Podcast
Douse Self-Doubt By Focusing On Your Sense Of Adventure With Melanie Macfarlane
Have you ever come across someone who has so much energy and a sense of adventure, you wonder if they ever have a bad day? Often the people with the most optimistic outlook have experienced the greatest struggles. How do they stay on top and in control of their emotions? Learn the secret today with your host Janet Hogan and her guest Melanie Macfarlane. Melanie is the CEO of MM Migration & Recruitment. She is motivated to educate, unite and let people understand the transformational journey to Australia. She is an expert at getting knocked down and bouncing back up. She is happy to share her sense of adventure and joy with you today.
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Douse Self-Doubt By Focusing On Your Sense Of Adventure With Melanie Macfarlane
Have you ever come across someone who has so much energy, and is so bright and happy, you wonder if they ever have a bad day? What I found is often the people with the most optimistic outlook have experienced the greatest struggles. It always fascinated me what their secret source is. What do they do to stay on top? What can we learn from them that we can apply to our own lives?
If ever there was a time when we need to find the resilience to deal with the massive changes we’re all facing on a daily basis, it has to be now. It’s with great pleasure that I introduce you to someone who is an expert at getting knocked down and bouncing back, and is happy to share her story with us that we might learn something from it. Melanie Macfarlane, welcome to the show. You’re on a business, MMMigration, and you’ve helped over 5,000 people migrate from other countries to make a new life in Australia. What got you into this line of work?
Thanks very much for having me on. I was born in Freetown in Sierra Leone. My parents lived in Vanuatu and Indonesia. I have a very international background myself. Working with people from many different countries and cultures, it was a destiny for that to happen. I started in international education. I taught English in Indonesia after I left uni, and then worked in international education for a while in the UK before coming to Australia doing the same thing, and then getting my migration agent’s license. When I was working with the company, it was a large group of international education colleges at that time, and then I went on to set up my own business. That’s how it all happened.
If not a child of the university, at least a child of the planet, can we say that?
Yes. I’m quite happy to get bound galactic blood within me.
Thinking about how stretched we get about being in lockdown. They say that one of the most stressful events in life is moving house. Here we’re talking about people who are not only moving to a whole new country and culture but in many cases, having to learn a whole new language. That must be one of the biggest changes anyone would ever have to deal with.
Language is a big issue more than people even realize. Sometimes you can judge people if their English is not so good. There may be some hidden prejudice against people and sometimes they feel that. I do a lot of work with international students who come to Australia because I came here as a migrant myself, but then speaking English didn’t seem such a big deal and maybe similar cultures from the UK.
Those who come here from Latin America, who come from a very different culture and background, they usually come enthused and excited about the adventure that they’re going to be on. Sometimes it can take a matter of a few weeks. That enthusiasm can slightly start to wear off as homesickness cuts in a culture shock.
This is a different place and you’re like, “I’m going to be here for quite a few months or even a year. I’ve signed up for a three-year university course.” Other migrants have come here for their whole lives. It does impact people in different ways and at different times. There are some people who even go back home. It depends on your resilience level. You think people have made that move and they must be automatically resilient already, but it’s not always the case.
I’m living in Bali, and my Indonesian is terrible. I find myself cobbling words. It’s almost like playing a game of Scrabble, “What was the word for that?” I’m piecing it together and feeling like a three-year-old. I know the frustration of losing your sense of self in that situation. We take self-expression for granted. I had to get that in little microdoses, not all the time. How do some of those side effects of that transition play out for people? What fix do you see it having on people emotionally in having to deal with that in general?
That’s a good point about the fact that you can lose some sense of yourself in the struggle to maintain another language, to deal with the difficulties of that, and the attitudes that you may be receiving from others. It can impact your self-esteem and the sense of who you are because suddenly, you no longer have family and friends around you. You may feel slightly isolated and different. That whole world that you’re used to changes so much. That in itself can impact your self-confidence and your sense of self-worth most definitely.
Australia started as a more Anglo-Saxon country and it’s changing. What are some of the ways that Australia fails to live up to people’s expectations?
I’ve been there. I mentioned the word racism. At heart, Australians are lovely people and I like to see the good in everybody, but there can be some difficulties in accepting differences. It does depend on the area, whether it’s the Metropolitan city or a regional area. There are some regional areas that are thriving because of migrants. There are some where migrants say that it’s still very difficult to fit in because they feel different. It’s not until they have managed to grow that migrant community to a fairly large size, that they will feel more at home and with other people, whether with differences and what have you.
Australia is an island away from the rest of the world. We’ve certainly seen that during COVID. Australians have behaved quite differently in many ways to many other countries in the world. Some of those differences have been highlighted. I can see that there’s still some way to go here to become more welcoming, and to understand that there is an economic value of migrants to the country.
There’s a huge value in terms of the diversity that migrants bring to the country, and bringing that knowledge as well as the skillsets and the life knowledge that can teach those who are already here. Teaching others more about the rest of the world helped to broaden their horizons. There is still quite a lot of conservativeness in Australia. They have some naivety, which is lovely too but there’s a lot to learn here still.
Being in Bali, I always take the position that I’m a visitor here because their culture is so well-established. I know that I could never be a part of that, and that’s fine. There’s never any pretense of the other. I suppose Australia could be both welcoming and not so welcoming. I imagine that creates a sense of confusion like, “Can I make this my home? What is that all about?” This is not a job for the faint-hearted with what you do. Tell me what drew you to this and what are the joyful moments that you get from this?
Immigration law changes all the time. You have to be very adaptive. I’ve been a migration agent for many years. You have to adapt constantly. It could be very stressful because you have clients and situations where one minute they could get the visa, the next minute they can’t. You might need to adopt a strategy or tell them that the avenue is now closed.
It is also incredibly joyful. It’s wonderful to be able to call a client when they’ve got their permanent resident visa. When they’ve been able to then obtain their citizenship because migrants, no matter what that journey they go through, they’re so incredibly grateful to be accepted into Australia. That in itself is lovely too.
I’ve mentioned, I do a lot of work with international students. I was in a hearing for a student whose visa had been refused. It was a wonderful outcome because the presiding member of the tribunal decided there and then that the visa should be granted. The student was confused initially. He didn’t understand that he was going to get his visa back. He was so emotional about it. If you’re an emotionally empathetic person as well, you’re going to be thrilled and delighted for your client. There is so much joy that goes along with this job.
It must take you on a bit of an emotional roller coaster. How do you deal with that? I can imagine the ups. What are some of the downs that you’ve had to deal with personally? Here you are as the CEO of your own business. I can imagine the stresses that it brings into your life. What are some of the emotional challenges you’ve had to deal with?
It is very emotional. You can’t get away with that because when you’re working with other human beings and their journey, you’re responsible for their lives. Whether they’re overseas or they’re already in Australia applying for a visa, whether it’s that permanent visa or the next step on their journey, or it’s getting their visa back because it was refused for whatever reason, it’s incredibly emotional. You can’t help but be taken on that journey as well.
It can be very challenging because sometimes clients can get angry if things don’t go their way. I remember many years ago, I had a client who came from another migration agent that for whatever reason it didn’t work out. He came to me and his visa was in an absolute mess. He was furious and shouted at me in the office. He was so angry. Whether it was my responsibility or not, I took the full force of that anger. It was incredibly stressful. That client has turned out to be one of the best stories that I’ve ever had in my career because of what we were able to do for him. This was years ago and he still refers clients now.
At that moment, it was incredibly hard to deal with the full force of that anger and the stress. I was thinking, “I’m not sure if I can handle this myself.” This is apart from the fact that this is a very difficult complex case. This is also a very volatile situation with a human who is so angry that I’m not certain if I’m going to be able to deal with it. That was my initial response.
Where do you go and what do you do when you find yourself in that situation? It’s almost like a therapist needs their own therapist to talk to. You seem to be on the end a lot. You cop a lot of people’s most extreme emotions. How do you deal with that personally? Do you have strategies in place for that?
It is hard. In a situation like that, you need to take a deep breath. I myself is highly prone to stress and anxiety. I may come over on the surface as having it all together and what have you, but that has come as a result of many years of putting in the work. I’m not immune to it even now. I feel the stress of being in lockdown and all the rest of it. I sense the atmosphere. I’m highly sensitive to those things. I needed to have a program that I find relaxing such as yoga, which includes deep breathing and meditation.
Sometimes I find meditation difficult because if I’m in a fairly anxious state, I need movement. I need to have a dog. I go out walking with my dog or running. I’ve had therapists over the years also that I have spoken to. I make sure that I do things like acupuncture and so on. I spend quite a lot of what I earn on my health. They say your health is your wealth. It’s also how I can give back and help others. If I can’t help myself and be in a good position, then I can’t help others.
I was talking to someone who used the expression divine selfishness, which I like. You are in the service space and you are contributing to the lives of others, but the proviso is you’re doing so by doing something that fulfills you first. It’s got to be that. It can’t be being in the sacrificial space. Some volunteer work falls into that category where you’re doing something to try and make yourself feel like a good worthy person. Instead of filling your cup, it’s emptying your cup.
We were talking about the environment out there and how COVID seems to be bringing out a lot of frustration, which is turning into anger. We’re seeing all these unprocessed emotions that have been bottled up suddenly spilling out. Tell us a little about where you see that in yourself. Sometimes there can be shame around emotions that we might call our dark emotions. We don’t want to talk about them or admit to saying that we feel depressed or anxious. It can be very empowering for someone who’s in that space to hear from someone successful like you that you’re human too. What human moments in your life can you share with us so that we understand that there’s this connection between all of us?
I’m certainly human. That’s for sure. The lockdown has brought out all the emotions. I liken it to those 7 or 5 stages of grief. I’ve felt that in 2020 but I felt it even more in 2021. The anger for me came out at the beginning of this lockdown. I felt I had a lot of anger in me. It’s one of the things that is genetic or something in my family, on my mother’s side. All of the women in the family have a bad temper. We seem to have this explosive temper. No matter what I’ve done over the years with yoga and so on, it shows itself sometimes. My poor husband cops it sometimes but he’s a fairly fiery Latino himself. There can be a bit of a volcano eruption between us sometimes. I have felt that.
We have a boxing thing in our garage, which has been quite useful. I went through a lot of anger myself and I was directing it out with the powers that be and so on and so forth. I have a young son, so it’s not great to be angry too much so I tried to get that out. As I said, physical exercise is useful. I have found that channeling it can be very useful too, whether that’s into projects that I need to get done. If I’ve been feeling angry, it tends to make me productive actually.
I started to go into looking at this anger and this is not doing me any good because it’s not a very nice feeling. In the end, you can be angry with people but it doesn’t feel good inside your body. Also often underneath the anger, there’s a lot of sadness. When I started to realize that, I started feeling sadness. I felt very sad. There have been moments where I’ve gone in this lockdown, but this is a bit me anyway because I am a sensitive person. I feel the full range of emotions and they never go away. I then felt very sad.
Maybe it’s the Scottish in me that I am prone to melancholy. These melancholic moments where I want to listen to sad music and feel that sadness. It felt like we had gone through a sad place for those in lockdown who’ve lost businesses. It’s nobody’s fault, and then what’s happening around the world and so on. The situation in Afghanistan was incredibly sad. I kept receiving all these emails from people. It has also helped me to put my own situation into perspective a little bit with this nice life that I have here in Australia.
I have felt all those feelings and it’s also helped me to communicate with other friends. It is hard because there’s something about being in lockdown where you feel everything more. You’re not out and about so much. You’re not socializing so much. You can’t just lose yourself in that outside world. It’s more insular, you are more isolated and so it can get on top of you. There’s no doubt that I have felt that as well. Perhaps that’s helped me to empathize more with other clients.
You raised a couple of interesting points. Being in a relatively comfortable Western country, do we stop ourselves from feeling these emotions because we think we’re not entitled to feel them? There are many people worse off than us. That becomes a narrative that we tell ourselves to stop us from feeling these emotions that are part of who we are.
I see this in the entrepreneur space. When we are putting ourselves out there, we want to put our shiniest version, the most invincible and vulnerable aspect of ourselves out there as a leader, guiding others and all of that. We expect that that’s where happiness lies. The seat of success is where we’re going to feel something that’s akin to joy and happiness. In my own experience, I didn’t feel that at all, and then that seems to be a letdown where we go into a state of anesthesia. It’s like, “I’ll put my head down and do the work, and bang out another email.” That’s when we get disconnected.
The fact that you’re able to tap into your anger, sadness, and find the melancholic base beneath that and be okay with that, it’s great leadership being able to share that. Thank you for that. In other words, instead of being scared of your own emotions and running away from them or sweeping them under the rug, you’re going through them and bringing them on. Play that melancholic music and be sad.
Also, cry if you need to. I have had moments where I just release being sad and cried. Whatever situation we’re in, maybe we’re in a more privileged position, we’re just humans. It’s taken me a few years to get to this point where I’m okay with releasing. I can’t help myself now. If I know that’s what I need to do, then I’ll do it wherever it is or take myself into a place where I can be private and have a good cry. I’ll do it.
I think that’s so important. As humans, our emotions are contained in our minds and throughout our bodies. Releasing them has to be a physical somatic response. What’s interesting about crying is how often we hear people apologizing. They say, “I’m sorry,” as they wipe away the tears. It is the happy tears like winning a sporting event or something.
It’s interesting, we used to run a wedding business here in Bali, which I wasn’t passionate about. I know what that feels like to be running a business that your heart and soul aren’t in. I was speaking to one of the Balinese, a fairly respected fellow here who’s deeply spiritual. He said, “Janet, what do you love about your business?” I said, “Probably the high point for me is seeing the groom standing at the altar, watching the bride walk closer towards him, and you see the tears rolling down his cheeks. I feel such relief seeing men express their emotions like that.”
The fellow looked at me and said, ” That’s when they’re connecting with God.” I thought that’s a beautiful way. It’s like we access our soul at that point. Possibly, tears are the way that we connect with our highest self, whether they’re tears of sadness or joy of being moved. That’s such an important part of expressing who we are.
I agree with you. It feels like you’re in that more vulnerable place, but you’re also in this lovely soft place. It’s like everything else is being stripped away and you just are. For me, sometimes sadness can be quite beautiful. It is a funny thing to say. You can somehow feel the joy in the sadness as well. I felt that during this time.
When we numb ourselves out, we don’t numb ourselves from sadness. We numb ourselves from the corresponding positive emotions like joy. If we don’t allow ourselves to feel sadness, we cannot feel joy. We’re condemning ourselves to a level where everything is flat. Maybe that’s a good survival tactic for extreme situations but it’s probably not sustainable ongoing.
We can allow ourselves to feel the depth of grief over loss, maybe it’s a loss of freedom with COVID, we might’ve lost someone through COVID, or we’ve lost an idea of what life should be like. To allow ourselves to feel that grief, we then opened the door to a corresponding level of joy. That’s probably the gift that comes out of that pain.
After I felt like I was dropping a lot of that anger and I went into that sadness and grief, I realized that was what was underlying in a lot of that anger. When I allowed that to be released more, I’m not saying that it’s all gone away and never come back because they say anger is a secondary emotion anyway. It’s going to be there. There’s nothing wrong. You can’t beat yourself up about feeling these emotions, even though sometimes we don’t feel it. It might not be an appropriate moment to be angry. It certainly felt much lighter after going through that stage and that sadness. You can then start to see clearly around you.
Something that I’ve also been doing during this time is practicing gratitude. I was gifted this gratitude journal for Christmas, and I’ve been writing in that and doing it mostly on a daily basis. It’s lovely being grateful for very simple things because you are filling up your cup rather than depleting it. It can help to give yourself a boost.
I know that gratitude journal. I recommend that. That’s great because it builds the gratitude muscle. Instead of looking for things to complain about, which is how we’ve been conditioned, we’re looking for things to be grateful for. That’s a great strategy. This is probably a good segue into the magic triangle quiz. What do you think?
Yes, absolutely.
To explain that to our readers, what this is about is helping people get clear on what is important to them because COVID has created a bit of a shift. Prior, maybe we’re placing a lot more value on material things, physical experiences and traveling. Choking up the notches on our post of, “Am I living a wonderful life?” and living to a certain extent in comparison mode, “How does my life compare with other people?” It’s supposed to snap us to look inwards and go, “Maybe all of that is irrelevant.” What life is really all about is, “What am I yearning for on a deeper level, and how can I fulfill that?”
This exercise is fairly simple. The goal of it is to isolate the three things that are most important to you. Going through, what came up for you, Melanie, we have being of service, delight, and adventure. We call these needs because they are the things that you would also like more of in your life so that you might not already feel them. There might be partly there but not fully realized. Of all those three, being of service, delight, and adventure, which one is the most important for you? Which one is at the top of the triangle?
At the top was adventure.
Give us a bit of Melanie’s version of each of these. What do they mean to you? There are many different ways we could interpret each of those. Tell us about being of service. Why did that come up as one of the top three? Why is that important to you and what does it mean?
This is something that I do in my daily work as a migration agent. I’m helping people change their lives. It feels like that it’s being of service. The thing is I didn’t set out many years ago to say I’m going to be of service. It must’ve been within me because I enjoy doing that. There is something so lovely about helping other people.
Apart from anything, it takes you away from all the stuff going on within yourself but it’s so gratifying. There’s a real joy that comes from helping others and being of service to them. I run a business and I need to pay myself a salary and all my staff. In the end, that is not what matters the most. It is about being able to help a lot of people to make the most of their lives and their potential, and to help them on their adventure in life.
It means a lot to me because I’m fundamentally a spiritual person. I do have the belief that we are all one, even though that can be hard to believe at times when you see how many people are so different. In the end, if we’re all one and from the same source, we’re all helping each other at this circle. It’s like the circle of life.
I can see why you’re drawn to this work because it’s got a great unifying aspect to it. You’re bringing people together on one continent or one landmass from all parts of the world. I see how that would be fulfilling for you. Tell us about delights. That one doesn’t often come up.
I love that word, delightful. To me, it is about joy but it’s also about fun. The word light is in it so it is a light feeling. It’s about enjoying something yourself but also being able to provide that to others. It is about the joy of doing things but there’s something in there about the fun aspect of it. I love to have fun and laugh. It’s fun to make others laugh as well. Joy, laughter and delight, it’s this bubbly feeling. It’s nice, fun and just a lovely feeling. It’s nice to feel that in yourself but to create this ripple effect around you. There’s so much that is not so great in the world but there’s also so much that is fabulous. I feel that we don’t celebrate it enough. I love to highlight that delight.
It’s so seldom that aspects or values like delight are put under the spotlight. We’ve talked about integrity and all those serious ones like I’m a person of integrity, and what does that even mean. We do a good job of squeezing out the fun, joy and delight for life. I’m glad that you’ve got that one in there. Let’s talk about the adventure at the top of your triangle. What’s all that about?
I’m sure this comes from my background from growing up in many different countries and cultures. I feel so lucky and blessed that I was able to travel a lot with my parents when I was young so I have that spirit. My parents had come to real adventures. There’s that spirit of adventure that has always been instilled into me. For example, I love to create adventures for my son.
For me, adventure is about discovery. It’s not necessarily that you have to take a journey to the other side of the world. You can have an adventure just by discovering yourself. On your backyard, which a lot of us have been needed to do in lockdown or even in your neighborhood. If you have a sense of adventure, then you’re always going to look for that in every aspect of your life. It’s about finding more and focusing on those positive things, rather than a negative practice of that. You can have scary adventures too. Perhaps, that’s what it is. In terms of self-discovery too, an adventure can be about finding new aspects of yourself, including things that scare you.
I’m a bit of a word nerd and Latin is my favorite subject at school. I see the word adventure is moving towards something. With this movement, there’s usually something good that comes with that. To interpret what you did, the triangle speaks to both our inner and outer selves. I feel that shows up as our true selves in the world. We first have to deal with the inner self. We can’t do it. We can head straight to being of service space without first having been of service to ourselves. Even though we can see a lot of that, it’s not sustainable.
I see a lot of it in Bali. People come over here with the savvy syndrome. I heard a conversation between two people once where someone said, “I meditated for two hours this morning.” The other person says, “I meditate for seven hours.” It’s like the spiritually evolved like Olympics over here sometimes. All that to say that we can fly to delight without first having confronted ourselves and we found out what’s important for us.
Speaking to that inner self, what the triangle is saying is that adventure is your vision or your North Star. Potentially, if you fully embrace that, it becomes your highest value. It is what you stand for. Your pathway to achieve your adventure is through being of service in a way that brings delight into your life. Those two things. Being of service is a prerequisite but in a way that is fun. That’s full of bubbles for you. Otherwise, it might be sustainable. Those two things together sought after adventure.
It’s quite uncanny how it always plays out. Inevitably, the thing at the core of your soul as the key yearning tends to float to the top. You had this excellent adventure. Your whole childhood has been a dress rehearsal for that, and now it’s playing out. I have a triangle that I look at every day and I’d probably revisit this exercise every six months. The thing at the top tends to stay the same, and quite often the two bases may stay the same. I like to bring them into your life, and then often they’re replaced by something else.
They’re like the wing commanders that manifest the core need. It’s a good idea to spin that on a whole week and see it so that you stay in alignment with that. What’s interesting then if we look at how it speaks to your outer world, as these core needs become core values, as they become who you are and part of your DNA, they are what you give to others. You said that before, that adventure is a promise to your clients. It’s why you get out of bed for your sense of adventure but also so that they have an adventure because the word adventure has a positive ring to it.
In other words, making this incredible move from the other side of the world to Australia and turning that into an adventure rather than into a calamitous life event, which it could be. That’s your why. That’s your purpose. Your what interestingly is delight. What you bring by you being you is a delight to the process. That feels to me not bureaucratic, not boring and not frustrating. You’re lightening it up for your clients and making it an experience that brings them joy. Do you feel that’s true for you?
Yes. Our mantra is happy people, happy world. It can be a very laborious, bureaucratic and tedious process. Whether you’re a company wanting to sponsor or an individual wanting to get any type of visa, it can be very complex and difficult. The idea is to make it light, much less stressful, and pain-free but to enjoy the process.
The marketing person in me says, “You can create that contrast because the expectation could be it’s going to be stressful and tedious.” You’re here to punctuate their experience with moments of delight so that it says enjoyable is such a thing can be because, at the end of the day, it’s a big adventure.
We’ve done your why and what. Now we get down to your how. Your how is by being of service. Your service is immaculate. You take the position of, “I serve you,” not, “You serve me.” It’s outstanding how many businesses bring any ounce of arrogance to the transaction. They go, “You should be grateful to be one of my clients.” You’re the opposite. There’s humility in what you’re talking about here because you’re being of service to these people and accordingly, making them feel honored to be a client. Your formula for yourself is also your gift to others.
It’s wonderful. I love it, the magic triangle.
There’s one other thing that it does too and this is interesting. It’s probably where most people don’t want to go but it also speaks to the thing that could stop that formula from coming to fruition. What I’ll invite you to do is quickly look at that because fortunately, it’s never on the outside. It’s always within. With awareness of that, you can see where that might be playing out in your life and how to deal with it so it doesn’t sabotage your best endeavors. Are you up for this, Melanie? Do you want to do a quick visit to the dark side? Not that it’s that dark.
Yes, I am up for it.
Imagine that sitting to your right is your bright future. That’s as described by the magic triangle, that by being of service and bringing delight to others, I achieve a sense of adventure. By bringing delight to myself, I achieve adventure. That’s your true path coming from your inner self. All needs are in the same way that our appetite for a long hot summer can only have come about from experiencing a cold winter. Without winter, summer would hold no value. Adventure holds value for you and must hold value for you because you know there’s opposite. Imagine you’re flipping 180 degrees and on your left-hand side sits the opposite of adventure. What would that be in a word? What comes up for you the opposite of adventure?
Words like terror, isolation and abandonment. It’s paralysis actually.
Doing a deep dive into paralysis, what scares you about paralysis? What’s wrong with paralysis? What does it stop you from being or doing?
Not being able to move.
What’s wrong with not being able to move?
There’s no sense of being able to move forward. To a certain degree, a loss of hope almost.
That’s the red flag. The thing that threatens your bright future most is this fear of paralysis. This is all happening on an unconscious basis. We tend to run away from whatever it is that we’re most scared of. In the running away from, what happens is there’s the greatest in the end. We can’t run away from our fear because we will manifest that fear if we do that. We have to be counter-intuitive and face that and go, “What created that fear? What am I scared of? What is this paralysis thing all about?” Those are further territories to be explored but that’s the flag. Does that resonate for you?
It completely resonates. If I could quickly tell a story that I think is one of the reasons for this. I didn’t even realize it at the time. It was before migrating to Australia many years ago. I used to travel a lot during my work and I had glandular fever. I was already planning to come to Australia but I was made redundant from the position. It wasn’t a nice way that had happened. I ended up with my parents in Scotland to see them for a few days. I ended up lying on their sofa for three months because I fell into this chronic fatigue.
It was like having paralysis and I couldn’t move. All I did was lie on the sofa and read Harry Potter books, which made me feel much better. I went into this real chronic fatigue depression state. It took me a while until I found a wonderful kinesiologist to prescribe some homeopathy, some vitamin C and Zinc, which took me out of all of that.
Ever since then, I’ve focused on my health. I know from having seen a stress management coach years ago that stress is accumulative. You need to be careful that it doesn’t mount up. Even over the years, one of the things that I have noticed and it even happened to me is that if I let too much get on top of me, I go into paralysis. I cannot move. My email inbox mounts up. I’m responsible for all these things and these people and yet, I am in this awful state. I’m gripped by this paralysis. It’s frightening so that’s probably why that word has even come up. That’s my scary place.
I’m sure a lot of people, particularly in the entrepreneurial space who are hyper achievers will relate to that. Why it’s something to be aware of is because it’s that fear that’s propelled us into an artificially high level of activity, of ticking off to-do lists and things like that. It will ultimately lead to the thing that we’re scared of. It will lead to that sense of overwhelm where you want to curl up in a fetal position and not do anything for a few days. That’s why it’s important to bring all of this to the surface so that you can do the great work that you do, and that it doesn’t burn you out. How did you find that? Was that helpful, going through the exercise?
Yes. It’s very interesting, useful and extremely enlightening.
That’s one of the reasons I like to share this on the show. It is so that people can understand that getting to know who you are, self-knowledge and self-awareness, which ultimately leads to self-acceptance and self-love can be a very quick process. It doesn’t have to take months. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to spend years in therapy. We seem to have sidelined mental health as mental illness. It is a process of getting to know ourselves and being treated as a person. My vision is to see all of this type of work normalized, where we can then operate without putting our inner brakes on and being aware of it. That’s the idea, that we can operate at our full capacity. Let’s face it, the world needs heartfelt leaders who are operating at full capacity.
Melanie, thank you so much for being willing to share your experiences and your deepest emotions. I appreciate that. What’s a message you’d like to leave with anyone who’s dealing with huge pains in their lives? Particularly people who might be suffering some amazingly, traumatic life-changing experience now, whether they’ve moved countries or even if they move states. What’s the best message you can give those people?
It may sound so simple but the fact is there’s always hope. Always hold onto it, have faith, and look for the light.
Thank you so much. I love that message. All the best with your business. For anyone reading this, you can find ways to contact Melanie through MMMigration. Bear in mind that if know of people who might be wanting to move to Australia, Melanie is your person to speak to. Thanks, Melanie, and all the best with your work. I’m a big fan of what you do.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak here.
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About Melanie Macfarlane
Melanie Macfarlane is a registered migration agent and a migrant herself to Australia, born in West Africa, then growing up in Vanuatu and Indonesia and educated in the UK. She founded her business MMMigration & Recruitment and VETA Education & Migration in 2007 and since then has helped over 10,000 migrants secure visas, from students to permanent residents. She has a diverse team of migrants and Australians working together in the business and is passionate about highlighting the advantages and benefits of living together as a diverse, global society and most of all, helping people to reach their full potential, no matter what their background.
Melanie is a founding member of ISEAA, International Students Education Agents Association, which advocates to government regularly. In addition, she is a member of the Migration Institute of Australia where she also lectures to other migration agents about different visa types. Melanie regularly features in the media such as radio, TV including SBS and the ABC, and newspapers such as the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age, and the Western Australian, discussing all things immigration.
Melanie lives and works with her husband Yovanny Useche Cruz, joint director of the business, and their son Francesco and labradoodle Maya.
