By Bulli local Danielle Colley, a speaker, coach and author of The Chocolate Bar Life
When I first moved to the Illawarra, I bumped into an old friend from high school who I had not seen in 26 years. I was utterly delighted and took it as a sign that I was exactly where I was meant to be. I had been looking forward to this sea and tree change because my city life had been hectic for as long as I could remember.
After a few weeks, we finally met for a coffee.
“Nothing has really changed though,” I said to her. “I still sit at my desk as soon as the kids leave for school, and I work furiously until they come home. Then it’s after school madness until the dinner time rush and maybe I work for a couple of more hours. I could still be in the Sydney suburbs for all I really know.”
Her pale blue eyes looked at me across the latte laden table in the coffee shop courtyard.
“What was the point of moving here if you’re not going to change your lifestyle?” she asked.
Her words sank in. Then she said something that stuck with me for weeks.
“Moving isn’t enough to dial down the pressure in your life. If you don’t change something, nothing will change. Allow this land to reveal to you how you need to live, but you’ll need to slow down to hear it.”
I’d been running my coaching business for five years, and for five years prior to that I was a freelance writer. Often, it was a rollercoaster with the undulating issue of too much work or not enough work and my anxiety rode those peaks and troughs like a drunken cowboy.
The impetus for change
It took me burning out as a writer before I changed careers and I decided to take some time out to research the science of happiness and contentment, before retraining as a leadership coach and workshop facilitator. It was then that I begin to see similar patterns in many of my clients.
Constantly climbing a ladder towards a thing called success, each rung offering more status, more money, and hopefully more satisfaction but it often required the sacrifice of a little more time, energy, and sometimes, even soul. I realised that ambition and the quest to attain a goal is often not the problem, but sometimes the internal things that drive us towards it can be.
The recent figures out of the 2024 Global Talent Trends report published by Mercer, an HR consulting firm, suggest that eight out of 10 employees will experience burnout symptoms in 2024. While excessive workloads, financial pressures and exhaustion are key players in these figures, sometimes the thing that drives these are the internal beliefs around success and what you need to be, do or have in order to be successful.
Unlearning the programming in myself, then helping others to do the same led me to creating a tasty philosophy about how to create holistic – or whole life – success because life should not feel like an endless Groundhog Day of work, bills, grind, sleep, repeat, but actually be enjoyable to live.
Everything is better with chocolate
The philosophy is simple and based on chocolate, because who doesn’t need more chocolate in their life, right? At a particularly stressful time of my life, someone suggested I needed my life to be more like a Mars Bar. I needed to find the balance of work, rest and play. I liked that idea, and really sunk my teeth into the analogy.
I began to see the ingredients of the Mars, the nougat, caramel and chocolate and these elements of work, rest and play. While the ratios are not equal, when put together they create a magic mouthful. Perhaps then, life balance is not about an even scale balanced into a middle position, but more like a Mars Bar. At any given time, your energy, attention and capacity requirements will not be perfectly balanced but provided you are intentional to ensure that the elements of work, rest and play are present then life can feel more like a magic mouthful too.
This way of thinking became a way of being for me. I now not only live near the beach but take time to walk on it often. I hike up into the escarpment and allow the whispers of the trees to rest my frazzled edges before pushing forward with my daily responsibilities.
I did let the land here on this magnificent strip of beach sitting below the gaze of the ridge top show me how to live and while I’m still a white belt at balance (do as I say, not as I do) I know I’m one hundred per cent better at it than I was before.
And all I needed to do was be more like a Mars Bar. Who knew chocolate could be so good for your health?
About the author
Danielle Colley, author of The Chocolate Bar Life ($29.95), is a sought-after speaker, leadership workshop facilitator and coach. Her philosophy prizes the zing of career achievement without your work taking over your whole life. She says sayonara to burnout and hello to holistic success and sustainable ambition. Find out more at daniellecolley.com.au
