Natalie Sisson's Quest For Freedom - Experiments In Personal, Financial, Physical, Business, Relationship And Financial Freed

We all do it. We all compare ourselves to others and sabotage ourselves in the process. Your aim in life should be to be the very best version of yourself. So why do we all consistently compare ourselves against others? Why do we look at people who are 3, 5 or even 10 years ahead of us in business and in life and get completely dejected that ‘we’re not there yet’ or that we pale in comparison. That’s like comparing yourself with Richard Branson and his current empire worth billions, instead of the Richard Branson in college trying to make a magazine come to life and getting loans from his Mum. You will always come up ridiculously short. And that’s just a game for losers to play, and you’re a winner, so I suggest you stop that now. You can’t even begin to know what’s behind their journey, what it took for them to get to where they are now. But you can learn from them, and emulate the great things they do, so long as you don’t try to measure up against them. Nothing compares to you. You just focus on being your

This is a fantastic time of the year to bringing you Season 5 of the Quest for Freedom Podcast on Mindset Freedom. Why is that? Well it’s typically the time when you’re winding down for the holiday season and also planning ahead to think about 2018 and why it’s going to be different. But it’s not going to be different until you’re prepared to start working on the very thing that can make the most significant difference to your life. I’m talking about your mindset. That’s because your mindset can set you free. Mindset is the foundation that freedom in its widest possible sense comes from. You are the product of your mind. Every thought and belief you have stored inside your mind shapes your experience of life. Your values and beliefs shape your perception of reality and as a result your ability to achieve anything in life. I’ve found that over the years, when I am not focusing on a growth mindset, when I’m not actively learning and applying new techniques to grow my mindset, to become more focused, to get ri

We’ve all been there. That sudden desire to do something we’ve always wanted to do creeps up on us and tackles us viciously. Not only does it tell us that we need to make this change right now but it also informs us that we must do it with everything we have. Soon, you find yourself surrounded by mats, bamboo blinds, and fake plants that accumulated while you were trying to follow the voice inside you telling you to pursue yoga, for example. You may feel as though your goal wasn’t true to your heart in the first place. That’s not necessarily right. You may, in fact, love yoga. The issue here lies in that need within you to purchase things in order to fulfill that goal. Let’s break it down… You start by realizing that you need to meet a certain goal in order to live a truly free lifestyle. You take a look at those around you and think that you need what they need in order to meet your goal successfully. You start accumulating things in the pursuit of that goal. You become so overwhelmed with everything that y

You wouldn’t expect yourself to cook in the kitchen without the proper knives, pans, and pots, and you wouldn’t expect to build your body at the gym without the proper equipment either, right? Think about lifestyle freedom in the same way that you think about cooking or building muscle at the gym. While you could achieve your goals without any assistance, tools will help you to achieve your goals faster and more efficiently. So I will cover the four different types of tools you can use to help you track your progress, achieve your goals, and work your way to a better life. #1. Journaling Although this doesn’t seem to be the go-to tool for many of those seeking lifestyle freedom in this day and age, the journal is a classic tool that is both affordable and useful. Journaling is best for those who are looking to track their progress as they make changes in their daily lives. When you take a look at your journal each day, you are constantly reminding yourself of the goals that you have set. Even better, you can

Think back to the last time you had an outing with a friend or significant other. What did you do prior to actually spending time with them? Did you give them a vague idea of what you'd be doing? Did you tell them that your visit could happen whenever you felt like it? Did you show up to your outing without any expectations of how things would be going? If you're the average person, the answer is most likely a no. You and I understand the importance of planning when it comes to major events. Similarly, you need to apply the same type of careful planning to major lifestyle changes as you do to visits with friends or dates with significant others. Only through planning, goals, and expectations will you be able to transition into the type of lifestyle that you have dreamed about. #1. Categorizing Your Lifestyle Goals Josh and I have been playing with a system to bring meaning and purpose to our lives called "Project Life" - working title. It is something that we love doing and we do it every single day. We have

In the previous episode, we discussed two major emotions that can hold you back from living out your ideal lifestyle. Now that you’re prepared for what is to come, we need to discuss the most important question you will encounter along the journey to lifestyle freedom. What is important to me?! It’s both extremely simple and extremely complicated. We all seem to know some of the things that are important to us such as maintaining our fitness and cultivating meaningful relationships. However, very few of us have actually explored some of the most basic human needs and figured out the type of actions we need to take in order to thrive in those aspects of life. Today, this is what we’ll be discovering together. Discovering Your Ideal Lifestyle: Imagine that you’ve woken up one day with the ability to do absolutely whatever you wanted. You have no monetary restrictions, all of your friends and family are ready to join you in your adventures at a moment’s notice, and you are able to travel anywhere with ease. What

To date on the Quest for Freedom Podcast I’ve covered off on Season 1: Personal freedom (mindfulness, meditation and happiness) Season 2: Business freedom (business sabbaticals, Universal Cycles of Change and letting go) Season 3: Learning Mastery (growth mindset and learning hacks) And now we come to Season 4: Lifestyle Freedom (goals and ambition vs lifestyle by design) Why are you living the lifestyle you're living? If you could wake up tomorrow and do anything you want, would you be doing what you're doing? I want to talk about how you spend your days, how you spend your time. Are you're doing things because you feel you have to rather than because you want to? Are you spending your day filled with social media and checking in on things because it makes you feel popular, connected or makes you feel like you're being productive , or is it filled with finishing up work projects because you feel some sense of duty to complete them, even if they’re not a priority? When I asked myself this question the other d

I am on a mission to help you find more personal freedom in your life every single day. That’s why I write this blog and produce the Quest for Freedom podcast. In order to make my mission a reality, I’ve been working on a bit of research background around what personal freedom really means to you and I. This is really what the true essence of this podcast is and it’s going to become much more about this from today on. That’s because, a couple of years back I had this HUGE vision. It was so big it scared me. How was little ol’ me going to conduct the world’s first research into freedom and create a framework that allowed people to figure out where they were on the scale of freedom?! Despite my fear (that always comes after a burst of enthusiasm at a new idea), I put together the vision at right2freedom.com and started getting survey responses when I put it out to my community. Maria Nicholas came on board to volunteer her time looking into how we could turn my vision into a framework and I created the 7 Phases

“Changing our beliefs can have a powerful impact. The growth mindset creates a powerful passion for learning. “Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better?” This is a statement from Carol Dweck, author of the bestselling book Mindset. A leading expert in the field of motivation, her research has demonstrated the role of mindsets in students’ achievement and has shown how praise for intelligence can undermine motivation and learning. So let me ask you a question right now: Do you have a fixed or a growth mindset? Your answer to this will define how you go about learning and reaching your human potential. If you’ve often struggled to improve and the act of learning is not something you enjoy, then listen in to this short summary of the first key idea in Carol’s book by OnePercentBetter: “Mindset was written by Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck. Her decades of research on achievement and success led her to discover what great parents, teachers, CEOs and at

This is Season 3 and it’s all about the freedom to learn new things and all the benefits that come along with that. Because learning is such an important part to your life. Without being curious and without learning you are not going to be expanding, you are not going to growing and life is frankly going to be a little dull. I am a huge learner but there are definitely times in my life when I go through wanting to learn a lot and other times when I just want to impart and teach the wisdom that I’ve learned. And I think it’s beautiful to have those ebbs and flows, but most of the time I think you should be setting about to learn something new or at least improve what you already know every single day. In the previous episode I taught you 11 Benefits of Learning Something New. And in this episode, as promised,  I’m going to be covering off on how to learn anything more quickly and some hacking techniques to learn more in less time. As well as the what. What on earth should you actually be learning? 5 Hacks To L

I don't know about you, but I'm always curious about the world, and always aware of how much I still have to learn. The day I'm not curious about anything will be a day I personally don't want to see, as I'll either be a know it all and completely deluded or on my deathbed! Yet in an increasingly connected world experiencing information overload and a certain amount of burnout from that, it’s become critically important - and I do mean critically, to curate your learning experience and limit the information highway to some specific side streets and cul-de-sacs of your choosing. I wanted to talk through how I’ve been ‘easing’ back into learning zone post my Business Sabbatical and what steps I’m taking to expand past my comfort zone, increase my skills and knowledge and deepen my understanding and perceptions around areas I’m not often exposed to. But first let’s focus on the benefits of learning something new and why you should want to do this in just 50 minutes a day. I was reading a piece on Lifestyle Updat

Hey! It’s Season 3 and it’s all about self learning mastery. How do you decide on what you should be learning and the most effective way to do it? I’ll be talking about hacking the way in which we learn and also going the slightly unconventional route because why should we always be following the traditional education model which hasn’t been that successful. And I’ll be throwing some stats and interesting factoids at you about that. Before we dive in, I just want to give a quick update as to why you might even be listening to this podcast. So hey! It’s Natalie Sisson and I am on a quest for freedom for you. This is the Quest for Freedom podcast and you are joining me in 2017 as I uncover what you can do to simplify your life, feel connected, live mindfully and develop true personal and financial freedom. In Season 1, I covered off around personal freedom and I really delved into that mindset freedom through meditation, through mindfulness. In Season 2, I talked about business freedom and all about the busines

In my previous episode called You are the answer’ I talked about the results on my business that my sabbatical had. Namely all the changes I made before taking time off - new website, new brand, new systems - and how they initially negatively affected the business. I think this is partly because it was too much change all at once. Now, fortunately the changes are making a positive impact on my business and the results we track weekly. But it seemed pretty dire at the time! Then I realized that this happened in my personal life too, with the complete 180 degree flip I’ve made since April. I tell you, business is one thing but massive life changes are something else! As Shana Aborn said in her article Coping with Life Changes: “For many of us, disruption to familiar routine sparks anything from mild anxiety to extreme terror. Maybe something's been pushed on us, like being downsized or getting sick. Just as likely, we've made a risky but necessary choice, like relocating to a new town or having our elderly pare

So I promised to tell you what I think the biggest lesson from my business sabbatical was as well as the result that I got from it. And for me it’s this: it’s time for me to back me. t I think it’s time for us all to back ourselves. And what do I even mean by that? Basically, to me, it’s about serving up your own delicious cocktail, alcoholic or non-alcoholic and being happy with what you are drinking. It’s like drinking your own goodness. It’s talking about you and why you rock versus everybody else. So basically it’s being a bit of a celebrity in your own right and believing in yourself! I think I’ve mentioned this in the past couple of episodes where I talked about the Power of a Business Sabbatical, is that the biggest thing for me in having time off and away from my business is, that I had to get past some really bad feelings when I got to thinking. I’m talking about the dangerous and pointless ‘comparison game’ or thoughts like ‘What have I actually done? What have I actually achieved? Have I made an im

As I come off my 3 month business sabbatical, I realized that you can have a little sabbatical every single day of your life. Through practicing what I talked about in Season 1, Mindfulness, Meditation, breathing and I am right now studying “The Science of Happiness” through edX which is an awesome online platform of amazing courses from incredible universities around the world. I am actually going to be revisiting a lot of what I spoke about in Season 1 back before I knew so little and now I’ve learned so much. It has absolutely opened my mind how every single day it’s the little things that you do in 10, 20 or 30 minutes of time that all radically change how you feel and how much more freedom you have. In this episode, I am going to talk about a daily freedom routine because I think it’s really important. Before I jump into that I just want to share with you a snippet from Hilary Rushford of The Elegant Excellence who went on a sabbatical about a year ago for three months as well. This is a one snippet from

Welcome back to Season 2 Episode 3. Today I am going to talk about the power of a sabbatical. What I'm already finding just with two and a half months off my business is that I have finally given myself the space to reflect and to look back on all the accomplishments that I've had so far, that maybe, just maybe, I'd forgotten about. If you are a business owner, you totally know what I am talking about. How often do we pat ourselves on our back and congratulate ourselves on how far we've come? Seven years in business, that's how long it's been since I had my business, since I started officially April 2010 and until I took the timeout and time off of my business, I didn't realize all the things that I'd actually managed to do. The reason why that came about is when I had the down time to not be working on stuff, I took a trip down memory lane and thought about the products and services that I've created since I started, all the blog posts that I've written. I had a few people linking to blog posts from like 201

Yup I fired myself. That's what I did. April 1st, 2017 I fired myself from my business and went on a business sabbatical. So you may be wondering what prompted me to take a business sabbatical in the first place. Let me take you back to September 2016. I was in Australia speaking at Problogger and staying in this amazing suite Darren Rowse and the team organized for me as a paid speaker. The view was incredible and the hotel complex was too. I was there to do a Tony Robbins style pump up session in between keynotes and also to run a session track on how to have a lucrative sales funnel that converts. Josh was with me and that made it extra special as it was his first real look into my world and the circles I connected with as well as some of my community who were there. I even managed to get in some videos for a Ten Day Freedom Plan Blog challenge with my fave videographer Mick Russell. After that we had some quality time in Byron Bay and a surf session before heading to San Diego, US where Josh was speaking

Welcome to Season 2 of Natalie Sisson's Quest for Freedom! I'm delighted to be back and I know you've been missing me...at least 2 people have asked me "Natalie when is your next podcast episode coming out". So thank you to the two of you, I appreciate it. Obviously to talk about a business sabbatical and how you can truly have a profitable business that can technically run without you, you need to experience that in full glory for yourself. Luckily this podcast is about making me the guinea pig of my own experiments in order for us to uncover what true freedom really is. Since the 1st of April I've been on a business sabbatical and in this episode I reveal all. Well almost all, I'll tell you the rest when I'm finished my break from my business. But here's what I will share: What a business sabbatical actually is (and why you get to define this for yourself) Behind the scenes of what really happens when you take time out from your business Then I went on to answer some great questions from a fan on my Faceb

There comes a time when you say, "Right. Out!" And that's what happened. I think we all have too much stuff these days." Those were wise words from my Mum, who I decided to bring on for Season 1 Episode 8 of Quest for Freedom. This topic and this podcast today is all about ... The art of minimalism and freeing yourself from stuff. If there's one person who knows how to do that, it's this girl. I think it's a really important topic because whenever I am offloading stuff out of my suitcase, in my life I feel so much freer. I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. Which brings me to Christmas time last year, when I gave my sister and my brother-in-law the Christmas present of my time. And what I said I'd do for them is help them clear out their garage. Now I have to say the garage was a complete and utter mess. There was so little room in there, there certainly were no cars, there was just all their stuff. Now my brother-in-law Zanda, has 3 kids from a previous marriage and now they have my lovely

I've only been in Bali five days and I already feel blissed out. I've had four massages, two meditation sessions, one surf lesson, two yoga lessons and a 4.5 hour pampering session! And I TOTALLY needed this, because the last month or two has been pretty cray-cray. As you may remember in my previous episode called Changing Plans, there's been quite a few plans that have been changed, including now owning a lifestyle property and getting a puppy for my birthday. Yes! My lovely man Josh has gone ahead and put a deposit on a white German Shepherd. So when I get back to New Zealand on April 5th, it's going to be all go - moving into the house, getting it furnished, setting up our new base and waiting on the puppy. I was content to go hard out on the organizing, planning, doing and making shit happen on all fronts, because I knew I'd be having this relax time in Bali, and of course my upcoming business sabbatical starting April 1st. If you've never been to Bali, let me just tell you this island has a very special