Shannah Kennedy - The Life Plan

The Life Plan

Simple Strategies for Building Confidence in a Changing World

Shannah Kennedy

This book is dedicated to my husband, Michael, my soul mate.

To my children, Jack and Mia, the best gifts I have ever received.

This book is also dedicated to you, the reader, to my wonderful clients and followersmay this book be your handbook for life.

Your thoughts create your world.

This book shows you my simple tools to make life bigger, better, more meaningful and whole, and healthier, both personally and professionally. My approach is for optimal, calm, confident living in all areas of my life; the business of me is my first and foremost jobeverything else comes after that.

Throughout my twenty years of coaching, I have found that most of my clients share one thing in commonthey dont need motivation. Theyre very successful people, and they know what they need to do to reach their goals. What they actually require is for things to be simplified, so they can get back to the foundations of who they are, dig themselves out of the clutter to find fresh confidence, clarity, and purpose in their daily routines, and live a full life without self-destructing in the process. In this book, I share the tools Ive developed with my clients over the years to help them do that.

My life has been a truly big journey. I think I wanted that from the day I was born. When I saw the movie Wall Street in 1987, I was seventeen years old and trying to decide what to do with my life. All of that power, wealth, and success was hugely appealing to my adolescent self, so I committed to getting a job at a high-profile stockbroking firmand pulled it off. But there was increasing pressure to gain a degree, and I hated studying, so after a few years, I chose more life experience and began looking for my next chapter.

Aged twenty-one, I set off to explore the world. I backpacked around Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Africa, working my way through kitchens and bars. I slept under the stars high in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, dozed on a small wooden boat on the river Nile, swam in the Dead Sea, and waitressed in the ski resort of Mrren, Switzerland, home of the James Bond 007 revolving restaurant. I hitchhiked through Spain, sleeping on many rooftops and staying everywhere from basic rooms to the odd grand castle. It was the most wonderful adventure.

After two years I came home and went back to the stockbroking firm, but I didnt feel challenged. Trying to be true to myself, I decided to swap numbers and stress for something completely different and took up an assistant role in a golf management company. Soon I was negotiating contracts, managing professional golfers, traveling on tours, organizing corporate golf days, and learning everything there was to know about running a business from the ground up. It was a time of major growth.

Then, as often happens when you least expect it, life threw me a curveball, and I was asked to join a high-profile sports eyewear company as their sponsorship and PR manager. Overnight I went from managing a dozen golfers to working with more than one hundred world-class athletes in Australia and internationally. By most peoples definition of success, I was living the dream. It was exhilarating, satisfying, and demanding all at once. It was also incredibly intense.

As a high achiever, I was used to overloading my life, so when the stress and exhaustion mounted, I brushed these warning signs aside as the price to be paid for the kind of success I craved. I believed I was strong and nothing was going to hold me back from having everything I wanted. I was both unwilling and unable to slow down, and eventually my body delivered a devastating reminder of its need to be cared for, abruptly giving way to chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS).

It was debilitating. Virtually bedridden for twelve months, I lost everything that mattered to memy sense of self, my network, my ability to do the simplest things. My body just wouldnt respond. Sinking toward depression, I felt overwhelmed with shame and failure, replaying why things had gone so wrong over and over in my mind.

It took me a long, slow three years to fully recover, but with help from a life coach, I eventually regained my energy, clarity, and motivation to move on. It took several more years before I realized what a blessing my illness really wasa gift that allowed me to see lifes grand picture.

I have also (unforgettably) witnessed many elite athletes self-destruct once their sporting careers were over. This, as well as my own experience with burnout, inspired me to get over my distaste for study and embrace extensive training to become an advanced certified coach. Who would have known I could be a committed student? I could see an opportunity to coach sportspeople to become whole people rather than has-beens, with the purpose and vision to create the life they want, both during and after their (relatively) short athletic careers.

During this productive time, I loved taking myself away to health retreats to recuperate and recharge. I recognized that I also needed to find a way to integrate these stress-busting, restorative strategies into my everyday life. Its no good if you can only find that clarity when youre away from your ordinary life. So, I have tried and tested strategies to get that balanceto find depth and calm in my work, joy and contentment in my family, and vitality and vibrancy in my life. To build a rock-solid foundation based on my purpose and a valuable, personal definition of success to guide my choices and behaviors as I go through life. To do whatever I can and live without regrets.

Over a decade on, my passion for managing time so it works for us, rather than against us, means my services are in constant demand. We all want a good life, but this has become increasingly challenging for many of us as were mentally ambushed at work and over-connected digitally and yet under-connected in our most important relationships.

Working within large corporations coaching senior executives, sales teams, individual business owners, and contractors, I always focus on the foundations. By going back to the basics, we can regain control and therefore make clear, informed decisions and also build supportive habits to create lives we love living.

Over the years, the structures that are outlined in this book have guided strategies for employee engagement, inspired valuable team-building activities, and provided powerful tools to connect leaders with their teams. They have proven to be effective not only for managers, leaders, entrepreneurs, and business owners but anyone who wants to set and achieve clear goals, create success on their own terms, foster meaningful relationships, and live each day to the fullest, with a sense of depth, strength, and sustainability. They have empowered every client I have coached, whether they are a stay-at-home mom, small-business operator, multimillionaire, or elite athlete.

With all this going on, my life was soon humming along: happy marriage, two healthy children at school, the house renovated, and my business booming. My first book,