12: Michelle Rowan - Optimizing Your Courage to Reinvent Your Life

The Life:Optimised Show

What would it be like if you had a comfortable job in the bustling city of Sydney, Australia, surrounded by loving family and friends, and decided to one day - almost for no apparent reason - pack your bags and move to India indefinitely? That's pretty much what my good friend, Michelle Rowan, did when she went from being a successful product manager to a digital nomad, travelling across the vastly diverse and extremely confronting social, cultural and political landscapes of India. You might be thinking, "Aah well I've heard plenty of stories from the hippy trail." except that Mishy isn't a hippy, and this story isn't from the 60s. It's as recent as less than 2 years ago. So why then? Well, as Mishy herself explains in this episode, staying put and not growing as a person was even more frightening than venturing into a vast unknown to try and understand herself better, and then reinvent herself almost completely. Mishy and I share a fascinating conversation about optimizing your personal leadership and life by shaking yourself out of your comfort zone, and she dishes out golden nugget after nugget of wisdom that is relevant and applicable to everyone, whether you're planning to escape to a mountain monastery in Dharamsala, or happy to optimize your life right where you are. --- Mishy Rowan is a Sydney born artist currently residing in India and her mission is simple: to spread as much sunshine to as many people as possible through creative expression and random acts of kindness. As such, each painting aims to share a little bit of what yogi’s call ‘prana’ – life force. Her prana-packed colourful paintings fuse traditional watercolour techniques with stream of consciousness illustration. Mishy, a student of anthropology, is endlessly fascinated with ‘the details’ and approaches art (and life) with infinite child-like curiosity. Mishy developed this intuitive and meditative technique out of a desire to surround herself with colour after being stung by a poisonous caterpillar in India (true story) resulting in emergency surgery. Whilst hooked up to an IV of antibiotics for two months and in what she calls “I can see through time” pain Mishy embraced the opportunity to focus on her creative side, painting every day until what was in her mind appeared on the paper in front of her, intuitively using colour therapy to support the healing process. Like a rickshaw driver in Delhi’s peak hour traffic, Mishy moves from one stroke to the next, from moment to moment, focusing solely on the present movement to ultimately reveal a myriad of characters that lie within each painting, mirroring the chaotic and messy duality of existence, yet (much like Delhi traffic) finding harmony and balance, looking beyond ‘Maya’, the chaos, the illusion to unveil hidden treasures. This style, a mix of watercolour and ink, influenced by street art, Jean Miró, Michael Leunig, Ken Done and Mirka Mora amongst others, enables Mishy to continue her nomadic lifestyle with the freedom to create anywhere and everywhere – from the foothills of the Himalayas to the café’s of Bondi, keeping creation social and public, harnessing the opportunity to inspire people to unlock their creativity and pursue their biggest dreams with the knowledge that (as they say in India) ‘everything is possible’. With a background in digital media, Mishy also creates digital delights from artworks to interactive e-books. --- You can check out Mishy's blog and see her amazingly unique artwork at http://talesandfails.wordpress.com. You can also purchase Mishy's art in various forms at http://society6.com/Talesandfails. Other Resources Your Best Year Yet! by Jinny S. Ditzler http://amzn.to/1pHMnUC Mastery by Robert Greene http://amzn.to/1pHMzDk Mastery by George Leonard http://amzn.to/1pHMGP8