Challenges That Change Us

Try our FREE burnout quiz. Grab your burnout workbook HERE. 

If you would like us to work with your team book a 30 min chat HERE.

Trigger warning: alcohol and drug addiction

We've spoken around addiction before, but each story shows how differently a path to addiction can start, and just how tragically it can effect the person’s life.

That was the case for Jourdi Bleu whose addictions saw her first enter rehab at 18 years old. But it wasn’t until much later that she finally broke free and reinvented her life. Now, Jourdi is an empowerment coach, yoga and breath work teacher, retreat host, international speaker, and Amazon bestselling author who radiates playful, contagious energy and inspires others to rise from their own shadows. With formal training in criminology, youth work, yoga, coaching, meditation, and breath work, plus wisdom gained through wild life experiences she now lives from a place she calls “Upstairs,” creating a life beyond her wildest dreams.

In this episode she shares:

• The first time she got blackout drunk and how her love story with alcohol began
• The car accident at 15 which led to the tipping point of drug and alcohol use
• The opioid epidemic and how she got sucked into oxycontin addiction
• Her relapse and how she lost her partner to an overdose
• How yoga helped her get back on track and see another way to live
• How she realised she needed to figure her life out and leave her family to do so
• The moment she realised she had an issue with alcohol and how she turned her life around
• What it is like now in her life without alcohol and embracing her past self and not demonising it

Key Quotes

“Drinking was intrinsically connected into my identity. It was woven into who I was... I thought.”

More Information about Jourdi

Follow her on her website, or find her book here.

You can get involved with the podcast online

On facebook in our community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/challengesthatchangeus or on Instagram: @challengesthatchangeus

If you want to contact the podcast, email us here: [email protected] or check out our website: www.Challengesthatchangeus.com

If you want to find out more about what Ali does, check out her business via the website: http://www.trialtitudeperformance.com.au

Interested in DISC personality profiling or a Burnout workshop for your team, get in touch with Ali today.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Try our FREE burnout quiz.

Grab your burnout workbook HERE. 

If you would like us to work with your team book a 30 min chat HERE.

This week we are exploring a challenge but in a slightly different way.

Anna Grosman is an entrepreneur whose diverse career journey has seen her work in roles from Medical Clinic Manager, to founder of two male escort agencies for women.

Her Confidant came from years of listening to women share their frustration with modern dating, emotional disconnect, and a culture that still shames female desire, founder

Anna Grosman set out to build something different. The only male companionship agency in Australia built exclusively for women, designed around emotional intelligence, consent, and genuine human connection.

But what is it like to not only start a business in the challenging field of the sex industry, but also to do so in what could be considered the ‘less known’ side of the field; providing male escorts for women.

In this episode she shares:

• Anna's early life and sexual awakening
• How she built a business in the escort industry
• Her advice on how to navigate the stigma and embrace your sexuality
• Her client experiences and booking process
• What actually is Companionship and what does it involve
• Her recruitment and selection process
• The safety measures she has in place for clients and staff
• The importance of sex education and communication
• The stigmas and misconceptions in the industry

Key Quotes

“Society and the education system have to start teaching kids from a young age about consent, respect, and understanding their own bodies.”

No one blinks an eye when a man goes to a brothel or uses an escort agency. It's been sort of their right as young boys when they turn 18. It’s societal norms and the way we've been raised in religion that have created these double standards."

More Information about Anna

Follow Anna on Instagram, or find her website here.

You can get involved with the podcast online

On facebook in our community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/challengesthatchangeus

Or on Instagram: @challengesthatchangeus

If you want to contact the podcast, email us here: [email protected]

Or check out our website: www.Challengesthatchangeus.com

If you want to find out more about what Ali does, check out her business via the website:

http://www.trialtitudeperformance.com.au

Interested in DISC personality profiling or a Burnout workshop for your team, get in touch with Ali today.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Try our FREE burnout quiz.

Grab your burnout workbook HERE. 

If you would like us to work with your team book a 30 min chat HERE.

The relationship between disability and personal identity is incredibly complex and navigating that can take a lot of work and self-analysis.

For Skye Shannon, growing up with Spina Bifida had an obvious impact on her life, but it wasn’t until she underwent an amputation in her adult years that she really felt the impact on her personal identity.

In this conversation, Skye Shannon shares her profound journey living with Spina Bifida, detailing her experiences from childhood through adulthood. She discusses the challenges of growing up with a disability, the impact of social dynamics in school, and the numerous surgeries she underwent to manage her condition. Skye reflects on her identity, the emotional toll of her amputation, and the ongoing struggle with phantom pain. Her story is one of resilience, independence, and the complex relationship between disability and self-perception. 

In this episode she shares:

-      What it was like growing up with Spina Bifida

-      What is Spina Bifida

-      The impact of her disability on her personal identity

-      Her journey to find someone who would help her do the surgery she needed

-      Life after her amputation and the difficulties she encountered

-      Her experiences with phantom pain

-      Understanding the impact of amputation

-      Her fears and challenges in daily life now

-      Her advice for those facing similar challenges

Key Quotes

“I ended up with maggots in my toes.”

“It had gotten to the stage where my hip had completely disintegrated.”

More Information about Skye

Follow her on Linkedin.

You can get involved with the podcast online

On facebook in our community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/challengesthatchangeus

Or on Instagram: @challengesthatchangeus

If you want to contact the podcast, email us here: [email protected]

Or check out our website: www.Challengesthatchangeus.com

If you want to find out more about what Ali does, check out her business via the website:

http://www.trialtitudeperformance.com.au

Interested in DISC personality profiling or a Burnout workshop for your team, get in touch with Ali today.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Try our FREE burnout quiz.

Grab your burnout workbook HERE. 

If you would like us to work with your team book a 30 min chat HERE.

We’ve heard countless times on this podcast how the western medical system can often get in the way of, or even prevent people from being diagnosed or healed.

But in today’s episode we are joined by someone who proved her doctors wrong after they told her there was no hope in regards to her condition.

Michelle Niemeyer is a speaker, coach and former attorney who teaches professionals how to bend time so they can stay sharp, productive and profitable – without burning out. After finding her way to burnout and back in her own high-performing legal career, Michelle created The Art of Bending Time, a framework that helps people connect the dots across work, life, and purpose to magnetise success and reclaim their joy. She helps businesses retain top talent, boost development, and keep their people energised and engaged, all while making the magic happen.

In this episode she shares:

• Her early career life and why it was damaging her
• How she lived with terrible symptoms that she thought were just normal
• The moment where everything changed
• What happened when she went to hospital and why it didn’t help
• What she was finally diagnosed with after multiple different doctor visits
• The extreme diet she did to try and fix it 
• The shocking prognosis her doctors gave her
• How she beat the odds
• Her greatest strengths that helped see her through this
• The insights she has gained from her experience

Key Quotes

“I didn’t realise that I was living in a lifestyle that was very, very chronically stressful all of the time.”

More Information about Michelle

Text CLARITY to 33777 to join her community.

If that doesn’t work in your home country, you can also sign up for The Art of Bending Time Community here. 

You can also go to her website

You can get involved with the podcast online

On facebook in our community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/challengesthatchangeus

Or on Instagram: @challengesthatchangeus

If you want to contact the podcast, email us here: [email protected] Or check out our website: www.Challengesthatchangeus.com

If you want to find out more about what Ali does, check out her business via the website: http://www.trialtitudeperformance.com.au

Interested in DISC personality profiling or a Burnout workshop for your team, get in touch with Ali today.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Try our FREE burnout quiz.

Grab your burnout workbook HERE. 

If you would like us to work with your team book a 30 min chat HERE.

Welcome to our third and last bonus episode on burn out.

So far we have discussed how to identify burn out and how you can prevent it, but what if you’re already in it?

Well I’ve brought our in house psychologist Vanessa De Sauty back to help work out how we can find our way back to reality if we are in the middle of burn out.

In this episode we share:

-      How our subconscious thoughts can influence how we see ourself

-      How these unhelpful core beliefs can influence burn out

-      Examples of unhelpful core beliefs and thoughts

-      How to combat these unhelpful thoughts and core beliefs

-      What is understanding emotional regulation?

-      The power of acceptance and commitment therapy to combating burn out

-      Some strategies you can use for grounding and anchoring

-      How to identify your personal stress profile

-      How you can make a burnout recovery plan

Key Quotes

“Burn out is a signal ,it is not an identity.”

Vanessa

To find out more about Vanessa, check out her website HERE.

You can get involved with the podcast online

On facebook in our community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/challengesthatchangeus

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Try our FREE burnout quiz. Grab your burnout workbook HERE. 

If you would like us to work with your team book a 30 min chat HERE.

Trigger warning: suicide, mental health

For Tara J Lal, trauma and loss is sadly nothing new, but in a sea of trauma, for some people it can still be one event that stands out as a truly identifying point and that is very much the case for Tara.

Amongst losing her mother to Cancer at 13 and dealing her father’s mental health battles it was the loss of her brother to suicide that defined a very clear before and after in her life. Now, Tara is the internationally published author of Standing on my Brothers Shoulders – Making Peace with Grief and Suicide. She is also a qualitative researcher, keynote speaker, and former firefighter and has won multiple awards for her work supporting mental health and suicide prevention particularly in the emergency services sector. Tara is passionate about integrating lived experience with research and storytelling to challenge traditional perspectives on mental health and suicide prevention. 

In this episode she shares:

• Her early childhood realisation about her father
• Her mother’s death from cancer when she was a child and how it shattered her family
• How she leant on her brother after losing their mother
• The moment her brother took his own life
• The emotional turmoil she went through in the years following her brother’s death
• How her struggles manifested into panic attacks
• The impact of her father’s mental health and diagnoses
• The moment that made her realise she could move forward after her brother’s life
• How her coach tried to take advantage of her and her vulnerability
• The moment in her adult life that prompted her to see a trauma focused therapist
• Her path to her PHD
• The big year where things piled up and triggered her trauma
• How she works through her trauma now

Key Quotes

“It just felt like everything that I loved and every person that I loved in the world had been taken from me.”

“When I was 13 my mother died.”

“At some point I remember realising that my dad wasn’t well.”

More Information about Tara

Find out more about Tara via her website.

You can get involved with the podcast online

On facebook in our community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/challengesthatchangeus

Or on Instagram: @challengesthatchangeus

If you want to contact the podcast, email us here: [email protected]

Or check out our website: www.Challengesthatchangeus.com

If you want to find out more about what Ali does, check out her business via the website:http://www.trialtitudeperformance.com.au

Interested in DISC personality profiling or a Burnout workshop for your team, get in touch with Ali today.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Try our FREE burnout quiz.

Grab your burnout workbook HERE. 

If you would like us to work with your team book a 30 min chat HERE.

Imagine pouring your heart and soul into a business and having it succeed, only to lose it all because of a relationship breakdown with the business partner you worked with.

That’s what happened to Annette Densham and it left her feeling lost, hurt and struggling.

Annette Densham was fifteen when she wrote her first newspaper story about a local school fête. It taught her something: everyone has a story worth telling, if you know where to look. Forty five years later, she's still telling stories. Enticing them out of people in business who think they’re 'just ordinary', turning them into business awards, media features, and brands that stand for something. She digs until she finds the thread that makes someone unforgettable, then weaves it into something so sticky it clings to judges, journalists, and customers.

In this episode she shares:

-      How her love for storytelling began in childhood.

-      The significant challenges in her business partnership.

-      The feelings of shame and guilt can arise from perceived failures.

-      How her mental health was impacted by the business breakdown

-      Why listening to your body can help discern feelings of fear versus challenge.

-      How effective communication during personal changes was crucial for maintaining her relationships.

-      How finding joy in small moments can help during tough times.

Key Quotes

“I was compromising myself for everybody else.”

“Mentally I felt broken. I felt like a loser.”

More Info on Annette

Find out more on her website, or via facebook and Linkedin.

You can get involved with the podcast online

On facebook in our community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/challengesthatchangeus

Or on Instagram: @challengesthatchangeus

If you want to contact the podcast, email us here: [email protected]

Or check out our website: www.Challengesthatchangeus.com

If you want to find out more about what Ali does, check out her business via the website:

http://www.trialtitudeperformance.com.au

Interested in DISC personality profiling or a Burnout workshop for your team, get in touch with Ali today.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Try our FREE burnout quiz.

Grab your burnout workbook HERE. 

If you would like us to work with your team book a 30 min chat HERE.

Welcome to the second episode of a new bonus series we’re releasing all about burn out.

The incredible Vanessa De Sauty returns to help me break down and explain the next steps when it comes to this experience.

Last week we covered what burn out is and how to identify if you are experiencing it, but this week we are going a little further and explaining how you can prevent it.

In this episode we share:

-      What it means to prevent burn out

-      the teaspoon theory and how it can help you manage your energy levels

-      The early signs of burnout Vanessa notices with herself

-      The importance of boundaries in preventing burn out

-      The different types of rest

-      The vagus nerve and the different nervous systems

-      Specific breathing exercises to help tone the vagus nerve

-      How cold water and ice baths help the vagus nerve

Key Quotes

“I used to think boundaries was about saying no to the things that you didn’t want in your life. But there are things that I really love, that I simply can’t do.”

“If I lay on the couch and watch 2 hours of tv or movie I might be lucky to get a single point back on my body battery. If I have 20 minutes of sleep, I can get anywhere up to 30 points back on my body battery.”

Vanessa

To find out more about Vanessa, check out her website HERE.

You can get involved with the podcast online

On facebook in our community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/challengesthatchangeus

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Try our FREE burnout quiz.

Grab your burnout workbook HERE. 

If you would like us to work with your team book a 30 min chat HERE

Trigger warning: sexual assault

Every now and then I encounter someone who has lived a life that is so much bigger and jam packed than you could expect. That means it comes with more than a few highs and more than a few challenges. That is very much the case for Andreea Kindryd whose early childhood was marked by moments of sexual assault, trauma and racism. Andreea went from working with Martin Luther King, Jr, Malcolm X and Maulana Karenga in Los Angeles, to work on radio stations in Chicago and New York, and then back to LA joining the crew on TV’s Star Trek.  In 1974, she finally settled in Australia where she was able to make her own films.  Her first film, Sunrise… Awakening, won awards and changed opinions. Andreea joined with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander’s NAISDA Dance College and helped launch Bangarra Dance Theatre. She was selected as an Australian presenter by TED during their global,14 city, six continent search for voices and ideas the world needs to hear.

In this episode she shares:

• Her childhood experiences as the only black student at her Catholic school
• The impact of her mother’s fear-driven parenting style on her self-image
• Navigating teenage challenges, including early relationships and societal expectations
• Her experiences with coercive control land sexual assault
• Her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement alongside figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X
• The evolution of her career in entertainment and the significance of representation, particularly in projects like Star Trek
• The rejection she experienced trying to make it was a woman in Hollywood
• The turning point in her life and the writing of her deeply personal book, From Slavery to the Stars

Key Quotes

 ”You can't go and tell people that you've just been raped, I guess. So I didn't tell my mother, and then I hated my mother because she didn't know what I hadn't told her so she didn’t respond.”

More Information about Ande

You can find out more about Ande and her book via her website.

You can get involved with the podcast online

On facebook in our community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/challengesthatchangeus

Or on Instagram: @challengesthatchangeus

If you want to contact the podcast, email us here: [email protected]

Or check out our website: www.Challengesthatchangeus.com 

If you want to find out more about what Ali does, check out her business via the website: http://www.trialtitudeperformance.com.au

Interested in DISC personality profiling or a Burnout workshop for your team, get in touch with Ali today.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Try our FREE burnout quiz. Grab your burnout workbook HERE. 

We often ask guests if they would have made the changes in their life if they hadn’t faced their ‘challenge’ and many say no, but none can definitively know for sure quite like Melanie Lechte. Mel is a seasoned marketing professional with over 25 years of experience in high-level marketing across diverse industries, including sports, entertainment. It was after leaving her high profile and successful career that Mel embarked on a journey of self discovery, only to find that it still didn’t feel quite right. That was until she was in a horrific car accident that left her with severe injuries, including a traumatic brain injury that would leave a lasting impact.

That accident was the moment that truly propelled her onto the path of finding her peace and place in life.

Now, Mel is channelling her passion for advocacy into new projects, including launching a podcast and writing a book cantered on brain injuries. Her goal is to provide support and guidance for individuals navigating the often-difficult changes that follow a concussion.

In this episode she shares:

• Her highly successful career prior to the accident
• The personal realisation she made after working in a highly successful career
• The health scare that convinced her to leave the high level work life
• Why her initial personal development journey didn’t work
• What was missed by the medical team immediately after her accident
• The cognitive issues she started to experience after her accident
• Her experience being dismissed by the medical community
• Her journey to discover help with her brain injury
• Her personal toolkit to help her be in the best possible state
• Her discovery of POTS and how it was effecting her.
• How her experience has changed her life for the positive 

Key Quotes

“I had facial lacerations, a broken nose, lots of damage to my face, maybe 5 ribs were broken. My entire body was black at the top.”

“I wanted the old version of me to be back. I was like, when am I going to be normal again? When am I going to be the same again?”

More Information about Mel

You can follow Mel on Linkedin and on Instagram.

You can get involved with the podcast online

On facebook in our community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/challengesthatchangeus

Or on Instagram: @challengesthatchangeus

If you want to contact the podcast, email us here: [email protected]

Or check out our website: www.Challengesthatchangeus.com

If you want to find out more about what Ali does, check out her business via the website: http://www.trialtitudeperformance.com.au 

Interested in DISC personality profiling or a Burnout workshop for your team, get in touch with Ali today.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.