Interview with- Jamie McIntyre Part 2

How were you introduced to the Law of Attraction and how do you incorporate that into business?

The Law of Attraction obviously is made famous by The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. I used to be aware of it before that but I can’t recall exactly where - obviously reading different books. The Law of Attraction I think is an important part of business but it’s only half the equation. A lot people think that you can just visualise what you want and do nothing else about it but there is another part of the equation, which is the The Law of Action. So, I think it’s important to have intent and focus on what you do want, which is what the Law of Attraction is about but we need to follow it up with The Law of Action. We all have the ability to manifest. The challenge for most people is they’re manifesting what they don’t want because they continually focus on what they’re afraid of or what they’re fearful of as opposed to people who are good at

manifesting because their focus is on the things they want the most. So, they naturally become better at it. You need to have an intention, put it out there, but then let it go. Allowing the universe to allow things to flow naturally like nature does as opposed to humans who try and force things to happen or make things happen in the way they think it should happen and often life is full of surprises and it doesn’t always happen the way that we expect. So, we need to be fluid enough to have an intention and allow outcomes to flow in a natural order while also taking appropriate action personally.

What gave you the courage to go for everything that you have today?

I think it’s similar for a lot of people. It was more the frustration than inspiration to be honest. I think you hit a threshold in your life when enough is enough and for me, I was always ambitious growing up but when I found myself on my friend’s couch in a lot of debt, my first business had failed, I’d got to a point where I was in that much financial pain, I just made a commitment to do something to change my circumstances. So, I think it’s more about

the pain, when the pain’s great enough you’ll make a change. The challenge for many people in Australia is that we’re comfortable. So, we’re not completely happy with where our life is at but we’re not uncomfortable enough to do something about it. So people stay in their comfort zone and I think that can be very dangerous for people if they want to take their life to the next level. I think sometimes, desperation and frustration can be a greater driving force than inspiration.

What are your top tips when it comes to managing your time efficiently?

Managing time – I think time management is critical and I think most people, if they have any sort of time management, they’re taught to have a “to do list”, which is basically activities or action lists. Which is great to have that, but most people go through their lives crossing off a to do list and when you finish everything on your to do list guess what you have more of? Things 'to do'. So, basically they can look back on their life and go “What did I actually

accomplish? Well, I was busy every day, I crossed off a series of to do lists but did I actually produce results?” So, for me, the greatest tip in time management is to do something different. What I focus on is not activity because a lot of people delude themselves of being busy equals results when it’s a delusion. A lot of people can be busy but they don’t produce anything. The reality is you have to focus on results. I guess you brainstorm everything you need to do but then you want to say “What results am I after? So, this week, this month, this day, this year, what are the clearly defined results I want to achieve?” and it’s like a laser focus and that’s what I’m going to focus on. Then I say “Why do I want to achieve those results? Why do I want it?” Why do you want to have a $100,000 a year income or a $250,000 a year income or a nice house? You’ve got to know why specifically because the ‘WHY’ is the driving force. A lot of people procrastinate or hesitate because they’re not clear about why they’re doing it, they’re not focussed on what the rewards are. And then the third step is take action but only take the action that is critical. A lot of action steps are not necessary. So, what I call 'results, purpose, action' – the other part of time management is very simple... Just abide by the Pareto Principle which is the 80-20 rule. Twenty percent of the time what we do is producing eighty percent of our results. So, most people are focussed on spending eighty percent of their time on things that only produce twenty percent of the results and that’s what they need to change dramatically. The top twenty percent of people in a company will produce eighty percent of the results for the company; the top twenty percent of sales people produce eighty percent of the sales; the top twenty percent of clients in a company will produce eighty percent of the results; twenty percent of your wardrobe you’ll use eighty percent of the time; twenty percent of your friends you’ll hang around eighty percent of the time. So, in other words, the Pareto Principle focuses on what is that twenty percent that is most productive and not trying to do everything. There’s not enough time to do everything so just do what’s most important. So the best analogy is- the week before you go on a holiday, notice how productive you become because all of a sudden you only have time to do what’s most important and you get really productive that week leading up to a holiday because you focus on a very clear purpose- the reason why they get this done- for the reward! Going away on a holiday! So you’re very driven and very productive and that’s the way I set my life up, so that I have to squeeze things into a small timeframe and then I’m going away doing other stuff. Otherwise work will just consume your life. 'Being busy' will consume your life and fill up every space because you allow it to.

How important is it to have confidence in business?

I think in business you have to have courage and confidence. I think it comes from a state of certainty and I think that comes from passion. If you’re passionate about something, you’re going to influence other people because it comes from your heart, it comes through naturally and you’re really excited about something and certainty just comes from being prepared and from knowing your stuff. So, having the experience or hiring the experience, you’re giving yourself a state of certainty where you can see something can possibly work and that comes from modelling. In other words, if you have a model or business idea or something that has worked before, you have more confidence that it’s possible. I’ll give you an example: one of my friends used to be a former CEO of one of my companies, he went and modelled Groupon. Groupon is one of the largest companies in the daily discount – it’s discounted shopping. Groupon just knocked back an offer from Google to be bought for six billion dollars. My friend simply modelled what Groupon did in America and started the company doing the same thing or similar thing in Australia and he’s taken that company to where it’s worth between fifty and one hundred million dollars and that’s taken him less than two years to build all through the power of modelling. So, he’s had a model that worked, he could copy, take ideas from. So, that gave him total confidence that this will work and as a result of that he was able to raise investors, he was able to put a team together and there’s a successful business in two years or less that’s worth between fifty and a hundred million dollars.

How did you cultivate your confidence?

I think educating yourself, getting a real life education by going to a lot seminars and developing emotional intelligence. One of my mentors was Anthony Robbins, so I learnt a lot about emotional intelligence, emotional mastery from Tony where you’d learn how to change your physiology, how to change what you focus on and confidence comes from within. If you want to be more confident you just have to stand and walk in a different way that’s more confident. When you’re confident you walk differently, you hold your body differently, you speak differently, you think differently, so it all starts with you putting yourself in an emotional state of confidence or certainty or courage or whatever it is, opposed to being in an emotional state of couldn’t be bothered or fearful or

procrastination, etc. So it all starts from within.

How can people erase their fears and biases to enable them to jump into buying shares?

I think once again, it comes down to education. Some people say “Ignorance is bliss” and I say “Ignorance will cost you a lot of money.” People have preconceived ideas about investing or pretty much about anything in life. For me, I too, at one point, had preconceived ideas about the

share market, so in my mind I linked pain to it and whenever you link pain to something you’re not going to follow through and do it. You’ll procrastinate, put it off, half do it, sabotage, you won’t follow through because you’re linking pain to it and the reason I linked pain to investing shares some years ago is because I thought they were risky, time consuming, difficult, I didn’t know what I was doing. All those things meant fear, uncertainty, not going to do it. Even if I knew it was good for me, I wouldn’t follow through. I needed to link pleasure to it. It wasn’t until one of my mentors said “Jamie, you realise you’re an entrepreneur, you understand the property market, I know that works well for you, but do you understand that you can do a thing in the stock market where you can generate monthly cash-flow? Do the opposite of what most people do.” And he said “It’s just like owning a business and you can generate monthly cashflow.” So he was speaking in my language 

because being an entrepreneur I could understand that, so he rephrased and helped me understand the stock market in a way that I linked pleasure to it and then I was more excited, passionate about it, testing it, getting educated and moving into that and out of that came a strategy which I termed “share renting” which now is quite well known. It’s become quite a famous strategy in 

Australia in particular and all come out of that and that’s why I got into the stock market because I started to link pleasure to it, I’d become confident about it. And so, people need to go through that process, they need to be educated, that will help them overcome their fears and they need to start on a small scale, practicing on paper to develop their confidence. Then you won’t be able to 

stop people!

How do you get the money to buy shares because don’t you need money to make money?

Yeah, it’s a common belief system that you need money to make money but I mean people that weren’t millionaires started out with nothing and they had to come up with the money. So if you want to say, invest in shares, you’ve got to work out what strategy is best for you. But ironically, borrowing money for the share market is the easiest form of finance you can possibly get. It’s easier that borrowing for a car; it’s easier than borrowing for property– it’s quite easy finance to get, almost anyone of legal age can get that sort of finance. Now, you’ve got to be able to come up with a deposit, the difference with the share market 

is you generally need a minimum 30% deposit or what’s a golden rule we have is 50% deposit. Unlike property where you might only need 10 or 20% deposit, shares are considered more risky, so the banks will require a bigger deposit. There are other things that some of my mentors teach and strategies where you can borrow up to 100% on the stock market which is 100% capital protected. There are strategies like that have been created that I invest in that are hands off, that are passive and all you have to do is prepay the interest bill, which a large percentage of it is a tax deduction. Once again, it’s about having knowledge and knowing how to access these types of strategies or learning about them where you don’t necessarily need to use your own money or only need to use a lesser amount of your own money to get started. Of course, if you’re going to borrow it for shares you need to make a judgement on that; whether your risk profile will suit that and once again, that comes down to education, when you’re more confident about things, you’re more confident to borrow. I’ve borrowed millions of dollars for shares and been quite comfortable with it but in the beginning I would have been more cautious.

Do you recommend any books in regards to the share market that would be handy for beginners?

Other than my books [laughs]. I can’t think of any off the top of my head. I think probably the stock market, you might want a little bit more than books, but there is obviously books out there on the internet. I would probably recommend watching DVD’s and going to some seminars. There’s lots of seminars on the stock market but try and go to seminars where they try to understand the psychology. A lot of seminars are boring, bland, they don’t understand that as humans we’re emotional, we need to understand our psychology, there’s just typical boring numbers. A lot of us will switch off because it seems too difficult; just go back to doing our job because at least we know how to do that. So, you probably want educators that can teach around the psychology of money as well and speak in simple language so you can understand it. A lot of words used in the stock market are deliberately confusing and it’s almost like learning a new language and that stops a lot people understanding things and I don’t know why it is that way but it doesn’t have to be. I’ve helped a lot of people by teaching in a very simple language. The terminology of share renting as an example is a terminology where people understand renting out houses or renting out properties, so instantly they understand what renting is and they can get their head around in a matter of moments around the concept that you can rent out shares. So that’s an example of simple language that enables people to learn something more rapidly.

Is it important to save?

Is it important? Absolutely. All outstanding investors are outstanding savers in my research. My turning point in my journey in becoming a self-made millionaire, the hardest thing was, I wasn’t saving money and once again, why I wasn’t saving money because I linked pain to saving money because of the pleasure of spending it now. So the point was when my first mentor, I had a meeting with him and I was trying to convince him to work with me to be my millionaire mentor and he asked me a simple question, he said “Jamie, how much are you saving?” and I was like “Um, ah, actually …” I wasn’t saving anything and he said “Well, don’t waste my time! I thought you said you were committed to making things happen and you’re not even saving any money” he said “If you can’t save money, you can’t live your dreams.” He was brutally honest with me and that’s what sometimes people need to understand. If you can’t save money, forget it, you’re not going to have your dream. So, if you want your dream, start saving money. You can make excuses or you can make money. There’s no excuse for not saving money. If people want to do something, they’ll make it a must and they’ll do it. So I went out of there, after that conversation with my mentor, and I’ve become an outstanding saver. I joke I’ve become Australia’s best saver, but I did. I really turned my life around because now I was linking pleasure to saving because if I save money I’ll link it to my dreams one day. If I spend it and not save it, then I’m never going to have my dreams. That’s massive pain, I cannot tolerate that, so I have no choice but to save. It was that shift. I could have used the same excuses “I don’t have the money” or “You don’t understand my situation” thats B.S. If something’s a must you’ll find a way and you save it. You take 10 percent off the top of your income and put it aside like you didn’t have it. Because have you ever noticed that when your 

income increases, no matter how much money you make, we continue to find a way to spend it? Saving comes first. Same if you’re in business; take money out first and then spend what’s left.

What are your top business rules, values or beliefs that you go by every day?

Top business rules – I guess you could call them rules or organising principles. The biggest one for me is that I teach people that two things you must do in business or in life: number one rule is you must add value. So anything that you do, your whole focus should be how do you add value to your clients, how do you add value to anyone in your life? Because a lot of people want to become wealthy and say “I’d like a million dollars” and I’ll say “Well, what are you going to do for that?” The second thing is the law of the universe – you must first give before you get and people forget these basic simple rules and they wonder why they’re not wealthy. You must give and you need to give a lot more than you expect. You need to give unconditionally – that’s another rule. You can’t just say “Well, I’ll give if I get this” that’s horse trading and a lot of people will do that. And so, I will give unconditionally because that’s who I am. You see the whole focus in anything you do should be how do you add value to society? Because your wealth is a direct reflection of the value you add. Therefore, if someone’s not making the money they want, not making the profits they’d like to, they should look in the mirror and go “Is that a reflection of the value that I’m not adding because if I was adding more value, I’d be earning more money?” So, in most cases, there is some exceptions to that if you work for the government often that’s a different rule where you can be the best nurse in the country you won’t be paid anything more than the worst nurse or the worst school teacher. So, outside that, the private sector, the more value you add, the more money you’ll generally make. I think that’s critical. Number two rule is you must make a profit. So, if you’re in business, you need to make a profit. I don’t care if you run a non-profit charity organisation; they still need to make a profit. A non-profit organisation is just the profit goes back into the mission of the company or the organisation. So, everything revolves around making a profit and a lot of people are not comfortable with making a profit. They’re not comfortable charging people, which really means “I want people to love me, so if I charge them they may not love me.” It comes from that internal belief around that. So, you’ve got to be comfortable with charging and charging enough that you can afford to put your heart and soul into making your product or service or what you do the best and if you’re charging enough you can afford to do that. And people are happy to

 pay because not everyone wants the cheap and nasty. I can use the example, people are happy to pay for quality. You don’t take someone out on their first date to MacDonalds – why? Well, you could say “Well, MacDonalds is cheaper, it’s only $3.95 for a burger” – because it’s not going to impress your date – does that make sense? You’ll go out to a fine dining restaurant because you’re happy to pay 10 times the price because what you want is quality and that’s what people don’t understand is people want quality experiences. They’re happy to pay for them if it is quality. So, if you’re adding a lot of value, you can charge more. And that’s what I think is critical, those two rules

and the rule that you must first give before you get – that’s critical as well.

Same question, but to your personal life?

As far as rules for my personal life? Once again, you want to add value to your network of people or your people or your family or your friends, etc. So you want to come in from a space of what can you do for them. My personal rules are I’d always rather be over generous than under generous and sometimes in my life I have been too generous where people will take advantage of that. But I’d rather be too generous than be stingy and I think, for me, money is a magnification of who you are. So, if you’re a generous person, the more money you have, the more generosity you can give. If you’re a loving person, the more money you have, you can be a loving person in a bigger way and express that love in many other ways. I think in my personal life being generous is important. For me, as far as priorities, I would say when you’re younger, I’d always put career and my mission as higher priority than my family and my friends and my partner; I think that is different these days. I think it’s important to have your career and it’s an important part of your life but I think your family and friends should definitely always be above your career and it doesn’t mean you can’t be driven and still succeed but you certainly want to have your priorities around the right way. And I think the other thing is that you want to be focussed on contribution. I think that the danger for a lot of people and it happens when we’re younger as well, is that we’re very much driven by significance – we want to be famous. So we want to be successful, we want to be rich and we want to feel important, which there is nothing wrong with that, but if we set our life up where we’re primarily just trying to get significance, we won’t be fulfilled long term. Fulfillment comes from contribution and growth. If we’re continually growing as a person and stretching ourselves, challenging ourselves, reading books, attending seminars, learning off interesting people, we will grow as a person, be more fulfilled. Either focus on contribution because if I’m not happy at any point in my life I’ll just say “Well, I need to focus on helping other people more.” Because when you focus on that and making a difference you’re happy. When you focus on yourself, you tend to lead to unhappiness.

How do you maintain your work life balance?

I think that’s a very good one and I would like to think that I’m a good role model in this area because a lot of people I think teach people how to become wealthy but can they really teach it from a perspective of a life work balance? I’m fortunate enough where I have a dozen companies,

I’m involved in a lot of charity projects, I have farms, I have a lot of things going in my life, yet I go on regular holidays, I take time out often, every second week, etc. because I’m very big on work life / balance. I think people get consumed, so busy making a living they forget to live. You need to work on your life, you need to work on your businesses and that’s the way that I’ve set it up. It doesn’t mean I still don’t work – I spend a lot of time working, but if I want to go anywhere, anytime, in the world, I pretty much can because my schedule is flexible. I can spend time with my family and my friends and I can fit all that in and I can still work. So, work life balance to me is everything and it just means working smarter. Often people put all their time into work because their life outside of work is unfulfilled. You say “Do you want someone that works 20 hours a day in your company?” They’re busy, busy, busy and they work that – no, I’d rather someone who can work eight or 10 hours a day and would be super productive and have a life outside of work because they’re going to be happier and it’s sustainable. If you’re always working, we can burn the candle at both ends for a while and you could do that to your company and push your people that hard and you’ll see companies that won’t sustain themselves and they’ll crash. They’ll burn because it’s not sustainable. It’s the same with yourself, you want to enjoy your life and smell the roses along the way. So I think you want to be careful, not saying “One day I’m going to do this” – start doing it now. You don’t have to have a lot of money to enjoy a quality of life. A quality of lifestyle is more about planning than it is about money.

What is happiness to you?

Happiness to me? I think just being at peace, knowing you’re doing the right thing and I think the thing for me is happiness is progress. You’ll find in your life and I find this myself, if I’m making progress towards my mission, towards what I believe I’m here to do in my life and making progress- then I am happy. If you’re not making progress, you’ll tend to start to feel frustrated or held back – that’s when you’re not happy. It’s simply when people are frustrated, they’re not making progress, they don’t feel happy. When they’re making progress people are happy. So, happiness to me is definitely progress. If you feel like you’re moving in the direction of your dreams or your goals or your purpose, then you’re happy, you’re content. Humans are not happy if they’re standing still. You can achieve success and plateau for a while, which is great, but if you don’t reset your targets and work towards something, you’re not growing, you’re not contributing and you won’t ultimately be happy.

Where do you see yourself in five years?

Very good question. I enjoy still being an entrepreneur and my focus in education is where I put a lot of my resources and time in, I really want to make a modern day, 21st century education available worldwide so people have the choice at school, university and they also get themselves a 21st century education. I believe most world problems are created by ignorance and I believe most world challenges and personal challenges can be solved with education, but the right education. So, that’s my mission in life- to provide that. So, my next five years, my five-ten years is a big focus on that. I also see that I want to make a big change to things in Australia. So, I will become much more involved in commentating or lobbying for a lot more positive change. We lack a lot of quality leadership in this country and I’d like to see a lot more of that leadership emerge where people that can really make things happen have a vision for the country are really heard and are really able to make things happen. So, I will spend a lot more time on pushing and lobbying to get those changes made. Outside of that, personally, I’m certainly looking at starting a family, maybe working a little bit less and spending more time with my family and friends.

What’s your best marketing tip?

Best marketing tip – it’s very simple actually. A friend of mine, Joel Bauer, I’ve done a lot marketing and J. Abrahams is a great marketing guru who will let off over 10 years ago, but Joel Bauer said this “If anyone wants to market anything they do, whatever product or service or if they work for a company, it’s very simple, just take video testimonials of success stories of people that like your product or service, whatever it is, and make it available” nothing else. If that’s all you do on your marketing is show success stories, testimonials of people who think your product or service or you provide, whatever your company is or business or whatever your work is great, that’s it. That’s the number one rule in marketing just share testimonials. Do that, nothing else. There’s a lot more to it than that; if you do that, that’s ninety percent of it and nothing else will really need to be done. You don’t need to go to uni to get a marketing degree to be successful in life.

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I Hope you all enjoyed Part 2 of Jamie's interview! Jamie is also giving away scholarships for his amazing 21st Century Education! To find out more go here http://21stcenturyscholarships.com.au

Stay fabulous! 

CLE

BEING A MOTHER- PART TWO- MY 'ADVICE'

My Now Non-Stop 2 Year Old!

I love being a Mum. I did not know that I would be good at it. Which I am pretty sure I am! But you are bound to be good at anything you love doing! The best advice I can give you when you fall pregnant and when your little bundle of joy arrives is… TRUST YOURSELF. You are a Woman and Women have been giving birth and raising Children since the dawn of time! We are built for this! Do not let fear or what ‘other people say’ dictate a single thing. There are so so many statistics about so many different things when it comes to being pregnant, giving birth and raising a child. YOU ARE NOT A STATISTIC. YOU ARE A HUMAN BEING AND YOU MUST DO WHAT IS RIGHT FOR YOU! Let me say that again… DO WHAT IS RIGHT FOR YOU. Never in your life is it more important to learn to trust yourself, your body and your instincts than it is from the moment you fall pregnant.

The moment you break the news you are pregnant you will have people from all different directions informing you what you should do, what you shouldn’t do and how you should go about doing certain things. Don’t get me wrong, ‘they’ say these things because they have your best interest at heart, but you need to do what FEELS right to you. No one is you but YOU and you have to trust yourself and your motherly instincts because I assure you… those instincts are there! I read all the time about the media, other mothers and even family members disparaging a woman for a choice they have made. The peer pressure you receive as a mother is unbelievable! The statistics that come out about this and about that do not help either. As a Woman in this world who is built for giving birth and you are blessed with free will and a keen motherly instinct and you WILL know what to do. All you have to do is trust yourself.

Once you make a decision. You need to own that decision. If you want to give birth naturally do it. If you don’t… don’t! You will have women tell you how amazing giving birth naturally is (I am one of those :) and then you will have women who tell you how much easier it is to have a caesarean. Then you will read statistics for and against having a ceasar and you will read the media that disparage women who do and disparage women who don’t. Then you get to breast feeding and the debates about- should you, shouldn’t you, what is the best way to do it, how long for, can you do it in public? Then you get to- should you wrap your baby or not and then into different sleeping positions, bassinet or cot, and so and so forth. By all means, use the information out there as a guideline because it really does help but do what feels best for you!

 You and your baby have a special bond that no statistic can put a number to and you will know what he or she wants. Even if you don’t know straight away you will go through the steps of- is she cold, is he hungry, is she windy, etc and you will find out! The best thing I ever did was learn to be calm, patient and trust myself as a mother that I will do the right thing. And… I did and… I do!

Which brings me to… when you have done what is best for you and you have trusted your instincts and have done what works best for you and your baby, NEVER EVER disparage another mother if her way is different to yours. I would never dream of saying a woman was ‘not a real woman because she had a caesarean’ or that ‘breast feeding in public is disgusting’ or even ‘breast feeding is child abuse’ (yes, that one is out there) or even again ‘a woman is not a real woman unless she has had a baby’. It is none of your business what decisions other women make just as it is none of anyone’s business what decisions you make. Too often you see women ‘competing’ against each other or disparaging another woman for the certain way she does something. It has nothing to do with you.

Don’t worry. I am not forgetting my awful judgement about the woman who fell pregnant before me and how I agreed with a bunch of people in their early 20’s who had no children in their lives and were busy with idle gossip, getting drunk, and partying. I could not believe I believed them and that I allowed myself to judge someone else about something I had no clue about. Especially when, in all honesty, I knew better. I just hope that you can learn from my mistake because it is not a nice mistake to make in the first place. Judging other women because they do not do what you do is all too common and it should not happen. We need to show a healthy respect for each other and support each other rather than compete against each other or say 'my way is the right way' because as a Mum, you know there is not one way and the 'right way' is the way that feels right and works in your or your babies best interest at that time.

Having a child is the most rewarding thing I have ever done in my entire life. Every day Beau brings nothing but love, curiosity and adventure into my life! I am 100 times the person I was because, obviously, I learnt a lot and the strength you acquire because you will do anything for this little person is amazing! Children do not wreck your life, not even for a second! Phew! :) It can be overwhelming and incredibly trying, I am not going to deny that at all! There are times when it can be extremely hard! But in all honesty the times that I felt like it was really ‘HARD’ is when I was not right within myself. If you fail at any stage to look after yourself then you will find it HARD. If you do not get enough sleep, if your relationships with your partner and/or other people are in turmoil or if you do not do things to look after YOURSELF and ensure you have some degree of happiness then motherhood will be incredibly hard.

This is another lesson that there is no more critical time to learn. I always tell people that there is no way you can prepare yourself for having a baby- other than starting on the path to learning to love yourself. It is THE MOST IMPORTANT ASPECT of having a baby. When you love yourself and have a healthy respect for yourself then you will do things to ensure your happiness which in turn makes you a better mother. If you look after yourself then you will be patient, you will be more alert and you will be more likely to trust your instincts. If you don’t look after yourself you run the risk of not enjoying motherhood, of ‘losing it’, of being a lazy parent and worst of all not being the best person you can be for yourself.

Believe it or not I truly believe that that is the only aspect which will make you a good mother or a not so good mother. The evidence of it is all around us. It is so important that we get to know ourselves and learn to love ourselves. If you want the best life possible for yourself and your family, there is nothing more important. There are a number of ways to start on the path that don’t even cost a dime and I personally think the best way to start this is to examine yourself, get to know you. What do you want from life? What do you enjoy doing? If you need any help doing this I have a brilliant questionnaire that helps you get to know YOU so feel free to email me and ask me for it if you like! Casey.lee.evans@gmail.com

I hope this blog has helped you in any shape or form. The main things I hope people take away from this is:

1:Go easy on yourself! Don’t do what I did because I missed out on the amazing experience being pregnant can be!

2:Do what is BEST FOR YOU.

3:Trust yourself, your body and your instincts!

4:When you make a decision OWN IT and never mind what ‘they say’ or what the ‘statistics are’.

5:Be patient and calm otherwise you will allow yourself to get overwhelmed and to help you be patient and calm you need to…

6:LOVE YOURSELF. Why wouldn’t you? You're amazing.

Stay fabulous!

CLE

BEING A MOTHER- PART ONE- MY STORY

My Brand New Bundle of Joy- Beau

I have been meaning to write this blog for a while. This is probably my tenth attempt. There is so so so much to being a Mum that it really is unbelievable until you experience it! But I will start at the beginning and be %100 honest in this blog, well, I am in all my blogs but I just want to say that so you know I am giving you my 100%, ‘raw’, ‘unedited’ version of my experience.

It was 2009 and I was 22. I had just finished all my studies and ready to jump into the work force! I was in such a great place as I was finally on the road to having something I always wanted… financial independence! I seem to associate being an adult with financial independence! No more student centre link payments and having to ask Mum and Dad to help me pay my rent! I had learnt so much through my life coaching and was in the process of surrounding myself with wonderful people and ‘letting go’ of the people who were not on the same positive and growth orientated path as me! That also included my boyfriend at the time. We were different. Very different. So we parted ways and all was going great!

Then out of the blue I got sick. Really sick. I couldn’t eat or drink because my body would just reject it. I spent a lot of time in hospital while they were trying to figure out what was wrong with me and having fluids pumped into my veins as anything that went into my mouth would not be accepted into my body. ‘Are you pregnant Casey?’ the doctors kept asking and each time my answer was a resounding ‘NO’. ‘Are you sure?’ ‘YES’. Apparently I was wrong! I had no idea that would happen. It came out of nowhere. I knew I had been a little slack with my pill before my boyfriend and I broke up but I had done that before and got away with it so I just assumed I would get away with it again. But no, not this time.

They couldn’t find what was wrong with me so they sent me home for the fourth time with packets full of anti-emetics (drugs that stop you from vomiting), not that they worked, and I thought I had better buy a pregnancy home testing kit just to make sure. When it came up positive I was mortified.

“What have I done??? How could I be so stupid! How irresponsible of me! What was I thinking?! I am such an idiot! Here I was thinking I was a smart girl and then I go and get myself pregnant!?”

They were the awful thoughts running through my head. Those thoughts debilitated me and I sat on my bathroom floor crying for hours before I could bring myself to call my mother and tell her my news. My Mother was of course amazing. Calming me down and telling me it will be alright “It is YOUR decision Casey, no matter what you do I will be behind you 100%” she said. I can’t imagine the different thoughts and emotions that were going through my Mother’s head at that time. So I sat down and thought about it and thought about it and thought about it. Not once did I give myself a break. I was an ‘an idiot’, ‘a stupid irresponsible woman’, I called myself every name under the sun.

There was a girl that I knew and she had announced that she was pregnant just a few months before and people said such awful things. ‘Why is she keeping it’, ‘she is too young’, ‘kids ruin your life’, ‘if she is not having an abortion she must have done it on purpose’. I hate to admit this but… from my place of bitchy judgemental ignorance… I silently agreed. So I thought that if I ever accidently fell pregnant I would have an abortion and that would be that. It was all supposed to be easy. I was a 100% pro-choice, and still am, so I pushed all of my feelings aside and called up the clinic and booked myself in. They are very smart at the clinics. You call up and book in and you have to call back in two days to confirm your decision. After I booked in, all the feelings I had pushed aside were now back with a vengeance. I had a little person growing inside of me. You cannot escape the feelings associated with the little bundle of cells dividing and growing inside of you.

I called a help line, I don’t remember which one it was but it was the best thing I did. They ask you to weigh up the pros and cons. I had no pros. After you ‘weigh them up’ they say what do you feel? ‘I want to keep it’ were the words that flowed from my mouth without any thinking. I felt such a relief when I said that and I knew that was my decision. My heart of hearts decision. The lady then went through my relationship with the father- will I tell him, will I get back together with him and the lady told me that the most important question in regards to the father is- if the father and I got back together and the relationship did not end up working- could I do it on my own? The answer was a yes. I knew he wouldn’t do much anyway! He wasn’t much of a family man.

The decision brought me instant relief but I did not let up on myself. The stress that I put onto myself from beating myself up so much and the fear and doubt I let overtake my mind did not let me enjoy my pregnancy. It was awful. I didn’t even feel much love or anything to what was growing in my stomach. I just felt… nothing. I was too busy being afraid of what other people thought of me because I remember how harshly other people, including me, judged the other girl and those people said that kids ruin your life so my life must be over right?

The father and I got back together and the months flew by. I spent my time between reading the twilight books and every book on being a mother and giving birth I could possibly get my hands on. By the time I hit the eight and a half month mark I knew 3 things for sure: 1. I was having a boy. 2. His name would be Beau. And 3. I wanted a natural birth. I went to see my OBGYN and told him that I wanted a natural birth. He told me that Beau was such a big baby that he didn’t think it would be possible and that if he keeps growing at the rate he will want to do a C section. I protested that I did not want that. Beau was due on the 19th of April and my Doctor said that hopefully he comes early otherwise I should come in on the 3rd so he could give me check up and he would discuss inducing me.

I was so sick of being pregnant and so determined to have a natural birth that on the day before I had to go back to the Doctor I went and had acupuncture. I had read many papers on women who were in the same situation as me, or were well overdue and had gone to have acupuncture to induce them. I had never had acupuncture before and it was pretty cool! So I had the acupuncture and went to my OBGYN the next day and he said that I was 1cm dilated! I was not in labour but my cervix was certainly preparing me for it! So the Doctor sent me home and said he would give me 3 days to go into labour or he would induce me on the 7th. I sat at home for three days eagerly awaiting my first contraction! Every movement and every feeling in my body did not go unnoticed! But no labour pains. So on the morning of the 7th of April 2009 I packed my bag and went into Pindara Private Hospital.

My OBGYN greeted me, led me to my birthing suite and introduced me to my midwife. I laid down on my bed and I had no idea what inducing was. I was in such a rush to give birth that I forgot to ask! I had not thought about the actual act of giving birth or how much pain I was going to be in because I made sure I didn’t think about it. I didn’t want to add to the stress of being pregnant! But then my Doctor pulled out what looked like a crochet needle and told me to that he was going to break my water and it would be just like popping a balloon, it would be painless and all I will feel is some warm water run out of me so all I have to do is lay back and relax! Then it dawned on me… Holy sh*t! I was about to give birth! It went exactly as he said. I felt a little pressure but it was not painful at all and then the water. They had everything there to catch the water so there was no mess no fuss. They just took it away and then I was told to enjoy the calm and wait for my first contraction. The birthing suites at Pindara are brilliant. It was huge and had a couch, fridge and ensuite. My Mother, Father and Partner were there and they were brought food and drink while I was ‘labouring away’. Not that I noticed. I am not going to go into the gory details of the labour because there is not much to tell. Contractions, to me, just felt like… easiest was to explain it is- bad period pain x 10,000. My Mum had brought me a brilliant meditation CD a month earlier which takes you through a meditation to help you cope with the contractions. It tells you to imagine the contractions as waves, they build up slowly, peak and then slowly go away. It teaches you to breathe through these ‘waves’ and to go to your ‘happy place’ and imagine what you do there. My ‘happy place’ was in a rainforest clearing where there was a waterfall coming down into a waterhole where I went swimming and sun-baked on the rock next to it, feeling the warmth of the suns rays, and watched turtles and other sea life swim. It doesn’t sound like it would help but oh my goodness it did! If I left my happy place during a contraction I could not 'ride the wave' of a contraction! It felt like I was dumped by it! So I stayed silent and in my happy place! Not to say it didn’t hurt like hell! But it made the contractions manageable and MUCH less stressful.

Five hours of labour later it was time to push! I was offered a mirror so I could watch as my little man entered the world but my answer was… No thank you! Ouch, I did not want to see that. I did not want the visions of that stuck in my head for the rest of my life and I do not regret saying no! Five minutes of pushing (I know! Only five minutes! Thank goodness!) and I had a baby boy placed on my chest. He came out quietly and as soon as I looked at his little face all of my stress, fears and doubts that had plagued my mind for the last 9 months melted away. Here he was. A vision of absolute perfection and love. The love that I felt was something that I cannot explain nor can you even grasp its power until it happens to you. It’s like all of a sudden you are in a world that is 100% safe and secure, where peace abounds, life is plentiful, and love is all you feel. It is a love void of jealousy, anger, fear and suspicion. It is the purest form of love and it sweeps you off your feet.


To read part two of this blog go HERE.