I fell into a bush in Budapest. And other personal updates!

Hello and welcome to the Business of Executive Coaching podcast. Now if you are a new listener, this is probably a slightly different episode to normal. So at the Corporate to coach accelerator, which is the primary way that I work with people, we are all about growing your executive coaching business and giving you support in terms of business process, business strategy, mindset, all the tools you need. That is what we do. And so this podcast is generally very practical. It's, I like to offer lots of suggestions, tools, tips, things you can implement easily and there is some of that today, but today is a little bit different. I wanted to give a bit of a personal update as to where I've been over the last few weeks. And so you know, do reach out whether you're new or a long term listener of the podcast, reach out Whether it's on LinkedIn or email, let me know. Do you love or do you hate this type of episode? I'm really flexible so you know, if there's no, no interest in these sorts of things, I, I will stick to, stick to my lane, my practical advice. But I know I've had feedback that lots of people like to every now and then hear a little bit of an insight into what it's like behind the business as well as the advice that I have. So today I am sharing a bit of personal update, a bit of the story behind the scenes and as we would get into the second half of the year, so I'm a bit jet lagged today and that is because we returned from a three week, three and a bit week trip to Europe yesterday. No, the day before yesterday. The day before yesterday. Gosh, that's the jet lag speaking. So we have been away for, as I said, three and a half weeks and this is the first real holiday I've had in quite a while and it was amazing and I think I really, I, of course I keep in touch with work things, but I really did holiday. I really, really took a vacation. I was really present with my family. I was really present with the opportunity that we had. And the reason we headed to Europe because I had a cousin who was getting married in Budapest, which is where we ended our travels. That was the stimulus for going on the trip. But to be honest, we really wanted to take our daughter, who is 11, on a bit of a bigger trip. So somewhere where we could, you know, really just provide a bit of fuel for her curiosity, for her adventurous spirit as well as our own. And so that took us, we went to London for a week, we went to Paris for a few days. My husband spent a day on the Tour de France course, which was amazing in a car that was sort of driving in with the peloton. It was quite amazing. Yes. We went to Paris for a few days, then we headed over to Copenhagen and got the train from Denmark through to Sweden. And we stopped along the way at my daughter's highlight, the IKEA Hotel and the IKEA Museum. And just a weird quirk I would say that she has is that she really likes Ikea. And so she started learning Duolingo Swedish on Duolingo and she has got nearly a two year streak of doing Swedish lessons. So that was part of the reason we decided to add Sweden in. And so we, we went to Elmholt where the IKEA Museum was and also to Stockholm for a few days, which was extraordinary. It was, it's really an amazing place to visit and it was interesting to compare. Like in London you go and you check out Buckingham palace and it's all very, very formal and remote. Whereas in, in Stockholm you can actually walk right through the middle of the palace and, and yes, there are sort of protected sections, but you. Yeah, there's, it's very open to the public, open to the people, which I thought was, was very interesting. And then from Stockholm we headed to Budapest for, for the family wedding. And so we were really fortunate along the way that we spent time with various friends and family. So one of our guests that you've heard on the podcast, Louise Kovacs, Dr. Louise Kovacs, she was with us in London and so we dragged her around to many of the sites as well as many lovely restaurants. It's been a dream of mine to go to Ottolenghi for a long time. So we had the opportunity to do that. We went to lots of musicals. So we went to see six the Musical. We saw Hadestown. If you have not seen Hadestown and you are somewhere that has it on, do not miss it. It is extraordinary. We've been listening to the soundtrack for oh God, it must be close to. Close to eight, nine years. And it was recently actually made into a musical. So highly, highly recommend it. And we had a very interesting experience in Paris actually. We, I was, we were lined up, I was lined up with my daughter for. There's a bookshop in Paris called Shakespeare and Company and Shakespeare and Company and it's an English language bookshops. It's sort of a bit of a tourist trap to be honest. But I thought, oh no, we'll go and we'll check it out. And while I was in the line, there's a line to get in, right? And it's quite a long line. And you know, I'm usually a bit of a stickler for line etiquette. I'm like, you don't push in, everyone takes their turn. And so my husband left the line and then another chap came towards the front of the line and it was someone who looked quite familiar and it was in fact Nick Cave. The singer, musician. So you may know Nick Cave, very famous, certainly in Australia, but I think throughout the world as well. And he looks like he was really weighing up whether he wanted to get in the line, because I think he genuinely just wanted to get a book. And so I said to him, once I recognized who he was, I said, hey, do you want to jump in with us in the line? Breaching all of my line etiquette line rules anyway. But it was Nick Cave. He's super, he's amazing. So I invited him in and we chatted and you could tell there's just something about, I think people who are famous in that way that sets them apart from the average person. So he was there in his suit, he's got this incredible long black hair. But we had a chat. I talked about how I was, you know, rediscovering my love of reading sci fi and fantasy books from, you know, like I used to when I was a teenager. And he was, he was looking for some books because he was about to head on a, like a 10 day retreat with his wife where there were no devices, so he needed some books. Anyway, he was quite grateful to save, I think, 30 or 40 minutes waiting in this line and actually invited us to his concert that he was playing at one of the Paris Opera houses that night with alongside the guitarist from Radiohead. And of course I was like, oh my God, that is so cool. We love Nick Cave. So we said, yeah, we'll absolutely be there. And so that was a pretty cool story. And my daughter's very first concert was seeing Nick Cave live in Paris. She thinks the fact that it was for free was perhaps the best part. But I just think that the opportunity to see Nick Cave in Paris in this extraordinary space, it was the Philharmonia is the name of the venue, but it was quite amazing. And that was a real highlight of our time, certainly in Paris, as was the IKEA hotel. Who would have thought that I knew that IKEA had a hotel because my daughter has told me a lot about the history of ikea. It was initially set up as a motel to Allow people to go to the. The first IKEA store as like a whole day or a whole weekend event. But anyway, this. The. In. This, in the site of the first IKEA store is now the IKEA museum, and the hotel is just across the road. But it was really like being on school camp in an IKEA store because you are in these rooms. But there were. Because there was three of us. We had four bunk beds, each with their own little curtain. And. And of course, you know, it was a room with our own bathroom and everything, but it also felt like staying in the IKEA store. And I don't know if you're like me, but as a kid, like, I always thought, how cool would that be to stay in one of these little apartments? And, and certainly, I know my daughter just was living her best life there, but there were so many highlights, you know, catching up with my cousin who lives in. In Copenhagen, but was the one getting married in Budapest. You know, I had cousins and aunties that we spent time with in Paris and also in Budapest, of course, running into my work, you know, staying with my whole extended family. So I think I mentioned as part of the title of this episode that there was a moment where I really reflected and I thought, this is something I should share on the podcast. And, you know, there's a bit of tongue in cheek in the title, which is that I fell into a bush in Budapest. And that is true. So on our first full day in Budapest, we had quite a group of family. There were about eight of us. And our plan for the day was to walk from where we're staying on the Pest side of the Danube river across to the Buddha side and up through into the citadel and the palace and. And through to, yeah, the big long walk. And, you know, as we were taking off, somehow I became the navigator, which is fine. I don't mind being the navigator. But we were walking very early on and I was talking to my auntie, I was navigating on my phone, and before I knew it, I. In Australia, we would say it went ass over tit. I don't know, it's probably very inappropriate, but I totally sacked it and hit the dirt. Now, you might think that my lesson that I'm taking away from this was the. The downfall of being distracted. And yes, that is a lesson I probably should take from that is. Which is that walking. We were also looked at was this weird archway that we just walked past that was spraying water. I think it was a cooling device. And I was on my phone trying to navigate Figure out where we were going. So, you know, I didn't see the edge of this garden bed and totally stacked. It also didn't have the quite the right shoes. So, yes, being distracted is not great. However, the real lesson that I took away from it is that as soon as I hit the ground, everyone was really worried and they're like, oh my God, are you okay? And particularly my husband, he was really, he was really worried. You know, I was slightly embarrassed, to be honest, but it didn't take me long to do a bit of a body scan and go, actually, I'm totally fine. There is nothing wrong with me. I think I sort of. I feel like I felt I fell in slow motion. I think part of me fell on a. On a plant before I hit the concrete or the cobblestones, which is probably also a reason why I fell. And so I realized that I was fine and I'm, you know, falls aren't great, particularly, you know, as you get older, kids can fall all the time and they're totally fine. But I. There was an assumption, and partly my assumption, but a lot of everyone I was working with was assuming that there was going to be. That I was going to get up and something was going to be wrong, right. So I was going to be hurt. I was going to be, you know, so, you know, when you fall, like sometimes you just get a bit emotional. It was a bit of a shock. But the truth was I was fine. I was just as happy as I was before. And I kind of popped up, dusted myself off and intended to just keep going. And in fact we did just keep going. And I didn't really think about it until the next day when I had like a slight, A slight tension in my arm where I must have like braced myself. And the lesson that I reflected on as we were walking, well, not as we were walking because I was still very busy being the navigator, but afterwards was that often we assume that things are going to. That things are going to impact us in a certain way. So we might assume that, for example, getting a rejection from a client is going to make us really upset. Or we might assume that when someone says, you know, replies to an outreach message and accuses us of being salesy, not that that happens very often, that we won't be able to cope or, or that if we have a down month, we're going to be really upset about it. And the truth is often that is the case. But it is also very good for us to allow for the possibility that we are more resilient that we are more positive, that we can, you know, take more positive or neutral outcomes from these experiences than we give ourselves credit for. And so if you are in business and you are, you know, going through the active business, the active business, really, including a lot of ups and downs, and you are. I just want you to allow for the fact that possibly you might not have such a negative experience of the downs because you might have done the work and done the work to say, okay, I know this is coming, this is normal, and you might have been able to reframe the fact that this is all part of the journey. And that is awesome. Right? Because when we can see that these experiences are part of the growth, that we don't get to grow without those experiences, right? There's no way around those experiences that actually those, those things, like the no's, the, the criticism, those things are our ticket to the business that we want to build. Those things are the rite of passage. And so we have an option that when we experience them, we might choose to be grateful for them, we might choose to be okay with them. And it's. It's fine if we feel really shitty about it too. Right? There's no problem with that. But it's also good to just allow ourselves for the possibility that we might handle it better than we could have ever dreamed and that we might feel not just okay about it, but good about it, because it is signposting this journey that we're on. Anyway, so that was, that was what I was thinking, you might say, geez, Ellie, weren't you on holidays? Why were you having these sorts of reflections? And the question is, and the answer is, yeah, good point. I don't know. But it really did stick in my mind as I pulled myself off the ground and continued walking. And people kept asking, are you all right? Are you okay now? And I'm like, yeah, I'm really fine. So I am back. I am, you know, this week we've been having our coaching calls again after our two weeks off. Off. And I'm so happy to be back working with the coaches inside the accelerator again. And I love it. So, you know, look at the podcast is going to go back to practical advice, really. You know, things that can help you. And so, yeah, my creativity is sparked. I'm looking forward to the next six months. I'm super, super excited about what the rest of the year has, has to bring. So if you are finishing your holidays, if you are approaching the end of summer, if you are in the northern hemisphere, then this may be the right time for you to start thinking about what the next phase of your business is. So I have a large group of coaches who are starting with the accelerator program in August. If you would like to be part of that group, you are not too late. So if you would like to please head to the show notes, book a call with me. That's the only way to get in at the moment. And, and let's talk about your business and your plans and whether or not the accelerator might be a good fit for you. But on that note, yeah, I really, you know, I hope this meandering chat has been interesting. You know, reach out if you have any questions about either the accelerator or about my travels or any of those things. Traveling with an 11 year old, which I have to say might be the golden age for travel. Curious. Not a single complaint. The whole trip. Never got bored. Could walk. You know, we were walking upwards of 20,000 steps a day. So I, yeah, highly recommend taking a kids of that age on a trip like that. But now I'm really going to wrap up and let you go. But thanks for tuning in. I did fall into a bush in Budapest, but it was fine and I learned a lot from that. So I look forward to being back in your ears next week.