4 years ago I saved up everything I could, cut down on the mojitos, and a few months later I…. quit the yachts and headed to Melbourne to set up a base and start studying.

I bought a vitamix before I bought a bed, I was sleeping on the floor, but I could still make green smoothies. I threw out all the sugar in the house, turned vegan, started eating dates and raw desserts and mung bean pasta and nutritional yeast and maca powder, you know the drill. Towards the end of a year studying online at IIN, I got my first two clients who were old friends, and started coaching them on their health.

<<PS — this is part 2 of the post from yesterday>>

But very quickly I realised that A. I couldn’t keep up with being an orthorexic vegan, and B, I’m so all or nothing, I’m the worst person to be coaching people on moderation and health. I’m also a terrible cook, try as I might. BGC will testify  the one time I made him a roast I roasted the chicken upside down and didn’t even realise!

Health coaching was never going to be my thing.

The huge AHA moment for me was when I found myself crying on the floor under my desk with overwhelm, unable to get myself to stop procrastinating, yet way overstressed by the sheer scope of what I was trying to achieve and the weight of the responsibility of it all. I had gone too far to turn back, but I wasn’t sure I could hack it. I just couldn’t stop wasting my days on all the wrong things!

Never mind that being on Tinder was a full-time career for me at the time, and I was also working two part time jobs as a bartender and receptionist.

I decided that control freak though I was, I couldn’t do it alone, so I signed up for a 6 month business coaching mastermind which cost as much as my full year of health coaching studies at IIN.

[By the way — if you’re curious about training to become a health coach and run your own business from anywhere, the Institute of Integrative Nutrition — where I studied health coaching — was bloody awesome. You can check out a sample class here using my affiliate link here if you’re curious. (Or skip the next para if you’re not!)

I’m SO grateful for IIN for the amazing training which I still use in my own life to this day (both for my own health, and for the coaching skills I learnt), and for my beautiful, fulfilling business that I could not have created without them. Andddd for the amazing friends I made through the course, some of whom are still close friends almost a decade later! If you’re interested in health and nutrition, and helping others change their lives through living a more holistic lifestyle, I cannot recommend IIN more highly.]

Early on in the mastermind, my business coach asked me what I was coaching my first 2 clients on. I responded, “Oh, mindfulness,” as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. I explained how mindfulness had changed everything about my life, and that my 2 guinea pig clients seemed to be getting huge benefits out of it too.

And she asked me, Andrea, why don’t you be a mindfulness coach?

It was like someone turned on all the lights on in my brain!

Angels descended from the sky and hallelujah was sung.

And so was born my program Bloody Good Life 101 — an unconventional mind-taming program that teaches indecisive overachievers how to… er… tame their minds so they can get clear on which direction to take their lives.

And now I find myself doing the thing I love more than anything — the thing I had no idea was a “thing” until I found myself doing it.

You don’t need to know where the path leads when you step off one path and onto another.

But if your gut tells you you’re walking down the wrong path, for the love of biscuits, don’t keep walking! Take your fine self in another direction, even if you don’t yet know which direction that should be!

If you go wrong in your car, you pull over and do your best to work out where you went wrong, then you turn back, or you take another route entirely.

You might get lost along the way. It might be stressful and scary as hell, you might feel in limbo for a bit, but it’s better than ploughing down the wrong road forever just because “you’ve already gone too far to turn back”.

And you don’t have to do it alone. I can help you. It’s what I do best.

Don’t feel guilty or fickle for changing your mind — if you can’t stick with something it’s likely because you haven’t found the thing you want to do yet.

You can only connect the dots looking backwards, you can never connect the dots looking forwards, said my mate* Steve Jobs.

*Not actually my real life mate.

You can only see that your whole life path makes complete sense in hindsight, but it will never make complete sense until you’re looking back on it.

Everything I’ve ever done, right down to reading eat pray love and persevering with yoga even though I kind of hated all makes sense to me now, in hindsight.

If you’re feeling stuck — I’d bet you’re following your mind over your gut.

Your mind will always keep you stuck — it’s interested only in your safety, not your happiness.

You may not know what you want to do, but I bet you know what you don’t want to do.

Trust your gut. It already knows the way.

You just have to learn to listen again.

If you just can’t feel your gut instinct anymore, or the journey feels way too damn confusing… I’m your your guy. Female guy.

I’ll help you get your overanalysing mind out of the way so that you can hear the wise dude/ dudette inside you speak up. Check out my program Bloody Good Life. You can go solo and do the online D.I.Y. program, or sign up for a free chat with me and see if we’re a good fit for 1:1 coaching.