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Hello and welcome to the Sharon Francisco show.
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The title of this podcast is that you've got to have a breakdown, a break with, or break apart to have a breakthrough.
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I'm going to talk about that in a little minute, but what I want to start with is to talk about this imaginary line that we live our life on.
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And so if you can imagine a horizontal line that's representing the life that you're living now, you know, all the confidence, our routines, the expectations, and how things are supposed to work.
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So you've got that line and you sort of picture yourself on that line of, you know, the status quo, just doing the do.
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And then something takes us below that line.
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So there's research backed on this as well.
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So if you go down below that line, something, it might be something minor where you just, you know, lost a client, or you might have had a Barney with your partner, or something might have happened, but it might be something even bigger, like a, you know, a divorce, or on the land, you might have a drought, or you, yeah, you might have lost your job or lost your, you know, lost a couple of clients at a time, something major.
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And yeah, perhaps the business is really struggling.
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Something that we haven't planned for and certainly wouldn't have chosen if we had the choice.
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Um, I know for my for my sort of below the line thing, I've talked about this a bit on my podcast where my divorce was a really big time that I actually dipped right below.
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And sometimes you go down below that line and you think, is there is there a way through back up to the top again?
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And I know one of the reasons that um I definitely, when um when I separated, my husband actually called me and he said, I can't do this anymore, Shazza.
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And it was really quite a poignant time because we both knew that it was over.
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And but the first words out of my mouth were, you're the brave one.
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And without his courage to call it, because we both knew, but without his courage to call it, goodness knows how long that would have meandered on for.
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But one thing I did say to him was, I will never ask for you back ever.
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And I did that more for myself.
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And for those of you who who know my journey, the financial security was my biggest thing that knocked me.
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I felt so alone.
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I felt scared because I was a single mum.
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I really, really was passionate
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about my children staying at their school where that where we had them, which didn't, uh which wasn't a cheap school for them to go to.
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So I said, I'll never ask for you back.
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I said that for me.
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So I made sure I stood by my word.
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And once I say something like that, for those of you who know me, I I never ever let those words come out of my mouth.
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And uh he he knew me well too.
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So he knew once I said that that was it.
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So so I was way, way below that line.
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And when you're down there, we often feel like we want our old life back, which is why I said I'll never ask for you back, because familiarity can feel really nice and it feels like this hurts, and there's a whole bunch of pain that you've got to go through to get yourself back up on that even line if you choose to sort of start to look at the the new way that you're going to live or whatever you're gonna do.
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So sometimes as we rebuild, we begin to question what we're returning to.
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Was that the life that we really wanted?
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Which is why I said I'll never ask for you back, because I didn't want that life again.
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But sometimes we hold on to things really tight that aren't serving us, which is really interesting, isn't it?
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It's a very interesting behavior.
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So as we rebuild it, we think, okay, well, so what are we actually wanting to rebuild?
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And thinking about what we were actually tolerating before.
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So, say for instance, if you lost a big major client and it was sort of a big part of your business, they were paying you the majority of the revenue of your business and you lost that client.
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Uh, similar scenario, as you rebuild, so you might try to get that client back and say, what can we do?
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But then if they say no, then you've got to look at, okay, well, what was I actually tolerating that I wasn't overly happy with?
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And I know for a fact that I hear this a lot with my clients that you know, if they lose a client, it's like, yeah, but that client was kind of, you know, they were a bit demanding.
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Or, or we tolerate it because it's so, it pays so well, or whatever that might be.
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And we sort of put ourselves into a situation that's not really um conducive for what we want, but we stay stuck because we perhaps think of the consequences of the pain that you got to go through to rebuild.
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My whole point with this is sometimes the crappiest things in your life
can actually be the most magical things, but it doesn't feel like it at the time, right?
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So the possibility is that we can grow beyond the parts of our previous normal.
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We might develop firmer boundaries around the way that we like to operate.
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We recognize our own strength, or we find a direction we hadn't even considered before.
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And that's why uh after my separation, I had a journal.
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And every day I wrote in that journal, I made myself write in that journal all the wonderful things that will be ahead of me because now I'm single, and now I get to go out to the world and and discover who Sharon Francisco is as a single woman.
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And while that scared the bejibas out of me, it actually was kind of as I kept writing and writing and writing every day, I started to allow myself to feel a little bit more excited about what the future might bring.
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I was I was scared, don't get me wrong, I was really scared.
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But that that ritual of writing every day, of like all the wonderful things.
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Um, you know, we we did have a good relationship at the end.
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We were more like friends, but um, you know, there's uh in relationships like that, especially when they're you know 26 years long, you just sort of get into a bit of a routine.
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And and part of our routine was that, you know, um my ex-husband would manage the money because he was really good with money, and I sort of stepped back from that, which was a rookie mistake.
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If you are not managing your money together, that's a rookie mistake.
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And he didn't do that as a form of control, it was just the way that we kind of landed.
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And so some of the things were, you know, if I went and bought a dress, it's like, well, Sharon, you've already got dresses, why do you need more?
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I'm like, well.
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And so part of my things that I would write is like I can buy a dress every day of the week if I want, and I don't have to ask anyone.
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And you should see how many dresses I buy now.
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I love clothes shopping, and that's just my happiness.
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I just absolutely love it.
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So basically, what we want to do is grow beyond the parts of our previous normal.
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We might, as I said, develop firmer boundaries and grow, uh, recognize our strength and find that new direction we hadn't even considered before.
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That's when, so if you think about that horizontal line I was talking about before, that's when we actually shoot through that normal and we actually go beyond.
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And the research shows if you are down below that line for any given amount of time, once you start rebuilding and start re redefining that new normal, you don't go back up to the horizontal line.
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You actually shoot through it for a certain amount of time.
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So things are actually heaps better for a certain amount of time, then you settle into the normal line, which is really cool because if you're sort of at the moment going through a really tricky time, you know that not only will you go back up to a new sort of normal, but you might shoot right through and go to a beyond that for a little while.
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Now, let's talk about having a breakdown, a break apart, or a break with before you have a breakthrough.
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That kind of again reiterates this whole concept of if you're going through a really tricky time, break with, break apart, break um, break down, we know that going through that will help you have a breakthrough.
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Because when you're down in the dumps like that, when it feels raw and unsure and all the feelings of fear and all of that, it's kind of like you rise out of the ashes and you redefine who you are.
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You have that breakthrough.
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You go, oh.
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So for my example of my separation, I knew that we both knew that it was over.
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But coming out of that, I actually got to create and understand who I was as a mid-40s woman, because I'd actually left home at 19 to go and be with my husband.
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So I kind of didn't get a chance to grow up and really identify who I was as a woman individually.
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And in my mid-40s, which I think a lot of women my age um tend to go through.
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Uh, a lot of women my age were left home to get married to their partner, and quite often not knowing who they are 100%.
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So the good part about that is you actually get to redefine who you are, understand who you are.
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And certainly Sharon Francisco at mid-40s was is a very different person to the 19-year-old girl that left home.
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So that's the fun part.
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That's where you get to recreate who you are.
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So again, if you've lost a client or even if you've lost a business and you're rising up out of that, you come up out of that a different person.
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You come out of that with more intellectual property around who you are, what sort of things that you'd avoid again.
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You realize your boundaries, you realize you're what things are important to you.
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So many things that pain can put you into that you don't even know who you are.
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Things like I'll tell you an instance what happened to my brother.
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We we grew up in a mining town, and he he, my husband and my brother were best friends.
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And my brother was working in a mine called Pete Goldmine, and he got hit by a massive big rock.
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Uh from memory, it was a, I don't know, two or three ton rock.
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He was in a machine, um, in a grader, and he um he was hit by that rock.
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And it sent him to uh intensive care for many, many weeks.
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Six weeks he was in intensive care.
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They flew him to Sydney from the town that were in in Coba.
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And for six weeks he was in intensive care.
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It was quite interesting.
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They um the nurses thought it was really funny.
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At the time, I was actually uh very, very heavily pregnant with my first child.
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And Tanya, my sister-in-law, uh, would we the whole family stayed down there for six weeks?
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We all went to to to go to Sydney for six weeks and we'd all tag team and going, going and visiting my brother.
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And the nurses all thought, the nurses thought that he had a girlfriend, and he thought that I was his wife, being the pregnant one, and then I'd come home and have a sleep, and then Tanya would go in or mum or my dad or whatever.
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And um, when Tanya was in there, because we were never there at the same time because we're all just trying to be there all 24-7 with him.
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Uh, they thought that Tanya was his girlfriend and I was his wife.
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And they were like, oh, he's got a couple of girls coming to that so it's really funny.
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Anyway, long story short, uh six weeks in intensive care.
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And John actually approached that incredibly well.
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He um he came out of that and realized that, you know, maybe the mining industry and and living in this little town perhaps isn't isn't for us and uh for for him and his and his wife.
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And and then that kind of made us second guess it as well, because you know, you see, you know mining is dangerous, but when it's right in your face like that, it's very, very confronting.
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And all of us knew that we wanted to get out of the mining industry, we wanted to to move beyond that.
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But what does that look like?
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And that was a really defining moment.
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That was really like obviously John was really down and out, not not knowing whether there's a there's a future in the mines for him, and certainly for me, being married to a miner as well, and just just made us all second guess.
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What are we doing here?
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What's it and that actually fast forward, it took a few years, but fast forward, it it's actually was the defining thing that got us to move to Brisbane.
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We all moved to Brisbane, my mum and dad, and my my brother and sister-in-law, and recently in the last five years, my sister and her husband from Canberra.
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So we're all in Brisbane now, which is lovely, but that was kind of the catalyst that made us move.
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So imagine if that didn't happen, our trajectory may have been quite different.
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The worst thing that you could ever imagine being hit by a two or three ton rock, intensive care for six weeks.
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They they thought he was going to lose his life.
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We all thought we were gonna lose him.
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It was the first time I've ever seen my dad cry.
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And seeing your dad cry for the first time made me realize holy cow, this is serious.
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And it actually was a defining moment for all of us, and it actually changed the trajectory of our lives, which is really interesting.
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So who knows where we would have been if this didn't happen.
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So when this happens, if you have a breakdown, break with, break apart before you have a breakthrough, then we start noticing the possibilities that we previously might have overlooked.
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The conversation might land really differently, and we consider an opportunity that we would have once dismissed.
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We allow ourselves to want for something different.
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We can fantasize about a new or different life, which is kind of cool.
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And doesn't it suck that something crappy has to happen sometimes for us to be pushed into that?
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And sometimes the opportunity was already there.
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Our willingness to consider it has changed.
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Other times we create something entirely new through the choices that we make.
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So it's kind of a really like pivotal time for our lives when something bad happens.
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We get to recreate whatever it is that we were doing and make those changes.
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We don't have to be grateful for what happened to value who we become because of it, which is very cool.
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We can wish it hadn't happened, but still recognize that something very worthwhile in how we've rebuilt.
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So we've taken what's happened and we've rebuilt, and it's because of that that it's happened, but we don't have to be grateful for it.
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We know that that was pretty crappy, but now it's allowed us to grow into who we are now.
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And we don't need to hit rock bottom to make the change.
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And this is my, I guess, call to action to you is if you're recognizing that you're not happy in a certain situation in your business or with what you're doing, maybe with friends or whatever it might be, if you are not feeling like you're on the right path to recognize it, yeah, maybe I'll make some changes and see what happens.
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We um support reflection and small decisions do matter.
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So having a look at where your situation is now.
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Nobody needs pressure to turn their hardest season into an inspiring story.
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So, what can we see now that we couldn't see before?
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If you think through your life now, what can you see now, knowing that you don't have to hit rock bottom to change?
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And what's one choice we can make from that new understanding?
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What can we choose to change from that new understanding?
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Hopefully, this has been helpful, guys.
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And until next time, we'll talk to you soon.
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Bye.