-indigenous that it makes you consider what you might do here in Australia, if you're running a business or if you're not running a business, but also from anywhere that you're listening to, that you stand up and you make, you know, these small steps consistently that become bigger things that can impact and really help all of us, you know, gain equality and access for everybody. Um, we just, like I said, we just have so much to change in this country and it it's really, really sad and heartbreaking, but it's also somewhat hopeful that things may change. And I think all of us play our part in that. So onto today's episode. All right.
So when I say down to think about this episode, I thought, well, what have I learned in this first year of being in my forties in the first year of being 40?
And I kind of narrowed it down, there were so many things that I learned, and of course I'm not going to be able to get through all of them and in one episode in a podcast, but I kind of wanted to list out 10 that really stood out to me.
#1 You know more than you think you do.
So years ago I bought an Anthony Burrill print, um, and in the barrel does amazing work out of the UK. And I bought a print of his using years ago with this exact phrase on it, you know, more than you think you do. And I think as small business owners, we spend so much time kind of seeking answers outside of ourselves, paying for courses, paying for this, paying for that thinking, if I could just learn this thing, everything else will fall into place.
And we don't actually acknowledge that we know a whole lot. And particularly if you are 40 and you've been in doing this for some time, or, you know, you're 40 and you've been working for a good 25 years, most of us in some capacity, you know, a lot. And sometimes we don't stop and acknowledge all the things that we've gone through, all the experiences that we've had. And one of my favorite things about coaching people is getting the opportunity to ask them well, what do you think the answer is? What do you think the solution could be? I, when I work with people, whether they're doing like an ad hoc coaching session or, you know, longer packages, they will all get quite a lengthy questionnaire to fill out before they come into the first coaching session. And in that questionnaire, uh, lots of different questions, questions, but one of them is around, you know, the gap between where you are now and where you want to be.
And I asked them, what are five ways that you could close that by yourself? And people often, that's the hardest question because, but it's also the most interesting because if we let ourselves, if we really give ourselves space and time to reflect, often we have great answers. We have, we know what it needs to happen. And even when I work with people in a consult call, and I sort of say, you know, what sort of things are you hoping to get out of coaching? Where do you want to be in 12 months? They often have the answers. It's just, no, one's asked them the question or they haven't asked themselves the question and they've been kind of conditioned so much to think that all the answers are external, whereas so much of how we run our lives comes from our intuition. It comes from experiences that we've had education, so many things.
And of course I'm a big one for education. So I'm not saying you should not look outside yourself ever. But I think that we really do know more than we think we do. And often, yeah, when push comes to shove or, I mean, we saw it. Yeah. So much in 2020 when out of necessity, you know, in innovation is born. And I think that that really stems back from, you know, trusting ourselves. And I think whatever way society is going and social media and so many other things, we've been conditioned more and more to not trust ourselves, to look externally for everything. And I know it's a little bit different to business, but I saw an amazing documentary recently called birth time. And if you ever want to be a parent, um, if you are a parent, definitely check it out. It's really about women acknowledging that, you know, women have been having babies for thousands of men, you know, hundreds of thousands of years.
And we yet in the last sort of 50, 60 years have really been conditioned to think, we don't know what's happening in our own body and that we need everyone else. And every other kind of tech tool out there to tell us, you know, when to feed our child when to do this, when to do that. Whereas, you know, a mother's intuition is, is exactly that we have such incredible intuition. And that's just one example of really thinking about, do I know this answer? And so I'm kind of asking you that if you're listening to this and you're considering something that you're doing in your business right now, or something you'd like to do in your business, maybe sit down and journal about it, write down, you know, ask yourself, ask yourself the question and then just journal and see what comes out. And I know that, you know, quite often for me, that can work really well.
Um, sometimes I just need a conversation with a friend. I need someone to bounce it off. And I often talk about your bounce off crew, but you do often know more than more than you think you do. And I definitely feel like that lesson has come to the fall quite a lot in this first year 40.
#2 Be confident in your decision-making.
So again, in my first year of 40, I really made some big decisions around my business. I made big decisions around friendships. I made big decisions around investing in myself and in my business. Um, whether was more staff, whether it was, you know, a mastermind group in the U S I really did say, you know what, I'm, I'm making this decision and I don't need to have a committee of people to like bounce every single thing off. Um, I don't need to weigh it up a thousand times.
I'm going to make this decision. I'm going to do it. And, you know, I'm, I'm 40, and I know I'm 40, you know, almost 41. But in that first year, I had to really think, you know, what, when am I going to make the decision, if not now, like, when am I going to be confident in my decision-making, I am, you know, halfway through my life. And I've been working at since I was 14 and nine months. So I know, you know, it kind of leads from number one, you know, more than you think you do, but really being more confident. And I love that. I love that in my forties. I feel more confident than I have in know, definitely in my twenties where I, I really let, um, a lack of confidence, you know, prevents so many great things from happening. But yeah, I love that men, regardless of what age you are, just really be more confident in your decision-making and look at the things that you're making decisions on.
And of course, it's good to, you know, chat through with friends. And I do that at times, but I think sometimes we can get to a point where we almost can't make the decision ourselves. We don't trust ourselves enough. So a big lesson that I've learned in my forties was to be confident in your decision-making. And even recently for my birthday, um, I am looking at something that is quite expensive and something that I thought I would never kind of spend that sort of money on. And I just go, and you know what, I'm going to do it. I'm making that decision. I don't need to run it by everyone else. I am a grown woman, just like the Beyonce
And a vote. I'll make a decision. I can make a decision. So snap, there it is.
So that's number two, be confident in your decision making.
#3 Real friends celebrate your wins.
And I had a lot of wins in my 40th year. I, you know, I had my book, which did really well. I had this podcast, which has done way more than I, you know, way better than I thought it would do. Um, I had some great media. I had some really fantastic speaking opportunities. And, you know, I know that the pandemic is an Oz really, really hard for a lot of people. And I tried in some times to kind of downplay what I was doing. And if people had said things, I would just sort of go, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's going okay.
Um, and I really realized that, you know, I had one in particular, one friendship that just turned really sour and it turned, um, just not great. And I found myself putting up with a lot of, kind of passive aggressive comments. I found myself, you know, being in a conversation where someone would say, oh, you know, it's my worst nightmare to be living in the suburbs with two kids. And I was like, what? Like me and I just found myself kind of apologizing for anything that I had got. And I've thought that's a really whack way to be. And when my friends are doing well, I am so supportive of them. And I really hope that I am. And please friends, if you're listening and you don't think I have, please let me know, but I try to genuinely celebrate their wins. And I'm always with my clients, you know, some of my clients are doing far better than I am, and I will say to them, I am so excited for you.
I'm so thrilled for you, you know, how are you going to celebrate this? And I think that what I learned in my 40th year is that, you know, my real friends will celebrate my wins. They are not going to see it as, uh, you know, if I'm doing well, they're somehow not going to get part of the pie. I felt, you know, I really, I really had to question my certain friendships last year. And I talk about, um, the book, I've talked about it many times, how to break up with friends from Dr. Hannah Corel. And she just opened my eyes to so many things. So if you are in that situation or if you've got to a certain point in your life with a particular friend or even a family member or somebody else, and you just think, I don't need to keep putting up with your, you know, sly put downs.
Um, I'm, you know, I can be proud of what I'm doing. I can be confident in what I'm doing and it doesn't need to impact you in any way then, you know, definitely check out that book, How to Break Up With Friends by Dr. Hannah Korrel. We'll leave a link to that in the show notes. And if you want to dive into it deeper, then definitely check out episode 66 of this podcast, because I had a full chat with Dr. Hannah and she talked all about just, not only just that a mind issues and the challenges that can go on when you have kind of toxic friendships, but also what can happen to your body physically when, when you're kind of being bombarded with this sort of negative stuff all the time. And it's a fascinating book and fascinating conversation with her. So yeah, if you're in that situation, definitely after you've listened to this check out episode 66 of this podcast, but yeah, that is number three, real friends celebrate your wins.
But also, yeah, I got to the point and I thought I'm 40. I just, I don't need a hundreds of friends. I need good friends. And I need friends who are willing to go deep with me, willing to get into the messy stuff and willing to be there and kind of sort through things and also think friends that can say, oh my God, you're doing so well. And I just want to give you a massive pat on the back, because that is brilliant and in no way impacts me as a negative thing. So, you know, that is number three, real friends, celebrate your wins.
#4 Have those hard conversations, have the awkward conversations, confront things. Don't let things to simmer and slide and kind of annoy you.
So I, lots of hard conversations in 2020, I I'm someone who doesn't really shy away from confrontation. Um, but you know, maybe that sounds a little, uh, contradictory to what I just said about the friendship. But I think with friends, sometimes I've let things go a lot, but in terms of business and other things, I'm more than happy to have, you know, the hard conversations, but 2020. And my first year of being 40 really reminded me have those hard conversations because often while they're awkward and challenging and uncomfortable, what can result from them is brilliant and beautiful and amazing, and often things that you wouldn't have thought of before. So last year I had lots of conversations around things like equality, things about racism, things about my own issues, as someone with immense white privilege, um, talking about black lives matter with my black friends, talking about, you know, skin color, talking about all sorts of things.
Talking about these things with my husband, who has Indian heritage talking about, you know, my white privilege with other white people and just having all of these conversations, having these things that you know, are uncomfortable, uh, hard. But my God, like if I, whatever I experienced was like a teeny tiny percentage of what, you know, anyone who is a person of color or, um, indigenous or, or, you know, in minority groups has experienced their whole life. So, but having those hard conversations, it wasn't just on, you know, the big things that were happening in society. I was having those hard conversations, um, around other aspects as well. And one of my good friends, Natasha ACE, and I'm sure she won't mind me saying this. Um, we had like a challenging time. A couple of times we are very close. We talk all the time. Um, we are business besties.
We both know each other's complete financials. Um, we, we meet every quarter. We do our strategy planning together and something had come up and she got quite upset about it. And I sort of was, I, I didn't understand how she was upset about it. And in the end we kind of talked it through. And I remember her, she was pushing for us to talk through, which was really great. And I will always respect her for that. And she said, I think she sent a text message, sort of saying whatever happens now, whichever way we go from this conversation will define us. So we can either sit down, hash it out and get through this, or we can walk away and lose an incredible friendship and an incredible, you know, business relationship as well. And, um, and my business relationship, I mean, you know, not a financial one, but I mean, like, uh, a truly somebody that gets what I'm going through in my business and I get what she's going through in her business.
And so we had the awkward conversation. We both cried, uh, she, she is someone who does not cry ever. So was a big thing. Um, but we really talked about everything and it wasn't even about this thing that she'd brought up in the end. It was about something totally different, but I had to apologize for things I'd done. She had to apologize for things she'd done. There was big miscommunications happening, but I will be forever grateful that we had that conversation because in the end it brought us so much closer and it allowed, and now we kind of joke about it, but the time it was really hard. And I really had to dig that deep and get over my ego and get over other things and have that conversation with her. And I wish in some way that, that other friend that I sort of had lost in, in my first year of being 40, I wish we had been able to have that conversation.
I really tried to have that conversation with her. Um, but both parties need to be interested in it. And it's like any relationship, whether you have a business partnership, whether you're in a romantic relationship or a friendship, you have to have the hard conversations that is what's going to lead you through to the next level of your relationship. And so if you're listening to this and say, maybe you're managing somebody right now, and you've been avoiding having the hard conversation. Um, you have the hard conversation because quite often you're actually doing them a favor. You're actually teaching them potentially in, in, in a manager managing kind of relationship. You know what, maybe they don't know. Um, likewise in a romantic relationship. I mean, my husband and I have been married for 14 years and we often have hard conversations. And in the last few years we have had so much death and so much hard stuff happen that we've had to keep having those hard conversations.
We had to keep being open with each other. And I think that my first year of turning 40 really reminded me have the hard conversations. And because it also don't want to regret things, you don't want to think, oh, I left that unsaid. Or I wish I had just said that to them, or, you know, for yourself as well as for the other person. So have the hard conversations, speak deeply with people. And you know, when it comes to things like black lives matter, it's all of our responsibility to have those hard conversations. So that's number four, have the hard conversations.
#5 Be you, everyone else has taken.
Yeah. And I am always like learning that lesson. I feel like every year of my life, I've had to learn that lesson, but in my forties, I'm in my forties, in my first year of being 40. Um, I really had to dig into who am I? And you know, yeah. Who am I very existential question, but like, who am I in terms of my business? What does my brand stand for? And I had to really turn off, um, looking at it. Yeah. A lot of other people that are in the same space, um, I had to really think about, you know, oh, this is me. And you know, sometimes in my Sunday email, I'm going to get quite sometimes I'm going to put a piece of poem in there. Sometimes I'm going to sing on a podcast, even though I don't have great voice, you know, I'm going to use references to bad nineties R and B, because that's what I loved growing up.
I was convinced I was like going to be Brandy. And Monica is like, best friend, aye, that's me. That's who I am. Not this other person. I'm not someone with pompoms. I'm not someone who throws confetti in their brand photo shoots. That's not me. And that's fine. Those people are those people. And if that's authentic to them, awesome. I really had to sit down and go, just be you the right people that know, you know, you are the right people for them will come to you. And I really had to think about that, especially when it came to my book and how I would launch it. And, um, you know, especially launching it in the pandemic and it locked down. But I really had to also think about, even with the book putting out, you know, I had quite personal stories in there and I did think I'm going to get judged.
People are going to think this or that. And I really had to just go screw it. This is me. I'm not going to be apologetic for it. I am me and I'm going to be me because everyone else has taken. And I love that quote and just, you know, being me on social media and speaking my truth and talking up about things that I know that some other business coaches are absolutely thinking the polar opposite too. I really had to dig deep and to think about my values and integrity and what feels right for me and what's aligned. And so that is number five, just be you because everyone else has taken. And I'll say your bloody fantastic. So be you.
#6 Spend the money, get the money.
But yeah, money is something that you can get again. And I know, I know I'm speaking from a very privileged position, but believe me, I have been in positions where for years I would go to the supermarket and hope to God that my card went through. Um, I have been in, you know, places where I've had to work around the clock, two jobs to get the money that I needed for my rent. I, um, when I lived in England, the first time in my twenties, my flatmate would bring bread home and I'd have two pieces of bread and mayonnaise on a sandwich. And that was it because I was like, man, I can not afford to buy anything else. Um, I used to sometimes get a seven pence, um, tin of spaghetti from Tesco. So I have definitely been places where, and situations in my life, where money was not there and I can laugh about it now, but I believe me, I was not laughing at the time, but this year I have worked incredibly hard and I'm someone who doesn't spend money on themselves. I don't tend to spend money on me. Um, I will, you know, I might spend a bit here and there and, you know, fashion or some earrings, but it's never really much money. And, um, you know, I really, there's a few things in my life that I'd really like, I really wanted to get some nice chairs from my office.
Um, I wanted to get some artwork from one of my artists. One of the people I follow on Instagram, who's an artist. Um, and I, and I bought the artwork and, you know, I've invested in quite a bit of art recently. And I really, in my 40th year, I thought I'm 40. I've worked for a long time and I've kept telling myself these kinds of limiting beliefs of the, you can't spend that much money. That's too much money to spend on X, Y, or Z. And I thought, no, I'm going to spend the money. I've got the money to spend. I'm incredibly lucky to have that money to spend, but I'm going to spend the money and things like the mastermind in the U S that's probably the most I've spent on my business besides staff, um, for six years. And I really, you know, I've, I've had other business coaches before that were quite a bit of money, um, in the U S of hope business coaches in the UK.
And this year, I thought, you know what? I've looked at this same, person's mastermind for three years. And I've, every time told myself it's too expensive. Uh, and this time I thought tougher, I'm doing it. You know what I'm signing up and, you know, I'm going to pay in full upfront. Um, so that I can't question myself later. So there's a great book that I talk about, um, a bit, I think I've mentioned it before in this podcast, it really, really helped me when I was first starting my business and it's called work smarter live better. And, um, I'll link to that in the show notes, but the starting point, the start of that book, the author, um, I think his name's Cecile Pepijn, um, I probably mispronounced that, but he talks about the fact that if somebody came up to you in the street and asked for $50, you would, you know, be kind of questioning like, oh, why do you need $50?
Or, you know, if someone turned around to that, you know, and said, um, can you give me $200 today? You'd ask, why do you need the $200? Whereas when people ask for our time, like, oh, Hey, can I just grab a coffee or, Hey, can I just, um, you know, chew your ear off for two hours about something, we just give it up. And yes, definitely. Sometimes it's great to give that up for our loved ones, family, clients, things like this, but sometimes we are just giving our time away for free. And in the book he talks about, you know, money, you can get back, you can earn more money. You can, you can sell things. You can find ways to get more money, but you cannot ever get your time back. And so I really thought about that in terms of spending the money on certain things, instead of sitting there for three years and all that energy and mind stuff that is wasted on thinking about it, writing my application, removing my application, thinking about it again, telling myself I can't afford it.
Dah, dah, dah, dah, over and over and over. And I thought, that's time just wasted. And this time, you know, I've put the money down. I've invested my time, my energy and my money into it. But if you have the money and I know I'm talking, and I'm sure this is going to be uncomfortable and triggering for some people, and maybe some of you are even going to turn off this episode right now, but I would question you as to why, what are you telling yourself? And I know, cause I used to get triggered by people's podcasts when they'd talk about money when I was first starting out and I would think, oh, I'm not there. And I don't have this and all that sort of thing. And this point is not to say, oh, you have to have money and everything will be great.
But it's to say that if you have the money and you know that you've got the money and you feel safe in that, you're not gonna make any, you know, massive negative issues for your family or your household or lifestyle needs. But if you have that money and you've been questioning yourself and questioning and telling yourself, I can't afford it, I'm not good enough. I won't get that money back, all the sort of fear and scarcity mindset. I would ask you to think about what might happen if you do spend the money, what what's the good that could come out of it, what could result from the end of it? Um, one of the people that was in my group coaching the first year that I ran it, um, I remember when she came in first, she was so scared about saying that she was a designer or using that term in any way.
And now I've seen her just catapult. She's getting so much media and press and, um, and she's getting all these amazing opportunities because she's put herself out there and she's saying, you know what? I put my designer flag in the sand and I'm a designer. And I love seeing that. And I'm not saying for a second, that that was all me or the group coaching program at all, but I definitely saw her confidence grow as a result of her investing in something like a group coaching program. And her also getting the feedback, not just for myself, but from other people in there, a few people who are very senior in the design space. And so, you know, you want to think about, what's the amazing thing that could happen at the end of this. And even with myself and this mastermind, I've just seen so many shifts in my mindset and just created such great friendships that I hope will last for a lifetime, with some people from that group coaching program.
And also just the things that people are asking the questions, the relaying of what they're going through. It's really opening my eyes up to so many things. And it's definitely been a great investment. So spend the money. If you have the money, I should put that in practice, you know, spend them, and this money also could be donation. You might say, you know, what, what could I do for, um, indigenous people? If you're someone who's not indigenous and it might be, you know what, I'm going to invest, I'm going to invest in, you know, these courses, I'm going to invest in training. I'm going to invest in putting my money into things like stolen land funds and other things like that. So that's number six, spend the money, if you have the money.
#7 Perspective and gratitude
I'm sure for every single person in the world, because of this pandemic, we have just seen so many examples of putting things in perspective and bloody thankful for what we have.
And when I turned 40, um, I didn't really go through the whole, oh my God, I'm 40. I'm going to be so old. That sort of thing. I didn't feel sad about it. Um, but I probably had more, more kind of feelings around turning 41, but cause now I'm fully going to be in my forties, but I had a lot of gratitude around turning 40. And one of the reasons for that comes from a beautiful friend who, uh, Lisa CET, who I lost. Um, she was one of my best friends and when I was 21, she died in a car accident and it was just a massive moment in my life. And there's not there. I genuinely think there wouldn't be a week that goes past that. I don't think about Lisa. Um, particularly I live in the area that she had the crash in and I think quite often about everything she hasn't been able to achieve in her life and do in her life.
And she did so many amazing things in her short life. She was so warm and she had the most beautiful smile. Um, and I'm getting teary now. But when I turned 40, I had to think, you know, I've been able to have children. I've been able to find my partner. I've been able to buy a house. I mean, it was to build a business. I've been able to be best friends with my parents before they passed away. I've had so many opportunities, I've traveled the world. I had got a book out I've I've been able to dance. I've been able to have a wedding, like so many things that I know Lisa would have loved to have had, and she didn't get that opportunity. And that's one example, but there are people all over the world who don't get to live to 40, who don't have access to health, um, you know, information and also just health services who don't have access to clean water who don't have access to so many things.
Um, and it just really puts it in perspective that instead of worrying about, oh my God, I'm getting gray hair. I'm 40, I'm so old or any, you know, I'm frumpy or whatever that, thank God I'm 40. Thank God that I got to live this long. And I got to, you know, be my, see my parents and all of those sorts of things. And so that has been a big lesson, again, perspective and gratitude. So that is number seven perspective in gratitude, whether you're 40, whether you're 20 or whether you're 60, you know, just be thankful that we're here, we're alive. We can another day that my dad used to always say that when he'd say, how are you dad? He's like, well, I'm still here got another day. I was like, okay. Yes. So massive number seven perspective and gratitude.
#8 Prioritize sleep.
So you may have heard me. I was on the wonderful Sophie walkers, Australian birth stories, uh, podcast. And I talked about having my own children and having two children with my husband and everything that I went through. We went through for that. But I also talked about the fact that neither of my children have great sleepers. My son who's eight, uh, has never been a great sleeper and basically just started sleeping through the night when we had the other kid. Not really when we had the other kid that sounds so like, I don't know who these other kiddies, but yeah, when he, um, my son Levi never really slept well. He was always up in the middle of the night. He was always coming into our bed or my husband or my self was going into his bed. Um, and he kind of got okay probably around the four year mark and we tried lots of different things.
It just never worked. So we sort of gave up and with the second child, Leo, beautiful Leo, he is now two, but he did not sleep through the night for 15 months. And I'm not joking about that. He didn't sleep one single night through the night and he not even just, he didn't sleep. He took a good hour and a half to get down. He, um, God, he just was, it was hard. It was very hard. My husband and I slept in separate beds because one of us would sleep in the bedroom with him. Um, he had a cop, but inevitably we would end up with him in the bed and then you wouldn't sleep because he's so worried that he's going to fall or do something. And so for 15 months, from the time from mid mid 2019 to the end of 2000, towards the end of 2020, we didn't sleep.
My husband and I did not sleep. So, you know, that leads to, you know, you're cranky, tired, you have no energy. You're just, you know, filling up with sugar. Um, we don't drink coffee, but if I did, did drink coffee, I would have been just injecting it into my veins. And so I was constantly tired. Um, and you know, a lack of sleep patterns, DEMEC leaks on the issues. It's not great for your mental health. And so about halfway through 2020, I have a wonderful book club and somebody in my wonderful book club, Kate Stokes from cocoa flip, she mentioned a sleep consultant that she, that had worked miracles with her daughters. And so she gave me her name and we invested in not just, you know, the money, cause it really, this woman could charge a lot more. She's like literally a miracle worker.
Um, but at the time, and so we invested and within a couple of days he was sleeping 12 hours and that's how he sleeps now. And it was amazing. Like he's literally goes down for his nap. I'm like, is this is this reality because our first child was never like that. So we just thought this is our lump. I actually thought it was a myth that people could just kiss their child and put them to sleep and they're fine. Um, but that's what happened. So that was a big one in my 40th year to prioritize sleep. And I do, you know, you read all the things about sleep and mental health, but really, really I had to really prioritize the sleep and prioritize a whole family's health and not just think, well, this is it, you're tired. You're a new parent. This is, you know, just leave it, you know, lump it.
I had to really prioritize sleep. And so if you are listening and you're in the same situation as us and you haven't you a newborn or, you know, I think she really helps anyone from newborn to four or five years old even, but her name is Amy Huebner and she is a sleep consultant and she runs a business called Huscher by baby.com.edu. And even if you're listening outside of Australia and you're going through this and you know, believe me, please prioritize sleep when I say it, because this just changed our entire lives. So we will definitely link to Amy's harsher buy baby.com today, you in the show notes as well. But yeah, that was a massive lesson. Um, when I turned 40 to think about sleep and mental health and also physical health, my father, uh, suffered from insomnia, um, really because he was a captain on a ship for a long time.
And then he worked shift work and he was always awake and he had a lot of health problems in the last kind of 20, 30 years of his life. And not all of them were related to sleep. I'm sure, but there's so many studies out there about lack of sleep and, you know, mental health, but also lack of sleep and physical decline. So really whether you have children, whether you don't have children, whether you're 40, whether you're much younger or older prioritize sleep, that was a big, big lesson for me. So that's number eight, prioritize sleep.
#9 challenge yourself
I think complacency is something that I deal with. Um, a bit in my life. I can get quite complacent about work. I can get complacent about, you know, healthy habits. I can get complacent about lots of different things, friendships. Um, you know, I can, I can get to that point of just going, Ooh, well it's all okay.
And I think I actually find myself irritable or like antsy when I get to that point and I kind of have to figure out, oh, it's because you're you, you're not being challenged right now. And I'm somebody that needs a challenge. And so it can be as simple as, you know, going to one class to learn something. And that might be, you know, something related to business. It could be SEO, it could be, um, Facebook advertising. It could be learning how to use InDesign or another graphic design software, but you want to keep challenging yourself. And I think that's something that as you hit more and more goals in your business, you kind of sometimes can go, oh, well, what's next. And not that you need to move the goalposts, but I think we do need to be challenged by things. And it could be as simple as, you know, doing the crossword.
That was something my dad used to love to do doing the crossword, um, every single day. So you want to challenge yourself. And for me in my year of turning 40, one of the things that I had to go through, it was, um, to go through all of my dad's stuff and my mom's stuff. Um, my sister, my beautiful sister had kept a lot of it for all of us. And we had to really go through it and sort it out. And in that I inherited all of my mom's knitting needles and my mother was an incredible knitter. Like you could literally show her a picture of something and she would be able to need it for you. Um, she was just so fast and she'd, she'd do it well, you know, shouting at the TV while the golf was on at the football or whatever she was watching.
And she was an amazing leader and she taught us how to knit, but you know, you kind of forget those things if you're not using it. And so that's the challenge that I'm going to give myself. Um, and that I have given myself in my 40th year, I am going to learn how to knit and I'm not going to be as good as my mom. She had, you know, years and years and years ahead of me. Uh, but I'm going to try and I'm going to knit a couple of things. And I think it also switches on different parts of the brain when we learn something, when we challenge ourselves, whether it's a new language, whether it's a new piece of software, whether it's figuring out how to, you know, do your zero reconciliation, we want to challenge ourselves. So I would kind of urge you that if you're listening to this, just think about two things, two things that you might challenge yourself on.
And then once those have happened, you know, something else and something else years ago using years ago, I co I went and had breakfast with my brother. Who's a professor in psychology and a practicing clinical psychologist. And I said to him, I think I need to see a psychologist. And I'd never seen one before. And he kind of challenged me to say, what do you think is the problem? And I was like, well, I don't, I try to think of what the problem is. I'm just not feeling great. And he actually said, why don't you challenge yourself to do something you don't think you can do? And what he did was fair. And then that afternoon, he signed me up to a run for the kids like run. Um, I think it was like 2007 or 2008 maybe. And I had, I hadn't been running for some, for a long time.
I'd run early in like my early twenties, but I hadn't run again. Um, and so it was in three weeks and I was like, there is no way in hell. I'm going to be able to run like seven or eight kilometers nonstop. I, I don't, you know, I'm not gonna be able to do it. And I, and that was my attitude. I'm not gonna be able to do it. I don't know why you've done this. It's ridiculous. It's a waste of money. And he said, no, I'm going to do it. I'm going to run with you. And Jerome, my husband is also going to run with you. And we ran and I ran the whole way. I pretty much swore the entire way around the tent, but we got through it and I, and they both stood back so that I could go first over the, you know, the end of the finish line.
And I felt amazing. I felt so good. And I always remember that because I challenged myself or he kind of forced me to challenge myself to do something I did not think I would be able to do. And so, yeah, I would ask you to think about two things, whether they're in, they might be in business, they might be life-related that you could do to challenge yourself. Because I do think we learn so much about ourselves and it really goes back to that point. Number one, you know, more than you think you do, sometimes you can do more than you think you do. So that's number nine, challenge yourself.
#10 Ride your own wave.
Now this is some Sage advice that my husband who's very good at giving me lots of Sage advice gave to me one night during the lockdown. And I was going through a kind of comparison black hole. I think I might've been quite anxious about my book coming out or something else. And, um, my husband is a keen surfer. He surfs every single week. When you are in the ocean, there is not point in looking at anyone else. You cannot look at what other people are doing or you could miss this perfect wave that’s coming along just for you. In business, you can’t keep looking at everyone around you or you could potentially miss the perfect wave coming to you. You’ve got to ride your own wave. Your wave might take you all the way to the shore, your wave might take you halfway and you can go back and start again. You have to ride your own wave because that is your journey. Whenever I feel I’m not where I should be in business or any other part of my life, I have to say it’s been such a great mantra – ride your own wave. Which waves are you riding these days? Either yours or somebody else’s.
Here's a recap of the lessons I’ve learned in my first year in my 40’s:
#1 You know more than you think you do.
#2 Be confident in your decision-making.
#3 Real friends celebrate your wins.
#4 Have those hard conversations.
#5 Be you, everyone else has taken.
#6 Spend the money, get the money.
#7 Perspective and gratitude
#8 Prioritize sleep.
#10 Ride your own wave.
So that is it for episode 112. There is a full transcript over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/112.
I hope you love it. I’d love to know which lesson stood out to you. We would love to hear from you.
Thanks for listening to My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you want to get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram at @mydailybusinesscoach.
