Riffing with change and living an unconventional, nomadic, multipotentialite life.

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Welcome to Episode 13 of the Create Your Story Podcast on on Embracing a Multipotentialite Life.

I’m joined by Laura Maya – Writer, Nomad, Multipotentialite, Author and Coach.

We chat about Laura’s new book Tell Them My Name, the writing journey and living a life that is unconventional, nomadic and multipotentialite. And we explore how she supports and inspires others who are curious and wanting to live a less conventional life.

You can listen above or via your favourite podcast app. And/or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.

Show Notes

In this episode, we chat about:

• Laura’s new book Tell Them My Name
• Writing your first book
• Being a constant beginner
• Giving ourselves permission to quit
• Being a digital nomad
• Embracing a multipotentialite life
• Opening up life options
• Riffing with change
• How change is always hard

Transcript of podcast

Introduction

Welcome to Episode 13 of the Create Your Story Podcast and it’s the 2nd of March as I record this. It’s been raining for about two weeks here in Sydney and there have been massive and devastating floods further north. Along with the tragic Russian invasion of Ukraine, it’s been a strange and unsettling time lately. My thoughts are with all those impacted by these events. It’s a very sad time.

In positive news, I’m excited to be a finalist in the Beautiful You Coaching Academy Awards for Book/Product of the Year for my Wholehearted book and Companion Workbook. The winners will be announced at a ceremony on Friday 4th of March this week. I’m so honoured to be a finalist and look forward to celebrating at the online awards ceremony. I’ve been thrilled to kick off The Writing Road Map short course with my writing partner and collaborator Beth Cregan. It’s part of The Writing Road Trip in 2022 and we will be offering other opportunities to work with us further on in 2022. You can join our email list for the latest news.

Speaking of road trips, I’m excited to have Laura Maya join us for the podcast today to chat about her new book, Tell Them My Name and the process of writing it. We also chat about Laura’s fascinating and somewhat unconventional life, which features variety, constant change and movement that she embraces wholeheartedly.

Laura Maya is a writer, coach and culturally curious ‘digital nomad’ who has spent over twenty years wandering slowly through 59 countries. Laura is the author of Tell Them My Name (2022, the kind press) and she runs an online business offering professional matchmaking, project management and coaching programs that help women step into the life they want (even if it’s a life other people may not understand.) Laura has spent the pandemic years living in a converted school bus in Australia but usually bounces between Oz, France, Nepal and Tonga and tries to explore everywhere in between.

Laura and I met as fellow certified Beautiful You Coaching Academy life coaches and as writers and fellow authors published by the kind press. We’ve chatted together about the writing process, becoming an author and ways to publish and share our work with the world. We’ll share insights from these conversations and connections and learn more about Laura’s unconventional, nomadic and multipotentialite life and what she inspires in others from this.

Today we will be speaking about writing, publishing, creativity, being a multipotentialite and nomad and opening up life options to consider unconventional and original paths that integrate our passions and purpose.

So let’s head into the interview with Laura.

Transcript of interview with Laura Maya

Terri Connellan: Hi, Laura, welcome to the Create Your Story Podcast.

Laura Maya: Thank you, Terri. Thanks for having me today.

Terri Connellan: Thanks for your connection across our work, our passions and our businesses, and we’ve connected in many ways around creativity, writing, publishing, coaching and more. And it’s great to be able to share those conversations with people.

So can you kick us off by providing a brief overview about your background and how you got to be where you are and the work that you do now?

Laura Maya: Yeah, that’s always a tricky question to answer for me. My background is a hot, beautiful mess I think that led me to where I am now, which is doing a lot of different things that don’t really connect.

So yeah, my background is that I left Australia in 2001 on what I thought was a gap year to go traveling and to live in school. And I’ve just been traveling the world ever since kind of living nomadically. And I have worked in lots of different businesses and had a lot of different jobs in a lot of different careers.

So, in your book, when you talk about being in transition, I’ve been in perpetual transition, I suppose, for most of my adult life. But that’s what brought me to where I am now, which is running my own business, where I work as a coach and a consultant. so yeah, I do lots of different things. Everything from life coaching to project management and people and culture consultancy, marketing, social media management, translation, writing, whatever. I do a little bit of everything and I enjoy that kind of diversity in my work.

Terri Connellan: Awesome. That’s a great snapshot. And I love that you say being in transition for most of your adult life. You must be incredibly skilled at managing change.

Laura Maya: Yeah, I think I’m a professional beginner. That’s the only thing I’m an expert at. I’m a professional at starting from scratch and I enjoy that process. I really like that point where you kind of get a bit bored or restless and then you think, oh, okay, well, what am I going to do next? And then finding that thing and not being able to do that thing and then having to learn that whole process. It’s a process I really enjoy.

Terri Connellan: It sounds like almost a love of beginner’s mind.

Laura Maya: Yeah. I don’t become a master at anything. For example, I learned the ukulele. I was really obsessed with that for a little while and I can’t play the E chord. It’s been what, seven years now I’ve been playing the ukulele and I can’t play the E chord and that’s okay. I just don’t play the songs that have the E chord in them. I just get myself to the point where like, I’m happy enough with that. And then I kind of get bored and I move on to something else. That’s that’s how I roll.

Terri Connellan: Great. So we’ve both recently enjoyed the process of taking a book from idea to draft, to publish. And as we speak, it’s the 21st of January, 2022. And your book, Tell Them My Name is soon to be out on the first of February, which is very exciting. Congratulations. So tell us about that writing journey and what it was like.

Laura Maya: Yeah. Before I do that, I just want to say a massive congratulations to you for your book, your beautiful book. It’s such a valuable resource. I’ve read it. And it’s such a valuable resource for people in transition.

So I just wanted to congratulate you because having been through the writing process, myself and the publishing process, I know I will never look at a book the same way again. It’s such an achievement just to get it to the point where you can hold it in your hands. So I just wanted to honor you for that.

Terri Connellan: Thank you much appreciated.

Laura Maya: Yeah. And for me, I guess the writing’s journey, I don’t know about you, but it was your first book, it was wasn’t it?

Terri Connellan: It was, yeah.

Laura Maya: For me, I think my first book was all about learning how not to write a book. I don’t think I would do it the same way again. I think the writing journey has been pretty tough. I’ve always wanted to write a book since I was probably about six. I always thought I would be a writer one day. And about seven years ago, I started writing this book. I spent about two years getting a draft down. About three years trying to edit that draft down from about 280,000 words to about 130,000, but without bringing anybody else in that process. Like that was my big mistake. I didn’t get any help. I didn’t get anybody to read it or anything like that. So at the five-year mark, then I thought, oh, I probably need to get some support here.

So I thought I was finished. I arranged a manuscript evaluation from a publishing house and they came back and said, look, there’s a really good story in here, but you’ve tried to squeeze about three other stories into it that shouldn’t be there. So you should start from scratch and start writing the book again. Which was just horrifying, heartbreaking to hear after five years of working on it. But I could see their points when they pointed it out and I took their advice.

I threw a little bit of a temper tantrum and had a moment. And then I decided, okay, they’re right, I’ll take their advice. And I started from scratch and I wrote the book throughout 2020 when, of course the world was in turmoil. And there was a little time to be at home and finished at the end of 2020 and was offered a publishing contract in January of 2021 which I ultimately decided not to take. And I spoke with you. That’s when you and I connected, and I did a shout out in our coaching group, our certified coaching group and said, does anyone know anything about publishing contracts? Because I don’t. And you put your hand out to help me, which was amazing.

And after speaking with you, and speaking with a number of other people, I decided to go a different way. And that’s what led me to the kind press. Now we’ve ended up being publisher house buddies.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, that’s amazing to hear your journey. And there’s so many things that resonate from that description of your journey and lots of commonalities in that journey. It indicates what writing a book, that first putting your heart into a book brings up. Beth Cregan and I, who’s my co-writing buddy, and we’re running a writing program together, we have joked that we’d like to run a program called how not to write a book because we know so much about how not to write a book. It’s like all these things not to do. And like you, I wrote a really, really long, mine was a hundred thousand words.

Laura Maya: That’s tiny!

Terri Connellan: 280 is huge, but I have heard people say that often the early books that we write, we often do put a lot of in there and then it’s either a whittling away or in my case, creating two books. But starting again, must’ve been incredible.

Laura Maya: Yeah, we do put a lot of ourselves in there and I’d heard that. And I thought that I hadn’t done that so much, but then when I got that feedback and I realized, I’ve injected myself into places in this book that are really not relevant. I didn’t know what to leave out was my big problem. I didn’t know what would be interesting for the reader. So going back and starting from scratch, because I said to him, I was like, well can’t I just edit the version that I’ve already done? And he said, no, no, there’s too much in there. And you actually need to start with a blank page.

So that was daunting because I’d spent, gosh, I reckon that number of hours I’ve spent on putting together that first draft I could have become, maybe not a surgeon, but I could’ve put myself through law school, I think probably like in hours that I invested, and yeah, sitting down and saying that blank page, but then just having to look at it, like, okay, what does the reader want to know about this and where would the reader want to start this story? And I started the book in a completely different place than where I would have.

And the beauty of this too, is that now I actually have 65,000 words, which I’ve cut out, which will be the basis of my next book. And so those years, it wasn’t wasted time. And I do think it’s a much tighter, cleaner, more enjoyable book to read now than it was before. I think I would have lost the reader in the original version because it was too all over the place.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, that’s great to hear. And it’s also wonderful too that you can repurpose some of that first draft because 280,000 words, is a huge commitment in time and intellectual energy, creative energy. So to be able to take some of that work and craft it and shape it in new ways.

Laura Maya: That is a positive.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. That’s great. So can you share with us a snapshot of what Tell Them My Name is about?

Laura Maya: Sure. In a nutshell, it is the true story of two indigenous Nepalese elders who leave their Himalayan farm and travel to Paris on this great quest to understand Western culture. That’s the book in a nutshell.

The slightly longer version of that story is that, my husband and I went to live in the Himalayas in Nepal with this elderly couple in 2009. We were sent there by an NGO to build a library in a local school and this couple, took us in and they sort of adopted us as their children. We called them mum and dad, Aama and Baba. And they taught us how to speak Nepali. They taught us how to take care of ourselves because it’s not the same. In Nepal, they don’t eat with cutlery. We had to learn how to eat with our hands. They don’t have a bathroom. So we had to learn how to wash ourselves in the public communal water source and things like that.

So after five years of coming and going from Nepal, they were just really curious to know where we were from and why we were so incapable of doing some of the most basic tasks, I guess, in the village. And so we offered them the opportunity to come back to France, to Europe, where my husband’s from, and we would travel around with them for a month. And we would just explore the differences between our cultures and, and they could see how we lived. So that’s what the book’s about. It’s really about their impressions of Western culture and a look at everything from loneliness and religion and race.

 There’s a lot of big concepts in there. And then there’s a lot of really funny moments, obviously when things happened because they don’t know how to navigate life in our culture.

Terri Connellan: I can’t wait to read it – it just sounds incredible. When I first heard about it, the whole story just sounds like an amazing way for us to understand different cultures, but also get a different perspective on ourselves too. When you take yourself out of your comfort zone, as you’ve done many times, and obviously your Nepalese mum and dad have done. That idea of just getting a different perspective, that sounds like that’s what the book’s about, like really turning the world upside down and just seeing things anew.

Laura Maya: Yeah, that’s exactly it, because I think in some ways, I mean, the book is full of questions, really? The kind of questions that Aama would ask when we were traveling and most of the time, as you’ll see, when you read the book, I didn’t have answers to those questions.

Because there was everything from, ‘why is the supermarket floor cold?’ Well, I don’t know. I’ve never reached down to touch it. To ‘why are people so lonely in your culture’ and like, ‘ why did you set my food on fire on my birthday?’ These sorts of things that I’ve never stopped to ask myself those questions and it’s my culture. And I guess it was a real look at all of the things that you just take for granted.

Terri Connellan: And to capture and remember those moments, did you keep a journal at the time or were you capturing those moments as they happened?

Laura Maya: Yeah, I think that’s the reason why the book blew out at 280,000 words, because at the end of every day, I sat down with a voice recorder and I spoke when everyone else was asleep because the trip was exhausting. You can imagine translating between Nepalese and French all day, obviously neither of those are my first languages. And we were traveling, we were doing a lot of stuff. And so at the end of the day, everyone would collapse and I would get out my phone and I would spend an hour recounting the day to myself.

And then when I sat down to write, I basically did a transcription of what we’d done. So I ended up with this book that was just like, this happened and this happened, this happened, this happened. And then having to then distill that into something that people would actually want to read and would take them on a journey without boring them to tears. There were things in there that just wouldn’t be entertaining for people or inspiring for people or educational. So, that’s how I, I did it. I don’t know how I would do it differently next time, because it was good to have all of that data, but it was too much.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, that’s what I was just thinking, as you were speaking, it’s amazing that you did take the time to do that work and it’s almost like a field research isn’t it? And gathering the data, having the records because so much gets easily forgotten. So apart from the writing, it’s that whole note- taking, gathering of information as well on way through that’s the books obviously created through.

Laura Maya: Yeah, exactly.

Terri Connellan: Congratulations. That’s huge – so how many years in all?

Laura Maya: I started writing in December, 2014, so seven years. A big part of my life. It’s been great. I’ve learned more than I could have, if I’d done a university course in creative writing, I think, by doing it this way in some ways, but I’m excited that all of my other books I think will be easier after this because I’ll have a better idea going in.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. You learn so much writing a book about everything, I’ve found, the drafting, the editing, just knowing what the process is like means, you’re better prepared for next time.

Laura Maya: Absolutely. Hopefully. Yeah. We’ll see.

Terri Connellan: So you’ve also recently had your story, ‘The Truth About Quitting’ published as part of the brilliant kind press collection ‘This I Know is True‘ in 2021 so tell us about that story.

Laura Maya: Yeah. So that story relates to the book that I wrote. It’s the story of the non-profit organization that my husband and I started to prevent human trafficking in Nepal. It’s the story of starting that organization and then ultimately burning out and closing that organization down even though obviously human trafficking still exists in Nepal. So the ultimate goal that we set out to achieve there was never going to be really a way to achieve that and the nature of the work, yeah, I burnt out. And so it’s the story of giving ourselves permission to quit when we’re doing something that no matter how much we want it, we’re just not really able to continue whether it’s for mental health reasons or physical reasons or those sorts of things.

So I think in our culture, we have this belief, never give up, you have to see things through to the end and that’s true in some cases, but I also think that sometimes your personal finishing point might just come sooner than other people’s.

Terri Connellan: I love that. That’s what I love about your life and your work is that you take a really fresh perspective on things. And I think that, we do have this cultural bias towards perseverance and keep going no matter what. And sometimes that’s helpful, like writing a book, you definitely need tenacity and perseverance, but, there may be, you know, like your first book draft, I guess you had to learn to stop that and start again. And sometimes the wisdom is in knowing when to stop, when to pivot.

Laura Maya: Exactly. And knowing when to quit, I think it’s a skill. I quit over and over and over again, but like obviously writing the book, I have felt like quitting at many stages of the process, but it was important to me to keep going and I knew that I could. And so I’ve kept going. But with our non-profit organization, one of the most important things to me in my life but it came at the expense of my mental health. And so, you have to make a call and it’s not easy to do, but I think actually cultivating that skill of evaluating things and walking away when it doesn’t serve you or you’re not serving it anymore, I think is really important.

Terri Connellan: And is that something you share with clients too? That skill? Do you see that for clients?

Laura Maya: Yeah, I do, particularly because I work predominantly with multi-passionate people. who quite often come to me because they’re frustrated with themselves because they quit all the time. They leap from one thing to the other and, they feel like they don’t finish the things that they start. So it’s really drilling down on, okay, well, how important it is for you to finish this thing? Or are you only trying to finish this thing because you think that you should. Like you talk about in the book that these words that enslave you, like should.

Terri Connellan: And that abandoned success idea too, maybe it’s okay to walk away from something that’s successful too. Just because something’s going well, doesn’t mean you have to stay either. That’s something that comes up for me, with clients as well. that’s about looking at what serves you ultimately.

Laura Maya: Yeah, I guess that’s even harder, isn’t it? When you’re at the pinnacle of your career in something you’re actually really successful, but it’s just not giving you any joy. I do have one client like that at the moment, actually. She’s carved a name for herself in a particular industry and now wants to do something completely different and it’s hard to make that choice to walk away from the status and the money, it’s really tricky.

Terri Connellan: So one of the key themes in your life story is being a digital nomad and traveller and you’ve been living nomadically since 2001. You’ve lived, worked and traveled in 60 different countries and you’ve learned to speak four foreign languages, which is amazing, had dozens of career changes and held over 40 different jobs. So what do you love about being a digital nomad and what does it offer that other more conventional lifestyles might not?

Laura Maya: So I, yeah, freedom is just ultimate freedom. I think, because when I first started traveling, I was 21. Last year was my 20 year nomadiversary, but in the beginning, the internet wasn’t really a thing. I mean, we had emails and we would go into an internet cafe and check our emails for half an hour a day. But, we didn’t really have access to the internet, like we do now. So I would get jobs as I went along. I was a nanny in Spain and then I was a tax auditor in the Netherlands. A bar manager in Scotland, always moving around too. I was always changing jobs and there was always the stress around, like where was the next job and the next money coming from. Whereas now being a digital nomad. I have the freedom of taking my income with me.

So I’ve built up my business. I’ve got lots of different clients. I do lots of different things with them, as I mentioned earlier, and I can just take that income wherever I go. All I have to do is make sure that the work that I take on is not bound to a certain time. Like I don’t have to turn up every day at midday. I can just do it over the course of the 24 hours. And it means that I can work from anywhere that has internet access. So we lived in Tonga for four years and I ran my business from this beautiful little private island in the south Pacific. And I’ve worked from Paris and Santorini. I went to Greek school in Santorini for a while in Greece.

You just have that freedom to move around and go, okay, well, where are we going to live this week, obviously with COVID that has all been kiboshed, but up until then, that was the freedom. And even during COVID, my income, the way that I earn it, and I’ll be able to travel around and we’ve been able to house sit all over New South Wales and live in a bus. We’ve been living most of the last two years in a bus traveling around. So we have the freedom to keep our costs really low. And weather the pandemic perhaps more easily than others. I think a lot of people over these last couple of years, if you have a mortgage and expenses and things like that, it’s been incredibly stressful.

Terri Connellan: So it sounds an incredibly creative lifestyle too.

Laura Maya: Yeah. We’re kind of creating all the time. What’s next week gonna look like, where are we parking next week? Or where are we living next week? Yeah. And we’re heading back to Nepal in April and getting back onto the international road again.

Terri Connellan: So, do you think you need certain personality preferences to be able to live that way, or is it something anybody can do if they shift their mindset?

Laura Maya: Yeah, I think it definitely takes a shift of mindset because you have to live a very minimalist existence. So you need to not be very attached to stuff. Or if you are attached to stuff, it makes it very difficult to have that freedom to be able to move around. I don’t know that it would suit everybody. I think that if everybody lived like me, the economy would probably collapse. I don’t know that that’s a good idea, but I think that if anybody’s got that sort of curiosity or that desire for freedom, it’s definitely possible, but I don’t know that it is a lifestyle that would suit everybody. Or even a lot of people.

Terri Connellan: I haven’t asked about the challenges because I was more interested in the positives too. Cause most of us could probably think about the challenges, the lack of stability and the things that would throw people. But, it’s great to hear about the positives and what’s exciting about it.

Laura Maya: Different challenges. Yeah. Everyone’s got challenges in their lives. Mine are just different to everybody else’s.

Terri Connellan: So you also identify as a multipotentialite, and you’ve explored this in a fabulous post on your website, Are You A Multipotentialite, Scanner or Renaissance Soul? How did realising it’s okay, and in fact, amazing to be a multipotentalite impact your life?

Laura Maya: Yeah, prior to hearing that word, multipotentiality. I thought there was something really wrong with me. I thought that I was a quitter. I was a dilettante. I just jumped from one thing to the next, I couldn’t finish anything that I started. I was like, oh, I’ve just got shiny object syndrome. I had all these really negative words, Jack of all trades, which has bad connotations these days. So I thought it was a bad thing.

I thought that even though I was happy and I was enjoying my life that I was doing it wrong because the people around me seemed to have a more linear approach to life. They stuck with their careers for a bit longer than I did or with their jobs for a bit longer. They put down roots, they had homes, they had families, they had children. It felt like I didn’t know how to do any of that normal, ‘normal’ like in inverted comments stuff.

And then when I heard about multipotentiality, I’d realised that there were actually a lot of people out there that have like me, this insatiable curiosity, to just keep exploring and to experiment with lots of different careers and interests and hobbies and those kinds of things.

So, I think it just gave me permission to really just be myself and also to know, once I understood that this was actually a thing that my brain is wired this way, it makes me approach my new careers and interests and hobbies in a different way. I’m not jumping in now going, oh my gosh, I found this great thing. This is the thing I’m going to love forever. And then getting really disappointed when it turns out, but it’s not again. And I want to move on to something else.

I go into everything now, this is the thing that I’m excited about doing now, and let’s just see how it all goes. And there may be an end date and actually taking that pressure off, it sometimes means that it lasts longer than it probably would have before when I used to berate myself for getting bored with things too quickly. So I think it’s just helped me shift my mindset around the fact that it’s not a bad thing. It’s just who I am. It’s just how my brain works. And now I can work with it.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, that’s why I love personality work for similar reasons. There’s such strength in knowing how you’re wired, this is what’s your natural preference. Once you understand that it’s the self-acceptance just reframes your whole life. That’s what happened for me with understanding myself.

Laura Maya: So, yeah, I totally agree that. I mean the personality type things, I’m an ENFP on the Myers-Briggs and I’m a nine on the Enneagram and I love doing all those kinds of things and it does provide a framework that makes me not feel like the way I am is wrong. It gives you the tools to then go, okay, well, this is one of my quirks. How can I a) use that to my advantage and b) make sure it doesn’t get in my way.

Terri Connellan: That’s great. And I know of Barbara Sher’s work in this, I love her., this area started there. She was an influence for you. Are there any other particular influences?

Laura Maya: Massive, yeah. Barbara Sher. So I originally found Emilie Wapnick’s TED talk where she talks about multipotentiality. She’s the one who coined that term. So I saw that. And then I saw a lot of people in the comment section saying, you should read Barbara Sher’s book, Refuse to Choose. So I downloaded that and I cried through the whole first and second chapter.

Oh my gosh. It’s not just me. This is just describing who I am and that book has just become my Bible. And I use a lot of the tools and tricks in that. I think it might’ve been written in the eighties or nineties. It’s been around for a long time. She just passed away I think last year.

Terri Connellan: She did. I was doing some research on her a little while ago. I think it was last year she passed away.

Laura Maya: She was such a pioneer. She did such great work for people like us.

Terri Connellan: Again, it’s that reframing and somebody taking the time to wrap the book to articulate, you know, it’s okay to refuse to choose. It’s okay to say yes to lots of things and live the incredible life that you’re crafting and encouraging others to craft who have similar preferences.

Laura Maya: She did. If anybody is resonating with the way that I’m explaining multipotentiality, definitely read Refuse to Choose because she lays it out perfectly to give you the tips and tools to set up your life, to create your life in a way. And I’d been doing those things unconsciously, but, reading that book was really helpful.

Terri Connellan: So just to touch a little bit on that, in what ways can we limit ourselves and what tips would you give for people opening up and integrating life options?

Laura Maya: This is such a great question. This is looking at me personally. But I think one of the ways that I’ve limited myself and I see this in a lot of my particularly female clients and most, all my clients are female, is that we limit ourselves by what we think we’re qualified to do. So we won’t leap into something unless we feel like we have a certificate or a piece of paper that says that we know how to do what we’re doing, or we have X years of work experience that qualify us for that.

And I see this too in my work in hiring, one of my hats that I wear doing a lot of hiring for startups, Australian startups and high growth companies. And the women have a hard time putting themselves forward for jobs that they don’t necessarily feel like they hit all of the necessary criteria. Whereas the male counterparts might send through a CV when they’re not really qualified at all. And I know that I’ve done that like, oh, can I write a book if I haven’t got a Masters of Fine Arts or I haven’t done a course in creative writing. Yes, you can. I think, that’s definitely an issue.

And I think another way that we limit ourselves is with the beliefs and the stories that we tell ourselves about what we’re capable of. I know I’ve spent most of my life saying, oh, I’m not very sporty. Like I’ll only run if someone’s chasing me, like I’m not very graceful, like Bambi on ice, those have always been my stories. And just in the last couple of years, I’ve really been working on dismantling those stories. I took up running and I’ve started learning Kung Fu and maybe it wasn’t super sporty or graceful in the beginning, but with a bit of effort and determination, you can improve. And you don’t have to live with those stories that you’ve been telling yourself, just because you were always the kid that got picked last for teams in primary school.

Terri Connellan: I’m coming up against one of those stories at the minute. I mentioned a little bit in my book about me and story, like ‘I can’t do plot’. And my plan this year is to draft a novel. So, it immediately rears up: ‘ You don’t understand plot.’ ‘You don’t know this’, so it’s fascinating how we limit ourselves with those. Like who says?

Laura Maya: Exactly. And that’s definitely something that can be taught. There are some things you need qualifications for, you’re a surgeon or even coaching. I think that’s a great thing to get qualifications for because you’re working with humans. But I mean, you can do a course in learning how to plot or you can just, what did they say? If you can pants, what are the two?

Terri Connellan: Pantsers and plotters.

Laura Maya: Do it and then give it to someone for feedback. And they’ll say, you could’ve done that better. Or put this there or whatever. And you can learn just by doing it.

Terri Connellan: Exactly. And in early conversation about writing books, learning how not to write the next one is all part of that opening things up and having a go. Yeah. So, I loved a recent posts you popped up on Instagram that you’re aiming to fail this year. I loved that and it was so refreshing to read that because everyone’s going and I’m going to do this and I’m going to do that. And then you pop in and say, well, I’m aiming to fail this year. That’s amazing, especially with all the uncertainty around. That’s part of what you’re talking about. So what does that mean for you and why is it important this year?

Laura Maya: I guess it’s two things. The first part of it is that what’s coming for me this year, which is that the book is going to be released. And, I’m very comfortable in my writing cave, just tapping away on my own, writing stuff, but I’m not comfortable with the promotion and the marketing and media interviews like this. You and I have some rapport, we know each other so it’s easier for me to do this with you today. But thinking about being interviewed on radio or things like that, make me really nervous. So, I guess aiming to fail means putting myself into positions where there’s a big chance that I’m will stuff it up.

And I’ll make a fool of myself, but just putting myself in that position anyway and going, okay. Well, if I failed and I’ve hit my target, I’m pushing myself to do things that, that make me really uncomfortable. So that’s sort of aiming to fail. But then also on the other side, it’s really just living my life this year without obviously because of the pandemic organizing my book launch, even though I know that it might get shut down because of COVID at the last minute. I’ve thought to myself, should I have a book launch? Maybe I shouldn’t because of everything that’s going on.

And then I thought, well, I’m just going to do it. If it all falls apart at the last minute, it all falls apart. If it fails, it fails and booking our flights to Nepal, that probably sounds a bit crazy. Why would we go to Nepal in the middle of the pandemic? But if the flights get canceled or things go wrong or whatever. Okay. Well just going to have a crack this year and if I fail, I fail. That’s really what it’s all about.

Terri Connellan: I love that. Your word freedom. It sounds very freeing, it frees you up to do the things that you want to do without feeling that it has to go down a certain path. If it goes down another path, then that’s okay. I love that. You’ve inspired me. So I’m taking that on board too.

Laura Maya: Aim to fail to craft a beautiful plot this year, Terri!

Terri Connellan: I will. I think it’s great. We talk about different definitions of success, but it’s still really easy to say I’m going to draft this 80,000 word and it’s going to look like this, but we just got to take ourselves through the process.

Laura Maya: And be kind to ourselves. Absolutely.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. So two questions I’m asking guests on the podcast and they’re fairly big questions, but interesting just to see what pops up for people. So how have you created your story over your lifetime?

Laura Maya: Yeah. This is like a really interesting question. I think one way I create my story, I’ve consciously created every aspect of my life. Because we’re changing so much, there’s no such thing as getting stuck in a rut really for my husband and I, because we change and move on and move to different countries or change our jobs and things so quickly.

So, I feel like a consciously create my life and my story through that way, but coming back to what we were talking about before, I think part of me is constantly trying to dismantle the stories that I’ve created for myself as well, it’s been a big thing for me lately. I think since I turned 40, I know that you follow a lot of Brene Brown’s work as well, and there was this great post that she wrote about the great unraveling when you turn 40. And it’s really since I’ve turned 40 suddenly trying to put myself into all of these situations and positions that the story of who I am would normally not feel comfortable doing.

So, yeah, I feel like I consciously create my story, but now I’m just kind of trying to break it down and stretch it and see how far I can go.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, I just love in everything you do, your writing, your story, being comfortable playing with change almost. It’s not even being comfortable with changes. Sometimes it’s the discomfort of change, riffing with change.

Laura Maya: Riffing with change. I love that. Yes. I love that. And it’s not comfortable. Change still isn’t comfortable for me, even at the position that I’m in. I think that’s the thing that I love to be able to tell my coaching clients is that even after you’ve been through as many transitions as I have, it’s still hard. It’s still uncomfortable. It can be painful. Feeling that discomfort with change, that’s totally normal. Even for somebody as accomplished at being a beginner as I am.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. I love that. I think again, it’s about expectations. Sometimes we expect ourselves to be or do something we’re not, which is be totally comfortable with change. Change in its very nature’s moving out of one comfort zone into another.

Laura Maya: It’s always going to be hard. Even though I make the decision to travel and to live this kind of transient life, I’m always anxious right up until it happens. I always cry when it happens. It always feels like the end of the world. And then I do it anyway. I just cycle through that process faster than most, but it’s always hard.

Terri Connellan: Hmm. That’s interesting. So as you’d know, from reading Wholehearted, I share my top 15 wholehearted self-leadership tips and practices. So I’m interested in, to add to that body of work, what your top wholehearted self-leadership tips and practices are especially for women.

Laura Maya: I think and you certainly touched on this in the book, for me, it’s following your own light. There’s lights that light the path in every possible direction. And certainly I think in our society we’re given some really clear runway lights of like where our life is supposed to go. And it’s just being able to really look inside and go, where is my light and following that because I work with clients who are looking for maybe a slightly unconventional life or off the beaten track. And it’s detaching yourself from what you think you’re supposed to do and what others expect you to do and what you think society expects you to do. And just following your own light.

Terri Connellan: I love that. Yeah, it’s true. Certainly myself too, working with clients, you often hear, how a parents light of you should take this path has impacted somebody else’s life when they’ve maybe started off on a track that perhaps would not have been their own choosing. It was just part of societal or familial expectations, or what the family has always done or what’s considered to be a good thing. So yeah. I love that, that idea of following your own light and what lights you up. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, I love that and it’s not being afraid to be unconventional.

Laura Maya: Yeah, exactly. It’s okay to live a life that other people don’t understand. It’s just having the courage to take that first step sometimes is the hardest.

Terri Connellan: Beautiful. And I hope our conversation today encourages many people who maybe feel that that’s part of what they’re doing or part of what they’ve been looking for in life that living that unconventional life, following their own light is a really positive way to go.

So thanks for sharing your insights today. It’s been a great joy to chat. Where can people find out more about you and your work online?

Laura Maya: I’m at lauramaya.com and @lauramayawrites on Instagram and Facebook and probably soon Twitter, but I haven’t sorted that out yet, but I’m told that writers need to be on Twitter. Are you on Twitter?

Terri Connellan: I am. Yeah. There are a lot of writers on Twitter.

Laura Maya: Yeah. So I need to jump on that horse. Holding off, but yeah, potentially Twitter by the time this is released.

Terri Connellan: It’s a good way to research too on Twitter.

Laura Maya: Yeah. I think it’s a good way to share other writers’ work as well, too, and be part of that community and support each other.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. Cool. Well, encourage people listening to check out your work, to buy your book, Tell Them My Name out on the 1st of February, so by the time this is released, it will be out in the world. So we’ll pop the links in the show notes and, yeah, thanks again for our beautiful conversation today. It was really lovely.

Laura Maya: Thank you so much, Terri, for inviting me here to have this chat, it’s been really beautiful chatting with you today.

About Laura Maya

Laura Maya is a writer, coach and culturally curious ‘digital nomad’ who has spent over twenty years wandering slowly through 59 countries. Laura is the author of Tell Them My Name (2022, the kind press) and she runs an online business offering professional matchmaking, project management and coaching programs that help women step into the life they want (even if it’s a life other people may not understand.) Laura has spent the pandemic years living in a converted school bus in Australia but usually bounces between Oz, France, Nepal and Tonga and tries to explore everywhere in between.

You can connect with Laura:

Website: https://lauramaya.com/

Instagram: @lauramayawrites

Terri’s links to explore:

My books:

Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition

Wholehearted Companion Workbook

Free resources:

Chapter 1 of Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition

https://www.quietwriting.net/wholehearted-chapter-1

Other free resources: https://www.quietwriting.com/free-resources/

My coaching & writing programs:

Work with me

The Writing Road Trip – community writing program with Beth Cregan email list

Connect on social media

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/writingquietly/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/writingquietly

Twitter: https://twitter.com/writingquietly

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/terri-connellan/