In this powerful episode of Baskets of Knowledge, Margot Korhonen, a Community Coach and Creative, shares how one simple question, “What if everything did work out?”, changed the course of her life.
From being a single mum dreaming of small comforts to becoming a homeowner, artist, and author of Creating Connected Communities, Margot’s journey is a masterclass in courage, self-leadership, and love.
She opens up about carrying the BRCA1 gene, overcoming chronic fatigue, and learning to lead with compassion instead of perfection.
You’ll learn how to:
Dream bigger than fear
Protect your peace through healthy boundaries
Listen when your body whispers before it screams
Transform pain into purpose
If you’ve ever felt stuck, tired, or unsure of what’s next, this conversation will remind you that you’re stronger, wiser, and more capable than you think.
Tune in to Baskets of Knowledge on Spotify a podcast about transformation, mindset, and the power of human stories.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
Hey everybody, it's Prajesh here.
In Tana here. Welcome to our podcast Passes of
Knowledge chats with a difference.
In our podcast, we invite guestsfrom around the country and
around the world to talk about how they got to where they at
the moment. It's about a journey, it's about
an experience, it's about their life.
(00:26):
Kyoto, everybody, welcome to another episode of Baskets of
Knowledge, and we've got Tony back.
Tony, it's great to see. We've missed you over the last
few episodes. Yeah, I've definitely missed the
few last few episodes. But yeah, I'm glad that it's
coming into summer as always, sogood sense of change of seasons.
I think something that I've probably put into my basket the
last couple of weeks has just been to celebrate the small
(00:49):
successes. And I think, you know, often we,
we've talked about it many timesaround striving for those huge
achievements. But now that I've started going
back into counselling and, you know, looking at how rocky this
year has been in terms of life change and moving back home, all
those kinds of changes that havehappened in my life, I think
it's just been an awesome realization to, I guess, reflect
(01:11):
on that change and reflect on where I am now compared to where
I was, let's say, six months ago.
Because I think we often forget or we like to forget about those
tough times. You know, we like to celebrate
being in those happy and happy spaces.
But I think sometimes it's important to reflect on, you
know, that success of coming through those challenging times
(01:31):
and what that's taught you alongthe way.
Yeah, so true. You know, I think as you said
before, too many times we focus on the big things, but actually
success is can be, you know, everyday success can be the
little things that we do in those moments there.
So it's really awesome to hear that you come back to
counselling and giving that backinto your since I know you've
had a pretty challenging year this year.
So really awesome to hear that. And my learning is, is the fact
(01:56):
that change is inevitable. You know, we, we, we, we like to
think that we have control of our lives, but actually our
lives, our lives are happening. So we have a choice of letting
our lives happen to us or we have control over the things
that we can control. You know, we change is going to
come. Change is part of it.
And every day is changed. And my thought process on that
is how can we make change that is positive in whatever phase it
(02:17):
is, whether it's positive towards ourselves or to other
people. Because it's so very easy to get
caught into the world of negativity because the media out
there is so full of negative negativity.
But also it's so easy to get caught into that without
actually realizing that sometimes that stuff is actually
not true. It's just there to make us get
hyped up and aggravated. So think about, think about
change in a positive way. Is, is, is my taking, my
(02:40):
learning over the last week. But that's enough about the two
of us because we keep venturing forever and ever and ever.
And as you know, we scour the country, we scour the world for
people that would think we're interesting.
We think and we know everybody'sinteresting has a story to tell.
And today we are so privileged, so lucky and so honoured to have
our guests. This is a person that I
connected with probably three years ago, almost three years
(03:02):
ago, I guess in person, I'm trying to remember that probably
three years ago. And when I met them and I had
heard their stories like, oh, this is this is an interesting
person. And the more that I've got to
know them, especially on a weekly basis with what they
share, I'm like, wow, this is anamazing, amazing human book lost
to share. So we're very lucky to have this
person on our podcast. But before I even introduce her
onto the podcast, it is her birthday today.
(03:24):
So imagine someone has sacrificed, first of all, a
Sunday morning, their birthday to come and spend time with us.
So we're really honoured and very lucky to have our guest
today. Let's welcome to Parks with
acknowledge Margaret, Kiera, Margaret and welcome to Parks
Knowledge. Hi, Fuji.
Shantanu, so nice to meet you and like be here today, I mean,
and thank you. Thanks.
(03:45):
It's been a really lovely start to the day actually.
Fantastic Margaret, people who know nothing about who you are
as a person. Who is Margaret today on the 9th
of November? At the moment, right now, I'm
feeling really chuffed because Ijust bought my own home on my
own, which has been a huge achievement.
(04:05):
I started working towards that seven years ago.
So it's been a really long journey.
But it's yeah. And I'm like I keep saying, I
feel like I'm falling in love with my house.
So at the moment I'm all about house stuff and but the reason
that's been such a big focus is that I feel that I can give more
to the world when I have stability in my home life.
(04:28):
And so that's kind of been the underlying reason to work so
hard to get a little place that I can just call my home and come
home to without risk of it changing.
So yeah. I love you and that's, that's
just one part of you and there'sso many, so many different
angles. And I and I love and I love that
you, you speak about your home giving you stability, which
allows you to then rocket launched to other parts of your
(04:49):
life. But if we, if we go back to 8
years ago, some 78 years ago, and if I said to you 8 years
ago, hey, while you're in eight years time you'll have your own
home by yourself, what would youhave said to us at that point in
time? I would not have believed you to
be honest. That was when I started my
coaching journey for my, my own coaching.
And I remember my I was in a very dark place and I remember
(05:13):
my coach saying, think as big asyou can, what would you have if
you could have anything? And at the time I was a single
mum on my own with three small children, smallish children and
a sort of around that 10 age. And I remember saying that I
would want to be able to buy meat twice a week to have for
(05:36):
dinner, that I would like the kids to do an after school
activity of their choice that was as big as I could dream that
long ago. So yeah, it was really a very
difficult time. Yeah.
Yeah. And as you think about it, that
was eight years ago. So what switched for you in year
7 years ago when you were actually wedding when it's this
home thing is actually become a reality?
(05:58):
Yeah, it's a, it's a really coolquestion.
So I was my, you know, you and Iboth know Trish Coleman, just an
amazing woman all together in her own right, a phenomenal
businesswoman and now an amazingcoach.
And she was in my community. I lived in North Canterbury and
I ran the business, the Tourism and Business Association for a
(06:22):
number of years. I started it with two other
ladies, Trish and a friend, Claire, and then we ran that and
built it to having 60 different businesses in it, which is
pretty big in North Canterbury because they're very small.
And as when Trish finished up her business, Mama T Trading
Lounge, she told me in a coffee that she was going to start a
(06:44):
coaching business or learn to bea coach.
And I said to her, I need to be your first client because I
always thought she was just an amazing woman.
And so, yeah, for the first couple of years, she was that
person for me. And when things were really
hard, we had this system where we I had to send her a heart
every day because I was in a quite a difficult spot.
(07:06):
And so the colour of the heart indicated how I was feeling that
day. And that was at that point.
And she was the one that asked me to set 3 extraordinary goals
to a couple of extraordinary goals to work towards.
And The funny thing was, when I set those goals, I really
thought that they were impossible or very difficult to
achieve. And within three months I'd
(07:26):
totally kicked them out of the park and things were looking
brighter. And I think that because they
were achieved so fast, I suddenly thought, oh, maybe I
could dream bigger. And so I think then I moved into
the city and and then I must have read a book.
I can't think I've read so many books, but I read a book and
(07:48):
basically it just said dream as big as you can.
And my always since I was 18 years old, I always wanted to
own my own home. And I have owned 4 houses but
because of relationships and things I haven't managed to hold
on to them. And so I just thought I'm just
gonna set that goal. So literally I went from
dreaming about being a better buy feta and meat to going,
(08:09):
what's the biggest thing I could, you know, like by
achieving that goal and getting the girls into circus and the
activity that they wanted to do and suddenly feeling more in
control of my own destiny, I thought, oh, well, if I'm going
to, I may as well dream really big.
And yeah. And that's that's how I set that
goal of buying a house and started myself on that
trajectory. So yeah.
(08:31):
Yeah, and, and I love that shape.
I love that shape because, you know, a lot of us listening to
the podcast as well as, you know, tuning in, we set our
goals, but the goal we set our in our comfort zones, you know,
even though we don't think aboutit, but when you step back as
you're done and go reflect, actually, I was that was, I was
playing pretty small. I was just being comfortable and
on the edge of uncomfortableness.
Remember when I did my coach training and my the coach was
(08:54):
like, what's your goal? And people had all these
different goals and I had my little goal and it's like, none
of those are goals. None of those are goals.
That's just the way you're just wasting your time.
And I was like, whoa, how arrogant is this guy here
wasting my time? This is my goal.
But he said something like, if your goal doesn't scare you,
then it's not a goal. Good goal doesn't scare you.
It's not a goal. And that's when I was like, oh,
actually, so you know, as you said, I'm pretty sure when you
(09:16):
said that goal, you it was a scary goal.
It didn't stop you. No.
And, and I think the thing I'm feeling right now, I feel really
proud and I'm, I don't know, I'msure I felt that before, but not
like this. It's really nice.
It's yeah, it's a really lovely feeling.
(09:37):
And I think that's the thing that when you set that scary
goal and you achieve it, that's when you don't need others
recognition of it because you just know how much work went
into getting there yourself. And it's really lovely.
Yeah, no, that's awesome. That's really, really beautiful.
And I'm going to switch texts a little bit.
I mean, as we said before, we'recelebrating your birthday, but
(09:58):
you have also had a lot of health challenges going along,
you know, that I just learned about this week.
Yeah. Do you want to share with our,
with us, I guess, and our listeners about the health
challenges that you've had and where you are today?
You know that that message you sent to the WhatsApp group the
other day was so I mean, yes, I said amazing, but my words
couldn't describe exactly how I felt when you shared that.
(10:19):
Thank you. Yeah, It's been a really
challenging decade, to be honest.
So 11 years ago, so my mother had breast cancer.
She's had it twice when I. Oh, she's had surgery twice, I
should say. So when I was young, I knew
that. So my family moved.
(10:39):
My mum and dad moved from Holland to Australia when I was
young. I grew up in Brisbane and when
you're young you hear about aunties and uncles that are sick
and things like that. And I kind of knew that there
was a history of something in our family and I didn't really
fully grasp it. And then when mum got sick, when
I was, when I had Hannah, who's 20 now, when I was pregnant with
(11:01):
her about to give birth, mum anddad told me that mum had breast
cancer. And so while I had a very, very
small baby, my mum went through breast cancer and I found that
so challenging. Like we lived across the city
from each other, a good hours drive away and a small child and
mum, you know, not being able tosee me because of the, you know,
(11:23):
that, that she might get sick. And I really struggled with it.
And over the time after that, until 10 years ago or 11 years
ago, I kind of had it in the back of my mind that if my
family had this BRCA gene, there's a big chance I did too.
(11:44):
But obviously, having had three daughters, there was also the
chance that they had it from me.So there was a funnel funny
double fear that I had not only got the gene myself, but that I
passed it on. But I decided to shelve that and
have my children. And then when I had my final
child, Anika, who's 14, I decided it was time to find out
(12:06):
and take empower myself. So I, I went to my doctor and I
got the testing done in France for the gene thing.
And sure enough, I had the, the gene.
And it's funny sitting in there with the surgeon, he said, look,
I'm, I'm really sorry to let youknow, but you do have this
Bracha 1 gene, which means I'm predisposed to breast cancer and
ovarian cancer. And he said you might want to
(12:28):
consider having a double mastectomy.
So having your boobs removed. And I said Yep, OK, cool.
And he went, no, no, you might want to consider it.
And I was like, OK, but I'll do it.
And it was really funny. That was, yeah, about 12 years
ago. And again, I went away.
(12:49):
I thought about it, but I it didn't change my mind.
My thing always came back to howmuch I disliked mum going
through it and how I felt out ofcontrol and unable to help.
And I didn't want my girls to gothrough that, so I wanted to
show them an empowered view on that.
And so obviously that brought upa lot for me.
(13:10):
And I actually went through a bit of a bucket list because,
oh, so when I was 16, one of my best friend's mum went in for a
routine surgery and died on the operating table.
And it shocked me so deeply to my core.
I didn't realize quite how badlyuntil this point when I found
out the surgery was 8 hours. And that seemed massive.
(13:31):
I actually thought I wasn't going to survive the surgery.
I just. I didn't.
Yeah, I don't know. That's how it felt.
And I did a bucket list. And on my bucket list, I wrote
all these things. And when I spoke to my husband
at the time, the kid stabbed about it.
He didn't want to do any of the things.
And I thought, oh, OK, I thoughtwe were doing these things after
the kids were grown up and he went up, never want to do any of
(13:53):
them. And I went oh, and, and so it
was quite crazy because such a massive thing coming up, it
ended up actually leading to theend of my marriage, which was
really difficult, which then deferred any surgeries or
anything because I had to get life sorted.
So over the course of two years that that all happened and then
(14:14):
finally got to the day where we did my surgery and luckily I
woke up and when it was longish story.
So when I woke up from the surgery, I the first thing I
said was I need to do more with my art.
And my partner at the time said,what do you mean?
(14:35):
And I said, I don't know, but I think I need to do something
really big. And that's how I started
painting my murals. So yeah, that's just leads to
how that happened. And that's.
So I had the surgery and it was successful, but there was a
complication. So a couple of months later,
they, yeah, there was a leak. They hadn't sealed it up
(14:59):
properly and they had to have emergency surgery.
And one whole side had to be redone at like the drop of a
hat. So that was a little bit scary.
And then that was at 35. And they told me at 40, I would
have to have my ovaries out if Iwanted to really mitigate the
risk because I did 2 family members that had the ovarian
cancer as well. So I thought, yeah, let's just
(15:20):
do that. So I didn't end up doing it at
40. I was a little nervous after the
complications. And so I put off the surgery for
a year. And I think at 41 1/2, they
said, look, this is the last chance we'll give you to do
this. And so I went right, let's do
it. And that went swimmingly.
And so then about, so that's sixyears ago or something.
(15:43):
And about four years ago I movedinto, I'd moved into town, I'd
got myself a really great job. So I've always worked for
myself, which I love doing. But then I still wanted to buy a
house. And one of my clients said to
me, why don't you get a job? And I was like, oh, don't, I
don't know if I want a job. I like being really flexible and
(16:04):
working around the children. And I like working creatively,
create with lots of creativity. And he said, Oh, well, I think
we could do that for you. So why don't you write what the
job might look like and send me a proposal.
And so in the end lot, Long story short, I got the job with
him. And interestingly, by creating
that sort of safety net of beingin town, things being settled
(16:28):
with the kids and at home and with their dad and that sort of
thing, and having a job where I have regular stable income, I
think my body went, oh, it's time to rest.
And I came down with chronic fatigue And so if any you, if
anyone doesn't know what happenswith chronic fatigue, your body
(16:49):
just stops working. I actually went ended up in
hospital 3 * 1 time. They thought it was a heart
attack. Another time I collapsed from
pain that was four times worse than childbirth, like really
debilitating pain. And I honestly thought I was
dying. I, it, it was really awful.
And over the last four years I've learned how to manage that
(17:14):
pain and how to the fatigue and got back to working a normal
job. But, you know, I'm still, I'm
here with the kids, I've bought a house, I've got a regular
income and yeah, pretty much overcome, not overcome the
fatigue, but learned how to manage the fatigue.
So that's, and what I wrote on the on the chat that we would,
(17:39):
that we're both part of was thatI finally, after 11 years, got
discharged from the hospital system on Wednesday this week.
So that was a very long journey.But I'm really, yeah, proud to
have conquered that, I suppose. Think you were thinking of a
sharing that bit and and what a what a story, and I'm saying and
(18:00):
multiple times because it's, youknow, you're proud of your
health, which is amazing, but also the fact that you have
learned how to mitigate or managed chronic chronic fatigue
syndrome. But going through everything
amongst all the people still having a job, being a mum, doing
all that you have to do is is really, really, really quite,
quite powerful and empowering results in on this this thing to
to your podcast. But you know, you, you, you
(18:22):
speak about it, but there would have been times when you're like
this, I cannot, this is, I'm done, you know, just mentally,
what would, what got you throughthose really dark times when you
know, and I say that because I'm, I'm assuming, I'm assuming
it could be correct. You know, there's times when you
just go like I'm, I'm just heading up.
This is not that I want to die. I want to give up, but I'm just,
I just can't do anything else. What got you through those dark
times? People yeah my the reason I do
(18:47):
everything is my love for peopleand when I very, very first
moved into town must be about 6 years ago now, I went to a I'm
going to forget the name tarot reader person that reads the
future not my jam at all but a girlfriend wanted to go because
(19:07):
it was her birthday and she's I said what would you like to do
and she said I want to go and dothis would you come with me and
I was like OK cool it's your birthday.
So I went and when I went into the room with the lady, because
we went separately, I said to her, look, I'd love to just have
a cup of tea and a chat. You know, I'm not, I'm not too
worried about my future. I don't wanna know what it is.
I will make it. And so we have this lovely chat,
(19:30):
beautiful, oh, beautiful woman she was.
And with this beautiful chat over a cup of tea.
And at the end she said, may I tell you one thing?
And I said, yeah, of course. And she said, if you follow your
heart and lead with love, you will be more successful than you
ever dreamed of. And I came home and I made a
painting, first painting I've ever made that I didn't think
about. I, I just got home and it was
(19:52):
like I was on autopilot. I just grabbed a canvas, grabbed
my brushes, painted until I stopped.
And then I had this beautiful painting.
And everyone that looks at it says to me, wow, I feel really
good when I look at that picture.
So and I from that day, everything I do is from my heart
and with love, even when I'm. Unhappy with people, if you want
(20:13):
to say that, or having a difficult time.
I try and always look at it froma point of love and it has I, I
have only had success. You know, there has been tough
times and there's been things that haven't gone the way I
wanted, but my life has just been so beautiful.
And I, when I felt down in the past, before this sort of
(20:35):
period, I think my thing was that I wasn't lovable.
I think I'm really loud and vivacious and sparkly and I can
be a bit too much for some people.
And because of that, I used to think that I am just too much
altogether. And that was my difficult point
(20:58):
when I was down. And then I just decided I got to
this point where I thought I'm just putting out the love into
the world that I want to receive.
I'm not having any expectation to receive it.
And guess what? Now I look at my phone and I
look at my messages and all I have is love Everyone, everyone,
my bosses, my like, everyone in my life is so loving.
(21:21):
And I think I just, yeah, I'm sograteful.
I think by putting myself into the world with what I want to
receive or what I feel the most dearly, I'm now getting it back
again. And yeah, whereas before I just,
I don't know. I, I, I did learn boundaries and
(21:42):
I learned a few other things about what kind of personality
type doesn't resonate in my world.
And I don't really have anyone like that anymore in my world.
But yeah, the love thing has just been, it's just blown me
away and I just adore it. So yeah, it's definitely what
gets me through the hard times is my friends and the love in my
life. Isn't it?
Isn't it crazy that a cup of teaand one one would or one brave
(22:06):
has just changed your whole perspective in life?
I know. So grateful.
Yeah, and, and it's really beautiful.
And I, I'm going to come back tothis because in your book and
your book at the on your, on your last page, you go, what can
I tell you? I'm a passionate person
personally and professionally. I get energy from variety.
I was hard to sum into one line,but I've managed this and it
(22:27):
comes out to this. I like people.
And it's so, so, so, so obvious as you speak today that people
are an important part of your life in all aspects.
The most? Yeah, the most important.
My highest values are love and connection so.
Yeah, and but, and it's really important, you know, that we
know we do all these tests and things and we realize that our
(22:48):
highest values are percentage types, but it's what you do with
it. Like, you know, it's all good to
have like, you know, are you andI.
But you know, I checked in a disk and I was doing a profiling
last week with the group and I challenged them and like, cool,
you all know what styles you are.
What are you going to do with that information today?
Like, what is, what's your next step?
And they're like, oh, yeah. And I was like, yeah, it's cool
(23:08):
to do this here, but not what not what happens.
It's so empowering. Yeah, because as you and I know,
because you can like, you know your style, but what happens
after that there do you? What do you do so?
Can you feel yourself flipping into your style, Nick?
If I don't know if, do you not? Do you have an arrow?
Yeah, because when I changed to 100% I, I now feel it.
(23:29):
I'm like, oh, I'm 100% I And with my chronic fatigue, I know
that that person can drain me. So I know that I can only be
that in that space for a limitedamount of time.
And then I have to flip back to my SI 100.
Percent, 100%. So for those of you that are
wondering what we're talking about, have both Margaret and
myself extended this practitioners?
(23:50):
So if you want to learn more about that, hit hit us up later
on and we'll we'll explain what that is because I think there's
so many tools out there. You know, there's every tool
under the sun and they're all fantastic.
But if you do every tool, you'renot going to figure things out.
Just pick the one tool and then just go with that.
And then, you know, whatever it is, because, you know, I had I
had a client of mine who was like, I've done my Briggs at
(24:11):
that Clifton. And then I was like, cool,
you've done all those things here, but what are you doing
with that information? And I and I love how you it was
no tool. It was just a cup of tea.
And they just said she'd go and lead with love.
And that's it. It's being.
Open, right? It's being open to what's around
you. It could be a person on the
street, it could be every. That's.
I think that thing I really loveis that there's something I read
(24:37):
in one of the books, one of those famous books like the 12
thingy, Carnegie, I can't remember his name, but I had to
influence people. It was one of those books where
he said you could go to a coursethat was on a topic that you
already know a lot about, right?You could go to a course and you
could walk away and go. I already knew all that.
But someone might say one thing that gives you a slightly
(24:58):
different perspective on the topic that you already know lots
about, and that could be the gift, you know?
And so I try and go into every interaction with anyone and
think, what was the gift out of this, you know?
Exactly because every attractionis a gift and it's a gift of
other what what I can learn or what I don't want to learn.
You know, it's two ways. It doesn't mean yeah, beautiful.
(25:18):
Margaret. The other thing I want to touch
on is I just read that line and that line came from your book
Creating Communities. And tell us more about what was
the inspiration behind writing the book and specifically about
communities, You know, because you could write a book about
anything and you've chosen to write something about something
that's very specific. And, you know, and we'll, we'll
share the link in the in the show notes in the show notes so
(25:41):
we can get a copy of the book ifthey want to purchase one.
But it's a really fantastic book.
I mean, thank you for sharing with me.
And I think it's got some amazing practical tips.
Why would you write that book? So about four years ago I was in
Sydney with a girlfriend and I had learned about passive income
and about creating. I wanted to create a sustainable
(26:03):
future for myself. And we were walking and talking
and we've been friends for many,many years, since 18 years.
And as we were going along, we're walking and walking and
talking. And she said to me, oh,
Margaret, whatever you do, it has to be about community.
It's, you know, it's been everything in your life.
And I thought to, to myself, oh,you're totally right.
(26:25):
And so we talked through like, should it be a podcast?
Should be a blog? You know, what should it be?
And, and I at the time, I just thought, oh, for me, I just love
books, right? I just adore books.
I love holding a book and I lovethe longevity of a book, you
know that you can pass it on to someone, all that sort of stuff.
And I got to the airport to go home from that long weekend and
just sat at the airport and wrote 3 pages of chapter
(26:47):
headings of all the things that.So basically I thought a dummy's
guide to running a community organization and creating change
was what I wanted. So because there's lots, I'm
sure there's lots of textbooks from really wise people and
people that have been to university and all different
things. But the people that I have
worked with in community have been kids, students, mums,
(27:08):
people that are in their community just getting stuff
done. I didn't know if I could swim
and that I love and they're the people that I thought could
possibly use just some extra. So it's the people that go, I'd
love to make a change, but I don't know where to start.
(27:28):
And so the idea was to create a book that would be really easy
to read, really easy to just pick up at any page and get
something off that page. That idea of everything.
I read this book when the kids were young that was called
Buddhism for Mothers. And, and I had a whole bunch of
friends that had the same book. And we used to say you could
just sit down exhausted and justopen it up and something on that
(27:49):
page would resume. And that's what I wanted to do
with my book. I wanted to have that.
You could pick it up at any point and pick it up and go, oh,
yeah, that's really useful. I didn't think of it that way.
And so that I'd made it really, it's really long, but it's
really short. All the chapters are like, you
could read them in a couple of minutes.
And all the language is really modern day average language.
(28:10):
And, and the biggest thing that I overlaid across the whole
book, so I wrote, I wrote the book and then I got the chronic
fatigue and I hadn't published yet.
And I remember saying to my editor, oh, I can't believe that
this has happened. Why has this happened?
And he said, I don't know, but there'll be a reason.
And the reason was that I had torewrite the book with the lens
(28:31):
of fatigue. I had to rewrite it because
people that do community projects are working, are
mothers, are carers and they don't have, they have to be kind
to themselves. I have seen and been one of the
people that burns out from doingtoo much in community.
So I had to rewrite the book from the lens of Don't burn
(28:53):
yourself out. And so, yeah, the book is
written very kindly. It's been written all about
looking after yourself and setting up your projects or the
the projects that you're part ofso that you don't burn yourself
out. So yeah, so it's got twofold.
One fold is make amazing differences in the world how to
(29:14):
and you can do it like a positive yeah, let's go, and the
other one is how to do it without really putting yourself
at risk and your family energy wise.
Yeah, and it's it's a really thank you for sharing with me.
I mean, as I said to you in our little chat there that I'm, I've
only skimmed through it because I'm a, I'm a, I'm a whistle
reader. It's on the way.
(29:35):
But but, but, but, but like us, but like I said just before, you
know, just picking up the littlechapters, there's, it's really
beautiful. But what I, what I picked up
there was the motivator for the book, you know, and it changed
quite dramatically with the lens.
When your lens changes, the way you look at things change.
And what is that like for you? Because, and I asked this
because the other day I wrote anarticle about burnout, which
which gets people excited. And in the, in the, the premise
(29:59):
of the article was, you know, burnout is a really big topic,
But also sometimes we forget to take ownership of the fact that
we're actually responsible for own own burnout.
And it's easy to blame everything else, but sometimes
we have to look in the room and go actually, what am I saying
yes to when it's when it's not, when it's on the health
condition, right? When it's just you just keep
saying yes to everything. When you read that article and
(30:23):
you said to me, hey, this is something that I'd like to talk
about. You know what what came up the
as you thought about that? Yeah, it is 100% right.
And even with a health condition, it is still your
responsibility. So chronic fatigue feels like
you're dying and it can get worse and worse and worse.
(30:45):
So when I got sick, it was rightat the beginning of COVID, so we
couldn't go to in person things it.
Was harder to go. To the doctor and my dad.
My mum and dad are in Brisbane and my dad messaged me.
He'd obviously done some research and he said the big
thing about chronic fatigue is to have a group of people, a
community around you to support you.
So I found the local chronic fatigue association here and I
(31:07):
went onto a Zoom call and I walked out of the bedroom and I
went sod that. I'm not doing that because what
I've noticed was people seem to get worse.
So they and it like I, I literally collapsed a couple of
times and then what IA lot of and I still did for about 3
(31:27):
years. Every three months I kind of
have a collapse moment, but whatI noticed was people got worse.
So people would go from having the pain to not being able to
walk certain distance, to not being able to open the curtains
because their eyes hurt, to not being able to get out of bed, to
not being able to get dressed. And I thought, no, no, that's
(31:50):
all going backwards. I don't want to go backwards.
I want to go forwards. And so I worked with, I was not
lucky, but I have income protection and because I have
income protection and I have an amazing insurance broker, he got
me a he was, he made sure I had someone at the insurance company
that worked for me. And she got me in to see a
occupational therapist called Ben.
(32:12):
And he was amazing. And we worked together and we
both just read the same book andThe Body Keeps the Score by
Bessel, then the clock. And so interestingly, because we
both read it, we were like zinging on it.
And we came to realize that the fatigue was 10 years of
difficulty in life, like and even before that, my ex-husband
(32:35):
had been really unwell for sevenyears in our in our marriage the
last seven years. So firstly that moving countries
to try and help his health within six months, an earthquake
and then another, you know, a series of earthquakes over the
period of time. And then we had lockdowns and
everything. So and the marriage breaking up
and the surgeries. So there was just a whole bunch
(32:55):
of things that had stressed me out.
And I try and be the best I can all the time.
But because of that, I had got myself to a point that I just,
my body just couldn't keep going.
And so when I was what I now realized when I was in a safe
place with a job and great household, I had flatmates and
things. So I had a very low cost of
living. My body went, you have time to
(33:18):
rest. You're not going to have a
choice about this. You are going to rest whether we
like it or not. And so that's how I got to the
place where I got chronic fatigue.
That is why my body did that. It the body kept the score and
it said you're going to rest whether you like it or not.
And so over the course of two years, I had six months almost
completely off work. And then over the course of two
(33:40):
years, I built my resilience back up, but each time by
falling down again. So I'd go, yeah, I can totally
do a four hours a week. And then, oh, actually 4 hours
is too much today. And then the next week I'd be,
or the next, you know, couple months, I'd do a bit more and a
bit more. And now I'm back to 40 hours a
week. But even that I've now even now
like yesterday I helped at the school fair and this week I did
(34:02):
a couple of nights where I helped out with spreadsheets
and, you know, signs and things for the school fair.
And last night I was absolutely shattered.
I was on my feet from 7:00 in the morning till 5:00 in the
afternoon and I could barely move last night.
And so I said today, this is theonly thing I'm doing today.
My kids are cooking me breakfastshortly and you know, but
(34:24):
nothing else. And so I have really learned
that that I have to take space. When I moved house, I took extra
time off than I normally would. So it is, you are correct that
the, it's, it's our responsibility to figure out.
I'm not saying you know how to do it because you only know how
to do it when you do it wrong. It's about next time.
(34:46):
It's like the last time I went on holidays, I took a longer
holiday. But what I realized afterwards
was I should have taken it one day before I went on the holiday
to actually prepare because I felt a little rushed.
And when I got to the airport, Iwas like, I was like, OK, that
wasn't fun. So I, you know, so it's about
remembering that the next time you book a holiday a year later,
(35:09):
I need to take one extra day to prepare because I didn't enjoy
feeling so stressed by the time I got to the airport.
So I think that's it's just a constant evolution.
A. 100%. I would say yeah.
Yeah. And I love that because you know
what I love about that is it's we always get feedback.
Our body gives us feedback, our environment gives us feedback.
And it's whether or not we listen to that there.
You know, we have we have a choice in the feedback.
(35:30):
And sometimes the body goes, OK,cool.
I'm giving you all these warningsigns.
I've been very kind to you and now I'm just going to shut down
because you didn't listen to me.And it's, it's really funny
because I remember when I was teaching and then if we go to
school holidays, you just get stuck straight away.
It's because you're on the you're on the go, go, go, go,
go. And then it comes as you say,
your body goes Ah, and then. Yeah, and that's why now I think
(35:55):
that's what I really, it's funnynow looking at other people and
I don't. I'm learning to be a coach, but
I don't officially coach yet. But now with that limbs on, when
I'm at work and I see people whoget sick quite regularly or that
have a sore back or that, you know, something comes up, I'm
like, oh, your body is trying totell you something.
And I always try to gently say odd, do you think maybe your
(36:18):
body's trying to tell you this or, or, or maybe maybe you need
a day off or you know, like I really the whole mental health
day is so vital. Taking a mental health day, even
when we don't feel that sick yetis it is the thing that will
stop you from getting actually really, really sick.
And so that I think that our, I have sound very old here, but
(36:41):
our kids have got it right. My kids, I always think, and I
hear it from guys at work who are a bit older.
They're like, oh, harden up. You know, when the guys take
days off when they're not that sick, but actually you come back
and you work twice as hard the next day because you gave
yourself the space to just catchup.
I don't know if that's the rightword, but yeah.
(37:03):
Yeah, I'm going to, I'm going tobring Tana in because Tana has
gone through something challenging recently and I'd
love to know what his perspective is as you navigated
that. Yeah, it's, yeah, You've given
me some, yeah, deep insight into, yeah, reframing that space
that I went through. Yeah, it's definitely, I think,
yeah. As you say, we don't often take
that space just to take the space.
(37:24):
We often, yeah, wait until there's no other Yeah, no other
reason or yeah, no other choice but to take that space.
So I think it's really important, yeah, that you do
take that space. Yes.
So really insightful for sure. Yeah, because Tana, when you,
when you were going through, when you were going through, you
didn't give yourself that permission to take that space,
did you? No, I just, you know, I just
(37:46):
keep going for the sake of keep on keeping on.
Yeah, Yeah. Yeah.
That's what we do though, isn't it?
And we're taught to do that. Societally it does feel like
it's, I don't know because I'm not a man, but I do feel that
particularly with guys, there isa sense of come on, just keep
going, harden up kind of thing. Even though it's much better
(38:08):
than it used to be. I I do wonder if that's not the
case. Yeah, and I think it's really
interesting that you say that because for both you and Hani,
I'm sorry. Yeah, both you and Hani, I, I
have to share that, you know, I,I work in an organization at the
moment and it's really interesting how it's how it's
seen very different when different team members ask for
mental health days. And for some it's like, Yep, no
(38:30):
brain. I give it to you easy.
And for some others, they require evidence and proof.
And my head is going, I don't understand.
I do not understand why there's two very different measures of
mental health and quotation marks when somebody asks.
And I think this is this is the problem, right?
Because as you said, Margo before is societies that's the
world have perception of mental health or non mental health and
(38:52):
you can just harden up and you can just do it because there's
no physical sickness that you can see.
Yeah, yeah, you're totally right.
I had a friend who had a surgeryand has she somehow they severed
A spinal cord or part of it and she has no feeling from her
belly button down. So she looks, oh, so it's called
(39:15):
The Walking paraplegic. And so she looks completely
fine. She walks, she, you know, and
yet it's incredibly debilitating.
She can't work, she can't go to the toilet easily.
She you know, all these sort of things.
She has no feeling down there. So, and I did not realize just
that's one of those things wherepeople think she's fine, but
(39:38):
obviously she's dealing with a lot.
And so, yeah, I just think you can never assume that someone's
OK because they look OK. You have no clue what's going on
at home or in their body. And we do need to give people
the space for that, I think. Yeah, it's interesting because,
you know, the whole hidden disability sunflower is really
(40:01):
becoming very big and I but it'salso works the other way around
because I, someone shared a story with me that they were
wearing the hidden disability sunflower and because of that
they were already prejudged. They couldn't do something.
So, you know, it's just like, it's just like you can't win in
that situation. It's so crazy.
It does. Feel like that, doesn't it?
It's so interesting, isn't it? And I think that's where when I
(40:23):
learned about boundaries, initially it was about other
people, but now I see boundariesas protecting my own health.
So not about interactions with people as much, but now it's
more about protecting my body from stress so that I don't get
(40:45):
sick again that badly. And I, that's why we need to
allow people to take the days when they need the sick days,
you know, because when you know your body and you know what it
is capable of, then you should be, have the right to take the
time you need to make it heal. And that's funny because I do
that now. So if I go to work, I work 40
(41:08):
hours and some days I, I'm not handling it and I will drive my
car around the corner and lay down and have a sleep in my car
for 15 minutes and I could go home.
But sometimes I, you know, there's a lot of honour I need
to, but I, so I just do that. I go in and I used to get to
school when I still took the kids to school all the time.
(41:29):
I'd get to school at 2:45 and I would put seat down and I'd
sleep until the bell went at 3:00.
That was, you know, part of how I got through the chronic
fatigue. And I think it's about finding
those micro or macro things thatyou can do that will help you
still function well. Yeah, I think that's a great
reminder to me because I haven'tbeen doing that there.
(41:50):
And it's a great reminder that actually in a 5 minutes, 10
minutes of of intentional risk or intentional, whatever you
want to call that as it's like the results of that exponential
and also 100%. And also conversely, if you
don't do it, the results are exponential.
Exactly. And that's again, that is why
how I've managed to buy a house.Do you know, it's like saving
(42:14):
all that money, working extra hours and doing murals on the
weekends and things like that. The only way I, I, it's funny, I
was talking to another friend who's a creative and saying I
must look like a schizophrenic and she was saying the same when
I start a mural now. So I go, everything I do, if I
can, is on what feels good in mybody.
So I will get to a mural job. And obviously I've packed the
(42:38):
whole car and I've thought aboutit and I've done my health and
safety. So I'll get to site and I'll
usually stop. Oh, you, I'll stop and then I'll
assess the site and then I'll write my health and safety
stuff. So I've just packed the carriage
rib in there. So then my rest is filling out
the forms because it's quiet. And I'll sit in my car in the
(42:58):
shade and fill out the form of what needs to happen on the
site. And then I'll unpack my car onto
the site. And that takes a lot of energy
as well. And then I'll stop and I'll
usually either go and get a coffee or I'll sit in the shade
and I'll think what do I want todo?
And it's usually a social media post.
So I'll do a photo and write away post about just about to
(43:18):
get started for the day and thenagain.
And then I'm usually like, oh, what do I feel like doing that?
And usually it's like a big block of color.
So then I'll open a can and thenI find that's when I really hit
flower and that's when I just almost forget.
And two or three hours later I'll stop and I'll like, whoa,
OK, it's done on the wall and that.
And but then again, what I find is I'll be in flow and I could
(43:41):
keep going for hours. I could keep going all day.
But what I now have is that I get this flutter in my heart
doesn't hurt or anything, but it's like it's like a butterfly
inside my heart, right? And as soon as I feel that it
doesn't hurt nothing but it, I go, oh, I have 15 minutes until
(44:01):
I get really tired or I trip over or I, you know, something
and I hurt myself. And So what I then do is I go,
you've got 5 minutes because I can't help but keep going.
So I go 5 minutes, 5 minutes. And then I'll put my paintbrush
in the water. And then I'll put the cap on the
paint and I'll go and sit again in the shade, and I'll have a
drink of water and I'll think, what do I want?
(44:22):
And sometimes it'll be 10 minutes of rest and other times
it'll be, you know, a piece of fruit or something.
But yeah. And I know that I need at least
15 minutes after that flubber ofjust nothing.
And then. Yeah.
And and then sometimes. And then again, it's all about
listening to myself. That's what I really learned
with the occupational therapist.I have this like board, we call
(44:43):
it the boardroom with all littlepeople inside my tummy here that
we call it and they talk all thetime.
So they go, are we safe? Is everything OK?
What are we feeling right now? Is there a lion at the door?
A tiger at the door? And then and then we make a
decision and but it's all about self soothing.
So it's like, am I OK? Is this, you know, and that's
(45:03):
been that's how I now manage life.
And that's how the chronic fatigue is improved is by
continually giving myself, OK, you're all right.
You know, there are days that I open the curtains and it hurts
my eyes. And that's when I have, I have
to listen to the little boardroom in my tummy and decide
if what I can do today is wearing sunglasses enough or do
(45:24):
I need to actually do 1/2 day atwork or do I need to cancel some
appointments so that I can I cankeep going.
So yeah. It's, it's, it's so interesting
because, and these were interesting a lot today, because
everything's very interesting. You're saying today, just the
other day, I had this conversation at a, at a, you
know, a random function and we spoke about awareness.
(45:45):
Everything is progress. Awareness proceeds change is
what, you know, the big quote is, but I was challenged and
that evening, but actually awareness proceeds change, which
is good. But for us to have a change, we
also have willingness. So as you said before, you have
the awareness of your boardroom,which says, hey, but then the
willingness to listen to your boardroom is very different to
the awareness of the of the boardroom, right.
And I think this is where a lot of us and myself included, we
(46:08):
have the awareness, but do we have the willingness?
And those are two very, very different conversations.
And not only that, but I think is a belief structure that goes
with the not listening to the boardroom.
Because if our mother or father or our boss or someone
influential in our life has influenced us to think hard
(46:29):
enough or it's not bad enough totake the rest that you need or
to change or, or that you shouldbe sitting at your desk all day
from 9:00 to 5:00. The fact that I can drive away,
go around the corner, lay down in my car for 15 minutes and
come back, that I give myself permission to do that.
(46:49):
I used to beat myself up. You're so weak.
You can't, you know, before I sort of started this journey, I
would have told myself that I should be able to do more.
And now I just think if people, if I am enough, that even with
taking this time, even in the middle of a really busy day,
(47:09):
that's OK. The right people will accept
that I take that time. And.
And it has happened like that. Yeah.
Yeah, it all comes down to you taking ownership of your own
reactions and then other you can't control other those
reactions, right? You cannot, you can.
And I think, and I think when werealize that actually we can't
control them and we don't know what's how they're going to
(47:30):
react. You know, there's assumptions
that we have that makes life very, very difficult when we
start doing that there. And the next level to that is
when someone reacts badly to really the big thing I always
think is it's not about you. So sometimes someone will react
badly and they'll get upset at you or or say something mean.
And the biggest learning for me has been not to take that on.
(47:54):
Sometimes you've made a mistake and you can feel sorry for it.
But mostly it's about that they're having a bad day or
they're struggling and all what we can do to be kind.
And this is particularly in the book, I find that you can do the
most amazing thing for your community or a project could go
wrong. You could run out of money, or
(48:15):
you could make a mistake or it couldn't, or some people just
don't like it. You made a park and other people
wanted a like, I don't know. But you know, and there's always
going to be someone that's goingto say, I don't like what you've
done. And if you take that on, you'll
never do anything or you'll feelbad about what you have done.
(48:35):
And neither of those are good options.
So the big thing is to realize that other people's perspective
are not about you. It's just really hard.
Yeah, and it's been, you know, other girl's perspective is not
your reality. You know, it's, it's not your
reality. And also, I read this, I read
this somewhere, the other, oh, afew months ago.
(48:56):
An opinion is not a fact. So an opinion is that affect and
an opinion is a fact. Therefore, I, my fact is I don't
have to listen to your opinion. I was like, that was so, so
true. Because you know, so many times
we go, everyone's got an opinion.
It doesn't mean you've got an opinion that you have to agree
with it. I can go down.
I don't I don't agree with your opinion and it's OK for that to
happen. And one of my particular ones is
(49:17):
about that criticism. I often think now if you're not
trying to do what I'm doing, as in either come to me with a
constructive criticism, with a suggestion or how I could do it
better. But don't just criticize because
(49:39):
if you, especially if you're notdoing it too I, I think that's
the thing. It's easy to criticize if you
haven't been there. Yeah, it's it's easy to
commentator when you're not on this possible trait.
Yeah, yeah. So take.
Yeah. Be proud of that you're doing
it. And if someone criticizes, I
will. I often say feel free to join
(50:01):
us. Come and join us on this
journey. And then, yeah, we'd love to
hear what you have to think. But until you and so you're here
in the meetings, doing the hard work, doing the mahi.
Thank you for your insight. Yes, exactly, exactly, exactly.
TANI, any questions for me? Tani any.
(50:23):
Business and that stands out forme.
Yeah, it's just really interesting and I love the way
you put that there, Margo, is that, you know, everyone has got
an opinion. And again, you're not going to
please everybody. I mean, you're trying to please
everybody. You end up not pleasing
yourself. That's Yep, 100% the case and
you won't make as big a change as you could if you spend too
(50:43):
much time thinking about everyone else's thinking or
doing and you can. Ah, the, the, the big thing from
the book is that like with so many books, like with Atomic
Habits and you can make massive change in the world if you are
open, loving and you connect with other people.
Because like the manifestation thing, I remember when I first
(51:05):
found out about manifestation, Ithought I've been doing this my
whole life. I didn't realise there was a
word for it, you know, because I, I talk a lot, as you can
tell. And but because of that, I find
that because people know what I'm up to, they look for me.
So I always say, I have an idea and then when I put it out in
the world, there's five people thinking about my idea.
And they all come back to, oh, you know, that whole idea of I
(51:27):
want a red bike. Suddenly you tell these people,
I want to buy a red bike and someone says, Oh, I just saw a
red bike on sale the other day. The next thing you know, you or
someone says, I've got a red bike that I don't want anymore.
And suddenly you get, you know, I, I think with a project, with
a, with something that you're doing for the world, the more
people you get out and tell about it, the more likely you
are to succeed. And the more people that are on
(51:47):
your side and they're actually backing you, helping you achieve
the goal. And even, and, and yeah, I just,
that's my thing with the book is, yeah.
And, and life in general that you can achieve so much if you
just tell people what you're trying to achieve.
If you keep it to yourself, it'smuch harder to to get there.
(52:08):
Yeah, exactly. If you, if you, it's I, I and I
wish I use as my my clients is you can have a great idea in
your bedroom, but it's only you and the bedroom.
You need to get out of the bedroom.
And you've got to share that idea with somebody.
Yeah. And so you can always come back
to the bedroom if you want to. But once she goes out there, the
universe takes care of it. That is the IT is the best thing
because like so my friend Sonia that helped me get started with
(52:31):
the book that's us. So we both have big ideas and we
we talk like this once a week ona Monday night.
And the, The thing is that we keep helping each other keep our
ideas alive. So, you know, we've both got
three kids, We've both got lots of things going in our lives,
(52:51):
full time jobs, everything else.And by having these catch UPS,
I'll ask her, how's putting yourapplication into uni going?
Or how's that project you started going or, or how's that
challenge that you had? Is it getting better?
And so it's like coaching, but on a friendship level.
And it's just beautiful. And I think that that's the same
(53:11):
with the community group. When you find someone who
resonates with you, who is into,so whatever it is you want to
achieve, you'll find someone by talking that is as passionate or
close to as passionate as you are about that topic.
And then you've got someone thatwhen you feel a little tired or
whatever, that they will go, how's that going?
(53:32):
And then they, they get the excitement going again and it
keeps the energy going. So I think that that's the
biggest thing about community isthat it helps you keep the
energy high about a specific topic.
Yeah. And you know, community is all
about the vibe, Rob, when you attract your vibe and your vibe
attract your tribe. And you know, this is that's
quite a great way. And it's actually, it's actually
true, you know, and all the communities I'm part of, it's
(53:52):
people that I resonate with on different levels, but I still
resonate with them and I don't have to agree with them.
And the same thing, you know, and they lift you up or they or
they pull you down sometimes to reality, they go actually, hey,
have you think it from this angle here, which as you said
before, their perspective, you might go, actually, this is
trying to think about that and you might take it on board or
you might go now. So I love the way you put that
there. Michael, we've been speaking for
(54:13):
almost an hour, but I want to touch, I want to touch on
another part of your, a big partof your life, which is your
murals. How did it all start?
Because that is, you know, that's a, that's a massive part
of your life and you share the, the colour and the beauty with,
with your community. Where was the inspiration for
that? Well, I've painted since I was a
kid, so I've always been arty. I was, that's always my, when I
(54:35):
was little, I was always in my bedroom with crayons on colours
and things. And like I said, when I had that
surgery, I woke up and I said I want to do more with my art.
And I didn't know what that meant at the time, but I was
driving around my community. I lived in Amberley and just now
north of Christchurch and driving around and there was a
(54:55):
set of shops that had been, theywere building a shopping center
and the people had owned the same space.
So they got all the retailers tomove into the new shopping
center and the old one was just sitting empty.
And it just, it was a bit sad. It was opposite the library.
And so everyone still went there.
But it was like there was sort of like dust, you know, going
through the car park and the buildings hadn't been cleaned
(55:16):
out properly. So there were still posters in
the windows. And I just, it made me feel a
bit sad. And so I contacted the property
manager, the people that were leasing it and said, could I
possibly help make it look a bitnicer?
And I said, what do you think? And I sort of, I was a bit
cheeky and I was like, well, we could paint the outside one
colour, we could clean the windows, but we could put a
mural on that big space on the wall.
(55:38):
And they came back and we're like, great idea, that's
amazing. We'll do everything, but we
won't pay for the mural. And I was like, oh, that's the
one that I really wanted to do. And so they said, but if you
went to council there are grants.
And honestly it was hilarious because the week before I'd seen
the Post go up on the cat crusher and what's called
(55:58):
Hirinoi District Council page about arts.
Oh, what's it called again? New Zealand Creative, New
Zealand Arts funding and the cutoff was the next day.
So it was one of those meant to be things, right?
I downloaded the form, I filled it out on the day, submitted it
and a week later they approved to me and I had five grand to
paint my first mural. So it was phenomenal.
(56:21):
And nobody asked what the topic was.
Nobody else thought it was goingto be on the mural, but yeah, so
I so I got these five boards made-up and painted what I
called love living here Hiranui,which was all the things as a
foreigner coming into New Zealand, all the things I loved
about living in the Hiranui. And so it was just a joy to
(56:44):
paint because there was no restrictions and I was still
coming out of the first surgery,the breasts surgery.
And so my partner actually put the panels up on the fence of
our house and I would just walk out and just do like I couldn't
even raise my arms very high. I still can't believe I did
that. But I did it about four months
after that surgery and I would just paint just like that.
(57:06):
I couldn't actually stretch my arms out yet and painted this
12m mural in about 6 months at home.
And then we hung it on the wall and immediately when we did
that, somebody approached me andsaid, oh, we've got a space up
north, would you like to come and paint that?
(57:27):
And then that was why out. So after the earthquake, which
was centred there and they lost so many of their buildings, they
loved what I did in Amberley andsaid we would like to showcase
the elements of our community that are going to be lost
because the buildings need to come down and still to inspire
and make people feel better during this hard time.
And so I went up, oh, actually did the same.
I painted it on panels this time.
(57:49):
I rented a space, A warehouse, and I had the panels on the wall
because it was during a winter. So I painted during the winter
and then they hung it up in the summer and they hung it in the
park so everyone could see it. And it was just so lovely.
And then at that opening ceremony, someone from Waikeri
approached me and said, oh, we've got a water tank, would
you like to? So it's been this beautiful
(58:09):
thing that at each community event to release a mural,
someone's approached me for another mural.
So that's kind of why I think I,I kind of call myself the
community mural lady. I love doing things to make a
community feel better so. That that's awesome and what a
what a great story there becauseas you said, you, you started
with one and then you put yourself out there, someone else
(58:31):
comes along. You don't go searching for it.
People come to you, which is which is which is which is which
is all about not a lot of peoplecome searching for you.
It's I was saying I was saying to Tanner that you asked to come
on the podcast. You asked a while ago and I was
like, this is the right time. Let's let's make it happen.
And there's a reason why there'sa reason why time and place
happens. So thank you so much.
(58:51):
Any last questions, Tonya, before we ask our final question
or Mark, is there anything that you'd like to share before that
we haven't touched on that you think people would like to hear
about? No, but I would love to.
Yeah, I would like the thing I'mlearning to coach, as you know
and my goal is to work with community groups to help them
(59:15):
achieve their goals. So if anyone is part of a
community group, whether that's a sporting one or something to
do with the school or, or just achieving a project in their
community and would like some guidance to achieve that goal,
whether that be getting the right team together or having
the right having idea about how they set up their money or
(59:37):
anything like that. That's what I would like.
I'd like to get some experience working with groups.
So at the moment I'm just looking for opportunities to
work with groups and, and help them achieve their goals.
Just on an advice level really. So I've got this kind of idea
called dating business and community.
It's like a dating app for business and community where I'm
trying to find a way to get businesses to donate $2000.
(01:00:01):
And then we'll use that money togive the community groups 5
sessions of coaching with me andextra resources and social media
so that both parties end up getting acknowledgement.
So social media posts to say that they've worked together and
to say what they're achieving together.
And the community group gets acknowledgement about what
they're doing. And so my goal is to have this
(01:00:23):
idea of, and then at the end of the process, after the five
sessions and everything and the socials, they fall in love.
And then from then on, I don't need to be involved.
They just always think about each other when they're doing
something. And so that's kind of my little
pipe dream at the moment. That's where I'm heading with
that part of my career. So for the moment I would just
love to work with some communitygroups and just get more
experience of facilitating SO. Yeah, amazing, amazing.
(01:00:46):
What we'll do is in the show notes, we'll put your contact
details website and also a copy of where they can get your book
from as well, because I think that the book is pretty cool.
Margo, thank you for sharing that towards the end, and we're
not going to let you go off justlightly.
We have one more question to askyou before we get away.
Our our podcast is called Baskets of Knowledge and every
episode we invite our guests to share a piece of knowledge to
(01:01:07):
put into our basket. You've shared tons of knowledge,
but is there one piece of knowledge that we can put into
our Kitty and a bust up most formyself, Tana and for our
listeners? Oh, that's a big question.
OK, so one of the things that I say is my superpower and my
girlfriend gave me this word, isthat I'm a possibilitarian,
(01:01:31):
which I just love the word. And I've got my friend Sonia,
actually the one that helped me with the book.
She her little byline on WhatsApp is what if everything
worked out and that idea of justdreaming ridiculously big, but
(01:01:51):
with that detachment. So just I always say what I love
about meeting someone amazing, like you and me when we met at
the Thrive event. When you connect with someone
like that, there's all this magic.
Like I always imagine it's like dust, you know, like glitter
hanging above us in the air, right?
You have that meeting with someone and you go this presence
(01:02:12):
just really excited me. And that's what I see is all
this sort of schlitter hang in the air between US and that's
the possibility of what we can create together.
So I would challenge anyone elseto just dream on that level.
Let go of the IT should be like this or this is my limit.
(01:02:32):
And actually, because I always say dreaming is free, right?
You can dream as big as you wantand you can change your mind as
many times as you like. And when you finally get to that
point where it feels so good that you think I can action
this, go for it. So what I would say is be a
possibility, Rian. Just think as broadly as you can
(01:02:54):
and let yourself dream because that is the way that you will
achieve big things in the world is just, yeah, really feeling
into what it is you want to do and but let it sit until it
feels comfortable, Yeah. What a lovely piece of on visit
to winter basketball, you know, and what a great way to round
off the podcast, like a full circle moment.
(01:03:15):
When we started off, you spoke about your big dreams on a house
and we've run by going actually,hey, world dream big, you know,
dream big. Find the people that give you
good in your life and be a possibilitarian.
What a great word, what a great race, what a great phrase.
Michael, thank you so much for for today.
You know, we've, we've spoken for just over an hour.
(01:03:36):
There's so much in your world that we could go into so much
depth and we want to get your back on again.
But I want to acknowledge you for sharing openly.
I also want to acknowledge you sharing time on your birthday
today with us. And we're actually really
honoured and privileged that youare still with us.
You know, given what you're calling your life so well, as
your teacher says, you met her. And so thank you so much for
your time. So this is out there.
(01:03:56):
Thank you for joining in. Hopefully you've picked up
something that you can put into your boss of knowledge.
Hopefully you've found a part ofthe story that resonates with
you or someone that you know. And if you haven't, go back and
listen again because you've fallen asleep.
But I promise you that this is this is a great podcast.
Until next time, don't forget tokeep smiling.
Don't forget to put something into your boss of knowledge.
And as Margaret said, don't forget to be a possible
(01:04:19):
material. Till next time, calculated,
everybody, please. Thank you, Margot.
Thank you for listening to Bastards of Knowledge.
Yeah, we hope that you found something useful to put into
your bastard knowledge. And as we said before, remember
to put something little into your baskets of knowledge every
week. And as always, feel free to
(01:04:41):
like, comment and share this podcast.
Thanks, everybody. Bye.
Hey everybody, it's Prajesh here.
In Tana here. Welcome to our podcast Passes of
Knowledge chats with a difference.
In our podcast, we invite guestsfrom around the country and
around the world to talk about how they got to where they at
the moment. It's about a journey, it's about
an experience, it's about their life.
(00:26):
Kyoto, everybody, welcome to another episode of Baskets of
Knowledge, and we've got Tony back.
Tony, it's great to see. We've missed you over the last
few episodes. Yeah, I've definitely missed the
few last few episodes. But yeah, I'm glad that it's
coming into summer as always, sogood sense of change of seasons.
I think something that I've probably put into my basket the
last couple of weeks has just been to celebrate the small
(00:49):
successes. And I think, you know, often we,
we've talked about it many timesaround striving for those huge
achievements. But now that I've started going
back into counselling and, you know, looking at how rocky this
year has been in terms of life change and moving back home, all
those kinds of changes that havehappened in my life, I think
it's just been an awesome realization to, I guess, reflect
(01:11):
on that change and reflect on where I am now compared to where
I was, let's say, six months ago.
Because I think we often forget or we like to forget about those
tough times. You know, we like to celebrate
being in those happy and happy spaces.
But I think sometimes it's important to reflect on, you
know, that success of coming through those challenging times
(01:31):
and what that's taught you alongthe way.
Yeah, so true. You know, I think as you said
before, too many times we focus on the big things, but actually
success is can be, you know, everyday success can be the
little things that we do in those moments there.
So it's really awesome to hear that you come back to
counselling and giving that backinto your since I know you've
had a pretty challenging year this year.
So really awesome to hear that. And my learning is, is the fact
(01:56):
that change is inevitable. You know, we, we, we, we like to
think that we have control of our lives, but actually our
lives, our lives are happening. So we have a choice of letting
our lives happen to us or we have control over the things
that we can control. You know, we change is going to
come. Change is part of it.
And every day is changed. And my thought process on that
is how can we make change that is positive in whatever phase it
(02:17):
is, whether it's positive towards ourselves or to other
people. Because it's so very easy to get
caught into the world of negativity because the media out
there is so full of negative negativity.
But also it's so easy to get caught into that without
actually realizing that sometimes that stuff is actually
not true. It's just there to make us get
hyped up and aggravated. So think about, think about
change in a positive way. Is, is, is my taking, my
(02:40):
learning over the last week. But that's enough about the two
of us because we keep venturing forever and ever and ever.
And as you know, we scour the country, we scour the world for
people that would think we're interesting.
We think and we know everybody'sinteresting has a story to tell.
And today we are so privileged, so lucky and so honoured to have
our guests. This is a person that I
connected with probably three years ago, almost three years
(03:02):
ago, I guess in person, I'm trying to remember that probably
three years ago. And when I met them and I had
heard their stories like, oh, this is this is an interesting
person. And the more that I've got to
know them, especially on a weekly basis with what they
share, I'm like, wow, this is anamazing, amazing human book lost
to share. So we're very lucky to have this
person on our podcast. But before I even introduce her
onto the podcast, it is her birthday today.
(03:24):
So imagine someone has sacrificed, first of all, a
Sunday morning, their birthday to come and spend time with us.
So we're really honoured and very lucky to have our guest
today. Let's welcome to Parks with
acknowledge Margaret, Kiera, Margaret and welcome to Parks
Knowledge. Hi, Fuji.
Shantanu, so nice to meet you and like be here today, I mean,
and thank you. Thanks.
(03:45):
It's been a really lovely start to the day actually.
Fantastic Margaret, people who know nothing about who you are
as a person. Who is Margaret today on the 9th
of November? At the moment, right now, I'm
feeling really chuffed because Ijust bought my own home on my
own, which has been a huge achievement.
(04:05):
I started working towards that seven years ago.
So it's been a really long journey.
But it's yeah. And I'm like I keep saying, I
feel like I'm falling in love with my house.
So at the moment I'm all about house stuff and but the reason
that's been such a big focus is that I feel that I can give more
to the world when I have stability in my home life.
(04:28):
And so that's kind of been the underlying reason to work so
hard to get a little place that I can just call my home and come
home to without risk of it changing.
So yeah. I love you and that's, that's
just one part of you and there'sso many, so many different
angles. And I and I love and I love that
you, you speak about your home giving you stability, which
allows you to then rocket launched to other parts of your
(04:49):
life. But if we, if we go back to 8
years ago, some 78 years ago, and if I said to you 8 years
ago, hey, while you're in eight years time you'll have your own
home by yourself, what would youhave said to us at that point in
time? I would not have believed you to
be honest. That was when I started my
coaching journey for my, my own coaching.
And I remember my I was in a very dark place and I remember
(05:13):
my coach saying, think as big asyou can, what would you have if
you could have anything? And at the time I was a single
mum on my own with three small children, smallish children and
a sort of around that 10 age. And I remember saying that I
would want to be able to buy meat twice a week to have for
(05:36):
dinner, that I would like the kids to do an after school
activity of their choice that was as big as I could dream that
long ago. So yeah, it was really a very
difficult time. Yeah.
Yeah. And as you think about it, that
was eight years ago. So what switched for you in year
7 years ago when you were actually wedding when it's this
home thing is actually become a reality?
(05:58):
Yeah, it's a, it's a really coolquestion.
So I was my, you know, you and Iboth know Trish Coleman, just an
amazing woman all together in her own right, a phenomenal
businesswoman and now an amazingcoach.
And she was in my community. I lived in North Canterbury and
I ran the business, the Tourism and Business Association for a
(06:22):
number of years. I started it with two other
ladies, Trish and a friend, Claire, and then we ran that and
built it to having 60 different businesses in it, which is
pretty big in North Canterbury because they're very small.
And as when Trish finished up her business, Mama T Trading
Lounge, she told me in a coffee that she was going to start a
(06:44):
coaching business or learn to bea coach.
And I said to her, I need to be your first client because I
always thought she was just an amazing woman.
And so, yeah, for the first couple of years, she was that
person for me. And when things were really
hard, we had this system where we I had to send her a heart
every day because I was in a quite a difficult spot.
(07:06):
And so the colour of the heart indicated how I was feeling that
day. And that was at that point.
And she was the one that asked me to set 3 extraordinary goals
to a couple of extraordinary goals to work towards.
And The funny thing was, when I set those goals, I really
thought that they were impossible or very difficult to
achieve. And within three months I'd
(07:26):
totally kicked them out of the park and things were looking
brighter. And I think that because they
were achieved so fast, I suddenly thought, oh, maybe I
could dream bigger. And so I think then I moved into
the city and and then I must have read a book.
I can't think I've read so many books, but I read a book and
(07:48):
basically it just said dream as big as you can.
And my always since I was 18 years old, I always wanted to
own my own home. And I have owned 4 houses but
because of relationships and things I haven't managed to hold
on to them. And so I just thought I'm just
gonna set that goal. So literally I went from
dreaming about being a better buy feta and meat to going,
(08:09):
what's the biggest thing I could, you know, like by
achieving that goal and getting the girls into circus and the
activity that they wanted to do and suddenly feeling more in
control of my own destiny, I thought, oh, well, if I'm going
to, I may as well dream really big.
And yeah. And that's that's how I set that
goal of buying a house and started myself on that
trajectory. So yeah.
(08:31):
Yeah, and, and I love that shape.
I love that shape because, you know, a lot of us listening to
the podcast as well as, you know, tuning in, we set our
goals, but the goal we set our in our comfort zones, you know,
even though we don't think aboutit, but when you step back as
you're done and go reflect, actually, I was that was, I was
playing pretty small. I was just being comfortable and
on the edge of uncomfortableness.
Remember when I did my coach training and my the coach was
(08:54):
like, what's your goal? And people had all these
different goals and I had my little goal and it's like, none
of those are goals. None of those are goals.
That's just the way you're just wasting your time.
And I was like, whoa, how arrogant is this guy here
wasting my time? This is my goal.
But he said something like, if your goal doesn't scare you,
then it's not a goal. Good goal doesn't scare you.
It's not a goal. And that's when I was like, oh,
actually, so you know, as you said, I'm pretty sure when you
(09:16):
said that goal, you it was a scary goal.
It didn't stop you. No.
And, and I think the thing I'm feeling right now, I feel really
proud and I'm, I don't know, I'msure I felt that before, but not
like this. It's really nice.
It's yeah, it's a really lovely feeling.
(09:37):
And I think that's the thing that when you set that scary
goal and you achieve it, that's when you don't need others
recognition of it because you just know how much work went
into getting there yourself. And it's really lovely.
Yeah, no, that's awesome. That's really, really beautiful.
And I'm going to switch texts a little bit.
I mean, as we said before, we'recelebrating your birthday, but
(09:58):
you have also had a lot of health challenges going along,
you know, that I just learned about this week.
Yeah. Do you want to share with our,
with us, I guess, and our listeners about the health
challenges that you've had and where you are today?
You know that that message you sent to the WhatsApp group the
other day was so I mean, yes, I said amazing, but my words
couldn't describe exactly how I felt when you shared that.
(10:19):
Thank you. Yeah, It's been a really
challenging decade, to be honest.
So 11 years ago, so my mother had breast cancer.
She's had it twice when I. Oh, she's had surgery twice, I
should say. So when I was young, I knew
that. So my family moved.
(10:39):
My mum and dad moved from Holland to Australia when I was
young. I grew up in Brisbane and when
you're young you hear about aunties and uncles that are sick
and things like that. And I kind of knew that there
was a history of something in our family and I didn't really
fully grasp it. And then when mum got sick, when
I was, when I had Hannah, who's 20 now, when I was pregnant with
(11:01):
her about to give birth, mum anddad told me that mum had breast
cancer. And so while I had a very, very
small baby, my mum went through breast cancer and I found that
so challenging. Like we lived across the city
from each other, a good hours drive away and a small child and
mum, you know, not being able tosee me because of the, you know,
(11:23):
that, that she might get sick. And I really struggled with it.
And over the time after that, until 10 years ago or 11 years
ago, I kind of had it in the back of my mind that if my
family had this BRCA gene, there's a big chance I did too.
(11:44):
But obviously, having had three daughters, there was also the
chance that they had it from me.So there was a funnel funny
double fear that I had not only got the gene myself, but that I
passed it on. But I decided to shelve that and
have my children. And then when I had my final
child, Anika, who's 14, I decided it was time to find out
(12:06):
and take empower myself. So I, I went to my doctor and I
got the testing done in France for the gene thing.
And sure enough, I had the, the gene.
And it's funny sitting in there with the surgeon, he said, look,
I'm, I'm really sorry to let youknow, but you do have this
Bracha 1 gene, which means I'm predisposed to breast cancer and
ovarian cancer. And he said you might want to
(12:28):
consider having a double mastectomy.
So having your boobs removed. And I said Yep, OK, cool.
And he went, no, no, you might want to consider it.
And I was like, OK, but I'll do it.
And it was really funny. That was, yeah, about 12 years
ago. And again, I went away.
(12:49):
I thought about it, but I it didn't change my mind.
My thing always came back to howmuch I disliked mum going
through it and how I felt out ofcontrol and unable to help.
And I didn't want my girls to gothrough that, so I wanted to
show them an empowered view on that.
And so obviously that brought upa lot for me.
(13:10):
And I actually went through a bit of a bucket list because,
oh, so when I was 16, one of my best friend's mum went in for a
routine surgery and died on the operating table.
And it shocked me so deeply to my core.
I didn't realize quite how badlyuntil this point when I found
out the surgery was 8 hours. And that seemed massive.
(13:31):
I actually thought I wasn't going to survive the surgery.
I just. I didn't.
Yeah, I don't know. That's how it felt.
And I did a bucket list. And on my bucket list, I wrote
all these things. And when I spoke to my husband
at the time, the kid stabbed about it.
He didn't want to do any of the things.
And I thought, oh, OK, I thoughtwe were doing these things after
the kids were grown up and he went up, never want to do any of
(13:53):
them. And I went oh, and, and so it
was quite crazy because such a massive thing coming up, it
ended up actually leading to theend of my marriage, which was
really difficult, which then deferred any surgeries or
anything because I had to get life sorted.
So over the course of two years that that all happened and then
(14:14):
finally got to the day where we did my surgery and luckily I
woke up and when it was longish story.
So when I woke up from the surgery, I the first thing I
said was I need to do more with my art.
And my partner at the time said,what do you mean?
(14:35):
And I said, I don't know, but I think I need to do something
really big. And that's how I started
painting my murals. So yeah, that's just leads to
how that happened. And that's.
So I had the surgery and it was successful, but there was a
complication. So a couple of months later,
they, yeah, there was a leak. They hadn't sealed it up
(14:59):
properly and they had to have emergency surgery.
And one whole side had to be redone at like the drop of a
hat. So that was a little bit scary.
And then that was at 35. And they told me at 40, I would
have to have my ovaries out if Iwanted to really mitigate the
risk because I did 2 family members that had the ovarian
cancer as well. So I thought, yeah, let's just
(15:20):
do that. So I didn't end up doing it at
40. I was a little nervous after the
complications. And so I put off the surgery for
a year. And I think at 41 1/2, they
said, look, this is the last chance we'll give you to do
this. And so I went right, let's do
it. And that went swimmingly.
And so then about, so that's sixyears ago or something.
(15:43):
And about four years ago I movedinto, I'd moved into town, I'd
got myself a really great job. So I've always worked for
myself, which I love doing. But then I still wanted to buy a
house. And one of my clients said to
me, why don't you get a job? And I was like, oh, don't, I
don't know if I want a job. I like being really flexible and
(16:04):
working around the children. And I like working creatively,
create with lots of creativity. And he said, Oh, well, I think
we could do that for you. So why don't you write what the
job might look like and send me a proposal.
And so in the end lot, Long story short, I got the job with
him. And interestingly, by creating
that sort of safety net of beingin town, things being settled
(16:28):
with the kids and at home and with their dad and that sort of
thing, and having a job where I have regular stable income, I
think my body went, oh, it's time to rest.
And I came down with chronic fatigue And so if any you, if
anyone doesn't know what happenswith chronic fatigue, your body
(16:49):
just stops working. I actually went ended up in
hospital 3 * 1 time. They thought it was a heart
attack. Another time I collapsed from
pain that was four times worse than childbirth, like really
debilitating pain. And I honestly thought I was
dying. I, it, it was really awful.
And over the last four years I've learned how to manage that
(17:14):
pain and how to the fatigue and got back to working a normal
job. But, you know, I'm still, I'm
here with the kids, I've bought a house, I've got a regular
income and yeah, pretty much overcome, not overcome the
fatigue, but learned how to manage the fatigue.
So that's, and what I wrote on the on the chat that we would,
(17:39):
that we're both part of was thatI finally, after 11 years, got
discharged from the hospital system on Wednesday this week.
So that was a very long journey.But I'm really, yeah, proud to
have conquered that, I suppose. Think you were thinking of a
sharing that bit and and what a what a story, and I'm saying and
(18:00):
multiple times because it's, youknow, you're proud of your
health, which is amazing, but also the fact that you have
learned how to mitigate or managed chronic chronic fatigue
syndrome. But going through everything
amongst all the people still having a job, being a mum, doing
all that you have to do is is really, really, really quite,
quite powerful and empowering results in on this this thing to
to your podcast. But you know, you, you, you
(18:22):
speak about it, but there would have been times when you're like
this, I cannot, this is, I'm done, you know, just mentally,
what would, what got you throughthose really dark times when you
know, and I say that because I'm, I'm assuming, I'm assuming
it could be correct. You know, there's times when you
just go like I'm, I'm just heading up.
This is not that I want to die. I want to give up, but I'm just,
I just can't do anything else. What got you through those dark
times? People yeah my the reason I do
(18:47):
everything is my love for peopleand when I very, very first
moved into town must be about 6 years ago now, I went to a I'm
going to forget the name tarot reader person that reads the
future not my jam at all but a girlfriend wanted to go because
(19:07):
it was her birthday and she's I said what would you like to do
and she said I want to go and dothis would you come with me and
I was like OK cool it's your birthday.
So I went and when I went into the room with the lady, because
we went separately, I said to her, look, I'd love to just have
a cup of tea and a chat. You know, I'm not, I'm not too
worried about my future. I don't wanna know what it is.
I will make it. And so we have this lovely chat,
(19:30):
beautiful, oh, beautiful woman she was.
And with this beautiful chat over a cup of tea.
And at the end she said, may I tell you one thing?
And I said, yeah, of course. And she said, if you follow your
heart and lead with love, you will be more successful than you
ever dreamed of. And I came home and I made a
painting, first painting I've ever made that I didn't think
about. I, I just got home and it was
(19:52):
like I was on autopilot. I just grabbed a canvas, grabbed
my brushes, painted until I stopped.
And then I had this beautiful painting.
And everyone that looks at it says to me, wow, I feel really
good when I look at that picture.
So and I from that day, everything I do is from my heart
and with love, even when I'm. Unhappy with people, if you want
(20:13):
to say that, or having a difficult time.
I try and always look at it froma point of love and it has I, I
have only had success. You know, there has been tough
times and there's been things that haven't gone the way I
wanted, but my life has just been so beautiful.
And I, when I felt down in the past, before this sort of
(20:35):
period, I think my thing was that I wasn't lovable.
I think I'm really loud and vivacious and sparkly and I can
be a bit too much for some people.
And because of that, I used to think that I am just too much
altogether. And that was my difficult point
(20:58):
when I was down. And then I just decided I got to
this point where I thought I'm just putting out the love into
the world that I want to receive.
I'm not having any expectation to receive it.
And guess what? Now I look at my phone and I
look at my messages and all I have is love Everyone, everyone,
my bosses, my like, everyone in my life is so loving.
(21:21):
And I think I just, yeah, I'm sograteful.
I think by putting myself into the world with what I want to
receive or what I feel the most dearly, I'm now getting it back
again. And yeah, whereas before I just,
I don't know. I, I, I did learn boundaries and
(21:42):
I learned a few other things about what kind of personality
type doesn't resonate in my world.
And I don't really have anyone like that anymore in my world.
But yeah, the love thing has just been, it's just blown me
away and I just adore it. So yeah, it's definitely what
gets me through the hard times is my friends and the love in my
life. Isn't it?
Isn't it crazy that a cup of teaand one one would or one brave
(22:06):
has just changed your whole perspective in life?
I know. So grateful.
Yeah, and, and it's really beautiful.
And I, I'm going to come back tothis because in your book and
your book at the on your, on your last page, you go, what can
I tell you? I'm a passionate person
personally and professionally. I get energy from variety.
I was hard to sum into one line,but I've managed this and it
(22:27):
comes out to this. I like people.
And it's so, so, so, so obvious as you speak today that people
are an important part of your life in all aspects.
The most? Yeah, the most important.
My highest values are love and connection so.
Yeah, and but, and it's really important, you know, that we
know we do all these tests and things and we realize that our
(22:48):
highest values are percentage types, but it's what you do with
it. Like, you know, it's all good to
have like, you know, are you andI.
But you know, I checked in a disk and I was doing a profiling
last week with the group and I challenged them and like, cool,
you all know what styles you are.
What are you going to do with that information today?
Like, what is, what's your next step?
And they're like, oh, yeah. And I was like, yeah, it's cool
(23:08):
to do this here, but not what not what happens.
It's so empowering. Yeah, because as you and I know,
because you can like, you know your style, but what happens
after that there do you? What do you do so?
Can you feel yourself flipping into your style, Nick?
If I don't know if, do you not? Do you have an arrow?
Yeah, because when I changed to 100% I, I now feel it.
(23:29):
I'm like, oh, I'm 100% I And with my chronic fatigue, I know
that that person can drain me. So I know that I can only be
that in that space for a limitedamount of time.
And then I have to flip back to my SI 100.
Percent, 100%. So for those of you that are
wondering what we're talking about, have both Margaret and
myself extended this practitioners?
(23:50):
So if you want to learn more about that, hit hit us up later
on and we'll we'll explain what that is because I think there's
so many tools out there. You know, there's every tool
under the sun and they're all fantastic.
But if you do every tool, you'renot going to figure things out.
Just pick the one tool and then just go with that.
And then, you know, whatever it is, because, you know, I had I
had a client of mine who was like, I've done my Briggs at
(24:11):
that Clifton. And then I was like, cool,
you've done all those things here, but what are you doing
with that information? And I and I love how you it was
no tool. It was just a cup of tea.
And they just said she'd go and lead with love.
And that's it. It's being.
Open, right? It's being open to what's around
you. It could be a person on the
street, it could be every. That's.
I think that thing I really loveis that there's something I read
(24:37):
in one of the books, one of those famous books like the 12
thingy, Carnegie, I can't remember his name, but I had to
influence people. It was one of those books where
he said you could go to a coursethat was on a topic that you
already know a lot about, right?You could go to a course and you
could walk away and go. I already knew all that.
But someone might say one thing that gives you a slightly
(24:58):
different perspective on the topic that you already know lots
about, and that could be the gift, you know?
And so I try and go into every interaction with anyone and
think, what was the gift out of this, you know?
Exactly because every attractionis a gift and it's a gift of
other what what I can learn or what I don't want to learn.
You know, it's two ways. It doesn't mean yeah, beautiful.
(25:18):
Margaret. The other thing I want to touch
on is I just read that line and that line came from your book
Creating Communities. And tell us more about what was
the inspiration behind writing the book and specifically about
communities, You know, because you could write a book about
anything and you've chosen to write something about something
that's very specific. And, you know, and we'll, we'll
share the link in the in the show notes in the show notes so
(25:41):
we can get a copy of the book ifthey want to purchase one.
But it's a really fantastic book.
I mean, thank you for sharing with me.
And I think it's got some amazing practical tips.
Why would you write that book? So about four years ago I was in
Sydney with a girlfriend and I had learned about passive income
and about creating. I wanted to create a sustainable
(26:03):
future for myself. And we were walking and talking
and we've been friends for many,many years, since 18 years.
And as we were going along, we're walking and walking and
talking. And she said to me, oh,
Margaret, whatever you do, it has to be about community.
It's, you know, it's been everything in your life.
And I thought to, to myself, oh,you're totally right.
(26:25):
And so we talked through like, should it be a podcast?
Should be a blog? You know, what should it be?
And, and I at the time, I just thought, oh, for me, I just love
books, right? I just adore books.
I love holding a book and I lovethe longevity of a book, you
know that you can pass it on to someone, all that sort of stuff.
And I got to the airport to go home from that long weekend and
just sat at the airport and wrote 3 pages of chapter
(26:47):
headings of all the things that.So basically I thought a dummy's
guide to running a community organization and creating change
was what I wanted. So because there's lots, I'm
sure there's lots of textbooks from really wise people and
people that have been to university and all different
things. But the people that I have
worked with in community have been kids, students, mums,
(27:08):
people that are in their community just getting stuff
done. I didn't know if I could swim
and that I love and they're the people that I thought could
possibly use just some extra. So it's the people that go, I'd
love to make a change, but I don't know where to start.
(27:28):
And so the idea was to create a book that would be really easy
to read, really easy to just pick up at any page and get
something off that page. That idea of everything.
I read this book when the kids were young that was called
Buddhism for Mothers. And, and I had a whole bunch of
friends that had the same book. And we used to say you could
just sit down exhausted and justopen it up and something on that
(27:49):
page would resume. And that's what I wanted to do
with my book. I wanted to have that.
You could pick it up at any point and pick it up and go, oh,
yeah, that's really useful. I didn't think of it that way.
And so that I'd made it really, it's really long, but it's
really short. All the chapters are like, you
could read them in a couple of minutes.
And all the language is really modern day average language.
(28:10):
And, and the biggest thing that I overlaid across the whole
book, so I wrote, I wrote the book and then I got the chronic
fatigue and I hadn't published yet.
And I remember saying to my editor, oh, I can't believe that
this has happened. Why has this happened?
And he said, I don't know, but there'll be a reason.
And the reason was that I had torewrite the book with the lens
(28:31):
of fatigue. I had to rewrite it because
people that do community projects are working, are
mothers, are carers and they don't have, they have to be kind
to themselves. I have seen and been one of the
people that burns out from doingtoo much in community.
So I had to rewrite the book from the lens of Don't burn
(28:53):
yourself out. And so, yeah, the book is
written very kindly. It's been written all about
looking after yourself and setting up your projects or the
the projects that you're part ofso that you don't burn yourself
out. So yeah, so it's got twofold.
One fold is make amazing differences in the world how to
(29:14):
and you can do it like a positive yeah, let's go, and the
other one is how to do it without really putting yourself
at risk and your family energy wise.
Yeah, and it's it's a really thank you for sharing with me.
I mean, as I said to you in our little chat there that I'm, I've
only skimmed through it because I'm a, I'm a, I'm a whistle
reader. It's on the way.
(29:35):
But but, but, but, but like us, but like I said just before, you
know, just picking up the littlechapters, there's, it's really
beautiful. But what I, what I picked up
there was the motivator for the book, you know, and it changed
quite dramatically with the lens.
When your lens changes, the way you look at things change.
And what is that like for you? Because, and I asked this
because the other day I wrote anarticle about burnout, which
which gets people excited. And in the, in the, the premise
(29:59):
of the article was, you know, burnout is a really big topic,
But also sometimes we forget to take ownership of the fact that
we're actually responsible for own own burnout.
And it's easy to blame everything else, but sometimes
we have to look in the room and go actually, what am I saying
yes to when it's when it's not, when it's on the health
condition, right? When it's just you just keep
saying yes to everything. When you read that article and
(30:23):
you said to me, hey, this is something that I'd like to talk
about. You know what what came up the
as you thought about that? Yeah, it is 100% right.
And even with a health condition, it is still your
responsibility. So chronic fatigue feels like
you're dying and it can get worse and worse and worse.
(30:45):
So when I got sick, it was rightat the beginning of COVID, so we
couldn't go to in person things it.
Was harder to go. To the doctor and my dad.
My mum and dad are in Brisbane and my dad messaged me.
He'd obviously done some research and he said the big
thing about chronic fatigue is to have a group of people, a
community around you to support you.
So I found the local chronic fatigue association here and I
(31:07):
went onto a Zoom call and I walked out of the bedroom and I
went sod that. I'm not doing that because what
I've noticed was people seem to get worse.
So they and it like I, I literally collapsed a couple of
times and then what IA lot of and I still did for about 3
(31:27):
years. Every three months I kind of
have a collapse moment, but whatI noticed was people got worse.
So people would go from having the pain to not being able to
walk certain distance, to not being able to open the curtains
because their eyes hurt, to not being able to get out of bed, to
not being able to get dressed. And I thought, no, no, that's
(31:50):
all going backwards. I don't want to go backwards.
I want to go forwards. And so I worked with, I was not
lucky, but I have income protection and because I have
income protection and I have an amazing insurance broker, he got
me a he was, he made sure I had someone at the insurance company
that worked for me. And she got me in to see a
occupational therapist called Ben.
(32:12):
And he was amazing. And we worked together and we
both just read the same book andThe Body Keeps the Score by
Bessel, then the clock. And so interestingly, because we
both read it, we were like zinging on it.
And we came to realize that the fatigue was 10 years of
difficulty in life, like and even before that, my ex-husband
(32:35):
had been really unwell for sevenyears in our in our marriage the
last seven years. So firstly that moving countries
to try and help his health within six months, an earthquake
and then another, you know, a series of earthquakes over the
period of time. And then we had lockdowns and
everything. So and the marriage breaking up
and the surgeries. So there was just a whole bunch
(32:55):
of things that had stressed me out.
And I try and be the best I can all the time.
But because of that, I had got myself to a point that I just,
my body just couldn't keep going.
And so when I was what I now realized when I was in a safe
place with a job and great household, I had flatmates and
things. So I had a very low cost of
living. My body went, you have time to
(33:18):
rest. You're not going to have a
choice about this. You are going to rest whether we
like it or not. And so that's how I got to the
place where I got chronic fatigue.
That is why my body did that. It the body kept the score and
it said you're going to rest whether you like it or not.
And so over the course of two years, I had six months almost
completely off work. And then over the course of two
(33:40):
years, I built my resilience back up, but each time by
falling down again. So I'd go, yeah, I can totally
do a four hours a week. And then, oh, actually 4 hours
is too much today. And then the next week I'd be,
or the next, you know, couple months, I'd do a bit more and a
bit more. And now I'm back to 40 hours a
week. But even that I've now even now
like yesterday I helped at the school fair and this week I did
(34:02):
a couple of nights where I helped out with spreadsheets
and, you know, signs and things for the school fair.
And last night I was absolutely shattered.
I was on my feet from 7:00 in the morning till 5:00 in the
afternoon and I could barely move last night.
And so I said today, this is theonly thing I'm doing today.
My kids are cooking me breakfastshortly and you know, but
(34:24):
nothing else. And so I have really learned
that that I have to take space. When I moved house, I took extra
time off than I normally would. So it is, you are correct that
the, it's, it's our responsibility to figure out.
I'm not saying you know how to do it because you only know how
to do it when you do it wrong. It's about next time.
(34:46):
It's like the last time I went on holidays, I took a longer
holiday. But what I realized afterwards
was I should have taken it one day before I went on the holiday
to actually prepare because I felt a little rushed.
And when I got to the airport, Iwas like, I was like, OK, that
wasn't fun. So I, you know, so it's about
remembering that the next time you book a holiday a year later,
(35:09):
I need to take one extra day to prepare because I didn't enjoy
feeling so stressed by the time I got to the airport.
So I think that's it's just a constant evolution.
A. 100%. I would say yeah.
Yeah. And I love that because you know
what I love about that is it's we always get feedback.
Our body gives us feedback, our environment gives us feedback.
And it's whether or not we listen to that there.
You know, we have we have a choice in the feedback.
(35:30):
And sometimes the body goes, OK,cool.
I'm giving you all these warningsigns.
I've been very kind to you and now I'm just going to shut down
because you didn't listen to me.And it's, it's really funny
because I remember when I was teaching and then if we go to
school holidays, you just get stuck straight away.
It's because you're on the you're on the go, go, go, go,
go. And then it comes as you say,
your body goes Ah, and then. Yeah, and that's why now I think
(35:55):
that's what I really, it's funnynow looking at other people and
I don't. I'm learning to be a coach, but
I don't officially coach yet. But now with that limbs on, when
I'm at work and I see people whoget sick quite regularly or that
have a sore back or that, you know, something comes up, I'm
like, oh, your body is trying totell you something.
And I always try to gently say odd, do you think maybe your
(36:18):
body's trying to tell you this or, or, or maybe maybe you need
a day off or you know, like I really the whole mental health
day is so vital. Taking a mental health day, even
when we don't feel that sick yetis it is the thing that will
stop you from getting actually really, really sick.
And so that I think that our, I have sound very old here, but
(36:41):
our kids have got it right. My kids, I always think, and I
hear it from guys at work who are a bit older.
They're like, oh, harden up. You know, when the guys take
days off when they're not that sick, but actually you come back
and you work twice as hard the next day because you gave
yourself the space to just catchup.
I don't know if that's the rightword, but yeah.
(37:03):
Yeah, I'm going to, I'm going tobring Tana in because Tana has
gone through something challenging recently and I'd
love to know what his perspective is as you navigated
that. Yeah, it's, yeah, You've given
me some, yeah, deep insight into, yeah, reframing that space
that I went through. Yeah, it's definitely, I think,
yeah. As you say, we don't often take
that space just to take the space.
(37:24):
We often, yeah, wait until there's no other Yeah, no other
reason or yeah, no other choice but to take that space.
So I think it's really important, yeah, that you do
take that space. Yes.
So really insightful for sure. Yeah, because Tana, when you,
when you were going through, when you were going through, you
didn't give yourself that permission to take that space,
did you? No, I just, you know, I just
(37:46):
keep going for the sake of keep on keeping on.
Yeah, Yeah. Yeah.
That's what we do though, isn't it?
And we're taught to do that. Societally it does feel like
it's, I don't know because I'm not a man, but I do feel that
particularly with guys, there isa sense of come on, just keep
going, harden up kind of thing. Even though it's much better
(38:08):
than it used to be. I I do wonder if that's not the
case. Yeah, and I think it's really
interesting that you say that because for both you and Hani,
I'm sorry. Yeah, both you and Hani, I, I
have to share that, you know, I,I work in an organization at the
moment and it's really interesting how it's how it's
seen very different when different team members ask for
mental health days. And for some it's like, Yep, no
(38:30):
brain. I give it to you easy.
And for some others, they require evidence and proof.
And my head is going, I don't understand.
I do not understand why there's two very different measures of
mental health and quotation marks when somebody asks.
And I think this is this is the problem, right?
Because as you said, Margo before is societies that's the
world have perception of mental health or non mental health and
(38:52):
you can just harden up and you can just do it because there's
no physical sickness that you can see.
Yeah, yeah, you're totally right.
I had a friend who had a surgeryand has she somehow they severed
A spinal cord or part of it and she has no feeling from her
belly button down. So she looks, oh, so it's called
(39:15):
The Walking paraplegic. And so she looks completely
fine. She walks, she, you know, and
yet it's incredibly debilitating.
She can't work, she can't go to the toilet easily.
She you know, all these sort of things.
She has no feeling down there. So, and I did not realize just
that's one of those things wherepeople think she's fine, but
(39:38):
obviously she's dealing with a lot.
And so, yeah, I just think you can never assume that someone's
OK because they look OK. You have no clue what's going on
at home or in their body. And we do need to give people
the space for that, I think. Yeah, it's interesting because,
you know, the whole hidden disability sunflower is really
(40:01):
becoming very big and I but it'salso works the other way around
because I, someone shared a story with me that they were
wearing the hidden disability sunflower and because of that
they were already prejudged. They couldn't do something.
So, you know, it's just like, it's just like you can't win in
that situation. It's so crazy.
It does. Feel like that, doesn't it?
It's so interesting, isn't it? And I think that's where when I
(40:23):
learned about boundaries, initially it was about other
people, but now I see boundariesas protecting my own health.
So not about interactions with people as much, but now it's
more about protecting my body from stress so that I don't get
(40:45):
sick again that badly. And I, that's why we need to
allow people to take the days when they need the sick days,
you know, because when you know your body and you know what it
is capable of, then you should be, have the right to take the
time you need to make it heal. And that's funny because I do
that now. So if I go to work, I work 40
(41:08):
hours and some days I, I'm not handling it and I will drive my
car around the corner and lay down and have a sleep in my car
for 15 minutes and I could go home.
But sometimes I, you know, there's a lot of honour I need
to, but I, so I just do that. I go in and I used to get to
school when I still took the kids to school all the time.
(41:29):
I'd get to school at 2:45 and I would put seat down and I'd
sleep until the bell went at 3:00.
That was, you know, part of how I got through the chronic
fatigue. And I think it's about finding
those micro or macro things thatyou can do that will help you
still function well. Yeah, I think that's a great
reminder to me because I haven'tbeen doing that there.
(41:50):
And it's a great reminder that actually in a 5 minutes, 10
minutes of of intentional risk or intentional, whatever you
want to call that as it's like the results of that exponential
and also 100%. And also conversely, if you
don't do it, the results are exponential.
Exactly. And that's again, that is why
how I've managed to buy a house.Do you know, it's like saving
(42:14):
all that money, working extra hours and doing murals on the
weekends and things like that. The only way I, I, it's funny, I
was talking to another friend who's a creative and saying I
must look like a schizophrenic and she was saying the same when
I start a mural now. So I go, everything I do, if I
can, is on what feels good in mybody.
So I will get to a mural job. And obviously I've packed the
(42:38):
whole car and I've thought aboutit and I've done my health and
safety. So I'll get to site and I'll
usually stop. Oh, you, I'll stop and then I'll
assess the site and then I'll write my health and safety
stuff. So I've just packed the carriage
rib in there. So then my rest is filling out
the forms because it's quiet. And I'll sit in my car in the
(42:58):
shade and fill out the form of what needs to happen on the
site. And then I'll unpack my car onto
the site. And that takes a lot of energy
as well. And then I'll stop and I'll
usually either go and get a coffee or I'll sit in the shade
and I'll think what do I want todo?
And it's usually a social media post.
So I'll do a photo and write away post about just about to
(43:18):
get started for the day and thenagain.
And then I'm usually like, oh, what do I feel like doing that?
And usually it's like a big block of color.
So then I'll open a can and thenI find that's when I really hit
flower and that's when I just almost forget.
And two or three hours later I'll stop and I'll like, whoa,
OK, it's done on the wall and that.
And but then again, what I find is I'll be in flow and I could
(43:41):
keep going for hours. I could keep going all day.
But what I now have is that I get this flutter in my heart
doesn't hurt or anything, but it's like it's like a butterfly
inside my heart, right? And as soon as I feel that it
doesn't hurt nothing but it, I go, oh, I have 15 minutes until
(44:01):
I get really tired or I trip over or I, you know, something
and I hurt myself. And So what I then do is I go,
you've got 5 minutes because I can't help but keep going.
So I go 5 minutes, 5 minutes. And then I'll put my paintbrush
in the water. And then I'll put the cap on the
paint and I'll go and sit again in the shade, and I'll have a
drink of water and I'll think, what do I want?
(44:22):
And sometimes it'll be 10 minutes of rest and other times
it'll be, you know, a piece of fruit or something.
But yeah. And I know that I need at least
15 minutes after that flubber ofjust nothing.
And then. Yeah.
And and then sometimes. And then again, it's all about
listening to myself. That's what I really learned
with the occupational therapist.I have this like board, we call
(44:43):
it the boardroom with all littlepeople inside my tummy here that
we call it and they talk all thetime.
So they go, are we safe? Is everything OK?
What are we feeling right now? Is there a lion at the door?
A tiger at the door? And then and then we make a
decision and but it's all about self soothing.
So it's like, am I OK? Is this, you know, and that's
(45:03):
been that's how I now manage life.
And that's how the chronic fatigue is improved is by
continually giving myself, OK, you're all right.
You know, there are days that I open the curtains and it hurts
my eyes. And that's when I have, I have
to listen to the little boardroom in my tummy and decide
if what I can do today is wearing sunglasses enough or do
(45:24):
I need to actually do 1/2 day atwork or do I need to cancel some
appointments so that I can I cankeep going.
So yeah. It's, it's, it's so interesting
because, and these were interesting a lot today, because
everything's very interesting. You're saying today, just the
other day, I had this conversation at a, at a, you
know, a random function and we spoke about awareness.
(45:45):
Everything is progress. Awareness proceeds change is
what, you know, the big quote is, but I was challenged and
that evening, but actually awareness proceeds change, which
is good. But for us to have a change, we
also have willingness. So as you said before, you have
the awareness of your boardroom,which says, hey, but then the
willingness to listen to your boardroom is very different to
the awareness of the of the boardroom, right.
And I think this is where a lot of us and myself included, we
(46:08):
have the awareness, but do we have the willingness?
And those are two very, very different conversations.
And not only that, but I think is a belief structure that goes
with the not listening to the boardroom.
Because if our mother or father or our boss or someone
influential in our life has influenced us to think hard
(46:29):
enough or it's not bad enough totake the rest that you need or
to change or, or that you shouldbe sitting at your desk all day
from 9:00 to 5:00. The fact that I can drive away,
go around the corner, lay down in my car for 15 minutes and
come back, that I give myself permission to do that.
(46:49):
I used to beat myself up. You're so weak.
You can't, you know, before I sort of started this journey, I
would have told myself that I should be able to do more.
And now I just think if people, if I am enough, that even with
taking this time, even in the middle of a really busy day,
(47:09):
that's OK. The right people will accept
that I take that time. And.
And it has happened like that. Yeah.
Yeah, it all comes down to you taking ownership of your own
reactions and then other you can't control other those
reactions, right? You cannot, you can.
And I think, and I think when werealize that actually we can't
control them and we don't know what's how they're going to
(47:30):
react. You know, there's assumptions
that we have that makes life very, very difficult when we
start doing that there. And the next level to that is
when someone reacts badly to really the big thing I always
think is it's not about you. So sometimes someone will react
badly and they'll get upset at you or or say something mean.
And the biggest learning for me has been not to take that on.
(47:54):
Sometimes you've made a mistake and you can feel sorry for it.
But mostly it's about that they're having a bad day or
they're struggling and all what we can do to be kind.
And this is particularly in the book, I find that you can do the
most amazing thing for your community or a project could go
wrong. You could run out of money, or
(48:15):
you could make a mistake or it couldn't, or some people just
don't like it. You made a park and other people
wanted a like, I don't know. But you know, and there's always
going to be someone that's goingto say, I don't like what you've
done. And if you take that on, you'll
never do anything or you'll feelbad about what you have done.
(48:35):
And neither of those are good options.
So the big thing is to realize that other people's perspective
are not about you. It's just really hard.
Yeah, and it's been, you know, other girl's perspective is not
your reality. You know, it's, it's not your
reality. And also, I read this, I read
this somewhere, the other, oh, afew months ago.
(48:56):
An opinion is not a fact. So an opinion is that affect and
an opinion is a fact. Therefore, I, my fact is I don't
have to listen to your opinion. I was like, that was so, so
true. Because you know, so many times
we go, everyone's got an opinion.
It doesn't mean you've got an opinion that you have to agree
with it. I can go down.
I don't I don't agree with your opinion and it's OK for that to
happen. And one of my particular ones is
(49:17):
about that criticism. I often think now if you're not
trying to do what I'm doing, as in either come to me with a
constructive criticism, with a suggestion or how I could do it
better. But don't just criticize because
(49:39):
if you, especially if you're notdoing it too I, I think that's
the thing. It's easy to criticize if you
haven't been there. Yeah, it's it's easy to
commentator when you're not on this possible trait.
Yeah, yeah. So take.
Yeah. Be proud of that you're doing
it. And if someone criticizes, I
will. I often say feel free to join
(50:01):
us. Come and join us on this
journey. And then, yeah, we'd love to
hear what you have to think. But until you and so you're here
in the meetings, doing the hard work, doing the mahi.
Thank you for your insight. Yes, exactly, exactly, exactly.
TANI, any questions for me? Tani any.
(50:23):
Business and that stands out forme.
Yeah, it's just really interesting and I love the way
you put that there, Margo, is that, you know, everyone has got
an opinion. And again, you're not going to
please everybody. I mean, you're trying to please
everybody. You end up not pleasing
yourself. That's Yep, 100% the case and
you won't make as big a change as you could if you spend too
(50:43):
much time thinking about everyone else's thinking or
doing and you can. Ah, the, the, the big thing from
the book is that like with so many books, like with Atomic
Habits and you can make massive change in the world if you are
open, loving and you connect with other people.
Because like the manifestation thing, I remember when I first
(51:05):
found out about manifestation, Ithought I've been doing this my
whole life. I didn't realise there was a
word for it, you know, because I, I talk a lot, as you can
tell. And but because of that, I find
that because people know what I'm up to, they look for me.
So I always say, I have an idea and then when I put it out in
the world, there's five people thinking about my idea.
And they all come back to, oh, you know, that whole idea of I
(51:27):
want a red bike. Suddenly you tell these people,
I want to buy a red bike and someone says, Oh, I just saw a
red bike on sale the other day. The next thing you know, you or
someone says, I've got a red bike that I don't want anymore.
And suddenly you get, you know, I, I think with a project, with
a, with something that you're doing for the world, the more
people you get out and tell about it, the more likely you
are to succeed. And the more people that are on
(51:47):
your side and they're actually backing you, helping you achieve
the goal. And even, and, and yeah, I just,
that's my thing with the book is, yeah.
And, and life in general that you can achieve so much if you
just tell people what you're trying to achieve.
If you keep it to yourself, it'smuch harder to to get there.
(52:08):
Yeah, exactly. If you, if you, it's I, I and I
wish I use as my my clients is you can have a great idea in
your bedroom, but it's only you and the bedroom.
You need to get out of the bedroom.
And you've got to share that idea with somebody.
Yeah. And so you can always come back
to the bedroom if you want to. But once she goes out there, the
universe takes care of it. That is the IT is the best thing
because like so my friend Sonia that helped me get started with
(52:31):
the book that's us. So we both have big ideas and we
we talk like this once a week ona Monday night.
And the, The thing is that we keep helping each other keep our
ideas alive. So, you know, we've both got
three kids, We've both got lots of things going in our lives,
(52:51):
full time jobs, everything else.And by having these catch UPS,
I'll ask her, how's putting yourapplication into uni going?
Or how's that project you started going or, or how's that
challenge that you had? Is it getting better?
And so it's like coaching, but on a friendship level.
And it's just beautiful. And I think that that's the same
(53:11):
with the community group. When you find someone who
resonates with you, who is into,so whatever it is you want to
achieve, you'll find someone by talking that is as passionate or
close to as passionate as you are about that topic.
And then you've got someone thatwhen you feel a little tired or
whatever, that they will go, how's that going?
(53:32):
And then they, they get the excitement going again and it
keeps the energy going. So I think that that's the
biggest thing about community isthat it helps you keep the
energy high about a specific topic.
Yeah. And you know, community is all
about the vibe, Rob, when you attract your vibe and your vibe
attract your tribe. And you know, this is that's
quite a great way. And it's actually, it's actually
true, you know, and all the communities I'm part of, it's
(53:52):
people that I resonate with on different levels, but I still
resonate with them and I don't have to agree with them.
And the same thing, you know, and they lift you up or they or
they pull you down sometimes to reality, they go actually, hey,
have you think it from this angle here, which as you said
before, their perspective, you might go, actually, this is
trying to think about that and you might take it on board or
you might go now. So I love the way you put that
there. Michael, we've been speaking for
(54:13):
almost an hour, but I want to touch, I want to touch on
another part of your, a big partof your life, which is your
murals. How did it all start?
Because that is, you know, that's a, that's a massive part
of your life and you share the, the colour and the beauty with,
with your community. Where was the inspiration for
that? Well, I've painted since I was a
kid, so I've always been arty. I was, that's always my, when I
(54:35):
was little, I was always in my bedroom with crayons on colours
and things. And like I said, when I had that
surgery, I woke up and I said I want to do more with my art.
And I didn't know what that meant at the time, but I was
driving around my community. I lived in Amberley and just now
north of Christchurch and driving around and there was a
(54:55):
set of shops that had been, theywere building a shopping center
and the people had owned the same space.
So they got all the retailers tomove into the new shopping
center and the old one was just sitting empty.
And it just, it was a bit sad. It was opposite the library.
And so everyone still went there.
But it was like there was sort of like dust, you know, going
through the car park and the buildings hadn't been cleaned
(55:16):
out properly. So there were still posters in
the windows. And I just, it made me feel a
bit sad. And so I contacted the property
manager, the people that were leasing it and said, could I
possibly help make it look a bitnicer?
And I said, what do you think? And I sort of, I was a bit
cheeky and I was like, well, we could paint the outside one
colour, we could clean the windows, but we could put a
mural on that big space on the wall.
(55:38):
And they came back and we're like, great idea, that's
amazing. We'll do everything, but we
won't pay for the mural. And I was like, oh, that's the
one that I really wanted to do. And so they said, but if you
went to council there are grants.
And honestly it was hilarious because the week before I'd seen
the Post go up on the cat crusher and what's called
(55:58):
Hirinoi District Council page about arts.
Oh, what's it called again? New Zealand Creative, New
Zealand Arts funding and the cutoff was the next day.
So it was one of those meant to be things, right?
I downloaded the form, I filled it out on the day, submitted it
and a week later they approved to me and I had five grand to
paint my first mural. So it was phenomenal.
(56:21):
And nobody asked what the topic was.
Nobody else thought it was goingto be on the mural, but yeah, so
I so I got these five boards made-up and painted what I
called love living here Hiranui,which was all the things as a
foreigner coming into New Zealand, all the things I loved
about living in the Hiranui. And so it was just a joy to
(56:44):
paint because there was no restrictions and I was still
coming out of the first surgery,the breasts surgery.
And so my partner actually put the panels up on the fence of
our house and I would just walk out and just do like I couldn't
even raise my arms very high. I still can't believe I did
that. But I did it about four months
after that surgery and I would just paint just like that.
(57:06):
I couldn't actually stretch my arms out yet and painted this
12m mural in about 6 months at home.
And then we hung it on the wall and immediately when we did
that, somebody approached me andsaid, oh, we've got a space up
north, would you like to come and paint that?
(57:27):
And then that was why out. So after the earthquake, which
was centred there and they lost so many of their buildings, they
loved what I did in Amberley andsaid we would like to showcase
the elements of our community that are going to be lost
because the buildings need to come down and still to inspire
and make people feel better during this hard time.
And so I went up, oh, actually did the same.
I painted it on panels this time.
(57:49):
I rented a space, A warehouse, and I had the panels on the wall
because it was during a winter. So I painted during the winter
and then they hung it up in the summer and they hung it in the
park so everyone could see it. And it was just so lovely.
And then at that opening ceremony, someone from Waikeri
approached me and said, oh, we've got a water tank, would
you like to? So it's been this beautiful
(58:09):
thing that at each community event to release a mural,
someone's approached me for another mural.
So that's kind of why I think I,I kind of call myself the
community mural lady. I love doing things to make a
community feel better so. That that's awesome and what a
what a great story there becauseas you said, you, you started
with one and then you put yourself out there, someone else
(58:31):
comes along. You don't go searching for it.
People come to you, which is which is which is which is which
is all about not a lot of peoplecome searching for you.
It's I was saying I was saying to Tanner that you asked to come
on the podcast. You asked a while ago and I was
like, this is the right time. Let's let's make it happen.
And there's a reason why there'sa reason why time and place
happens. So thank you so much.
(58:51):
Any last questions, Tonya, before we ask our final question
or Mark, is there anything that you'd like to share before that
we haven't touched on that you think people would like to hear
about? No, but I would love to.
Yeah, I would like the thing I'mlearning to coach, as you know
and my goal is to work with community groups to help them
(59:15):
achieve their goals. So if anyone is part of a
community group, whether that's a sporting one or something to
do with the school or, or just achieving a project in their
community and would like some guidance to achieve that goal,
whether that be getting the right team together or having
the right having idea about how they set up their money or
(59:37):
anything like that. That's what I would like.
I'd like to get some experience working with groups.
So at the moment I'm just looking for opportunities to
work with groups and, and help them achieve their goals.
Just on an advice level really. So I've got this kind of idea
called dating business and community.
It's like a dating app for business and community where I'm
trying to find a way to get businesses to donate $2000.
(01:00:01):
And then we'll use that money togive the community groups 5
sessions of coaching with me andextra resources and social media
so that both parties end up getting acknowledgement.
So social media posts to say that they've worked together and
to say what they're achieving together.
And the community group gets acknowledgement about what
they're doing. And so my goal is to have this
(01:00:23):
idea of, and then at the end of the process, after the five
sessions and everything and the socials, they fall in love.
And then from then on, I don't need to be involved.
They just always think about each other when they're doing
something. And so that's kind of my little
pipe dream at the moment. That's where I'm heading with
that part of my career. So for the moment I would just
love to work with some communitygroups and just get more
experience of facilitating SO. Yeah, amazing, amazing.
(01:00:46):
What we'll do is in the show notes, we'll put your contact
details website and also a copy of where they can get your book
from as well, because I think that the book is pretty cool.
Margo, thank you for sharing that towards the end, and we're
not going to let you go off justlightly.
We have one more question to askyou before we get away.
Our our podcast is called Baskets of Knowledge and every
episode we invite our guests to share a piece of knowledge to
(01:01:07):
put into our basket. You've shared tons of knowledge,
but is there one piece of knowledge that we can put into
our Kitty and a bust up most formyself, Tana and for our
listeners? Oh, that's a big question.
OK, so one of the things that I say is my superpower and my
girlfriend gave me this word, isthat I'm a possibilitarian,
(01:01:31):
which I just love the word. And I've got my friend Sonia,
actually the one that helped me with the book.
She her little byline on WhatsApp is what if everything
worked out and that idea of justdreaming ridiculously big, but
(01:01:51):
with that detachment. So just I always say what I love
about meeting someone amazing, like you and me when we met at
the Thrive event. When you connect with someone
like that, there's all this magic.
Like I always imagine it's like dust, you know, like glitter
hanging above us in the air, right?
You have that meeting with someone and you go this presence
(01:02:12):
just really excited me. And that's what I see is all
this sort of schlitter hang in the air between US and that's
the possibility of what we can create together.
So I would challenge anyone elseto just dream on that level.
Let go of the IT should be like this or this is my limit.
(01:02:32):
And actually, because I always say dreaming is free, right?
You can dream as big as you wantand you can change your mind as
many times as you like. And when you finally get to that
point where it feels so good that you think I can action
this, go for it. So what I would say is be a
possibility, Rian. Just think as broadly as you can
(01:02:54):
and let yourself dream because that is the way that you will
achieve big things in the world is just, yeah, really feeling
into what it is you want to do and but let it sit until it
feels comfortable, Yeah. What a lovely piece of on visit
to winter basketball, you know, and what a great way to round
off the podcast, like a full circle moment.
(01:03:15):
When we started off, you spoke about your big dreams on a house
and we've run by going actually,hey, world dream big, you know,
dream big. Find the people that give you
good in your life and be a possibilitarian.
What a great word, what a great race, what a great phrase.
Michael, thank you so much for for today.
You know, we've, we've spoken for just over an hour.
(01:03:36):
There's so much in your world that we could go into so much
depth and we want to get your back on again.
But I want to acknowledge you for sharing openly.
I also want to acknowledge you sharing time on your birthday
today with us. And we're actually really
honoured and privileged that youare still with us.
You know, given what you're calling your life so well, as
your teacher says, you met her. And so thank you so much for
your time. So this is out there.
(01:03:56):
Thank you for joining in. Hopefully you've picked up
something that you can put into your boss of knowledge.
Hopefully you've found a part ofthe story that resonates with
you or someone that you know. And if you haven't, go back and
listen again because you've fallen asleep.
But I promise you that this is this is a great podcast.
Until next time, don't forget tokeep smiling.
Don't forget to put something into your boss of knowledge.
And as Margaret said, don't forget to be a possible
(01:04:19):
material. Till next time, calculated,
everybody, please. Thank you, Margot.
Thank you for listening to Bastards of Knowledge.
Yeah, we hope that you found something useful to put into
your bastard knowledge. And as we said before, remember
to put something little into your baskets of knowledge every
week. And as always, feel free to
(01:04:41):
like, comment and share this podcast.
Thanks, everybody. Bye.
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