Rachael Jansen – You can have it all and thrive in a complete life

My reputation agency for women in business, Visible Women Media, is where I help women communicate their message for greater impact and influence. Our society needs more women in leadership and women’s voices are desperately lacking – without them we are only hearing one side of a conversation. Women have so much to offer the world, and my deep, deep passion is to help foster more balance.

And then I have courses and a membership – The Complete Life Project – that helps women live healthier, happier more balanced lives.

I found that my devotion to motherhood had stripped me of my own life and sense of purpose as an individual. I had sacrificed my much loved career and profession, and also my health to an extent, and the realisation was deeply traumatic and involved years of finding out how to fix it.

When I looked around, I saw it wasn’t just me. So many women enter their 40s with the realisation or feeling that they’ve somehow let themselves down, and yet they have so much more to offer!

Fortunately, the time has never been better for women to reclaim their individual vitality and power – the internet has given us a freedom to strike out on our own, or speak up, or find the information we need to heal and rise.

Girls and women have always been told that having a reputation isn’t a good thing but I’d like to say bollocks to that! We’ve been conditioned to be good girls and seen but not heard, and so women who want to step up in their career or business, or even just take some time back for themselves, often find it hard to communicate their message with confidence.

If gender equality and equity is ever to be realised, and I am determined that it will, we as the current generation of female leaders can forge the way through creating a more balanced existence at home and professionally. This means taking up space as an individual – through sharing your knowledge and wisdom, and also protecting your own dreams and sovereign right to health and wellbeing.

I’ve interviewed thousands of people, from Prime Ministers to people living on the streets. I’ve confronted bikies, been stalked and threatened, and called many, many names during my career, and nothing was as challenging or caused as much fear as trying to do this business thing.

So fear has been a huge beast to understand and tackle – fear of looking silly, being judged, getting something wrong, being criticised, stuffing up. I realise now it’s always going to be lurking in the corner of my psyche, and I’ve learned to deal with it much better because I’ve also learned it’s pretty much always false.

I think all the other challenges stem from fear of some sort: mindset, procrastination, indecision – all fear-based.

I also come from a professional background where I had to make judgment calls every day on people’s legitimacy – did they have any gravitas or authority to be quoted or included in the days news? So I found myself applying that same judgment process to everything I did and always coming up short. Over time I learned to think instead about the fact I have skills and experience most people don’t, and to just get in and do it anyway. Action breeds confidence.