today i am sharing my own story… my journey to find my next level self. it’s a story of how i once was lost, so very lost, and how i found myself again. i share because i believe in sharing the struggle, i want you to know you are not alone if you are lost or struggling or stuck, and i hope there is something here that is a helpful contribution to the healing and helping space.
transcript: my story of being lost and then found
welcome to the next level self podcast. i'm karen brandy. i help people get unstuck by strengthening and expanding our sense of self.
today i am sharing my own story… my journey to find my next level self. it’s a story of how i once was lost, so very lost, and how i found myself again.
before we begin, i have a little disclaimer:
this is not a ‘how to’ for you… it’s not a proscribed set of steps to repeat… it's simply what helped me and what i learned along the way.
my aim is to live my own promise, which is to share both the struggle and the strength in this thing called life. when i decided to start my business again, i wanted to be really honest about the struggle and share it from the messy middle…. not wait until everything was rosy and awesome again, because i just don't think that's reality. so much of what we see and so much of what we share - especially in social media, online spaces, even in person with each other - looks like the highlight reel.
especially when we have days like RUOK here in Australia - and I know other countries have similar kinds of days - with a reminder to check in on each other. the thing is, if we can't have real conversations in our day-to-day lives about not being okay, one day is not really going to be the thing that makes the difference. i think we have to practice all the time. practice sharing our own struggles, practice witnessing other struggles… when we feel safe to do so and we have the capacity to do so.
if you follow me on social media, if we chat in real life, if you subscribe to my email, to this podcast, you will hear me share the stuff i struggle with. i don't do it for sympathy, i do it to create a space where stuckness and struggle become normal.
i hope that is something that you'll feel after listening to this episode. i hope also that you will know you're not alone.
if you’ve found yourself stuck, struggling, stagnant, maybe just surviving instead of thriving. maybe you feel depleted, dejected, discontent. perhaps you're lost or languishing. maybe you're longing… wanting, wishing, waiting. maybe you're in transition, unsteady or unmoored, perhaps in limbo… not who you once were and not yet who you are becoming. maybe you're just so fucking ready… ready for a change, ready to focus on or prioritize yourself, ready to find yourself or reclaim yourself, or strengthen yourself to handle what comes next. maybe you are ready for your next chapter to start.
i want you to know i get it. i bet so many of us listening get it.
i've been encouraging people to join the get unstuck club… which is really just about acknowledging and honouring that our stuckness is real. stuckness is a normal part of showing up for ourselves. i hope by talking about it we can get real about it, honest about it. we can notice it. we can call it what it is.
because, especially when we're ready for change, our brains are going to try to keep us the same and that's going to feel like stuckness. so if we truly want to start to create change for ourselves, whether that is getting unstuck or finding yourself again or navigating a transition or finding your own inner steady. whatever it is that you want for yourself, going for it – showing up for yourself in new ways – is going to come with stuckness. that's just how our brains work. so let's call it what it is.
and i hope that this episode also will maybe offer a little bit of hope, some inspiration, a point of view that contributes to the helping and healing space. all of us are on our own path. we all have different experiences. we have different privileges and different barriers or obstacles. but i hope that hearing about one struggling human, learning how to show up for herself in new ways, is something that might give you a little nudge that you can do the same.
so here is my story: lost and now found… my story of getting unstuck.
before moving to australia from canada, in 2006, i was a teacher. that was my passion and i was awesome at it. but i was a new mom on maternity leave and my husband came home one day and said, what do you think about moving to Adelaide, Australia? i googled the weather, i saw the beaches, and said yeah i'll do that. so off we moved to Australia with a one year old. our plan was to be here for three and a half years, and we had a student visa, so i decided that it didn't make any sense to pursue my teaching career here.
i always say that i accidentally started a photography business when people started asking me how much i charged. i had to figure out how to start a business, so that's what i did! i'm a learner so i dove into learning about business… and i’m a teacher so in 2010 i started a blog called Build a Little Biz. shout out to that community still here all these year later.
that little blog turned into my business… my photography skills morphed into design and branding and marketing, especially visual marketing, as well as supporting and teaching other women in business… and it grew from there.
in 2018, i was having this niggling feeling, a nudge, that i was ready for a shift, ready for some change… i just didn't know what that was. now i know that that is a sign of identity shift, of expansion. but back then, i just had this feeling that i was ready for something to arrive so my word of the year in 2018 was magnetic… i was ready and open to receiving and seeing what would come my way.
sadly, as the year started, in February i got a call from home that my beloved cousin had died and i went home to Canada to be with my family for the funeral and returned to Australia home sick and longing for my family in Canada. this happened to be the same year that my husband was at the end of his medical training… we’d been in Australia now for 12 years and it was time to decide what was next. together, we made the decision that we would stay in Australia, and we bought a house. it was an exciting time and also, i was grieving and struggling with depression, and beginning to wonder what was next for ME.
so in 2019, i thought, okay, this is going to be my year. i am going to rise up out of this stuck place i've been in, this struggle town i've been stuck in. my word for the year was rise. i wrote at that time: i am a warrior. i can do hard things like get unstuck and rise.
and then in february i once again got the call from Canada. this time, my mom had found out that she had cancer and didn't have long to live so i once again got on the plane and flew home to Canada to be with her until she passed in July of 2019.
i came back home to Australia for the remainder of that year to heal and to grieve and thought, it’s ok 2020 will be my year. i have been through this hard, hard thing and i'm going to find my way through. and then on New Year's Day of 2020, once again, the phone call from Canada, my dad had a massive stroke. i went home to Canada to say goodbye, and in February, he died.
then in March of 2020, of course, the world shut down with COVID. so we didn't get to have a funeral for my dad, and then in the remainder of 2020, both my last living grandparents died as well.
so in that two-year span, i had lost my beloved cousin, the last of my grandparents, and both of my parents. i lost my dream of moving home to Canada, and i lost my connections to Canada… my family, my childhood home, the place that i always went back and forth from Australia to Canada, for more than a dozen years.
and i lost my business, because i had shut it down when i was first struggling with depression and grief and questioning what was next for me.
and of course, the world shut down as well. everything changed for all of us then… we lost so much of what we loved and what made us thrive - whether it was travel, community, the way that we learn or teach, the way that we go to work or do our business, the way that we raise our families. we all lost all of that. it was a big, hard year of loss.
and through all of that, i lost myself. i lost my sense of purpose. i lost my direction and my dreams. i lost my mojo.
i was lost and i was stuck.
(i want to pause here for a moment to say that i was absolutely aware that i was struggling with depression and i was experiencing grief… and those are two big topics that i’ll explore in future episodes because i have more i can share about my own experience with those and my own perspective of those. at that time i decided not to try therapy or counselling or antidepressant medication… again, i can share my reasons for that in a future episode.)
so here i was, a girl who once wrote a book about shining like a lighthouse, and i completely lost my light. my whole lighthouse felt like it had crumbled down. everything i was trying to do to fix myself or solve my problems wasn’t really working. the mindset work i had once relied was making me feel even more broken.
i remember at the time seeing a meme on social media, something like: oh, you're not lost because you're not a $5 note forgotten in a pocket. you're just going through a hard thing right now.
and i just thought, fuck you. how i feel is real. i feel lost and that feeling was visceral. and having someone just kind of bypass it with lip service pissed me off.
and that's partly why i'm so honest about talking about struggle nowadays… how we feel, our experience of the world is real. at the time, i remember writing down in my journal that i felt like i was just a shadow of a person, not a real person, more like a wisp… almost like i was just kind of floating on the edge of a life… there, but not really there.
so in 2021, my word for the year was found. if i was lost, then i wanted to be found. i wanted to feel real and whole and like myself again. i started with walking. i figured at the very least leaving my dark cave and getting out into the sunshine might be a good idea… but man it was hard. i had to force myself to leave the house. sometimes all i would do is stand in my front yard and put my feet in the grass. again, i can talk about this some more, but my experience of depression felt like this sort of black hole that sucks everything away that you know would be good for you. so everything just felt so damn hard.
i remember having this moment one day, this moment where i was just wishing that i could just wave a magic wand or take a magic pill or suddenly have a magic day where i would just wake up and feel better. that's all I wanted was just to wake up one day and feel better. and i heard this voice in my mind on that day say: okay, but what have you actually done or tried to do to feel better? you want a magic wand but meanwhile you’re just here day in, day out, not doing anything different so that you can feel different.
that moment helped me realise i was waiting on the couch for something to magically change all on its own without me doing things any differently. i had another realisation that i was following the path of my mom… she died stuck. she’d been stuck for a long long time – waiting on the couch for a magic day when things would change. she never found her magic again… but i was still here. i wanted to truly live, to be alive. i wrote in my journal: it’s time for me to stop waiting, to start living again… to become the hero of my own story. i need to become my own hero… a warrior… one who never gives up on me, one who fights for what i say matters.
so i started with baby steps… literally.
i made a dr appointment to get my iron levels checked and make sure i had a place to go for more medical help if needed.
i kept walking, and signed up for a daily walking challenge, to raise money for mental health, as incentive to do it every day.
while walking, i listened to podcasts and ended up signing up for a free online course from Yale University called The Science of Happiness by Lori Santos.
that ended up being a really powerful stepping stone because it led me to doing my life coaching certification. i figured if i was choosing NOT to try therapy again i needed to learn how to coach myself through this struggle. and that led me to exploring all sorts of psychological skills, mental health strategies, healing techniques, somatic practices, spiritual practices… so many things that are now part of my work.
walking itself ended up being a really amazing baby step because, of course, movement is really powerful when we're feeling stuck or struggling. movement is medicine, and being outside was healing… being in nature, being in sunshine, being in rain, being at the beach, being in the trees… to this day it is my medicine.
but the biggest thing that walking did was give me time that i would listen to podcasts and courses. one of the first things i learned about was strengths, and one of my strengths is learning. my definition of strengths is something that strengthens you, and so when i'm in that space of learning, i feel strengthened, my sense of self gets strengthened. with every step i was taking both my physical self and my innermost sense of self were being strengthened.
that led me to learning about values, and i define values as the things that add value to your experience of life, like adding little coins in your soul bank. practicing my value of connection - to myself, to purpose to meaning, to spirit - all of it is healing and empowering. and then that led me to keep exploring: what else can i learn about myself? what else can i find about myself, and remember and reclaim? later i wrote a workbook called Shine, which has the 22 questions of knowing yourself, developed from my own journey to finding myself again.
a really cool thing happened when i did that work to find myself… i also really strengthened my sense of self worth, and that was something i wrote about too at the time in my free ebook called Enough.
so strengthening my physical sense of self helped, and that’s something i carry on doing today. strength, stability, and stretch are my physical goals but probably my self goals as well! using my strengths helped too – starting with learning. creativity was next, once i started to feel and find myself again, i was able to bring creativity back into my life. meaning is my third strength… so exploring my purpose and a life that has meaning and is fulfilling. again, that’s another big topic – purpose – which i could talk about in it’s own episode if that’s valuable.
as i found my self again i was able to find my spiritual connection again - that came later. it’s ongoing work – rather than an overnight fix – it was something that happened slowly over time. every step led to another step of strengthening my sense of self.
i remember back in 2023, i was two years into this healing journey and i went to Tash Corbin's conference, the Heart Centred Business Conference in Noosa. that was the first year it was back after COVID and i went because i thought it would be nice to be with people who remember that version of me that i used to be pre 2018, perhaps i could reconnect to my sense of self through being in that room with people who were like minded and just beautiful. so i went even though i didn't have a business and i had no clue, what i was even going to do with my life… i went because i felt called to be in that room.
and i remember there was an exercise that was a physical stand up and move your body kind of thing, and i couldn't do it. i knew that if i was in my body enough to do that exercise that i would end up as a sobbing puddle on the carpet. that was a big clue for me that my healing and self coaching needed to include some nervous system regulation and somatic work to become more embodied and more safe and in my body… so that became some of the work i did.
in 2024, i was back again, and i was then starting to think, what is my purpose? what's next for me? what do i want to do with my life? so i went back to the conference to see if any answers appeared… i realised i wanted to build a little biz, again. by 2025, i was back on stage speaking, and tip toe-ing back into business. i was also now at a time where i was exploring my spiritual sense of self, my spirituality & spiritual practice. i'm sharing this to reflect on how it happened in steps, and how all of these aspects of strengthing self matter and accumulate.
by 2026, this year, this september, i was back at the conference for its final year, back on the stage again. and i felt as if i showed up as ME for the first time since the first conference in 2016. reflecting on that one event helps me witness and celebrate my own journey… to notice that i felt like i was fully embodied and in my sense of self.
also i am still becoming. i am still expanding. self is always a work in progress, self is always becoming. there isn't a finish line. it feels really concrete because i can pinpoint to when i started to feel lost, but i think the work of finding and being myself is going to be ongoing.
all of this has led to the model of identity work and self-leadership that i teach today which is about strengthening the self, allowing the struggle, and creating the capacity and the tools and the practice to guide ourselves where we want to go
why i believe that this approach of identity work & self leadership is special and it's different is that a lot of typical self-help can make us feel like we need to fix or solve or adjust or correct or improve or overcome or eradicate the imperfect parts of ourselves. like who we are is a problem.
and sometimes our struggles make us feel like there's something wrong with us. we think that we should be better or do better, that we should get over it or move on or solve that already. like who we are is the problem.
and sometimes self-help strategies can feel really dismissive or invalidating or bypassing.
“you're not lost. you're not a $5 bill.” “you just got to get out of your own way!” as though what you're genuinely experiencing shouldn't be a problem and therefore the problem must be you.
and then all of these feelings and experiences make us question who we think we are. our sense of self gets rocked when our inner voice or mindset or behaviour doesn't quite match who we think we are. we start to wonder what's wrong with me. and then we feel even more stuck.
and that's certainly how it felt to me when i was struggling the most. once i began with self – remembering, reclaiming, re-igniting – my sense of self. that's where the magic happened.
here’s what i want us all to remember: just because just because something's hard, it doesn't mean we're doing it wrong and it doesn't mean that who we are is wrong or needs fixing. it just means that it's a hard thing. so much of typical self-help is about fixing. but you and me, we're not a problem to be fixed.
self work is also incredible powerful because it’s centres SELF (you!) as the authority. i’m not interested in working with practitioners, coaches, therapists who centre themselves as the expert of your healing, your growth. YOU are. you are the hero of your story. (of course heroes sometimes need sidekicks! sidekicks – teachers, supporters, healers, coaches, friends – are awesome. let’s just not give away the power of the self, ok!)
because you're not broken. you're simply a human being, a self-becoming. so if the world ever tells you to fix or push through or get over or never mind, instead, practice leaning in and allowing, embracing and honouring your struggling, imperfect self.
if the self-help space or any sort of coaching or therapy ever made you feel broken – even inadvertently – i am so sorry that happened. please know that who you are is brilliant and you have everything within you to heal and grow and explore and expand and do more and have more of everything you long for.
here’s something else to know: self work isn't a magic fix. i still get stuck all the time. i still experience depression and grief. i get stuck a lot in this work of building a business again and putting myself out there showing up for my business and my work. perimenopause is often kicking my ass. i have been through some tricky transitions lately our family growing, changing, shrinking… empty nest is no joke!
back at the start of those years of 2018, 19, 20, 21, i kept thinking: just please let this be my year. and now i know it's just going to be A year. a year. the truth is, stuckness happens over and over. life hands us some pretty awful and wild shit. i know there will be more loss to come. there'll be more grief to come. there'll be more beauty, more adventure, more pain. some of it's going to be really tricky to navigate. that is life. that is part of what it is to be alive. i want to be alive.
i try to no longer use the phrase: i got this …because i often do not got this. life is often kicking my ass. (that’s also why i use the phrase self coach instead of life coach. i have very little say over what life deals me.)
what's different now is that i've got me. when i say that i always have that sonny & cher song in my head: i got you babe.
i've got me babe.
i've got me to see me through. i found my inner steady.
i have one more story to tell you about finding yourself… a story about my recurring dreams. i call them dreams but they're more of a panic-y feeling, a visceral experience that i wake up with in the middle of the night. they started 25 years ago!
i would wake up in a panic like i forgot or abandoned something alive - maybe there was like something living in my closet that i had to go find and take care of - i'd forgotten it and it was going to die i would even find myself sometimes at the closet searching.
then i started having dreams that i'd lost something important or essential and valuable: files in a file folder or something really important that was life or death. for a long time it was that i lost my wedding rings and i'd wake up and i'd be actually like out of bed searching for them.
back in 2014, i wrote a blog post about these weird recurring dreams. that ended up being one of my most read and most commented on blog posts that i ever wrote so many people found it because they were searching “weird recurring dream that i lost my rings” and they'd happen upon this blog post. anyways, at the time i had a friend who was a channel for spirit and i asked her about the dreams and the message she gave me was about remembering who i was born to be and remembering my purpose. once i shared about the lighthouse revolution, the lighthouse as a model of shining our light in the world, the dreams stopped for a while as though i was on a pathway towards who I was born to be and what my purpose was.
but after taking care of my mom and being with my mom at the end of her life, the dreams were back and this time it was that i forgot to do something that keeps me alive - like taking a pill - or a panic about doing something that will kill me… i'm doing it and i forgot i'm not supposed to do. so the dreams were back during that whole period of being lost… that was one of the things i was struggling with was sleeping and these dreams that would just plague me every night.
two years ago, i took a wonderful course with Lynn Hoard about channelling your message and she said ideas can come to you at crazy times and if you don't want them to come, for instance in the middle of the night when you're trying to sleep, then you can just ask spirit to not interrupt you at those times. and so i gave that a try. i meditated and connected to my spirit and to my guides and i said: can you please stop giving me messages in the middle of the night because i'm exhausted and upset and i can't take it anymore. i made a pledge to connect with spirit in the daytime so that spirit wasn't trying to get through to me in the middle of the night and the dream stopped for a long time, which was such a relief, coincided with me connecting to my sense of spirit again.
reflecting on these dreams now, 25 years of recurring weird dreams, and it all comes back to self! forgetting or abandoning something alive, losing something important and essential, forgetting to do something that keeps me alive… duh, of course, that was always about self! what i didn't realize then is that there's a lot more to our sense of self than just purpose, or just spirit, or just physical well-being or daily practice. ALL OF IT IS SELF. all of it matters.
so my goal now is when i have one of those weird dreams, is to check in with myself. what might i be forgetting or abandoning of my self? have i lost something that is essential and valuable to me? have i forgot to do something that keeps me alive and well?
recently i have been struggling with depression a little bit and the dreams have been back and i had another AHA that i haven't been journaling. there was a time back in 2000 when i stopped journaling, i lost that essential practice that had been a huge part of my life for a decade. i suddenly stopped doing it and that's when the dreams began!
it's kind of amazing to look back at those dreams with a new perspective of self.
i was looking back at that blog post again found a comment from my mom. she said: this sits close to home. i've got shivers. pay attention, Leanne. pay attention.
at the time i don’t remember asking her if she had dreams like this, but this blog post meant something to her. (she read everything i wrote, she was my biggest fan.) of course, she too had lost her self.
my mom is my why. she's the reason i decided to start a business again because she died stuck. once i learned how to guide myself through stuckness i thought perhaps i could teach others how to do the same… no one stays stuck on my watch! i wished i could have taught her how to find her self again. she always said that i was her hero--- i wish i could have supported her to become her own hero.
it’s wild to find her comment on that old blog post from so long ago and to realise now the dreams are all about losing our selves. even though losing her is part of how i lost myself. it's also how i found myself again… stronger than ever and ready to serve and help more than ever before. i'm grateful to her for that.
phew. i think we should leave it there. i'll do a few more episodes where i can talk about depression, grief, identity shift, purpose, the business journey, anything else that might be of interest… if there's a topic or a theme that you'd love to hear more about or would love for me to explore because it's something that you find yourself in the middle of right now, i would love to do that. send me a DM, send me an email, let me know what you'd like for me to explore on this podcast.
in closing, i wish to acknowledge the Kaurna people, the traditional owners of the land on which i live, write, create and teach, as well as the Okanagan people, the traditional owners of the land on which i call home in Canada. i also acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which you are joining me from today.
i also wish to acknowledge that i do love to share a variety of perspectives and therapies, including positive psychology, ACT, IFS, neuroscience, mindful self-compassion. i'm not a therapist. i'm not an expert. i simply wish to share information and ideas that may offer insight and inspiration you can use to lead yourself out of stuckness and into the life you want for yourself.
i also acknowledge my own privilege. whilst i'm learning to lead myself through struggle, i also have time, money and support to do this work and that affords me the capacity that others may not have. some struggles will not be alleviated by self-coaching alone.
my aim is to simply offer some new perspectives that might help shift things for you internally, no matter what further steps you decide to take. thank you for joining me in this exploration of being lost and becoming found, finding, strengthening and activating my own sense of self.
until next time, keep shining.
