Do I have an inspiring episode for you today!  I had such a fun chat with Sharne Perrett and you are going to take a lot of wisdom from this episode.

Sharne Perrett wears many hats – photographer, mentor, and serial small business hustler. She kicked off her wedding photography journey in 2009 and has since juggled photographing over 1000 weddings along with multiple successful businesses in the wedding world (while keeping her sanity… mostly).

Her most important gig? Being Mum to a super busy 8-year-old. She’s been through the trenches – including business burnout, a massive health journey and figuring out how to work smarter, not harder. Now, she’s all about balance, and using savvy systems to keep things running smoothly so she can be fully present at home. With a strong focus on goal setting – both in life and business – Sharne proves that a solid plan is the secret weapon to making your dream work-life balance a reality.

In this episode we discussed presence and the little moments, priorities, setting goals, time mindset, and how she balances her time across her family, her self-care, and her multiple businesses.  I won’t keep you waiting any longer, here is my wonderful chat with Sharne Perrett.

Listen to the episode!

Listen on Apple Podcasts or Listen on Spotify

Let’s Meet Sharne!

Natalie: Welcome to the Living Intentional Life podcast, Sharne. Lovely to have you on. Welcome.

Sharne: Thank you for having me, I’m very happy to be here.

Natalie: Yeah, lovely. I invited you on because I see you as, you know, from the outside looking in, I see you as this really successful person. You have multiple businesses. You have a family and you’ve also been on quite a significant health journey as well over the past few years.  And so I just would really love to chat more today about how you juggle all of that and how you prioritize your time.  But first could you tell everyone a little bit about yourself who you are, what have you got going on?

Sharne: Sure. Firstly, thank you for those kind words. We’ll talk about how I feel about the juggles. Um, yes, my name’s Sharne Perrett.  I am a photographer. I own a few businesses. I have been in the wedding industry space since 2009.  Before that, I worked as a care account manager for a corporate, in the hardware industry. Very random. And yeah, and then basically I picked up a camera and the rest is basically history, but I’ve been in the wedding industry since 2009 and all of my businesses revolve around the wedding industry.  So photography is my main photography business and I’ve been doing that. Since full time 2013, um, and I’ve photographed over a thousand weddings, I’ve actually kind of stopped counting how many weddings I’ve shot. 

But yeah, I’ve been really, really fortunate to, you know, be a part of lots of couples days and meet lots of amazing people all the way and do what I love, which I just, you know, photography is the core of what I do, but I’m also a very hungry business person as well, and I don’t like to sit still, so I get itchy feet, and a few of my other businesses have been born from the photography business, so I run a wedding fair, done that for eight years, and that’s been all about just fostering community, and bringing, you know, amazing vendors to amazing couples at the Yarra Valley, Victoria, And I have a micro-wedding business, which is like a wedding planning business. We organize small weddings for couples who get up to 50 guests and fully inclusive packages.  So there’s that as well. And along the way I’ve done a little bit of business mentoring, which has just come along as a side thing.  So that’s a very quick snapshot of what I do.

Juggling Life and Work

Natalie: Oh, fantastic. So that is a lot going on, on the work side, and then of course, like all of us, you have all the home juggle and all of the other things as well.  So there’s this idea that like successful people just can do it all. So how do you do it all, Sharne?  How do you feel about the juggle of things? Sharne: Honestly, it’s a myth to say that it’s, you know, that it’s easy, and I think I’ve put lots of lots of systems in place after basically, the journey of, you know, you touched on my health journey and I kind of came to a realization when I had, you know, some news about my health that I couldn’t juggle it all, and I had to really put some things in place to be able to do it all. I’ve got an 8-year-old son as well. So, you know, I don’t know how, I don’t know how you do it with multiple children.  But yeah, it’s a juggle, but I just think with the right systems in place and making some strategic decisions around creating support in certain areas of your life, that’s pretty much how I managed to make it happen. 

I have pulled back a little bit from doing as much as I was, and just, you know, rather than trying to be jack of all trades and master of none, I’m really kind of honing in on what I love to do and just, doing less, you know, working smarter, not harder, basically, that’s kind of a quick overview.

Natalie: Yeah, for sure. And I feel like, you know, we all have so many different facets to our lives, but we don’t often talk about, like, the support that we need and the help that we ask for, is that something that, like, do you balance it with maybe your partner or, like, how do you, when you talk about how you get support?

Sharne: Yeah, yeah, look, I am in a very fortunate position where my partner’s a stay at home dad. So he’s semi-retired and that has been a huge part of me being able to do what I do is that he has been supporting.  So basically when Mitch was around 15 months old, Jason and I made the decision that it wasn’t working with me time to work full time, look after Mitch and he was working full time.  And so we made the decision that Jason was going to be a stay at home dad, and honestly, if I didn’t have that support, I would never have been able to do what I’ve done.  You know, that’s just the reality of it. Or I would have had to have put other things in place to support me around that.

But, you know, there was some drawbacks to that too. For the first kind of eight months of Mitchell’s life, I was literally juggling him and work, and I didn’t really have a mat leave, so there’s things that I’ve done that I would definitely do differently, but plain and simple, I wouldn’t be able to do where I am today without that support.  My parents, I’m very lucky that I’ve got, you know, my parents are retired and very happy to help. They’ve helped me through as well, and then also, with business systems, you know, automations and things in the background, that’s a key to making it all work too.

So I am more involved in Mitchell’s life now than I’ve ever been and I’m absolutely loving it because I, I think for a while I was trying to design my home life around business, but now I design my business around my home life because I only have one child and I don’t want to mess it up basically.

Natalie: Yeah

Sharne: I want him to know that, I want him to see a strong, you know, working mum. I think that’s really important for kids to see.  That’s my perspective. I think it’s healthy for kids to see that their mum can work and be ambitious and for a career to be important to a mum, and that’s okay. But yeah, I think, It’s also important to get the balance right because I don’t want to be, you know, there’s been moments over the years where I’ve been staring at my phone and reading emails and he’s come up to talk to me and afterwards I’ve been like, wow, I just totally dismissed him. So I’m very aware of those sorts of things now and, you know, he has my undivided attention and I have very set, you know, work hours and things like that, but support is a huge part of it.

Natalie: I love that. I feel like there is so much I could touch on there. You said now you try to design your life around your business, not the other way around.  Have I got that right?

Sharne: Around my life

Natalie: That’s right. Yeah. Right way around. Yes. Which is better, which is two different things!  Yes. For sure. Um, which is so important, right? Because in different seasons of our lives, we’re doing different things and we have a different focus, right?  Whereas now it sounds like now that Mitch is eight, I should say, I have a Mitchell who is eight as well, which I find hilarious.  Yeah, so now that like he’s a little bit older, you can kind of structure things a little bit differently.  And I love that because we can’t do everything all at once, right? There’s different seasons to our life.

Sharne: No, and you know, just little things like Mitch, on the weekend, we had a waterfight out the back.  And he had done a play date with a mate, we’d had people over for dinner over the weekend, and we did a waterfight.  And I said to him at the end of the weekend, what was the most exciting thing that we did over this weekend?  And he said the waterfight with you and dad. And I just thought to myself, he values us to just being present with him so much.  It wouldn’t have mattered if we were sitting there playing a game of Monopoly, or I was reading with him. He just wants our attention.  That’s all he wants from us. And so, you know, I couldn’t believe that we came above the play date with his mate, you know.  But it just proves the point of being present in his life is so important to me, and even though the business is very important, you know, paying the mortgage is important, all of those things, they just pale in comparison to that quality time that I have with him.  And I want him to look back on his childhood and be like, my parents were both present with me.

Um, so yeah, I just, I just think my perspective for a long time being very career-driven and was work, work, work, work. But I think COVID, I hate mentioning it, but it gave us perspective, you know, it gave me a huge amount of perspective about what was important.  I think COVID was a horrendous thing to happen, but it also gave us some really, really valuable gifts. And that was one of those things to me.

Planning Areas of Your Life

Natalie: Yeah, for sure. And, you know, you talk about presence, like having that separate, like those boundaries. So, you know, when you’re with, your child and your family, you’re with them 100% and then when it’s work, work, work, you can do that because you’ve got those systems and supports in place so that you can kind of separate them a little bit and have that, you know, the term “work life balance” a little bit.  Um, and it sounds like you really have thought more about your priorities. Like do you feel like that has been part of the decision to all your decision around how do you use your time? So I’m wondering how you decide like how many hours to work because I feel like when you’re self-employed and you’ve got these multiple businesses, how do you decide like how many hours to spend on one thing?  How many hours to spend on exercising or your self-care or all of these facets of our lives? How do you decide what to spend your time on?

Sharne: Look, I think I’m still refining this. And I think it will always be the season that I’m in at the time, you know, we talk about seasons.  So, you know, I have a really big focus on self-care at the moment. And so, you know, exercise, non-negotiable, time with my son, non-negotiable, and work gets worked out around that.

Basically, Sunday nights a bit of a ritual for me. I sit down on a Sunday night, I have a bath.  It’s always my thing on a Sunday night because it just resets me. Sunday is always a family day for me, so I don’t look at my phone, I don’t get on my computer, I don’t look jobs, you know, if I’m booking jobs the teams doing them on a Sunday, I’m not doing them.

So Sunday family day, Sunday night, I’ll do a bit of food prep, and then Sunday night have a bath, and in the bath, I just think about, okay, what have I got to do for the week?  Just mentally preparing myself. And then I’ll just write a really loose list of what I want to achieve for the week, you know.  So it’s almost like mini business goals, but it’s also just the tasks that I want to get knocked over or that need to get knocked over for the week.

I am a little bit old school. I like to write things down. But I do have a Remarkable, do you know what a Remarkable is?

Natalie: Oh, I’m so jealous. I do know what a Remarkable is.

Sharne: So a Remarkable is like the digital note pad, and I thought I would hate it because I’ve always been at old school.  I have all these old note pads that I have just filled up from writing, writing, writing. So now I’ve got my Remarkable, I’m trying to steer away from using so much paper.

And I just have a folder in my Remarkable for Sunday nights. And it’s just basically this is what I want to achieve for the week.  It’ll kind of be overarching things. And then on Monday, I drop Mitch at school, you know, we do the whole thing, my phone’s on do not disturb overnight up until I drop Mitch at school and then I flick it on to available.

And then I sit down, I do my emails, and then I write a really distinct list of what I want to get achieved.  So that’ll be okay, these are the overarching things that I want to get achieved, but this is the distinct list.  I try not to task switch because you would know there’s a lot better than I do, but from what I have read, task switching is so hard on your brain to literally go from 15 different tasks; So when I say task switching, then me, that means going from one business thing, like it might be, doing an email for Aria Photography, and then jumping into Micro Wedding Co two seconds later, and then flitting in between those two things, or two completely different tasks.

So I like to time block if I can. And it’ll be okay, whatever I’ve got to do for each of the businesses, and then I’ll work on each business task separately.  So it’ll be okay, this morning I’m working on Micro Wedding Co and getting social media knocked over. I try and block social media days as a whole day. But if I do, I do half a day on Micro Wedding Co, half a day on Aria Photography.  So I’m not going in between the two businesses because it’s two different hats.

And I learned the hard way task switching, I was not getting anything done. I was just going from thing to thing and being distracted. So I kind of make a joke that I used to get distracted like, Dory, where I’d just see something shiny and I’d be like, ooh, what’s that?  And so I try not to get into social media because it draws my attention away, or there’ll be a message sitting there, or whatever it might be.  So I just try and set the list of things to be and stick to it. And then I, I get a huge amount of joy ticking things off.

Natalie: So you’re a list person.

Sharne: I love it. Yeah. And so I’m always like, I do a bit of goal setting.  And so when I, when I achieve goals, I get a huge highlighter and I just highlight, you know, that I’ve achieved.

Natalie: Give yourself a pat on the back. Nice, high five.

Sharne: Yeah. I’ve always got rewards around goals, but I always like that process of I’ve done it, you know. Yeah. So that’s kind of a bit of an overview, but I try and have a really structured day. So my day always starts with checking emails.  And I try to have an inbox zero, which for one business is virtually impossible, because it’s just got out of hand over the years, and for Micro Wedding Co it’s inbox zero. I just check it every day. I action it, file it, I’ve created a system of, you know, folders.

Natalie: Beautiful.

Sharne: It’s very nitty gritty stuff.

Natalie: Oh, no, I love, I love the nitty gritty stuff because I feel like that’s, you know, actionable for other people as well.  And so you write out your kind of ideas for the week on a Sunday night, then you make a more detailed list on a Monday.  And so I was going to ask about the multitasking. So it’s funny, right? Like you’re totally right. The brain just can’t multitask.  You end up burning so many calories and using time as well, going from one thing to another, stopping the kind of flow and being in that mental zone of one thing and then going to the next thing.  So your brain is just like fried after multitasking. But on your About page, you say you’re a passionate multitasker!  And I feel like that’s a more, instead of being like that, like that fine grain multitasking, that’s just you saying, that you like have all these businesses and can do all these things, right? Like tell me about the multitasking.

Sharne: Yeah, I mean, I like people say to me a lot, I don’t understand how you get done, what you get done.  I think to be honest, I’m all about giving things a crack. So, I must say people can achieve things if they just give them a go.  And sure, it might not be the best version of what you’re going to end up doing, but amazing things have just been, I’ve been able to do some really amazing things, and I don’t mean that in a braggie way, but I’ve been able to achieve some things that I didn’t think were possible by just giving them a go. So with multitasking: I just built a website, and I started building it in the middle of January, and I, managed to juggle school holidays with Mitch, lots and lots of time with him and got that website done in two weeks.  And I just think when you start chipping away at things, you’ll get there.

And I, I used to never believe in this, but “done is better than perfect” is a huge, huge thing and I go by now because we all sit there and wait for this perfect thing to be put out into the world.  Your friends, your family, who are your initial cheerleaders in anything, they don’t give a flying shit, excuse my French, whether something is perfect, because you’ll have this idea in your mind of what you want to be putting out into the world.  They don’t know what that idea is. They don’t know what that vision is. They’re just seeing on face value that you’re giving something a crack.  So people are always going to cheer you and they’re never going to notice something isn’t perfect. So, yeah, I just think when I’m, I don’t feel like, I, I don’t feel like multitasking is hard for me, but that’s the way I’ve always kind of just done it, you know, and I just think putting business systems in place and just getting changes from multitasking because when you’ve got something working in the background doing things for you, you also, you’re allowed to do, you’re doing multitasking without even realising it.  So, yeah, someone said to me once I’m a passionate multi-tasker, and I stole it. I was like yeah, I really like that.

---

Jumping in here to let you know that if you’re inspired to make lasting changes to your own life, then it’s time to join TIMEWISE. Go from busy and burnt out, to relaxed and productive, using my evidence-based Intentional Life Framework.

---

The Power of Mindset

Natalie: Nice.  And so you’ve really got multiple burners on the go, right?  Like you’ve got multiple things on the go. And some people might think to themselves, Oh, I just don’t have time or I can’t do that.  Whereas it comes down to mindset, right? Like if you believe that you have time and it’s important to you, then you are fitting that in.  Even though it’s January school holidays and you want to prioritize a lot of time with Mitch, you still were able to build your website.  And so you’ve just got lots of things on the go, but it comes down to mindset. So, and you said that, you know, you used to think, now you think done is better than perfect and you used to maybe not think that.  And I wonder if you’ve got any more insights around your mindset, around time, and if that’s evolved over time, and what you kind of think of at the moment, around like being busy or having too much to do.

Sharne: Yeah, oh gosh, this is so multifaceted. I mean, I think looking after myself, kind of, I had a big realization, so do you want me to kind of talk about my health journey a little bit?

Natalie:  If you feel comfortable to?

Sharne: Yeah, I would. Yeah. Ties into a lot of what I’m talking about. So basically in 2020, I, so 2021, actually, I was suffering with anxiety for the first time in my life, and so much so that I didn’t even know to identify it as anxiety.  I had a hand tremor. And I had this leg weakness, so I was bending down at weddings to photograph things, and I was struggling to get up, to the point where I was saying to my second photographer, can you help me out? I can’t get up.  So, I had these really weird symptoms, and I googled it, which is the worst thing you could ever do, and I was convinced that I had MS, and I didn’t want to go to the doctor, but I was like, wow, look, I just need to know.

So I went to the doctor, had the full set of bloods done, and they came back and told me that I had a hyperthyroidism, and it was basically caused from, Grave’s disease, which is an autoimmune disorder. So I now have Grave’s disease, and I’ll have it for the rest of my life. When you have one in autoimmune disorder, you’re three times likely to get another autoimmune disorder.  And honestly, what I realized was, that was 100% and that was, you know, when COVID happened, there was, there was a lockdown that we were all released out of and I photographed 77 weddings in four and a half months.  And I also had a family and I was managing a few businesses. And what happened was my body just said, oh, I’ve had enough.  And I didn’t have business systems in place, or enough business systems in place, and I wasn’t coping, and my body went screw you, Sharne, we’ve had it. And so at that moment, I was very overweight. I was not prioritising myself care at all, and so I went through this journey of seeing the specialist and I went on hyperthyroidism meds and all that sort of stuff. And I was on that journey for 12 months. and I dropped 43 and a half kilos in that time.

Natalie:Wow.

Sharne: And I just started prioritizing my self care as part of my life.  And also just that realization of, wow, you know, stress is this gigantic issue. And so many people just don’t understand what it’s doing to their body.  So, I said to the specialist, what caused Grave’s disease for me? And he said, look, we can’t prove it, but 90% of the people that come in here with Grave’s disease.  I suspect it’s caused by stress. And so I just had this like moment of thinking to myself, wow, me putting myself under all this pressure and the hustle and all that sort of stuff, it’s not worth it.

You know, it’s not worth, it’s just hasn’t been worth it from what it’s done to my health. So I just think from that moment onwards, I was like, I have to look after myself moving forward, and I have to prioritise my health, not just to be an amazing mum, and to, you know, live well into my, whatever’s, for my son, because I am an older mum, like I’m mid-40s and my son’s eight. So, you know, I want to make sure I’m around, but also, you know, for my businesses and so I’m super efficient and so I’m able to show up for clients.

Yeah, the health scare changed everything for me. And even though I still had a lot of my plate, I just was looking at it really differently and approaching everything differently.  So it was a lot of work to set up systems for the back end of my business, but once they’re set up, they’re ready to go.  You know, it’s just making choices now. I go to boxing a couple of times a week, and I choose to do that before Mitchell’s awake.  But it’s a non-negotiable that I do those things too. So I just feel that choice is a part of, you know – doing a website in the last few weeks.  I’ve been choosing to get up at five and just knock out two and a half, three hours of work before anybody in the house is awake.  So it’s just making choices in how I go about it and prioritising the things that are important for me when I need to.  So that’s kind of a bit of an overview of how I’ve got to that point.

Natalie: Yeah, I love that.  Like you say, you’ve still got multiple businesses, you’ve still got lots of things to juggle, but it’s totally about like how you approach and how you think about it.  And again, coming back to that mindset piece, right?

Sharne: Yeah. Yeah. Mindset has been huge, so I, during that time of, I didn’t do that time alone.  I went, I found a mindset nutritionist because it had, for me, in the past, like I remember saying to the doctor, the endocrinologist about, you know, Grave’s disease, and hypothyroidism, and I said to him, obviously a lot of this has to do with my diet, so what can you suggest that I do in my diet, that’ll make things better. And he said, just don’t eat tinned fish and don’t eat sushi. That was the only suggestion he gave.

Natalie: Oh.

Sharne: And I’m like, why do we have to just look at treating the symptoms here? Why can’t we look at what the root cause was?  And so I found, I started googling and I found a mindset nutritionist and she spent, we spent a heap of time working on my mindset and subconscious thoughts and things like that.  And it was revolutionary in helping lead to make changes. It was huge, absolute game changer. And it’s funny, because I feel like you know how we’ve all got this like evil little person that sits on our shoulder, and tells us to do things subconsciously.

Natalie: “Eat the Tim Tams.”

Sharne: Yeah, I just, I just like to flick that person away.

Natalie: Get lost!

Sharne: I say to myself a lot when I’ve made a decision not to be tempted by things, I design my life, I’m the boss of what I do. And I, there’s this empowerment in that, in, in going, I just decided not to pull in to KFC and get six nuggets.

Natalie: Yeah, yeah! Sharne: Or whatever. You know, like I went to boxing this morning, I didn’t feel like it. I still put my runners on and went.  And now I feel amazing, and I feel like I can face the day, and mentally I’m a way different person when I exercise and look after myself.  And yeah, it’s just the mindset work. I stopped doing it for a while and put weight back on, started to have really bad thoughts.  My businesses started to become unorganized. And so for me, I also believe that the work never ends. And I don’t even like to call it the work because it’s not extremely hard. It’s just important, you know. Yeah.

Setting Goals

Natalie: Wow, that’s so inspirational. I think we could take so much from that. Like the mindset’s so important.  Amazing. With the health journey and the weight loss, I’m wondering if obviously mindset was a massive part of it, but I’m wondering if you set goals and, uh, how you kind of did that and do you set goals in other areas of your life?  You talk about business goals as well. Can you talk a little bit about setting goals and how you might keep track or how you kind of achieve those?

Sharne: Yeah, still again, old school. I’ve got a book. Actually, it’s right here. I promise you, I didn’t actually put it here to show you. However, this is called I Can and I Will, and I bought this from Kikki K and it’s a goals journal so basically there’s like all of these pages when you can put goals about anything in there and it just helps you really work through and break things down.

So I believe when you goal set, you have to break it down. It has to be a multi-faceted approach. It can’t, you know, I could come out and say, okay, like, my family and I just want to go to America to see, my sons actually been invited to compete at the karate championships in Florida.

So the goal is to get our family there, and it’s an expensive trip, right? But I can’t just say I want to get there and just go, okay, you know, we need whatever for that.  I need to work out, how do we put together the money for the flights? You know, how many, like, basically it’s breaking it down into small, achievable steps that get you to the big goal at the end.

So, for example, to do another example weight loss, I sat down, I worked out the total weight loss that I wanted.  So, my goal was originally 35 kilos. And as I started dropping weight, I upped it. I was like, wow, I’m actually finding this really easy, surprisingly. And I upped it to 40 and then I up to 45 and in hindsight, I never needed to up to 45.  I probably didn’t even need to up to 40 really. Um, but I basically, the end goal was, let’s say 40 kilos and then I went, okay, this month, how much do I believe is achievable to drop?  So the first month, I made a goal. I made a goal that I wanted to lose eight kilos and basically what I did was I went, eight kilos this month, six kilos next month, four kilos next month, four kilos next month, and I broke it down into really achievable amounts.  But obviously as you get lower, you’re going to find it harder. So that was why I made sure that I, you know, was getting to a kilo a week towards the end.  And then I had, how many months I believe it’s going to take me to get to that amount. And so when I set those goals, my healthy, mindset nutritious at the time said to me wow Sharne this is ambitious, I think that you should look at pushing out a bit, but for me personally, like, I just wanted to smash it, and I was in the right mindset to give it a crack.  So that first month, you know, I dropped 9, and then in the next month, I dropped another 8. It happened super quickly.  The first three months, I dropped 21 kilos.

Natalie: Wow.

Sharne: Yeah, so then I just kept going back to the goal sheet. I had it sitting on my fridge and I was crossing it out as I went.  I’m here, I’m here, and then I was writing the dates. Wednesdays were my weigh-in days. So they were just, and again, mindset.  I wasn’t going into those going, wow, the number on the scale, I don’t like it. I was just saying to myself, whatever, this tells me on Wednesday, it’s just feedback for where I’m at in my journey. If I’ve dropped a kilo this week and I wanted to drop two, okay, that’s the feedback. Yeah, well, you know, we had friends over and I had a couple of drinks.  So, or I might have eaten too many potatoes or whatever it might be.

It’s all just feedback, so changing it rather than, you know, before I used to really, be cruel to myself if I didn’t achieve what I’ve put down on paper.  But there’s no point in that. It just puts you in this bad mindset about the rest of it. So I just think if you break the goals down and reassess them, to me, it is completely fine for me to change that goal midway through trying to achieve it.  And I think that’s where people sometimes go a little bit wrong is that they’ll set a goal and that is set in stone., and if they don’t quite get there or something happens. You know, life happens. Think, so many things are out of our control.  That it’s unfair to you to keep saying, well, I’ve got to keep that goal when things out of your control have affected it.  So it’s okay for you to go back to that goal and change it if you need to. You’re on the journey.  It’s all a really positive experience, and it’s okay for you to change it. You have this power to design your own destiny in that way.

Natalie: That’s such good advice. That’s so good. And so when you originally set that like 35 kilos, 40 kilos, did you feel like making a big goal like that was inspiring for you?  Like inspiring you into action? Or was it overwhelming to be like, oh, I can’t actually get there.

Sharne: I don’t think, for me, it was inspiring because I was in the space of where I was like, something has to change. You know, this is my priority.  My biggest goal was my health. The 35, 40, 43 kilos was a byproduct of another huge goal. You know, it my biggest goal was being able to go and kick the footy with Mitch to the park.  I mean, that was a byproduct of these other goals. So, I’d never felt like it was daunting. I was like, let’s just get it, you know, um, yeah.

Natalie: So I love that. That’s so good. Yeah, because, you know, there is research that shows if you do set a bigger goal, contrary to a bit of popular belief, it’s actually more, you’re more likely to actually get a bigger number or higher success.  So I love that. 40 kilos and more. And so I love that. It seems like that was really inspiring for you.  And like you say, it’s part of a broader picture. It’s like it doesn’t, you don’t just end. You’re not going to just stop eating healthily or just stop doing anything or stop doing the mind work, the mindset work.  It’s, what you are doing, ongoing every day? And yes, you can have goals, but then you still got to be, it’s sort of part of a bigger picture, right?

Sharne: Yeah, it’s good. Look, the big, the big thing that I realized through all of it is that consistency, like I know that people probably get sick of hearing this, but consistency is the It’s, um, it doesn’t, it doesn’t matter if you miss it.  I mean, it’s funny because I was saying to my mindset nutritionist, I’ve had a really bad couple of days and she said, but what are you doing today?  Like, it doesn’t, like, you’ve just got to let that be what it is. And leave it behind because your reality is how you’re sitting right now, I think a lot of people get to this point where they go, well, I’ve had a really bad week, so stuff that I’m done.  I’m not going to get there. The key is just saying, I’ve had a bad week and I’m going to leave that week to where it was at.  This is a new week and this is where I’m at and I still want to get to that goal. So let’s just forget that that happened and move on and just get back into it.  So that was a really big key to the success of it as well.

Living an Intentional Life

Natalie: Yeah, because every new, moment, every new action is like you talked about power and choice, right, it’s like I can do something differently regardless of what’s happened in the past few days, weeks, whatever. You can choose something different. Yeah, love that. That’s so good. I wanted to ask you about this idea of living an intentional life. So that’s my business name, I want to ask you what it means to you to live a life with intention.

Sharne: Look there’s many ways and many things again, I could talk about in regard to that.  But for me, it’s just about being present and getting present in our lives. You know, we spend a lot of time thinking about what if?  What are we going to do a month down the track and like setting goals is obviously important, but what we’re doing today is obviously a part of that.  I just feel like living intentionally is choosing to be really present in our lives. You know, staring at our phones, it’s so bad and I’m terrible at it.  And I have to constantly tell myself to get off it and get present in life. You know, we could spend all of our time staring at Netflix series and, you know, re-watching them and doing all of that stuff but it’s just not living your life in the present. So for me, living intentionally is about looking after myself and my family and being really present.

And time is a thief.  And I just want to make sure that, you know, I follow a photographer who’s now a business coach and she talks all the time about how time is a currency.  And I want that to be time. I want that to be the case for me too. So being present is, and also just doing things with kindness and being genuine and supporting your community and your friends around you and those are really important intentional things for me as well, so yeah, that’s probably the best way I would put it.

Natalie: Oh, that is such good advice. I love that. Sharne, it has been so lovely to chat with you today, and I’m sure our listeners will really take a lot from the conversation that we’ve had.  Can you tell us where people can find you if they want to know more about you?

Sharne: Sure. So my wedding business for big weddings is ariaphotography.com.au. My micro wedding business, which we do fully inclusive micro wedding packages and elopements for couples wanting a smaller wedding and to kick overwhelm to the curb and basically for us to take care of it is microweddingco.com.au.  And yeah, that’s pretty much what you can find me.

Natalie: Oh, I love it. Thank you so much, Sharne. Listeners, I’m going to end this wonderful interview with my favourite quote.  It’s by Mary Oliver. Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one-wild and precious life? See you next time.

---

If you are inspired to make changes to your own life, and want a step by step framework on how to get there, join TIMEWISE. You’ll learn evidence-based strategies to plan your time so you are living life with intention.