The Secure Love Club Podcast

Ep #43: Life Update - Therapy, Business Growth, Moving?!

• Mimi Watt

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In this episode, I’m pulling back the curtain and giving you a real, unfiltered life update - the stuff I usually only share with my closest friends. No lessons, no frameworks today… just truth. I’m talking about the unexpected year I’ve spent in Melbourne, the slow unraveling of my mental health these past few months, the impact of pouring everything into my business, and the very real loneliness that can happen when you don’t have community around you.

I share why I finally decided to go back to therapy, what patterns I’m uncovering, and the exact moment I realised something in my life needed to shift. I also talk about the question that completely changed the direction of my next chapter — and how it led me to consider moving interstate (yes… the Gold Coast might be calling 👀).

In This Episode, You’ll Hear About:
• Why staying in Melbourne for a full year wasn’t part of the plan, and what it revealed
• The real pattern behind my mental health dip and burnout
• How “going all in” on goals can turn into self-abandonment without you noticing
• The loneliness that comes from lacking community, connection, and balance
• The golden question that shifted everything, and how it’s guiding my next move

🎧 Tune in now! And if this episode resonates, send me a DM on Instagram—I’d love to hear your thoughts!

MIMI SOCIAL MEDIA
Come say hi 👋 (or DM me your biggest takeaway) over on Instagram HERE!

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You are listening to the Secure Love Club podcast. I'm your host, Mimi. What. Hey friends. Welcome back to the Club. I have been getting the most beautiful, beautiful messages from so many of you over on Instagram about how much you are loving the podcast and how it is a space that is helping you to feel so seen and validated in your challenges and the things you're navigating in dating and relationships. And it just warms my heart so much. I had a beautiful DM from. A woman that came through just yesterday and she said that she felt like she was going crazy until she heard the podcast where what she was moving through and experiencing finally had language for it, that the episodes had put words to what she was experiencing and made sense. For her and especially being in a, in an environment where mental health isn't something that is really welcomed to be spoken about where she's from and she doesn't feel safe to express herself and there's just a real lack of support and. I just pinch myself sometimes that we have this platform and the opportunity to reach people all over the fricking world and to support you. So shout out to all of you. Thank you for sending me your dms and just giving me so much, feedback on the podcast. It really means a lot to me. Today I want to do a bit of a life update episode. We've been going. Heavy into a lot of different topics over the last few months on the pod, and I just wanna touch base with you and give you a bit of an update on what I am personally moving through right now and some changes that are gonna be happening in my life. I like being open and transparent about the things I'm moving through, as well as giving you the support that you need to move through things in your life. I always find, I don't know about you personally, but for me, with coaches that I work with and mentors I have, I always find it so refreshing when they are transparent about the challenges they're moving through because it. It just humanizes them a little bit and it normalizes the fact that you can still be wildly successful. In many different areas, whether it's in business or in having a healthy relationship or health and fitness, whatever it is, and still go through challenges and have difficult times where. You are doubting yourself or you are overwhelmed or you've taken a few steps back, but then to see how they are getting back on track and still able to move through these challenges and come out the other side successful, I don't like when people online with a platform never share that side of the journey because number one, it's not real. Like no one goes through. Life without challenges and without struggles. And it just doesn't seem relatable. It doesn't seem real like for me anyway, so I always try to keep it real. Um, so let's just not ramble, let's just get into it. Okay? Let's do into the life update and I'm gonna give you some backstory and some context on some things, and I hope you enjoy. So let's dive in. Now for this life update. To make sense, we need to rewind the clock for about 12 months. Now, many of you have been following along my journey since I started this podcast earlier this year. Some of you, maybe you have just found me. Hello, welcome. But many of you probably know that about 12 months ago now, I left Bali where I had been living for six months and I moved. To Melbourne. Now, this move here was not intentional. I didn't intentionally move here. I came here with the intention of staying with my mom and visiting for Christmas at the end of last year. And I thought, I'm gonna be here maybe one month, two months max, and then I'm going back to Bali for another six months.'cause I had a 12 month visa over in Bali. But when I arrived in Melbourne. And back in Australia, it just felt so good to be home. I'm not gonna lie, it felt really, really nice to be back in Australia and Bali was an amazing chapter for me. I loved it. But it definitely got a bit intense Towards the end, it was getting extremely hot. I was living right in the center of Chango, so it was very intense, very overstimulating, uh, a lot of noise, a lot of pollution. Not much space to walk around and move around. If you know over there, like they've only just started putting sidewalks in. And even, even still, they're not very good. Uh, and you know how I love my walks anyway, and I also kept getting sick. I got food poisoning a bunch of times. I got fucking salmonella and I was just, I was really over it by the end of that six months. So when I got here, I thought, wow, this just feels amazing. And because I have the freedom to be location. Independent, I can move around and take my work anywhere. And my mom was happy to have me. She just moved here from Sydney and she said, just, yeah, do whatever you want. Like, you know, stay, stay as long as you want. I'm happy to have you. And I took that a little too. Literally. I basically just didn't leave because. Dec, we got through November, then December, and then January rolled around, and then, yeah, the months just kept ticking over and I got a little bit comfortable staying here because Bali had been very overstimulating for my nervous system with everything going on and just being out of, you know, normal routine from being in Australia. When I got to Melbourne, I thought, okay. This is a time for me to just be a hermit. I just wanna have peace and quiet and a bit of solace, and I'm going to just keep working on my business and, not really put too much effort or emphasis into socializing because I thought, well, this is temporary. I'm not gonna be here for long, so I don't need to make much of an effort to go and make friends. So the months passed and passed and passed, and then before I knew it, I have been in Melbourne for an entire year, and if I'm honest, my mental health has definitely taken a bit of a dip in the last, I'm gonna say six months, especially in the last few months. And. As I've been reflecting on where this has come from or like why my mental health has been challenged, it really comes down to a lack of balance in life at the moment. I have been going so hard on building my business for the last year. I've invested so much financially, energetically. Emotionally, all the things. I've just put a lot of effort into it. And don't get me wrong, I love doing this. I love being an entrepreneur as well as a coach and building my business, but it definitely. Can get con all consuming at times when you're so passionate about something and you are ambitious as many of you are. You know that there's this desire to want to just pour all of your energy into that one thing until it reaches a certain point of success. And I think for a lot of us, that comes down to financial success, right? There can be so many other ways. If I look at my journey or if you look at your journey of. What you have achieved since you began building something or trying for something. There are so many different ways that you could look at it and say, yes, you are a success. You have reached this many people, you've coached as many people, you've made this much of an impact. You know, look how, um, your, your work or your craft has improved and refined. Like there's all these other ways we can measure success, but I think for so many of us, we end up. Putting all the emphasis on financial success, and we think, oh, if I'm not hitting X amount, uh, income goal, then I'm not successful and therefore I can't take my foot off the gas and I have to keep pushing and pushing until I reach that point. And only when I reach that point will I be allowed to focus on other things and actually live my life. And now saying that out loud sounds ridiculous in a sense. And I get that. I hear myself when I say that. And would I give this advice to other people to just, you know, put everything else on the back burner? Probably not. But I don't know actually. I mean, I think there's a fine line, right? Like when you are building a business, you do need to make certain sacrifices. If you wanna get ahead faster, you are going to probably socialize less. You may put less emphasis on dating, and you're gonna be pretty selfish with your time. But maybe for other people, you are okay with taking more time to achieve certain goals. So you don't put that much pressure on yourself. But either way. We need to be careful about our mental health and the implications of the lack of balance in life. And so that's really what I had been beginning to feel. I was noticing this pattern of when Monday would come around, I'd be, you know, really excited to get into work for the week and. Kind of just give it my focus all day, every day. And towards the end of the week, I was starting to get really tired. My energy was dipping, and then the weekend would come around and I just honestly, like half the time, didn't even wanna get outta bed. It was just that feeling of, I just wanna rot because I'm so tired or I'm drained that I just wanna do nothing. And at first that didn't seem like a problem because I just thought, oh, it's fine. I'm just resting. And. Although there's nothing wrong with lying in bed on the weekend and just absolutely switching off. Nothing wrong with it, but there is something wrong with it when you start to feel really low and really flat because of that, because you're not getting any other stimulus in your life outside of work. When life becomes too One track mind or one dimensional. We lose connection, we lose joy, we lose other stimulus that we need. And I think for me personally, the biggest thing that I have been missing is that in-person connection, that social connection, the play, the pleasure, the joy, the hearing about other people's lives and talking about what they're doing and really just getting perspective on things. You know, because when you're so focused on yourself. And your goals, you can lose perspective about, well, are my problems really that big a deal? Compared to what other people are going through? I don't know. Or. Am I really not successful, compared to when you hear where other people are at? I don't know. So I, I really started to notice this, that I just wasn't feeling good and it was becoming a pattern. And whenever there's a pattern, it's because there is something within you that is causing it. I always say this, you are a common denominator when there is a pattern and. Being the type of person that I am, whenever I am really struggling with something, whether it's challenges in business or my mental health or fitness, I will always reach out for support because I know the value in getting support from. Whether it's a business expert who is already in the place that I want to be, it can give me a direct path to achieving it, whether it's having a safe space, like a therapist to just talk out loud and process my thoughts and get some advice on how to shift out of this. Funk that I feel like I've been in or hiring a personal trainer or joining a group gym because I want that external motivation to help lift my spirits. Whatever's gonna help you feel driven and motivated to get back to a healthier place mentally and physically. And this is something that I believe in so, so strongly. It is something I've always done, something I will always do and genuinely is. One of the biggest reasons that I have had the success that I've had today across the board is because I have not wasted years and years of my time trying to figure something out all by myself. I have gone to people who know what they're talking about, who can help me bypass certain mistakes and achieve my goals faster. So I made the decision recently to go to therapy. I've been to therapists in the past, like over my lifetime a few times, but not for the last, I'm gonna say two to three years. And for me, therapy just is that safe space where I don't have to. Structure my thoughts. I don't have to worry about how they're coming across or if I'm taking up too much space or how the other person's going to perceive me, right? So I, I am an advocate for therapy. It's different to coaching, but I'm an advocate for it. And I think it's a fantastic resource if you have the means and access to, to do it. And thankfully I do. And so I had my first therapy session. Uh, last week and it was great. It was mainly just me word, vomiting, all my thoughts and feelings out, but it reminded me the power of having someone hold space for you. It is just so invaluable to have that experience. So going to therapy to just, I want to uncover some strategies and. Ways to make running a business more sustainable in terms of not feeling like I'm just gonna burn out every 12 months because it is a bit of a pattern for me. So I wanna understand myself better. I wanna understand this pattern, and I want to get sustainable tools I can put in place to make sure this doesn't happen again. And I'm also going to therapy to talk about how I can get myself out of the right socially. And just finding joy again in my life. And I think for me personally, having a space where I can just talk out loud and process my thoughts and have someone prompt me and just ask the right questions, always helps me to uncover the answers that are actually already within me, or it just helps to get a new perspective on things in terms of my life and where I'm living. This is another update I wanted to go into, As I've just shared with you, I've been in Melbourne for a year and it was never intentional for me to be here. So that also kind of plays into why I haven't made much of an effort to find friends or community here. I was having a conversation with my. Um, with my older sister the other day, and she's lived here in Melbourne for like six years and she, selfishly loves that I'm here. Obviously she wants to hang out and she likes having family close as we all do. But anyway, and I was telling her that, I'm considering moving. And she said, yeah, but you know, you haven't even made an effort here to like, make friends and find community and wherever you go, wherever you move, you're going to have to make an effort. So what. What's gonna be different there than it is here? And I said the key difference is that I never chose to move here intentionally. It wasn't like I had the desire and I followed that desire to live some to live here and made it happen. I just sort of ended up here. Now I've been in this weird limbo phase. I said, when I want to be somewhere, making an effort is easy for me. It was like when I first moved to Bondi, when I lived in Sydney. I fucking loved it and I put myself out there and I started new hobbies and I met new people. I made amazing friends who I'm still close with to this day. It was like when I got the intuitive pull to move to Bali and I followed it again, putting myself out there was effortless meeting people, creating community, having experiences outside of work. It came easily because I genuinely wanted to do it. I was following my desire and I know myself, and when I don't feel that natural desire, I'm just not gonna open myself up. I just, as much as my sister was struggling to understand it or just was getting annoyed at that concept, I was like, it's not about you. This is about me, and you just have to trust. And she's like, okay, fine. Fine. So anyway. When I was, I was on a walk, this is probably over a month ago now. I was on one of my morning trots and I was listening to a podcast by um, a friend of mine, friend. We are friends over Instagram. Her name is Laura Caruso and she's actually a therapist and she has a podcast called Safe Space and she shares a lot of what she's going through in her personal life on that podcast and I love listening to it. And she was. Recording. She recorded an episode where she was talking about the fact that she wasn't loving her life living in New York City anymore'cause that's where she was living. And she asked herself this question that I'm not sure if I've shared this on the podcast before. I don't think I have, but there's apparently, there's this question in therapy. It's called the golden question or something, and the question goes, if you could wake up tomorrow and everything could be different, what would be different? And she asked herself that question and it really got her thinking. And she started describing the things about lifestyle that she really loves, that she wasn't experiencing anymore, living in New York City. She wanted nature. She wanted to be outdoors. She wanted to go hiking on the weekends. She wanted more like wholesome, close-knit community where maybe she could find a group of like-minded people to have a group, a friendship group, as opposed to just lots of different one-on-one friendships. And she decided that she wanted to move to, I think it's Denver, Colorado. And so. She did a few trips there to suss it out, see if she liked it, and she absolutely loved it. Like energetically, she just knew when she got there, she's like, yep, this is where I wanna be. And so she moved. She literally packed up her life and moved from New York City to Denver and she's, you can see on her Instagram, she's sharing updates about her experience and it's really cool. But when I heard her ask that question on the podcast, I asked myself that question. I said, if I could wake up tomorrow and everything was different, what would be different? And it made me realize what I am missing so much about. Lifestyle that I don't have here in Melbourne. I love being outside in nature. I love being by the water, which I am sort of by the water here, but it's not really the beaches. It's sort of like a, a, a bay, I guess. Um, I love being by the ocean. I love being in nature and outdoors. I love living. In a community of, other young people who are active, who are fit, like there's that active lifestyle. That is what gets me going, and that is the kind of environment I thrive in and here in Melbourne, because the weather I think as well is so. Unpredictable. It's very cold, it's rainy. It's much more of an indoor lifestyle here. You know, you don't have a lot of beaches around. It's a bit of a London vibes, even though I haven't been to London. It's what I would imagine, and I've heard other people describe it that way. And so a few months ago I asked myself this question, and since then I've started to think about, well, where do I want to live and where do I want to go? And I've considered moving back to Sydney. But I don't know. I'm feeling like it's not the time I'm feeling like I still want, I want something else. I want an adventure for a while. And I was having a conversation with, um, actually a previous mentor of mine and a friend, and we were talking over Instagram and I was telling her this, that I was, you know, struggling to feel a sense of community and I didn't know where I wanted to live. And she said, oh my God, you have to consider the Gold Coast. And I had never considered the Gold Coast as somewhere I wanted to live. Not for any particular reason. I just never before this moment, never thought that that's what I would want. And it's funny because when I was considering this move, I thought about Byron Bay or somewhere in the hinterlands near Byron because I thought, oh, surf sun. Community, young people, vibe. And so that's kind of been planted in the back of my mind. And then I was, she was saying to me, oh my God, the gold, the lifestyle on the Gold Coast is just absolutely incredible. She also used to live in Sydney and she said, you know, the weather is insane. It's just beautiful and balmy every day. The housing prices are much more affordable than Sydney. There's lots of other entrepreneurial people around. It's just beautiful. You should really consider it. And I said, oh, okay. Well, I was actually thinking of Byron Bay area and she said, well, gold Coast is literally an hour's drive from Byron, but there's probably more accommodation. It's a bit more built up. There's you're close to a city. So she planted that seed and honestly, I have not stopped thinking about it. And I actually know a few people who live in the Gold Coast, both through who I know personally and through Instagram, and I just. It's one of those feelings again, it's like what I had with Bali when someone suggested to me, you should go move to Bali because you can, and why not? And before that person said it, I had never thought about that. I had never thought that I would move to Bali. But sometimes in life you have these moments where someone says the right thing at the right time, and for reasons beyond what your five senses can understand. It feels right, and that's sort of the feeling I have with the Gold Coast. So I'm kind of spilling the tea here like much sooner than anything is happening. But I'm considering it. I'm thinking about it. And the funny thing is, is before my friend suggested this, literally the day before, one of my best friends texted me and said. Do you wanna go to the Gold Coast for a, like a little four to five day trip in early January? A little getaway together. Like what? And I, again, I had never suggested that to her. She just put it to me and then the next day. This other friend of mine who lives in the Gold Coast now was giving me this, you know, spiel about the, the sales pitch on the Gold Coast. And I thought, that is so weird that my best friend of my best friends said to me, let's go to the Gold Coast for a little trip. And you know what, what perfect timing to go there with her and suss out the Gold Coast and see if I like it and see how it feels. And then my plan was always to try and make a move early next year, so within maybe the first three to five months of the year so I could go to the Gold Coast in January, suss it out, and then if it feels right, plan to make the move, you know, a few months later. Now, obviously I know that moving cities. Moving into state isn't gonna magically affix all my problems, but at the same time it might No, it, you know those memes and it's like. What does they say? It's like a trip to Italy or a trip to Europe isn't gonna solve all your problems. And then it's like me in Italy, drinking, living it up, eating. It's like, yes, it actually will. No, I'm still gonna go to therapy and I'm gonna talk about these ingrained patterns that I have been repeating'cause I want to understand where they're coming from and, and heal them properly. But I really do think. That getting into an environment that makes me happy, that aligns with the things that I value, where I can meet like-minded people and be my bubbly social self, I think is really going to support me in getting back to a really healthy place with my mental health, um, as well as continuing to run my business that I absolutely love and to support my clients that I really, really adore. So I'm trying to think if there's anything else I wanna update you on. I don't think so. I feel like at the moment this is what I'm navigating personally, and this episode feels a little bit like I'm on the phone to my best friend and I'm just yapping away rambling. But I wanted to, I wanted to share it with you and just let you know where I'm at because. I'm a human behind this microphone. I'm a human behind this business and behind the Instagram account. And, although my passion and expertise is in helping you to become more secure within yourself and relationships and how to actually attract and call in that beautiful, safe, loving relationship, that is my bread and butter. But there's also other things going on, so I wanted to, I don't know, just keep you in the loop and. Let you know where I'm at because yeah. Real human over here. And you know, I guess I'm sharing it to normalize that again, if you are going through a period in your life right now of uncertainty or change, that's okay. And it's okay if it feels scary because uncertainty is scary to our human brain. We don't like it. We really perceive it as a threat to our survival. And so we do find. All these maladaptive coping mechanisms to feel in control. And that's honestly probably why I've gone so ham on my business is because it's something I can, to a large degree control. Uh, so, you know, it's okay. It's okay if you, if you're afraid or you're unsure of where things are gonna go. My biggest piece of advice would be to set the intention to be open to synchronicities. Or crumbs from the universe about what your next step is, because that's really the way life works. Sometimes we try to have these grand plans, but in my experience, the way that life typically unfolds is you just need to look out for that little next step. What is that next step that your intuition is giving you? What's that one thing that feels most right for you right now that feels most aligned? Even if you can't explain it, pay attention to how it feels. And then you take that step and then you say, okay, what's the next thing? And then you take that step, what's the next thing? And you take that step and then all of a sudden you've taken 200 steps and you turn around and you look back and you can see why everything had to happen the way that it happened, and everything makes sense. And there's no way you could have predicted that the path would've unfolded in that way. And even though that can be scary, that is also one of the most beautiful parts of life. Because if we knew everything that was gonna happen all the time, life would be boring. Maybe we'd feel super duper safe and secure, but it would be boring. And I think we need to leave room for a little magic in our lives. All right, my friends, I'm gonna wrap it up there. I hope you enjoyed this yappy episode on a more personal note, and if you have any shares or any aha moments or insights feel free to reach out in the dms or if you have any Gold Coast tips, feel free to send them my way. Okay, you have a beautiful week and I'll talk to you soon. Bye-bye. If you enjoyed today's episode, hit that subscribe button and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Share this episode with your friends and come find me on social so we can hang out between episodes. All the links are below in the show notes.