Blog

Is your gut saying “not this?”

Happiness & Fulfilment, Making Decisions & Finding Passion

Chaps, after just 5 weeks at home, I’m off again, this time to San Diego and Huntington, to see my mate*

Ecky Tolle!

The minute Project Self became a full time location independant gig, I set off for Bali for two months. Then NZ for 2 months. Then Bali again for two months just a month ago. And now I’m off to San Diego and Huntington and shortly afterwards – Mexico with BGC!

Travel is the number one thing that makes me want to high five strangers. So I got a bit carried away this year with extreme travel plans.

*Disclaimer, Ecky doesn’t yet know we’re going to be mates.

Never in my wildest dreams did I think that this lifestyle would be possible so quickly, and so fulfillingly. I thought it would take me many moons to get here, but I was determined, I set out to do whatever it took to do what I love while also being location independent.

Even though I hadn’t a clue what I loved until I stumbled into it accidentally,

probably even drunkenly.

Success for me isn’t how much money I make. It’s about living life in alignment with my values, just to sound like a quintessentially unoriginal life coach here for a sec.

Freedom
Authenticity
Integrity
Honesty
Genuineness
Loyalty
Kindness

Those are the values that I have written up on the wall by my desk. And yes, I’m aware that 4 of them are pretty much the same thing.

I didn’t used to know my values, I didn’t know who I was, and I sure as hell didn’t know there was a difference between my gut instinct and my mind.

Which is why I was stuck.

Until suddenly, my gut instinct spoke so loudly I couldn’t ignore it any longer.

All it said was:

“Not this”.

Not architecture. Not a location-dependent office with inflexible hours and rules and deadlines. Not New Zealand, not yet.

Well fuck, then what?

My gut instinct had nothing to say about that. We hadn’t yet become mates.

So I went exploring into the corners of my curiosity, driven only by the voice that occasionally piped up to say “not this” or “enough of this now”.

The more I listened, the better I became at hearing the “yes” as well as the “no”.

And now here I am, on a 16 hour flight as we speak, on my way to sunny California to learn from the greatest minds (or no-minds?!) in the mindfulness world, to hang out with entrepreneurs and my old business coach, and to take off my Ugg boots and slip into turquoise jandals once again.

Living in alignment with your values is possible for anyone. You don’t even need to know what your values are in language, values are just the labels we give to what our gut instinct tells us is important – in my experience, our gut speaks in sensation, in a feeling that feels like “Hell yes” or “F, no”.

If you ignore it, you’ll stay stuck.

If you follow it, you’ll face fear, you’ll plunge into the unknown, you’ll feel and excited and nervous and overwhelmed and elated.

This is what aliveness feels like.

This is what it takes to live a bloody good life.

 

Ps — To learn more about regulating your emotions like the kind of legend that doesn’t throw coke at me, head over here to check out Bloody Good Life, an unconventional mind-taming program for overthinkers.

Pstt - enjoyed this blog post? Fab. If you have a hankering for more radical honesty delivered freshly to your inbox every week or eight-ish, subscribe over here.

Popular Posts:

Looking for anything in particular?

More bloody good blog posts...

How to stop a bad day in its tracks

Download the free bloody good g-book. Because we've all had enough of e-books