“If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise.” ~ Robert Fritz.
“It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” – J.K. Rowling

I read a tweet first thing today that went something like this:

“Great day. Awesome yoga class this morning, now sitting in airport lounge at JFK enjoying a drink. Nice!”

Such a seemingly innocuous, harmless little tweet.

But at 5am in the morning, in the dark, it was like a red rag to a bull for me.

When was the last time I sat quietly enjoying a drink in anticipation of a flight somewhere? Or actually made it to a yoga class? Why can’t I just decide to jet off and have the points or credit card to do the whole lounge thing?

Ooh, I was suddenly really, really MAD. Mad with frustration and envy. Mad because I had things holding me down. Mad because I know I have a violent unlived life bubbling away under the crust of my day to day.

I was mad at my kids.

If I didn’t have kids I would be SO much richer. I would be having sex all the time. I could leave nice things that were breakable on shelves below eye level. I could lie on the sofa and read a book during the day on a weekend without feeling guilty about my husband having to clothe/bath/feed/entertain/perform damage limitation/counsel/bandage up/prise apart…whatever.

I could actually have one of those movie mornings where I wake up in a fresh white linen bed, passionately kiss my man, romp, eat breakfast and drink hot, fresh coffee while poring over the papers, romp some more, then emerge for a walk somewhere bracing and picturesque.

Ha!

I was mad…suddenly all I could see were seemingly childless women everywhere on Twitter. Doing retreats. Slipping off to yoga and then curling up with a book at night. Leaping off to conferences and tweeting madly from Vegas over too much champagne.

In my moment of Mad, it didn’t matter that these women might be miserable. Or that they might trade everything to have a gurgling bundle of chubbly baby in their arms. All I felt was twisting, angry jealousy that I was squeezing every inch of writing I could into the dark, cold hours of morning before my day became a muddy fingerpainting of food and nappies and cleaning up toys and putting away the HUGE baskets of laundry that three children somehow manifest.

A full two coffees later, and The Mad had gratefully eased off a little. I realised that I was mad at a much bigger, messier picture.

What was I really envying? The travel? Yes. The connections and me-times and networking? Absolutely.

But these things are not about my children.

They are about giving myself permission.

I could go on a retreat. I just don’t allow myself because it wouldn’t be fair to leave the children with my husband on his weekend off.

I could fly somewhere, anywhere. I just don’t because there are few places I would ever want to go without my family to come along and enjoy the ride, and buying five plane tickets is crazy expensive.

And that movie morning thing? I could so totally make that happen if I wanted to. (And if the movie morning thing turned into pile of kids on the bed, sitting on the papers and spilling scrambled egg all over the duvet, then that could still be fun.)

Because the truth behind The Mad is this:

You don’t have to have kids to have a handbrake holding you back from what you give yourself permission to do. It’s just that kids make the challenge to negotiate through the chaos greater.

Kids are massive, volcanic calls to action. They summon you out of your slumber (literally and metaphorically!) and shake your arse in the air, screaming “Do something now! Make it important! Leave me a legacy! If you want it, JUST MAKE the time!”

Because with kids you have no choice. You have to want it so bad that you stay up, like Gary Vee, until 3am to make it happen. You have to properly decide it’s worth doing and then give yourself permission to do it, without guilt.

So for all you women out there living a relatively hand-brake free life, I say this – you have so much freedom. Don’t forget to give yourself the permission to do what your freedom so blissfully allows you to do.

And I’ll keep working on giving myself the permission to do even more.

Comments – Sing It Back To Me

What parts of your unlived life are begging to be let loose? What thing do you most want to do that only needs you to say “yes”? Can you give yourself – today – the permission to do one secretly haboured, magnificent thing?

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Well, all I can say is finalmente.

It’s been almost three weeks since the birth of my little boy. Almost 21 days of soothing and rocking and holding and snuggling and swaddling, clutching at spare minutes of sleep and crisis-managing the occasional nappy FAIL.

But I am very pleased to confirm that he is truly scrumptious.

There is nothing more delicious than a newborn baby. There is a certain freshly-baked scent that barely lasts a day or two, but in those first hypnotic days it fills the room like a siren song. I’m sure it’s all part of the charm offensive…

I’m hooked. But I can now, with cast iron certainty, declare…never again.

Three kids?? Why, oh why did I start my blog three months before giving birth to baby three? What was I thinking? Why didn’t someone shake the hell out of me, slap my cheek in a kind of 30s movie style kinda way and say “For God’s sake woman, get a hold of yourself!”

Surely I was trying to do too much?

The truth is, you see, I have never been one to take it easy. If I start spinning a plate, I tend to say “What the hell, let’s spin twelve.” My imagination has always struggled to slow down and wait patiently for my circumstances to catch up, red-faced and puffing and apologising for the mess.

But despite the exhaustion and the guilt and the spinning spinning spinning, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Because there is only NOW.

There is no perfect time. There is no ideal situation, no golden moment for you to start that life, that inspired business or that project you dream about in the early hours of the morning.

When I woke up back in October last year with my muse fizzing at my heels, I knew I had to start my blog that day. It didn’t matter that my whole life was due to be turned inside out and dangled upside down by a pair of tiny wrinkly hands in a matter of months.

If there is something you want to do, there’s nothing to stop you waiting until you feel the time is right.

But the risk with this strategy is that that right time never shows up. And sometimes when you miss the boat, you never get off the island.

I know my life just got a whole lot more complicated. I understand that the squishy, comfy center of my life is now fully overgrown by my three green and leggy children. ‘Me time’ is now what plays upon the fringes of my day. But that’s ok.

My scrumptious little boy is snoring in quick, faint little breaths by my side. My girls are building a cubby house out of pillows and quilts and fighting over Mr. Men cups in the next room.

And I’m writing my first post of the New Year, a head full of possibilities, while my muse is treating me to a much needed shoulder rub. (Well, I made that last bit up. But I can dream, can’t I?)

It’s delicious and it’s all mine.

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Today I wanted to share with you the exciting and quite frankly terrifying news that in the next week or so I will be introducing baby number three to the family.

Yes, as you may not already know, I have now finally arrived at the very end of that 9 month growing-another-human-being thang. I’m tired, and a little over the being kicked part. I know that this will be nothing compared to the exhaustion that comes with the “actually having baby in the room” part that is coming up, so I’ve forgone my usual 5am starts in favour of staying in bed as long as possible.

So this week I have been a little quiet on all fronts – and I wanted you to know that this, like everything, is only temporary.

In the meantime, I offer this little poem – I wrote it in honour of my grandmother, whose image pops into my head whenever I smell a tomato on a vine. I hope you enjoy it.

In My Grandmother’s Garden

My squinted eyes could barely see, the sun
Heavy on my grandmother’s skirted knee
Bent hemmed in a rose polyester dress,
In front of my nose.

She would grow tomatoes like vineyards.
Me in their shade, ripening slowly,
Smelling so much red I could sense my
Head begin to blush, and

My short stumpy fringe delicately
And hairily extend to green stalks.
My toes took root through my sandals and
Fed my well-filled cheeks.

They hung heavily red from my head
And she would pick them each with a kiss
Then take me inside for toast and beans,
My nose behind her knees.

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Have you ever thought about why it really bugs you when your partner leaves the lid off the toothpaste? Or why you are obsessed with being on time while your best friend thinks nothing of always turning up late?

Why does one person live perfectly at ease surrounded by piles of clutter while another would consider it an irritating mess? I remember visiting the flat of an ex-boyfriend for the first time and discovering he basically never washed a dish. Ever. His kitchen sink was like a horror movie. And I just couldn’t understand why that didn’t freak him out.

It was clear that we each had a different set of rules.

Our rules are hugely important in helping us to quickly and easily navigate our way through life. They allow us to shape our reactions to the things we experience and to judge whether we are moving towards things that work or moving away from things we want to avoid.

But we don’t usually choose these rules knowingly – most of them we soak up from our parents, our culture or our education. They may be obvious and mundane – like manners, the highway code or the etiquette of queuing. (Seriously, in the UK it’s an art.) Others are more ethical and moral, such as vegetarianism, or our laws against killing and stealing.

Whether we’re aware of them or not, all of these rules share something in common.

They are designed to create some kind of order out of the chaos that is living.

But what about those rules we “accidentally” live by?

For example, how many rules do you have for feeling “loved” by someone? Do they have to say it? Constantly? Or can they just show you? Must they buy you flowers? Cook you dinner? Kiss you in public? Never kiss you in public? Agree with everything you say? Never criticize you?

What about your rules for feeling appreciated in your career? How much money must you be earning before you decide you are successful? Is security an important rule for you, or freedom and flexibility?

We all have rules that we live by, consciously or unconsciously, and they are hugely powerful in shaping the quality of our lives. So shouldn’t you take the time to really explore what your rules are? Perhaps should ask yourself:

Do my rules make it easy for me to feel great? Or do they make it easy for me to feel dreadful?

For example, if you have one rule that says you absolutely must be famous to feel truly recognised but another rule that says you must never be criticized to feel loved, then how are you ever going to get what you really want, which is love and recognition?

Are your rules holding you back? Then change them!

If you want to start feeling more relaxed, at peace and in control, then here are 7 powerful reasons to get down to rewriting your internal rulebook:

1. You will feel more courageous. Most of us create hundreds of rules for feeling fear and yet very few for feeling confident and empowered. Why not start redefining what it takes to makes you feel scared? Write down the situations that cause you fear and then really question why it is that you feel that way. Is it insecurity? Embarrassment? Rejection? Now actively choose to dramatically edit this list down. A good way to do this is to ask yourself these two questions every time you imagine doing something that scares you: “What is really the worst that can happen?” and “If the worst does happen, will it still matter tomorrow? In a week’s time? Next year?” We feel fear because we are suddenly not in control of an outcome that will directly affect us. And not being in control, for most people, is terrifying. Why not decide to stop fearing what you can’t control, and start relishing taking on what you can?
2. Your relationships will dramatically improve. If you catch yourself nagging or criticizing your partner because they haven’t done the housework, or they dressed the kids in completely uncoordinated clothes, or they never buy you flowers, you really only have two choices. To let it upset you every time they “get it wrong” or accept that their system of rules is different to yours. (Changing someone is not really an option – that is their job!) You might vary the kind of language you use and nag in a positive, more encouraging way, but let’s face it, now you’re just nagging with soul. Why not change the goalposts instead?  Choose to love your partner first. Choose a rule that says “I respect and value my partner for all of the things that they do, especially the wonderful stuff that I forget to appreciate because I’m too busy zooming in on all the annoying stuff they always get wrong.” And then, why not start voicing this appreciation instead of criticizing? And just be accountable for the things that are non-negotiable for you – if you need a sink without a dish in sight, then just do it yourself and smile that you get to control how you feel about it.
3. You will be calmer and more relaxed with your kids. Back in my child-free days, the sound of kids and babies crying in planes and restaurants used the annoy the hell out of me. I couldn’t have a conversation with a friend without their toddler rampaging around my flat picking up and throwing every visible object they could get their sticky fingers on.  “Why don’t you just control your child??!” my inner voice would scream. Two little girls later, and my rulebook has been totally rewritten on this one. Having children demands that you be more flexible, that you filter out more and just accept what can be controlled and what cannot. So narrow down the possibilities for your kids to bug you. If you have an admirable rule that says “I will never get frustrated by my children,” then you’re setting yourself up for some serious conflict! Change the rule and accept a degree of parental madness is totally allowed. Or if your rules are more restrictive, instead of shouting at them every time they touch something fragile or breakable, why not just move it? Accept the chaos and learn to appreciate their energy and curiosity and physicality instead of always trying to rein it in. You are not lowering your standards and you are not raising unmanageable children – but you are increasing your opportunities to feel less stressed and frustrated by allowing more flexibility into your life. Ask yourself constantly – is this rule really necessary? Is that boundary there for your child’s benefit, or for yours?
4. You will feel more attractive. How attractive you feel to the opposite sex is never about what they find attractive – how can you know what turns them on? What you assume to be attractive is the sum of your “rules for attractiveness”. So think about how you personally define “attractive”. Is it primarily a physical set of rules? Like your body shape? Your weight? Your hair (or lack of)? The size of your bust? Your height? (I could go on!) Or do you define it internally? And what happens when you finally lose the weight or scrape together enough to pay for that boob job, only to look in the mirror and secretly whisper, “Bugger, I still feel ugly, dammit.”  Don’t make the mistake of creating a template for feeling sexy that you could never attain. Bend and break your rules instead, and choose to feel like a sex machine based on a better set of conditions. What can you learn from that “bald but so incredibly funny he’s kind of a sex-pot” kind of guy?
5. You will feel less stressed. Have you ever noticed that you tend to feel less stressed when you feel in control over your circumstances? Problems arise when we set up boundaries that attempt to assert control over things we can’t control.  So rather than wrestle with the unpredictable, accept the uncertainty and instead assert the control over how you will choose to respond. Rewrite your rules by staying flexible and non-resistant to outcomes that you cannot predict as yet. Choose to adopt the rule of “being in the now” as much as possible.
6. You will feel much happier, more often. By rewriting more of the rules that are holding you back, you expand the possibilities for feeling great as opposed to feeling frustrated. So why not start with choosing to value happiness – as a rule – first? It’s a choice limited only by your criteria for feeling happy. So why not decide that from now on it’s going to be insanely easy for you to feel happy. That it doesn’t take much to make you laugh. Then see how this dramatically improves the way you feel.
7. You will get more of what you want. Most people want to feel successful, peaceful, wealthy, and free (just to get started). But have you really thought about what it would take for you to actually feel successful? Peaceful? Wealthy? Free? Are your conditions for experiencing these feelings actually possible? Or have you set in place a set of rules so rigid that the chances of ever attaining these perfect conditions are virtually nil? Because you can experience blissful happiness eating one perfectly ripe strawberry. Or you can experience incredible wealth, just by being grateful that you get to live on more than a dollar or two a day.

Take the time to actually “design” your rules instead of assuming that your responses and behaviour are just “the way you are”. It’s not about compromising, or lowering your standards. It IS about giving yourself a more liberating and empowering “rulebook for life”. Why restrict your opportunities for feeling great? How many rules can you rewrite to start playing the game you want to play?

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“What mankind wants is not talent; it is purpose.” ~ Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton.

There is a general consensus that talent alone does not make you a success. You also need application and the right kind of hard work. You need the skills to analyse the results you get, and the perseverence to continue where others give up. And luck, of course.

But is it really as simple as that?

I was moved to write this article in response to a Triiibes discussion I have been taking part in. One of my friends on this excellent forum was discussing the book Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else and the thoughtful, intelligent responses were very much in line with the consensus I described earlier.

But my perspective on this is quite a different one, and I’ll do my best to not make it too lengthy.

As a teenager I was considered Gifted and Talented. I attended a school based on academic selection, and very soon I discovered that I also had an unusually beautiful singing voice with operatic potential.

As I followed the operatic path, my talent opened many doors. I won huge national competitions, dozens of prizes, received a great deal of financial patronage and was snapped up for my professional debut before I had even finished my formal musical training.

But no matter how much talent I had been blessed with, it really didn’t matter in the end because how I felt about the “business” of singing impinged too much on my love of the “craft” of singing.

You see, to me it is not a question of talent vs hard work. It is a question of preserving the love for what you do.

The business of opera means travel (oh, for a major opera house in every city!) for long periods of time (a new production takes at least 6 weeks to rehearse) for the least amount of money the house can afford (= one broke singer).

I was fortunate to have been signed by the largest and most powerful agent in Europe before I’d even made my professional debut. And yet the first contract I secured after 6 years of formal training was as Principal Soprano in a leading house for the grand annual salary of 14,000 pounds a year. I still laugh at that figure….can you imagine a trained medical student emerging after 6 years of education earning this kind of money? Certainly not. Opera may appear glamorous, but at its heart (especially in the UK) is a system where the companies depend on government handouts and not private sponsorship. The coffers are almost always empty, and the cupboards bare.

And it isn’t just about the money. It’s about the logistics of pursuing a glittering operatic career at the expense of everything else. If you have children, do you bring them with you? What if they are at school? Who stays home if your partner is also a performer? How do you even get to meet non-performers when every one of your colleagues are either singers themselves or intimately connected to the business? Male opera singers at the highest level sometimes endure weeks without their families. High level female opera singers either pay for the nanny to come along, or they exchange the cuddles of their kids for the proverbial roses strewn along the footlights.

Personally, I chose family over career, because my audience could never have loved me back in the same way as my daughters. I chose personal growth and variety over the continued pursuit of an artistic legacy that I believe is really a mirage.

Many of my friends and colleagues see this as a “waste”. We can’t help believing someone has been gifted with a talent for some divine reason and that they are obligated to selflessly share it with the world. But surely it is just as much a waste to continue plugging away at something that does not nourish us anymore?

Persistence is a tool. It serves us in the pursuit of something we are passionate about. But all the persistence in the world will not enable a person in any field – talented or otherwise – who’s heart is not in it.

If there is anything we can teach our children, it is about learning to know themselves in such a way that they discover their passions and learn to follow them, whereever they may lead. For what good is talent without joy? What good is hard work without passion? Persistence is merely a means to an end – and many can pursue failure with the same persistence as those who pursue success.

I just want my daughters to know – intimately and with conviction – their own values, follow their passions with purpose, strive to contribute to those around them, and always do what they love. And I am learning to do the same.

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Despite having been through childbirth twice, I’m having to go through a number of “firsts”.

1. This is the first time I have had a baby in Australia.
2. This is the first time I am booked in to have the baby in a hospital.

My first daughter was a water birth in a Midwife-Led Unit. My second was a home birth that was complicated by a post-partum haemorrhage where I lost over 2 litres of blood. I was told afterward that if I was ever to have another baby, it must be in a hospital.

So I have been trying to get my head around the way the maternity hospital system works here, and it’s even more complicated by the fact that childbirth is available on private health insurance here in Australia, whereas in the UK it is not. So my choices here in Brisbane are very limited.

I was “bounced” from the Mater Maternity in South Brisbane (all shiny and new) because it is too full, and told to go to Ipswich instead.

So I visited Ipswich Hospital Antenatal and Maternity Departments on Monday to check it out. And I left literally in tears.

How could I have my baby here? The place was dirty, the furniture and walls old, rubbish on the floors and bathrooms that looked like they were last cleaned in 2008. We couldn’t even find a place to park our car when we arrived – the huge multi-story car park next door had a sign outside saying FULL. The receptionist in the foyer confessed it is very rarely otherwise.

Compared to my first two birthing experiences, the thought of having to deliver my baby in Ipswich was pretty much my definition of hell.

But now that I’ve had a few days to calm down and reflect on the situation, I find myself asking a really important question: is this an opportunity for me to just be grateful?

Let me explain.

Following my haemorrhage last year, I became very interested in the work being done by the UN and organisations such as Unicef to improve maternity mortality rates in the developing world. In countries such as Afghanistan and Sierra Leone, they are so high that there is a 1 in 6 chance of the mother dying in childbirth. The vast majority of these are entirely preventable deaths caused by isolation from hospitals, lack of skilled attendants present, basic hygiene, nutrition and even family/gender prejudices and ignorance. You can read the Unicef report on Maternal and Newborn Health for yourself by clicking here.

In my case, I was incredibly fortunate to have been tended to by a team of doctors, midwives, ambulance staff and paramedics who all came together the morning Sophia was born, to save my life.

Almost one and a half thousand women who die every day from similar causes are not as fortunate.

So should I call my GP and demand that I be allowed to birth elsewhere? Should I raid my finances to afford a private birth in a “nice” hospital? Or should I be grateful that at least I have a hospital to give birth in, where there are staff who know what to do, where there is a bed to lie on, where there is a bathroom and not a hole in the floor.

I don’t know what the answer is. But I am reminded, at least, that I am blessed enough even with things as they are.

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