Hi, I’m Naomi, and this is my first post about this little space I’ve made.

So, this is my first post.

Well, not my first, first post.

I’ve been blogging for quite a while.

And I’ve been a creative soul for even longer than that.

In fact, my earliest memories are of being creative… I loved colouring in, I’d find the most intricate colouring in books and strategise about the perfect colour combination for hours. I’d spend afternoons designing treasure hunts full of riddle clues for my siblings, I’d write silly stories, scribble in my journal (back then it was called a diary), and being an introvert, nothing would please me more than cranking up the tunes in my bedroom and spending a whole weekend by myself, pulling the room apart and redesigning it so all my treasured possessions were arranged ‘just so’. I can not tell you how happy it would make me to step back and feel so much pride in the things I’d just created.

But something happened to me along the way.

Instead of studying art and creative writing at school, I switched to law and PHYSICS. Freaking PHYSICS. This is the girl who still, to this day, gets confused about which knob turns on which hot plate on my stove top.

Somehow in my teenage years, life pulled me away from who I was, and I got stuck in what I thought I ‘should be’.

I got stuck in thinking I should makes sensible choices.

That I should toe the line. Get a stable career, everyone knows that you can’t earn a living in the arts. Settle down. Be a good girl. Don’t rock the apple cart. Stop being a rebellious thinker.

And more and more, I stopped being me and started being ‘acceptable’.

Acceptable to who? God only knows… parents, society, friends. Maybe I just wanted to feel like I fit in.

But slowly, over many years, I was killing myself inside.

I went to Uni. I studied marketing. I worked hard. I graduated.

I kept getting drawn into the creative industries, but always on the fringe of actually being creative.

I worked for advertising agencies…. in account management and tender writing.

I worked for magazines… in advertising, sales and marketing.

I worked in creative studios… but working on projects that did not in the slightest satisfy my need for creativity and in depth thinking.

And in each role, I’d sit and gaze longingly at the people who were actually being creative and think ‘But, what if I could be creative?’  but by then all the expectations and grubby mindset blocks I’d built up from hundreds of random sources throughout my life kept me on the sidelines.

And then, four years ago, that life I was ‘supposed’ to build because it was the sensible choice fell down around me. It was all gone, in an instant. It was epic. And it was painful.

But, it’s also when I finally thought ‘Fucking fuckity fuck it’.

And I threw all the shoulds away and starting remembering who I was again. I started actually listening to the “But, what if…” whisper that was locked away in the back of my mind.

I started blogging and journaling and writing again. I started drawing. I started traveling and trekking and running and going outside and doing all the things that fuel my creative inspiration. I started figuring out how MY creative process worked… not how you ‘should’ create something because ‘that’s how it’s done’.

It took some time.

It was very quiet at first.

And it’s still evolving.

Sometimes it’s still a bit scared to speak up and be heard just in case my ego jumps in and tells it to stop being stupid/too dreamy/not realistic and definitely not sensible.

I started looking deeply into my personal values and what I wanted out of life, studied my personality type, figured out what was blocking me, where my hidden fears and weaknesses were. I read self development book after self development book, went to psychologists and got a whole bucket load of therapy.

It took a long time to unravel what I REALLY wanted from the twenty years worth of thinking about what I SHOULD want.

And each day I commit to unraveling that a little more, and a little more.

And as I have, all the things blocking my happiness have started to fall away.

Not with any great fanfare.

Not with any bolt of lightning.

There was no ‘Aha, that’s the secret to happiness and success!’ moment.

It just came gradually.

With a determination to peel off the masks and layers I’d subconsciously built up to protect myself.

And through all that I realised that the best way you can be happy and successful is to be YOU.

And now that’s what I do, I help people, who have maybe taken the road they thought they should take earlier in life but who still have that whisper of ‘But, what if…” lodged firmly in the back of their minds, to remember who they really are and what they really want. I help them nurture that ‘But, what if…?’ dream, express it in a way that matches their values and personality and bring it to life through their business.

Because when you’re just being you in business, it’s so much harder for anyone else to compete with you.

And as I’ve discovered over a long time, and a bumpy path, there’s definitely only one you, and the real, unencumbered, free, glorious you just as you really are holds the key to everything you’ve ever desired.