Jen's Story
I was raised in a small town called Turua in the North Island of New Zealand, where I grew up on a farm with my older brother and sister.
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I have always had an undeniable LOVE for animals, and naturally, I thought this would lead to a career working with them.
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Not even close. Instead, I decided to make the "smart" decision to become a lawyer. I completed my Law Degree at the University of Waikato and spent the following six years working as a lawyer at a number of different law firms across the North and South Islands of New Zealand.
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That's 10 whole years I spent going through the motions, feeling unfulfilled with my life.
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However, the story doesn’t end there. I always knew I was destined for something more, and when I finally invested in my very first coach, I resigned from my position as a lawyer within three weeks of starting the course.
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Some would (and did) say it wasn’t the smartest decision. But I’ve never looked back. Not even once!
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Following this, I went on to work as a beauty therapist (primarily because I no longer had a job and needed to pay the bills). In this line of work, I was blessed with the opportunity to work with a range of different people from all walks of life. This one-on-one time with my clients, who I saw on a regular basis every single month, really challenged me to look deeper into the minds of not only myself but all these wonderful people I had the pleasure of working with.
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And what I noticed was a theme: many of us were deeply unfulfilled. As I dove deeper, I was able to identify why. I found it was mostly due to the careers we found ourselves in (or so many of us thought). But the scariest part was learning that the majority of these people (including myself for 10 soul-aching years) had an idea or an inkling about what we would rather be doing—but felt too scared to make a change. Too consumed by the reasons why it might not work, how we could fail, or what other people would think to actually take a chance on ourselves and go after our dreams.
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What I couldn’t get past was the idea that we were all okay with spending our lives deeply unfulfilled. We would rather play it safe than push ourselves to grow and make a change.
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From here, I just knew I had to do more.
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This is when I went on to complete another coaching course that focused purely on the mind. This is where I really got to know and understand how the mind works. It was then that I decided I was going to dedicate my life’s work to helping people with their mindset and becoming a lifelong student in this field.
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A huge takeaway for me from a lot of the coaching work I have done is our constant need to be perfect. I started to realize that perfectionism was showing up in so many areas of my life without me even realizing it. If I couldn’t go to the gym five times this week, then what’s the point in going at all? If I couldn’t get everything perfect for my business launch, then what’s the point in launching at all? I had developed an all-or-nothing mindset.
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Perfectionism is just one of the many personality traits that we adopt to survive. It wasn’t until I learned how to become aware of how this was showing up in my daily life, and how to manage it, that I was able to set myself free and start taking imperfect action toward my dream life. This looked like showing up to the gym in the middle of the week. This meant starting my business right then and there and choosing to improve and evolve it as I go. This meant letting go of the “I’ll do this when” attitude and taking action right in that moment. Because there will always be something in the way. And it will never feel like the perfect time.
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And this, my friends, was how Messy Action was born.
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I personally started by taking one messy action at a time toward a life that I wanted to live. I stopped worrying about needing the approval and validation of everyone else and started to really get to know myself again. I focused on taking one messy action at a time toward a life that truly lit me up.
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So, if you’ve made it this far, we might just be soul sisters and destined to work together.
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Either way, I’d love to hear from you. Reach out today and let’s have a chat. It may not be the right time for you right now, but you’ve got nothing to lose by planting the seed.
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All my love,
Jen X
