janette’s story

Let me tell you about my Vision

“Unleashing a world where no-one, anywhere, accepts that it is okay that a person or animal live in fear of intentional or unintentional cruelty”

My Purpose

“To inspire people to see that alternatives always exist and cruelty is never ok, so that together we can break the cycle of harm and support those impacted by cruelty to courageously step into their adventurous and thriving life”

My Values

I am a student of life. I have coined the statement “Thrive, don’t just Survive” to capture my vision, purpose and values and as a point of focus as I build my thriving life.

I am dedicated to helping you build your own thriving life whatever that looks like for you. Click here to find out more.

Okay you say; what is a “thriving life”?

Well that is an awesome question.

I believe that a thriving life is that very special, highly unique and extremely personal combination of experiences, events, relationships, achievements and purpose. It means that when we take time to reflect on our journey, we sit in awe of all the shit we have achieved and the impact we have had.

I also know that your thriving life will be very different to mine.

Why?

Because you are unique and the forces that shape your life are equally unique.

Born and raised as a very proud, first generation Australian, I have a passion for the wild places in the world. I have been doggedly pursuing my version of a thriving life since I realised that life is incredibly fragile and fleeting. It can disappear in a moment just like it did when my Mum was taken in a car accident in 2005. She was my best friend, confidant and biggest supporter and one minute she was there and the next she wasn’t.

I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye and it broke me.

On the other side of grief

When my grief subsided enough to try functioning again I started to really reflect on her life. What became clear to me was that, as much as she could, my Mum lived her life on her own terms and in the manner that she wanted to. I also realised that the best way to keep her close and to remember her was to take this precious gift of life that she gave me, stop faffing around with it, get crystal clear on “my why” and go after that with unshakable dedication, optimism and the belief that everything is achievable.

Now the faffing around was a real challenge for me. I am crazy interested in so many things; family, music, landscape and aerial photography, sustainable living, wild places, reading (I mean I will literally read the back of a cereal cartoon if I have nothing to hand), camping, bushcraft, mechanics, design, travel, renovating old homes – I mean this is such a small part of the list.

Then add to that my experiences:

1. working as a Jillaroo / Farmhand for many years, serving in the Military for 15 years, working in IT as a Trainer and then managing help desks, becoming a human resources practitioner etc etc;
2. personally, I have travelled to some of the most remote and wild places in the world;
3. through I was not fortunate enough to have a family of my own I have been blessed to have the love and support of my brother, his wife and my amazing nieces and nephew;
4. undertaken study on many occasions; and
5. had several amazing and special relationships throughout my life, all of which have taught me very important things.

So with all this “stuff” how was I to define my purpose?

Well it took quite a few tries to find the essence of what felt right for me. It didn’t actually happen until I stepped back from it all and realised that all this stuff, well this was my life and it was unique and special and a once of. It was then that I realised that I wanted to fill my life with the stuff that really matters to me and to be successful at all of those things. Drum roll please – I wanted to “Build my Thriving Life”.

So the journey began

“Go back he thought? No good at all! Go sideways? Impossible! Go forward? Only thing to do! On we go!” Bilbo Baggins, The Hobbit, Riddles in the Dark

Now the next part of this story is going to appeal to the problem solvers and troubleshooters reading this. If that ain’t you then skip this bit ok.

I wanted to understand what was stopping me from moving forward and so I used a technique called the 5 Whys. This is a really useful tool for identifying the root cause of issues – you just keep asking why until you get to the underlying root cause of the matter and then you fix that.

So it went something like this for me:

Now I don’t want you to get me wrong here. I was extremely grateful and appreciative of my job. After all it afforded me a certain lifestyle and no doubt if I hadn’t been really reflecting and searching I may have been satisfied to stay there.

After all, wasn’t that what I was taught by my folks – get a good education, get into a good job and work hard!

But with my new found focus this didn’t fit my picture for my thriving life. In fact no matter how I did the math on how else I could chop up my day to spend more time doing the things that added value to my life the more focused I became to change this pattern.

At the time I was commuting about 11 to 12 hours a week to and from work and I was doing about 10 to 12 hours a week of work from home. All up work was taking up about 75 or so hours a week of my life. I naively thought that a positive step I could take would be to negotiate with my employer to kill off the commute time – so work from home. It seemed like a foolproof plan to me because in exchange for this agreement I was willing to offer up a few of those reclaimed commute hours on top of the 10 to 12 hours a week extra I was already doing.

Win win – what could go wrong hey?

So after working out all the details I set a meeting with my manager and armed with what I thought was a sure fired win win situation I went into the meeting and made my pitch.

No!

You guessed it. The answer I got was no and no matter how I tried to reposition what I was trying to explain and how important it was to me the answer was still a resounding NO.

“Why?”, I asked after finally accepting it wasn’t going to happen. Wait for it – here is the response word for word: “How will I know that you are actually working?” I kid you not. My first thought was Seriously! how do you know I am working now you (insert appropriate expletive here); you don’t sit in my office all day every day!

Again I don’t want you to think I am ungrateful, I was not. My manager was making his decision within the constructs of what he had to work with at the time and the company I worked for was traditional in its thinking. Deep down I think I knew the answer I was going to get, however, nothing ventured nothing gained.

Alright let us jump forward to 2013. I had worked tirelessly to identify “my way out” and to make it happen. I took the leap and move into my own human resources consultancy business and it pretty much flew from the outset. Now I knew going into this business that I was “buying myself a job”, however the one thing I hoped this step would do was afford me flexibility, and it did. I was able to work with my clients from anywhere in the world, like writing a report on a ship sailing down the inside passage in Alaska as just one an example.

So I had taken a huge step forward in pursuit of my thriving life. I was still working long hours. In fact more than I had ever done before. However I got to call the shots on who I worked with and what I worked on, so I was cool.

But this isn’t the end of the story – oh nooo!

While I had moved out of the “working for a boss” situation I was still trading my time for money and I was still not able to leverage off my work, meaning I was often doing the same piece of work client after client after client. Now while I got a bit quicker at the work, it was still taking time I didn’t want to give. So I continued searching for that final piece in this part of the puzzle – how to leverage my efforts to gain an income that would then allow me to start working on the other aspects of my thriving life!

Leverage, leverage, leverage

I knew I wanted an online digital business – I kinda had one already and so I wanted to explore that option more. The criteria I set myself was:

1. it had to allow me to do the work once and be able to, with minimal tweaking, have it work for me 24 x 7 without me sitting at a desk or keyboard.
2. it had to have earning ability that wasn’t capped by the value I placed on myself. I mean it is a tough gig to ask clients to pay for your services at a high rate, it is seriously scary. Will I lose them as a client if I ask to much? Am I really worth that much? etc etc – self doubt, you have to love it don’t you!!
3. I didn’t want to be ripped off. I figured at over 50 years of age I was only going to get one chance to do this right and I was old enough to have lived through the pyramid scheme days.
4. Whatever it ended up being, it had to fit in with who I was as a person, my vision, my values, my purpose and my plans for a thriving life.

Where to start; oh where to start

Well I figured you don’t know what you don’t know and so the first thing to do was get to knowing. I searched through uni courses because that makes sense doesn’t it. But you know what I discovered? They’re all geared to putting you right back into the what I had left – the workforce.

I kept searching and ran up against the many many “get rich quick schemes” promising you everything for nothing “if you just sign here and pay this amount”. I was pretty much getting to the end of my tether when a family member showed me what they were doing and told me about the education program and process they had used to achieve their thriving life. The rest, as they say, is history…

So coming back to you, my friend

If you have read this far then it is likely that you too are on a journey looking for answers and options. I would be honoured to work with you in an honest, transparent and “let’s quit the BS” way, to help you define and build your unique thriving life.

My business is about passion, dreams, drivers, and wishes and how to achieve them. I am here to make a difference in the lives of like minded, hardworking, straight talking people. However make no mistake – I am not promising anything here. What you achieve will be directly related to the thoughts, beliefs and actions you take – you own those and therefore you also own the results whether they be success of failure.

Also you need to understand that I am a business. I sell stuff and I am immensely proud of the products and services I get to recommend to you. You need to know that if recommend something from my website I may get an affiliate commission. I am not ashamed of this, because everything I recommend on my website are services or products that I have personally used and which I have found immensely valuable in my journey to build my thriving life. Given I am just an average 55+ woman with no particular skills in this stuff, I figured if it added value to me and my journey then it might do the same for others, so while you are on my website I will tell you about them – what you do with that information is up to you. I am no expert and I won’t stand tall and try and tell you that you should do this or you should do that. Just like me, I figure you are smart enough to work out what you want and how to go about getting it, otherwise you would’nt have read this far.

“Commitment is what transforms a promise into reality”

Abraham Lincoln

My commitment to you is to deliver the very best of what I am living and what I am learning in the hope that it is just what you need at that point in time. Now given I do my very best learning when I stuff up, there will be a big dose of “keeping it real” so you will likely get some laughs at my more cringe worthy antics.

I am 100% devoted to helping you THRIVE – whatever that looks like for you.

My most sincere thanks

I want to say a huge thank you for reading this far. I would love to get to know more about you and the best way to do that is to come and join the Thrive, don’t just Survive” community as a thriver. You can do that by simply entering your name and email address in the popup.

When you join me then I will provide you a free eBook that will help you make a start on defining your thriving life.

If you actually want to know more about the education program I used to build my online business then you can visit this page and it will give you more details.

Thanks so much for visiting with me. I am excited that we have connected and I look forward to the journey ahead.

Take care and talk soon

janette – thrive, don’t just survive!

One last quote from the great Bilbo Baggins

Seriously, if you haven’t read The Hobbit you need to!!

There is only one Road; it is like a great river: its springs are at every doorstep and every path is its tributary. “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,” Bilbo said. “You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no telling where you might be swept off to.”

Hoping we are “swept off” to somewhere or something amazing.