95. The voice at rock bottom with Kate Ruby Aroha

If you've ever hit rock bottom, you need to listen to this all stars episode. Kate explains how she pulled herself back from the lowest of lows to turn her life around and discover her confidence.

Transcript

Hello, today’s all stars episode is incredibly powerful. I take you back to my chat with Women’s Leadership coach and mentor Kate Maree O’Brien. The way Kate speaks is so charged with passion and energy and you can just feel the light she’s here to shine in this word.

I believe everyone has a powerful fire within, a light to shine, a message to share, however you’d like to describe it, but it can be difficult to access, right? That’s why I created Speak from your Soul, it’s a six week course with live circles, meditations and exercises to help you access your inner voice, your inner confidence your inner fire.

We start November 7th, join us via the link in the shownotes.

Now Kate Maree O’Brien emanates confidence, and like many confident people it wasn’t always that way, so I want to share Kate’s response when I asked what it was like at her lowest of lows.

Kate:     Oh Lord, the lowest of the low. I was so crippled with social anxiety. I couldn't hardly talk to people. I remember standing in the supermarket one day at the line at the checkout just to buy chewing gum and I was second-guessing my thought to buy this chewing gum because of the impact it was having. Just standing there knowing that in about two minutes time I'm going to have to talk to that woman on the other side.

I was virtually like verging on a panic attack cause I knew I had to talk to someone and then I would, you know, I got through it, got home and I lived in a garage. I lived in an old shed -, like I didn't even live in a house, close the door and I had this big bolt that I would just like lock this big garage door with. And then finally I was kind of safe from the world and from human beings and I would just, you know, go under the covers and just stay there for as long as what I could. It was, it was really bad. I had a drug addiction and I had an eating disorder. I had anorexia. I was not in a good way and back then I actually, like the way in which life occurred to me, Sally, is that I had ruined my life. It occurred to me like there was nothing else beyond this. I couldn't see anything beyond this.

And so, the only reason why I say that is I know we can feel trapped at points in our life and you know, I'm hoping that most people listening to this aren't to that extreme what I just described. But that's cool. If you're further along than what I was, you're further along than what I was. You can really get anywhere and I want anyone to listen to this, to hear that you can get anywhere from here. I'm pretty sure that it's a Wayne Dyer quote. It's certainly not mine, but it's the truth. But it only happens through deciding and knowing that there is possibility. There's something beyond this. Knowing that, and this is apart from me, Sally, the switch that flicked within myself was I'd hit rock bottom one night. I got so low that I was kind of facing my own death. And what came up for me in that moment was the thought in my head. 'I could have done something different.' And then I heard my dad's voice and my dad's voice said to me, my head, 'Kate, you could do anything with your life' and the pit in my stomach was like, 'fuck, I could have done anything and this is what I'm doing.' So in that moment, I chose, followed up with by prayer to help me get through the night. But I decided in that moment that I was going to do whatever it took to turn my life around and I was going to make sure that these experiences that I went through weren't just racked up to some shitty life experiences. I wanted to make some meaning out of it.

Oh doesn’t that just hit you, and did you need to hear that today? You’re listening to this podcast so I know you’re somebody who wants to really do something with their life, take the experience of the negative and turn it into a positive, or fuel it into a positive. If there is some heavy shit going on in your life at the moment, or you feel more on a down than an up, then my Speak from your Soul course is just what you need. It’s gentle, it’s refreshing, it will help you reconnect with your voice, fire up your confidence and help you step out into the light again, and talk about coming out the other end, Kate is doing some amazing things as a mentor and you can listen to our full conversation – just scroll back to episode 23.