Edit Your Life v4.0

Welcome and thank you for following Duck Pond!

I hope you will find this an inviting space in which we can paddle around using our natural curiosity.

This is a space where we hope to stimulate your interest and learn more through sharing chats and articles on Strategy and Strategy Execution – probably on a monthly basis.

We will focus on emerging global trends and current topics, and I’ll share key themes that come up when working with our clients.

Please let me know if there are particular topics you would like content on.

Duck Ponds are always better when we get to know each other, so to kick off I thought I would tell you about 2020 and the seismic shifts that happened to start me off on the evolution of the Duck Pond, so here goes!

I usually wake up at 5am, and when my feet hit the floor my brain is 110% on. That’s my natural Gill Duck approach to life.

So when that stops happening I know my life needs an edit to get back on track. The only thing in question is the scale of editing required.

That morning in 2020 I sat on my balcony overlooking the world’s best cricket ground with my hands wrapped around a hot cup of tea, a morning tradition in our family for at least 3 generations, and pondered on why I wasn’t motivated.

How did I get here and more importantly how do I get out of it?

At that point it had been three years since a significant life change.

I realised I was bored, and it was time. I needed to design Edit Your Life v4.0 (at least!).

I confided in my closest ones about how I felt – turns out they saw this coming before I did.

I rummaged my professional networks, particularly my less current networks, and decided I needed to see what they were doing.

‘That’ll stimulate my brain’ I thought, ‘have some new conversations and see what comes of it’.

It did stimulate my brain and things did come from it – wonderful things that became the Duck Pond strategic alliances emerged – these take time and I’m so glad I stopped to breathe and create a space for them to develop.

With the ‘doing’ side of things coming along nicely, I then needed to attend to the thinking side – mindset!

Closer to home on a day-to-day basis I felt like I was behind the gate at Flemington and couldn’t get out. I had become a product of those around me who were struggling to effectively manage the impacts of 2020 and the COVID-19 health pandemic. This isn’t meant as a criticism – after all none of us knew how to deal with a global pandemic – but I knew a lot of it depended on what you have in your personal toolkit, which I’ll talk about another time.

Amongst many other things, 2020 brought about a sense of fear in relation to money and security. I was seeing this around me on a day-to-day basis and it translated to me picking up on and absorbing unnecessary stress.

I operate from a place of faith – faith in myself personally and professionally and faith in the universe, about life and being able to make good things happen. My health was suffering, and the unnecessary stress was impacting my overall wellbeing.

Something needed to change, and I knew I couldn’t leave it too long.

During October 2020 I meditated at night under the clear skies in the Flinders Ranges, and in the daytime sitting on the dry, hard, drought-impacted red dirt, connecting to Mother Earth, to clear my cluttered noisy brain and see what fell out of it.

I did a stocktake of the things in my life that were no longer serving my highest good. I realised I needed a shift back to a greater focus on my own destiny and be less concerned about supporting others’ destiny. I had drifted too far away from my passions.

I devised some ways to open the gate at Flemington and bring about intellectual stimulation to satisfy my boredom. I found that some of my people at that time weren’t aligned with my thinking, and all around me I could see that fear was blinding opportunity.

I needed to take some big steps together with a healthy dose of courage, and those big steps were fuelled by some amazing human beings who come in the form of fabulous, trusted friends, who don’t tell me what I want to hear.

I’ve always been a fan of setting intentions and putting them out to the universe and then taking some small actions to show you are serious. It has worked for me in the past so it felt safe.

First, I made the space for my intentions. I resigned from two different business partnerships which were fabulous at a point in time but were now no longer serving my highest good. I also distanced myself from a half-baked relationship with a man who remarkably, supports me wholeheartedly to be the best version of myself, but isn’t emotionally available.

It was time to clear the clutter from my life, and Edit Your Life v4.0 was in execution mode.

I set some intentions to shift back to a greater focus on my own destiny. I registered a new company and started work on a new brand.

The Duck Pond emerged!

I continue to spend my evenings sipping wine and digesting canapes to build professional networks and keep up with industry trends. What comes of this drives my own destiny, and the water in the Duck Pond is flowing.

I have new energy and a spring in my step, my body has calmed, and my well-being has improved. I have added further strength to my faith in myself personally and professionally.

Oh, and the men in my life? That’s a story for another day!