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1. Finding Purpose After Burnout: How I Built a Successful Business and Transformed My Life

Season #1

Today, is our first episode, and I could not be more excited to be here. This has been something that has been on my mind for such a long time, and I cannot wait to share my story with you to help you become the best, most optimised, high performance version of yourself, where you get to have an epic life, as well as an awesome, successful business.

 

Today I share with you a bit about my career background and how I wound up with burnout, that ultimately became the deciding point for me to leave my career and travel the whole of Australia solo.

 

Resources and links mentioned in this episode:

 In this episode we cover:

  • Introduction to Harmony. Who she is, what she likes and where she comes from.
  • Harmonyā€™s uni days.
  • How she left uni to start a career in retail.
  • The story of her childhood sweetheart and how she bought her first home at 23.
  • Harmonyā€™s career journey from working at Suzanne, Cotton On and then to a large South African retailer who wanted to open stores in Australia.
  • How she got great results at work, but little respect.
  • She was working so hard, she started to become someone she didnā€™t like. She was finding it hard to get up out of bed. She had become a little bit aggressive and a bit bitter a twisted.
  • Harmony was always the person her friends and family would go to if there was something wrong, they could always talk to her. So, she found it hard to tell anyone when she felt broken herself.
  • So, she booked a day retreat, with other women she didnā€™t know, to try and help her.
  • This is when she saw a kinesiologist for the first time and all her emotions came out.
  • Then she did a yoga meditation, and something shifted in her. She felt an overwhelming sense of peace.
  • Not long after the retreat, she went on holiday and saw people holidaying in a little combi van and thought ā€œI think I could do thatā€.
  • Not long after, back in Melbourne, she put her house on the market, bought a new car and an $80,000 caravan and planned the next phase of her life, which it didn't involve workm but to travel Australia.
  • The hardest part, for Harmony, was deciding she was going to choose herself. She knew she would be judged.
  • She stopped showing up to birthdays and going less to family events. She had to separate, and it caused people to turn on her because, in the past, she had been a people pleaser.
  • Harmony started to get thoughts such as ā€œif I fell down the stairs at home, how long would it be before someone found meā€.
  • She was depressed and burnt out.
  • So, she planned on finishing work after Christmas 2018. She got to September. Her van was pretty much complete, and she realised she couldnā€™t work another Christmas in retail, so she left.
  • This was the first time Harmony had put herself first.
  • She hit the road, not really knowing where she would go. And travelled for 12 months around Australia.
  • Although travelling was fun, there were some hard and lonely times for Harmony.
  • She starting practicing yoga, so she could feel the calm that she felt when she was at the retreat.
  • She used Amanda Biskā€™s Fresh Body Fit Mind app to do workouts and yoga at the campsites every day.
  • But it was meditating that was bliss for Harmony.
  • She started listening to her body and realising that her body was giving her feedback. Yoga taught her to find moments of peace and quiet, and to listen to the feedback her body was giving her.
  • Harmony met many people and families on her travels and at one point they all crossed paths and caught up again in Broome.
  • Some ladies noticed Harmony doing yoga every morning and asked her to teach them yoga.
  • When Harmony arrived in Perth, in December 2019, she started to feel anxious as she knew that soon sheā€™d need to work, and knew she didnā€™t want to work in the retail industry again.
  • She saw an advert for yoga teacher training in Bali, so she went to that.
  • This is where she learnt both mindfulness as well as the physical practice of yoga.
  • Yoga had helped Harmony so much she knew that she needed to teach other women the benefits of yoga, to stop them suffering from burnout.
  • After the retreat, she flew back to Perth and, due to Covid, Perth was in lockdown 10 days later.
  • She started to teach friends and family yoga, on Zoom, to help them feel calm. They would thank her, and Harmony loved that.
  • So, Harmony stayed in Perth and set up her first business, House of Harmony Yoga.
  • She still teaches yoga but is also a Mentor. She teaches others the importance of choosing themselves, in order to find happiness, as sheā€™s lived through the experience herself.
  • Harmony asks lots of questions to make you think about how you can make yourself happy.