Last week, I found myself having a conversation that has stayed with me.
I was at the ISPCAN International Congress here in Melbourne with Louie, where we spent three days working alongside the Australian Childhood Foundation. Louie was there as the conference therapy dog, and we were also facilitating morning breathwork sessions, which meant that over the course of the event we had the opportunity to meet so many people from around Australia and around the world who are doing incredibly important work to prevent child abuse and neglect and improve the lives of children.
At some point during a conversation with one of the team members, we started talking about all the different things I do. I’ve had quite a few careers over the years, and I’ve become pretty comfortable with the costume changes that come with them. There have been businesses I’ve built, things I’ve created, people I’ve coached, stages I’ve stood on, rooms I’ve facilitated and completely different industries I’ve found myself working in. From the outside, some of those things might not seem to have much in common at all.
Then he asked me a question I hadn’t really considered before.
“Is there a consistent thread through all of them?”
My answer came almost immediately.
Everything I’ve ever done has been an act of service.
I’ve been thinking about that ever since, because perhaps the different things I do aren’t actually that different after all.
For me, service has never necessarily meant doing something in a traditional caring profession or dedicating my life to one particular cause. It has been much broader than that. I’ve always found a way to use whatever skills, experiences, opportunities or resources I have at the time to contribute something to someone else’s life.
Sometimes that has looked like building a business and creating opportunities for other people. Sometimes it has looked like sitting across from someone who needs a safe place to work through something. Sometimes it has been sharing my own story in the hope that someone else feels less alone in theirs. Sometimes it is creating a room where people can pause, breathe and reconnect with themselves, and sometimes it is simply standing on a stage, holding a microphone and helping a room full of people feel welcome and connected.
The costume changes, but perhaps the purpose underneath them hasn’t changed nearly as much as I thought it had.
And what struck me even more last week was how many of the people I was surrounded by were also living lives of service.
The work being done at ISPCAN is a pretty extraordinary example of this. I spent three days surrounded by people whose professional lives are dedicated to protecting children, supporting families, researching better ways of doing things and creating change. They had travelled from different countries, worked in different professions and brought very different experiences with them, but there was a common desire to make things better for someone else.
My role there was very different from theirs, but I recognised something familiar in the reason they were there.
They cared.
A few days later I found myself on a plane back to the Gold Coast to MC the Gold Coast Women’s Health and Wellness Expo, and once again I was surrounded by people who had built their work around helping, supporting, educating and connecting with others.
Two completely different events, in two different places, with very different purposes, and yet I found myself having the same experience.
I was surrounded by people who were contributing something.
It made me realise that perhaps this is one of the reasons I so often feel at home in these spaces. I am drawn to people who are doing things because they believe they can make a difference, whether that difference is big and systemic or small and deeply personal.
And I think that is what service means to me.
It doesn’t mean giving everything you have away or constantly putting everyone else before yourself. I don’t believe service should require self-sacrifice to the point of exhaustion, and I certainly don’t think you need to abandon ambition, success, money or a life you love in order to be of service.
In fact, I think we can build successful businesses, have fulfilling careers, create beautiful lives and still be deeply committed to contributing to the lives of others.
Service can be part of how we work, but it can also be part of how we live.
The older I get, the more I find myself thinking about what actually matters to me and how I want to be remembered – my legacy. Not necessarily in terms of a list of achievements, but in terms of the experience people had because I was there.
Maybe that’s what legacy really is.
Not necessarily the things we build or the titles we collect, but the impact we have on the people and communities we move through. The conversations we have, the opportunities we create, the courage we encourage in someone else, the moments where we show up when it matters and the ways we use what we’ve learned to make someone else’s path a little easier.
That conversation last week made me realise that I’ve probably been following the same thread for a very long time. I just hadn’t stopped to look at it.
And perhaps that’s something worth doing for all of us.
When we look back across the different versions of ourselves, the jobs we’ve had, the things we’ve created, the relationships we’ve built, the causes we’ve cared about and the moments where we’ve felt most like ourselves, is there a common thread running through it all?
Maybe it isn’t immediately obvious. Maybe, like me, you’ve had plenty of costume changes along the way and assumed each new version of you was something completely different.
But perhaps there is something underneath it all that has remained remarkably consistent.
And when all the costume changes are over, what is the thread we hope people remember?
For me, I think I’ve finally found the words for mine.
Service has been the thread running through it all.
And perhaps knowing that means I don’t need to worry quite so much about what the next costume looks like.
