Soul-sister + artist-champion + life coach to rebel goodies
Here’s Me
I help flawed humans (@me) exist in their brightest light & get anything they want. I coach leaders, artists & self-proclaimed aliens to achieve their next ‘impossible’, following their own unique code NOT the ‘rules’ of planet earth. We make it fun & easy!
And so, people find refuge in our conversations.
We are all paradoxes here.
As I write this, I am an executive leader and the writer of controversial ‘sexy’ songs. I’m a neuro-linguistics expert and I spend most my time singing baby songs to my little girl.
I’ve had my fair share of adventure too.
I’ve driven at 130 miles p/h in a foreign country, my husband nearly dying beside me, and had to learn how to play nurse (needles & all) while committed to ‘not ruining our honeymoon’. I’ve been a teen-instructor, blackbelt and two-time karate world-champion (gentle heart x loves to fight). I’ve been a force for forgiveness in my parents’ separation (if it were a movie-drama I would be expected to be outraged because of weird details!).
I’ve coached my mentors & people who used to scare me, having them share their deepest secrets in the safest space for leaders who want to do and be better.
If what you just read seems like chaos, it isn’t.
It is life.
And your own intersecting of the dark and light is equally complex, but doesn’t have to hold you back. You don’t have to shrink when things get realer than real. You can feel free & powerful at every moment. You can feel profound love. And you can define and attain success on your terms.
Ever since I was 5 years old, I’ve been connecting to my heart and helping others connect with theirs. I wrote in my first diary entry ‘Today my heart is telling me…’ because that is how I intuitively knew how to relate to the world. Heart-first. In high-school, I wrote letters to my friends giving them reasons to live and reminding them of their unique beauty. My mum had to play my personal secretary, filtering calls from guys who loved me because they could always be themselves around me.
The same heart has made me a powerful leader.
When I ran my own karate dojo at 16, I helped students from 5 to 70 become their most confident selves. As I high-school teacher, my classroom was full during lunchbreaks, where students would seek advice or arrive bursting to share something new they had tried. Boys would come to cry. Girls would come to learn to be brave.
When I began formally coaching adults in 2013 after living & breathing personal development, I realised that beyond the gift of asking powerful questions, my extraordinary empathy & perspective were always leading me to this work.
The transformational gift of seeing what others can’t see has been there throughout so much of my journey:
When I went for and won two karate world titles, I had to believe in myself more than anyone believed in me. I wasn’t always the ‘favourite’ to win & was often treated like a novice (I was new to competing!). As a karate instructor I could see the spark in the most quiet unassuming students, and turned them into senseis & champions. When I juggled my teaching with studying for my HSC, I trained myself to think that my extra time in the dojo was exactly what would make me succeed. If you care about high ATARS, succeed, I did.
In my teaching career, I was disqualified from applying for a position to be a senior learning mentor (how whack!). Less than 12-months later, I applied for and got the position that manages that role. The person I succeeded was a domineering, ex-military man who told me it was impossible to do the job and still have quality-of-life. Well, my vivacious little self (not at all domineering) not only had quality of life, but began a new solo music project too, often (through weird fortune) releasing singles on the days I had to sub-in for deputy principal. I laugh about that a lot! At an executive conference my boss gave me this magic value card with the word ‘PERSPECTIVE’ written on it in bold. She said that it was my biggest strength, and I knew it.
And being a songwriter has been the ultimate lesson in perspective. I can turn grief, guilt, shame & hurt into pieces of art that make people feel less alone. Our struggles don’t need to stagnate. They can transmute and give hope. This is why I’ve worked with so many artists. I give them permission to go deeper than ever and say what nobody is willing to say. They are loved for it.
Becoming sure of yourself & your truth has its own struggles.
When I quit teaching karate, I received many hints about ‘coming back’, which were about as welcome as the nudges I get about having babies. Champion can equal obligation.
And when I knew I had to start my own solo music project, I felt too loud, then too quiet, too exposed & then misunderstood and like for every proud sharing moment, there were a thousand little humiliations. People who don’t try don’t know this world, but some of us just have to create.
These days, I work exclusively with the most inspirational ‘aliens’ on the planet.
Like leaders who feel strangely disconnected from current issues because they’re on their own heart-led mission. Old-soul, young-at-heart, creative rebels & those obsessed with learning & doing. Charismatic, sensitive and sparkly-eyed. Poets of life. Extraordinary people don’t see the world in typical ways. Sometimes they think their brain is broken, but I show them how it holds the key to their greatest fulfilment.
If you want some more intimate details of the picture of my life…
Dan is my honey-bear, ultimate cavalier-baby-daddy, and photographer of beautiful women. I still call him ‘the best person I know’. Our first proper interaction was sparring during a karate class, and the first-time I planned to seduce him I got bitterly rejected! We think it’s weird being dubbed a ‘power couple’, but sometimes when he’s shooting my music videos it makes me wonder if we are. Our most running joke is quoting this scene. We’ve travelled to 10 countries together, with only one near-death experience. I am best friends with his mum.
I’ve been writing songs forever, and when I was in Year 5, I put on a concert of original songs about ‘Outer Space’ and performed them with friends to all the Year 4s! My sister used to harmonise my own Spice-girlesque originals with me and I serenaded my first boyfriend with songs I wrote for him (and it was very sweet and not cringe). I wrote my brother’s wedding song & a couple of theme songs for clients. I even did a songwriting session with the winner of the Voice so he could start writing music that was more true to himself (and not the generic shiz that Sony would have him put out)!
I am obsessed with the nuances of language & it’s how I get results in my coaching. I taught English for 12 years, study & practise advanced Neurolinguistic Programming & I look up word etymologies before bed. I don’t need to guess what linguistics and cunnilingus have in common. I created a writing course that is all about using words to heal and transform.
Here are some other tidbits for the truly curious who’ve made it this far:
The same famous producer who told me that I couldn’t sing or write songs for shit (paraphrasing), ended up recording two of my songs for free 5 years later. I’m proud of this one, because the evening he addressed my suckiness, I blogged about it, knowing whole-heartedly that karate taught me I can get better at anything. More singing lessons with my coach and client, queen Marion Rouvas, and everything clicked. Look at me now!
I get migraines at least once a month and my non-medicated strategy is to plant purple flowers on the pain points in my head. I’m grateful to understand debilitating pain, and if I can manage, I’ll listen to audiobooks and enjoy the ‘down time’. I’m studying sound therapy as another healing modality.
Every Christmas I do a burlesque performance of Santa Baby in front of my whole family, including any new love-interests who don’t anticipate being fluffed my red tinsel. I also regularly impersonate James Franco as Tommy Wiseau to entertain/embarrass my family in public and to spice up the occasional games night.
I’m in a book called Public Bodies where I posed naked in front of the Contemporary Museum of Art with a bunch of strangers. With no adrenaline, excitement or energy. It was like ‘meh’. For the same book, we did a shoot in a freezing cold lagoon, and I’m pretty sure my goosebumps are why it didn’t make the final cut!
And yet, so many of my life highlights have been naked, with high-energy, but no fear. Like diving into a sparkling Zamami ocean, filled with emerald-green bioluminescent plankton alongside a new karate friend. Or calling in the year 2020 dancing naked on a Byron Bay beach (to my own song!) after teaching some new friends how to bellydance.
I’ve gone through some disturbing shit, like being blackmailed by a gang-member, finding out a family member and I have shared a sexual partner (nooooo!), and having my best friend arrested with an adjacent investigation happening on me ‘just as procedure’.
The moments that, upon my deathbed, I would pay millions to relive are those precious conversations with my nieces & nephews. When he was only 5 my eldest nephew asked me what success was & I felt like my whole life had been leading up to that point!
I make the best of the worst situations. In 2018, when a teacher quit in the English faculty, they took my Year 12 class away from me and put me on a new Advanced class. It was in the final term of the HSC, and I was devastated not to have my class until the end, but I learnt a new curriculum and convinced my new class to enter the lipsync battle with me as my back-up dancers. Some of the girls were so shy and had never done a public performance of this kind, but we choreographed something amazing and did two stunning and hilarious acts- the ultimate class bonding exercise. The way I cared about and committed to that class in just a term is one of my greatest reminders of the human capacity for love. There is always room in our hearts to give. Teaching has never stopped giving me that reminder.
Ok, I’m feeling a little raw after that overshare (did I even mention anything bio-impressive?), but I am now far more interested in YOU!
If you’re anything like the people I work with, you might relate to this.
And if you want to see how we can work together, click here.
You can also read some of my favourite articles here or get your free ebook by subscribing.
Becky coaches creative, heart-centred leaders who crave transformative experiences & a life on their terms. To reach out to Becky directly, email hello@beckyshortt.com.