However, as we and routines settled in, life continued happening - and not in a good way. I started suffering from anxiety and depression which was - somewhat peculiarly - unrelated to thinking the world is ending. I fell deep, leading to significant consequences. I emotionally missed out on years of my kid's childhood, I left my relationship and was at times suicidal. While some of my sustainable habits continued, I moved back into town, just trying to get through the days. Your world gets very small when you are struggling. Being in a new relationship with a recent widower struggling with depression and suddenly being a stepmother to two teenage daughters on top of it all didn't help. You might say, it was a compounding catastrophe.

Years of counselling improved the situation significantly but I still wasn't really winning. I had to abandon my freedom and took a job to pay the mortgage in order to move back onto our land. And while I got to teach sustainability as part of my work - which was a privilege - I continued to struggle through life's challenges. 

By 2016 I was truly over it all. I was frustrated with my work. My relationship was still a struggle. I got a flu and actually took sick leave, which rarely happened. And here's where it gets cheesy: on day one, I watched "I am not your guru" on Netflix - a documentary about life coach Tony Robbins. I was mesmerized. On day 2 and 3 of being ill I watched every scrap of material of Robbins Interventions I could find on YouTube. I cried for most of that time. Day 4 I dragged myself to the library to check out all the books on NLP I could find. By day 7 my entire perspective on life had completely transformed. Anxiety and depression moved over for good, to make room for a new life.  I felt like I had been living in a dark room for all of my life and then someone came along and turned the light on. The change was permanent - I now knew where the switch was. I signed up for the Robbins-Madanes Life Coach training. I became completely obsessed with learning about 'mental mastery' - and I'm still obsessed today. Early in 2017, I started coaching other people.

But back to my sustainability journey. Having taught hundreds of people about sustainable living, through workshops and courses, one of the things that stood out the most was that the biggest barrier to implementing sustainable lifestyle changes for most people wasn't the lack of information. What got in the way were some of the same reasons getting in the way of every lifestyle change - not setting clear goals, competing priorities, lack of family support. With the added challenge of having to withstand the pressures of the dominant culture, which -alone - is huge. 

This is where my journeys meet. Back to mindset work and self-mastery. While my training as a life coach taught me to cope with all sorts of my own challenges, I was now also able to support people on their sustainability journey in a more holistic, powerful way. 

Today, my job is to come in and say “It IS possible, there ARE different ways of doing things - and it’s time they actually happen’ Because this is actually bigger than just you and me. 

I’m not here to fix your life. I’m here to fiercely believe that you already know where you want to take it. I’m here to help you clear the clutter that is in your way so that you can do your bit to help lead a change. I’m here to help you see each obstacle as a gift which is going to speed up your journey. I’m here to help you shout back at the voices in your head that tell you it’s too late, too hard, too frightening. The ones that say it is hopeless.

I think we’re right ahead of a real paradigm shift, and often there just isn’t a beaten track - that’s when we create one. This is completely new territory and we’re drawing the map together as we go. Don’t get left behind.

The beauty of coaching is that in order to fix the big stuff - you HAVE to fix the small stuff. People that are unfulfilled, unhappy, stressed or burnt out are NOT going to be the best they can be for the rest of us. They’re going to make bad decisions and we’ve had enough of those. So if you’re not 100% in the best place in your life - we’re going to sort that out.I’ve worked on sustainability my whole life, and from pretty much every possible angle. I’ve been everywhere from high level government to business to communities and households. One thing I’ve learned from all of that is that EVERYTHING is about people. People created the systems we live in, and people need to change them. And whatever stuff gets in the way of you doing your bit - we’re going to get rid of it. 

Everything I do, I do because I believe in it. I offer nothing that I haven’t tried and tested myself and if it’s done less than turn my own life around, in a small or a big way - forget it. To sum it up, I believe the future is going to be unlike the past, unlike a somehow bigger or better version of what we have already experienced. The evidence for that is all around us, and it is overwhelming. Climate change, resource depletion, economic collapse are going to mean our society is going undergo rapid and fundamental change in the next decade alone. Which means, we are faced with humanities biggest opportunity. We can rebuild our culture to be sustainable, regenerative, inclusive, collaborative and resilient. So I say it’s time for you to be part of the solution. Because we have all been part of the problem for long enough.