Shellie – recharging the Energizer bunny :)

Shellie is a superstar – an incredible human who brings laughter and fun to everywhere she is. We have always admired her and even more after watching her learn to take care of herself fully over the last year and becoming an advocate for true self care. Here’s to recharging batteries! Questions by Caitlin

You have travelled to some interesting and stunning places. Tell us more about some of your favourite destinations and where to next!

Choosing my favourite destination is a hard one! I am definitely going back to Egypt because it’s an amazing country and I didn’t get to see all of it, but I really loved the tiny town of Chefchaouen in Morocco. It’s a beautiful town with lovely people and the 6 hour bus trip from Casablanca to Chefchaouen is a chance to see the countryside fly by!  The next big trip I’m planning is a long one covering South Korea and Japan.

Until recently, you were balancing a full time office job and coaching group boxing sessions. That requires some serious commitment! What makes you passionate about coaching?

Coaching was definitely one of my happy places, despite the very early mornings! One of my favourite things about coaching was creating programs that people loved to hate! 😊 I loved getting to know the clients – what exercises they loved/dreaded, and what kind of formats they responded to.

You’ve recently been on a journey of self-care – can you tell us more about what you’ve learned and what changes you’ve made as a result

I’ll try and be as concise as possible with this one, but there’s so much to it! The most important thing I’ve learned – that I thought I already knew, but didn’t – is that checking in with your health (mental and physical) needs to be part of your daily routine regardless of how good you feel. It’s shockingly easy when there’s a lot going on in life to slip down from feeling great and on top of everything, to being unable to handle anything. I jot down (in my awesome wellbeing battery journal! plug!) what my battery level is each day, how much water I drank and how many steps I did. This gives me a clear picture of what is happening in my day, and I can see when I need to slow down to recover from work or physical stress – or when I can push myself more. I started doing this in May last year when my battery was in the red every day, and I still do it every day now that I’m green most days! It’s actually what keeps my battery more full – without knowing where I am today, I can’t make decisions that are beneficial to my tomorrow.

The biggest mental hurdle though, was making peace with resting and going back to basics. Accepting that some days all I can do is go for a long walk, and knowing that other days I can complete a 45 min hiit sesh. The word ‘balance’ gets thrown around a lot, but it absolutely is the key, and listening to my body and my mind about what I really need that day is the biggest change I’ve made 🙂