[00:00:00] Oh my, oh my. Today's topic of discussion that I wanted just to flag really is bouncing back from being discombobulated. I love the word discombobulated. A little bit confused, a little bit disconcerted, kind of dunno whether you're coming or going, all a little bit of a mess. And for anyone who's watching the video recording of this podcast, we'll see that I am not in the bright, shiny podcasting space that I have in my home.

[00:01:03] At the moment I have paint stuff samples all put on the wall behind me. I've got random pot plants that are all put together, which came out of the studio space that I have nowhere to put at the moment. My makeup table is sat in the middle of our lounge room and you can see that in the background as well.

[00:01:19] It is all a little bit of a hodgepodge right now, and as much as I have all of the things set up in my beautiful office space with my fantastic camera and the beautiful lighting and the fantastic podcasting microphone, not just my headphones. I can't get to it. I can't get to any of that right now because we are in the middle of a big renovation project.

[00:01:44] A well, I say we're in the middle of it. We have started you may remember if you've listened to the show for a while now that last year, one of the bottles of champagne with Post-It notes for me was buy the country estate. And we did that. We managed to pop that and we moved into our country house in rural New South Wales, regional New South Wales, I should say, back in September.

[00:02:07] It dawned on me at the beginning of 2023 that I actually hadn't spent more than five days at a time in any location, let alone my home or one of my homes for more than five days. That is mind boggling. Three months straight. I was not in the same location for more than five days.

[00:02:26] So I'll just take stock on that and just, yes, I am very privileged to be able to jump between two houses. I am very privileged to travel as much as I have. In the last 12 months. I've worked extremely hard to live the lifestyle that I'm living and, and I love it. But five days in one location, three months, that is big.

[00:02:47] That's a lot of moving around. So part of that, I was like, great, I've got all this kit that I can move around with me. I've got travel podcasting microphones. I've got an awesome webcam that I can use. I've got hacks from my video trade of, how to set my computer up so that my eyeline's right for videos and I know that I need to be in a soft space for audio quality and I know all the things.

[00:03:08] But if I look at myself today, this week where I look at our house, our heritage house that had a couple of rooms with rotten floorboards that we've had to change I've got no floorboards in two of my rooms. One of the rooms is where the stairs is to my, beautiful purpose built and designed office space for podcasting and reading.

[00:03:27] Recording and writing and working in absolute bliss upstairs I cannot get to. The four main rooms of our home right now are completely void of furniture. We have an old 1856 home, which is beautiful. It's a heritage house and it's gonna look stunning when it's restored, but there is a lot of work to be done.

[00:03:48] So the four main walls, in the. Are all stonewalls and therefore the internet connection doesn't like to bounce through stonewalls at all. But cause of all the renovation projects, , we've had to remove all the wifi boosters from around the house as well. And so right now I'm working in one side of the house in like what has been extended onto over the years and the wifi system and the TV connection.

[00:04:17] The phone connection for our internet is the other side of the house, like in the other wing of the house. And I say wing because it's a U-shaped house. So I'm in wing one, it's in wing two, and the wifi is not bouncing through to me at all. So not only do I not have my office set up, I do not have my podcasting microphone.

[00:04:35] I do not have my beautiful camera set up my beautiful background. I also don't have a strong wifi connection and I'm hotspotting. So it's all a little bit, you can understand why I'm a little bit discombobulated, right? Everything's a little bit up in the. It's a little bit of a mess. It's a little bit scary.

[00:04:52] But you know what, I look at it all and I go, I'm gonna look at it as organized chaos. I could very easily get completely and utterly derailed. I could have lost it and gone, you know what? I can't get to my fancy microphone. I haven't got my travel microphone kits cuz they're all in Sydney.

[00:05:10] I don't really wanna put out a podcast episode or video that is, I'm gonna say subpar to what I've now got upstairs as a setup. Knowing full well that what I'm doing and delivering is still pretty darn good by all the stretches of the imagination. I've got my camera, got my lighting, I've got good audio.

[00:05:28] So I could have let it derail me, but instead I've sort of cobbled everything together and gone. No, we need to make sure that the podcast is gonna go out next week. We need to make sure that the newsletter is going out and that the Champagne Lounge community is feeling loved. And so part of this year for me is doing everything with ease and grace.

[00:05:49] And as much as there is confusion and disruption and a hell of a lot of dust around where I am now that is what I'm doing and I, fully maintain that bouncing back from discombobulation from chaos, from drama, trauma, any of the things, probably not the trauma bit, the drama piece for sure.

[00:06:08] Mindset, my friend mindset. So I'm going into it, doing it with ease and grace. I'm going to enjoy every moment as much as I can. One of the things that I took away from a conversation with someone I met at a retreat that I was at in Spain last year, was worry about things that worry can solve and I was like, "huh, okay.

[00:06:30] That's really important. Like that's a really good thing to have in the back of my mind." At the time she was telling me this because I left my husband in our new house that he did a lot of work with a new job and a new puppy, and I relinquished all control of any of it by heading overseas , and working overseas for a few weeks.

[00:06:52] So I was worried about like the puppy and the house, then him and his job and all the things. And she says, "you can't, we can't do anything about it. So stop worrying about it and live in the moment and be present". And it didn't stop me caring, but it did stop me from worrying about things that I couldn't solve.

[00:07:07] And so I look at all the things going on with our renovation project where, you get someone to come and go, " yeah, it's a little bit bigger than we anticipated. Like now we've done it, the surface of that, the job's a lot bigger". Or " we've got this issue". Okay, we've got this issue. What can I do about it?

[00:07:25] Trust in them and their expertise and what they can do. And so I'm not worrying about that. The chaos and the dust and the renovations, it'll happen. There are experts doing it. I'm not attempting to do these things myself. So you gotta trust in the expertise of those people in terms of, getting everything done.

[00:07:42] I have the ability to work from anywhere I can, hotspot from anywhere. So I can take my laptop, I can take my phone, and I can make things happen. The joy and the beauty of technology these days is insane. You know, the way that we can run our businesses and run our lives. 

[00:08:00] So for that piece, I'm not overly stressed or worried about that. I tell you what I was stressed about the most, not having a set space to set up my workspace. And so when I'm traveling, I always try and find somewhere, always have a hotel room or , a house that has a dedicated desk space so I can go in, set it all up once, move everything around so it looks amazing behind me and go for gold. I'm one of those people that needs organization around me in my little workspace for me to feel on top of the bloody world, like I can conquer anything, I'm unstoppable. So what's discombobulated me this week, and I think will continue to do so until I have floor boards to get up to my office space

[00:08:43] so I'm gonna say it's gonna be another couple of weeks, is the fact that I have been bouncing around from place to place within our house, our garden because there's two of us working from home and there's one desk downstairs, and that is my husband's workspace. And so when he's here and he's working, I'm not gonna take that space away from him.

[00:09:04] That is his space. But when he is not there, when he is not here, when he is on the road like he is today, as I'm recording this, I'm back at a desk. I am working at a normal height in a normal chair with post-it notes and pens and on all the things I need to feel, that I've got this. They're all around me.

[00:09:21] But up to that point, I've been moving between the garden table, sitting on the sofa, sitting on the spare bed, propping up against a small little coffee table. Now I've been moving around and doing little bits here and there, and I haven't felt settled. And so for me, that's something that I'm gonna have to work with.

[00:09:39] And you know, I run a business that I can run by design and life by design. So I am actively setting my mindset to, you know what, if I don't have a space to do those things now in a way that I know I need to execute. , it's okay. It's not meant to happen right now. I can carve out time, I can have the conversation, I can find the right space and set up and hammer that stuff out with allotted time in my calendar like I'm doing now.

[00:10:07] Tomorrow when I have to move away from this spot again. Cool. Tomorrow's the day of content creation, taking photos and connecting with the community that I'm building via the app. I can do all of that, but right now, today is bulk content creation for me at the big computer. I've got a quiet space.

[00:10:24] I can do all the emails that I need to do. I can deal with a big creative planning in terms of website updates, content updates, video reviews for clients all on my big screen, and then tomorrow be back to laptop with my mobile phone. So I talk about mindset and bouncing back from this serious discombobulation because so many things can throw us off as along the way we can get thrown completely. And you need to be able to have a skillset or you know, a mindset to be able to step back, take stock, and go, this can either completely derail me for an hour or it can completely derail me for the next week, two weeks, month, whatever it may be. And so I always choose the least amount of time to be discombobulated.

[00:11:09] I do not have the time to be discombobulated, quite frankly, and nor do I have the energy to drain in feeling that way and feeling stressed. And so I allow myself to sit in the moment to then step back and go, "Okay. How do I solve this? How do I rejig my week or my work day so that I can be maximum impact, maximum output without feeling the stress of not being in the right spot to do the right job".

[00:11:36] There is always a way of working it around. And so for me, very much around. Knowing in advance when my renovation loud noises are gonna happen is gonna be key to me creating videos and live streams for my community and podcasts for you to listen to. You know, I want to make sure that the audio and the visual is clear.

[00:11:57] That's important to me. What I've given up in that time put on pause that I care about right now is the background of the video. I know that my podcast editor will work absolute magic to make the audio from my headphones sound as good as the audio from my proper podcasting mic, and I know that that's gonna happen.

[00:12:17] But I also know that I cannot do my podcast without my video. Cause of my background in video and how much I love to use the medium on all social platforms. And so I'm okay with the fact that the background of the next few podcasts for me are gonna be different. They're gonna be all over the place.

[00:12:34] It's gonna sometimes look amazing and it's gonna sometimes have paint swatches on the wall behind me. And you know what? Human. That's what it's all about for me this year. Reinvention with ease and grace. Leaning into my own uniqueness and just living in more joy and connection. And, and joy. I'm gonna come back to the joy piece.

[00:12:55] We can find joy in every single day. Not all day, every day, I get that. But you can find and enjoy a moment or several in every single day. And so listening to this podcast, I want you to think about what can you start doing in your lives? When stuff starts to derail you, what is that trigger point that you need to go, oh, no, I'm feeling a little bit discombobulated.

[00:13:20] I need to stop this now. Do you lean into it? Do you let it completely derail you? Or have you got a trick that you go, you know what? When I start to feel that feeling, I go for a walk. I go for a run. I have a meditation. I get up from my desk and just leave it for 15 minutes, let me know, like, let me know.

[00:13:37] In the, in the comment. Let me know everyone. Instagram, come and DM me. Let me know how you handle managing your own discombobulation. I don't actually even know if discombobulation is a word. I know that's discombobulated is and I always have tried to get it into a conversation every so often because I really love saying the word.

[00:13:57] So, you know, that complete derailment this year, we're already into February. When this podcast is coming out, it is gonna be the, second week of February in 2023, we are already halfway through the second month of the year. It's insane. It's moving extremely fast. And so if I look at why I'm creating the champagne lounge and the community of joy and connection and making the most of every single day.

[00:14:24] It's because it completely moves in the blink of an eye. And before we know it, we're gonna be at the end of the year. And we could have spent a lot of time in that completely derailment. We could have spent a lot of time begrudging certain situations feeling uncomfortable where we're sitting and not having the community around us or the support or the confidence to move forward and get us out of that situation.

[00:14:47] And so take stock. Take stock right now of all the things that you can potentially get derail roaded on in the next few weeks. What is something that is, eh, gonna test your patients a little bit and how are you gonna manage that? And then start thinking about and noting down, this really helped me noting down all those pieces of time in the day that bring you joy.

[00:15:14] Because I guarantee you there's gonna be some stuff that grinds you gears. But what are the things that have brought you joy? Because it's far better to focus on the joy and enjoyment and the moments in the presence of life than it is to sit and stew on something that you potentially had no control over.

[00:15:30] And also in terms of things that you know are gonna come up and test. How to navigate that. So actually come out the other side of it, feeling all right about it, changing that mindset and that piece.

[00:15:42] And so, yeah, like for me, it was very, very, very easy. , it could have been very easy for me to go, you know what, guys? I'm gonna skip a couple of weeks of the podcast because I'm just not set up in the right way and this is just not working for me. And I feel all a bit higgledy picky. But I didn't, and I, I pulled it all together.

[00:16:01] I found the right spot, I put the gear together that I needed cuz the message is really important, right? Like it is one of, there are gonna be times that test you and there are gonna be times that stress you out and there's gonna be chaos around you at times.

[00:16:17] But that internal compass piece, that internal strength and focus the ability to have that mindset shift into something way more positive is so powerful, like so, so, so powerful that I can honestly say that right now it, it doesn't matter what state my house is in. I know that I've been able to deliver what I needed to deliver for my community, for you and for me, and I'm feeling really bloody happy about it.

[00:16:46] I really hope that you've got a lot out of today's episode and I, I really wanna know, as I said earlier, let me know over on Instagram, come and say hello. Let me know how you deal with potential derailments and what you do to bounce back from your own discombobulation. I would absolutely love to know.

[00:17:02] So thank you so much for listening to today's episode. I really appreciate you tuning in and I'll see you next time.