When I finished school, I was convinced I was going to become a doctor. I had chosen all the right subjects, worked hard and had my sights set on becoming a Royal Flying Doctor. When I narrowly missed out on medicine, I was devastated. At that age, I thought I knew exactly what my future was supposed to look like.
Life had something quite different in store.
I studied nursing briefly, went home to Birdsville, and eventually found myself drawn towards helping rural and regional businesses succeed. That led me back to university to study graphic design and communications, then into building my first business, brand and business strategy, coaching, human performance and ultimately the work I do today.
Years later, in my late twenties, medicine came back onto my radar. I applied again and was offered another interview. This time, I was the one who said no.
Talking about this in 2024 with Kelly Shann made me reflect on something I hadn’t really considered before. Perhaps part of the appeal of becoming a doctor was that it was an identity I could understand. Everyone knew what a doctor was. It was a respected career with a recognised path. What I was creating instead was far less certain, there wasn’t an obvious title or pathway for the work I was moving towards.
I think this becomes particularly relevant when you’re already successful.
The next version of you may not fit neatly into your current identity
The more established you become, the easier it is to identify yourself with what you’ve already created. You’re the CEO. The business owner. The expert. The person everyone comes to. You’ve accumulated experience, built a reputation and become very good at operating in a particular way.
And then you want something different.
Maybe it’s a much bigger business or more freedom and less involvement in the day-to-day. Maybe it’s another venture, a different role, greater wealth, more travel or simply a sense that there is another expression of your life and work that you haven’t explored yet.
The difficulty is that what you want next doesn’t always make sense from the identity you’ve built so far.
That was one of the things Bob Proctor helped me understand.
By the time I met Bob, I had an undergraduate degree, postgraduate study behind me, had studied leadership through Harvard and completed part of a master’s in organisational analysis. I wasn’t short on information.
But my results had plateaued.
Bob helped me stop looking for another qualification or external answer and start understanding why I was creating the results I was creating. He taught me to understand my paradigms, self-image and thinking differently, and then use that understanding to close the gap between where I was and where I wanted to go.
That changed the direction of my life.
Fear doesn’t necessarily mean you’re making the wrong move
One of the other things Kelly and I talk about in this conversation is fear, because inevitably when you begin moving beyond a familiar identity, you’re going to experience some discomfort.
We often assume that if something is right, we’ll feel confident about it.
Growth rarely works that way.
When you entertain a bigger goal, make a decision you’ve never made before or begin behaving differently from the person you’ve been, you’re moving away from what is familiar. Even when it’s something you genuinely want, your existing conditioning would still prefer to keep you where it knows how to operate.
Understanding that changed my relationship with fear. You don’t necessarily need to eliminate it before you move. You need to understand what you’re experiencing well enough that fear no longer gets to make the decision for you.
I’ve experienced that in business, on stages around the world and very literally when I entered a 250-kilometre ultramarathon through the Simpson Desert. There have been many times when the person I needed to become was not yet familiar to me.
I had to become her by moving.
You don’t have to know exactly who you’re becoming before you begin
Looking back, so many things that now make perfect sense in my life once sat completely outside the picture I had of myself.
The girl from Birdsville who thought she was going to become a doctor couldn’t have mapped out this career. The young business owner couldn’t have known she’d eventually fly to Toronto several times a year to study with Bob Proctor, stand on stages with him and eventually bring those ideas back to Australia in her own way.
And that’s something I’d love you to consider:
Is the future you really want still being filtered through an outdated idea of who you are supposed to be?
You don’t have to throw away everything you’ve created or become a completely different person, but you do have to give yourself permission to think beyond what is currently familiar.
Your next chapter may not have an obvious title yet. It may not make sense to everybody around you, and you may feel some fear when you begin moving towards it.
None of those things necessarily mean you should stop.
Sometimes they simply mean you’re growing.
→ WATCH MY FULL CONVERSATION WITH KELLY SHANN HERE
Kelly and I talk much more about growing up in Birdsville, the early years of my career, what Bob Proctor was really like as a mentor, fear, the Simpson Desert ultramarathons, attitude, authenticity and some of the experiences that have shaped how I live and work today.
What do you really want next?
If that question has been coming up for you lately, I’m also hosting my complimentary Make Your Own Luck Masterclass next week.
Across three live days, we’re going to work through what you really want, the old ideas that may be keeping you where you are, and how to start moving towards the next level before you feel completely ready.
Because success is never an accident.
