Meeting With Julie Bishop - A Goal 5 Years In The Making..

On 14th June 2018 I achieved a big goal 5 years in the making. ❤️ When I first started this Travel Safety Campaign I had a dream to take it all the way to the top, so I couldn’t be more proud to sit beside my Mum as that dream came true - with the huge honour of a personal meeting with the Hon. Julie Bishop and chance to chat with her about all the work we’re doing in honour of Nicole.

Click below to watch a quick video the Minister and I filmed together (which involves some fun with insta-filters too 😂):

This whole campaign began with just me, on my laptop, in my bedroom back in March 2013. I sent out 100s of emails to school’s requesting the opportunity to speak with their students, to which I would say about 90% fall on deaf ears and were ignored – and when I first reached out to work together with Smartraveller, they didn't immediately jump on board like I had hoped (understandably in hindsight!). 

But of course when I faced all this rejection my brain wanted to freak out and tell me ‘this is
too hard, it’s taking too long, no one cares, I should just give up!' 

But when that temptation crept in, I reminded myself "Kate, you have a choice here" -

so rather than make their rejection mean that what I was doing wasn't valuable, instead I chose to use it as motivation to put my head down and show them it’s worth and the power of what I was doing.

This meant forgoing short term gratification for the chance of long term success and achievement.

I kept showing up and putting myself out there even when no one was recognizing my efforts, and I wasn’t resentful of that because I accepted that:

I was not entitled to success or recognition that I hadn’t yet earned – and that day by day I was growing into someone who was.

I kept choosing to believe every no was getting closer to my next yes –

because in reality that’s the truth. And then guess what?

2 years to the day, on the anniversary of losing Nicole, I received an email from Smartraveller asking to schedule a call together.

It was two year's of 'no' before I got my 'yes'. 

And another three years of persevering through to this moment of personally meeting with the Foreign Minister.

That's five years of work in the making.

Five years.

Most of us don't want to wait five minutes for things to happen for us.

And hey I'm not here to lecture you; I know I still have areas of my life to work on where impatience gets the better of me.

But what I do want to say is although it's been a turbulent path to get where I am today, I wouldn’t change a thing.

Because I wouldn’t be half as brave, or creative or wise as I am now without all the things I've learned, skills I've gained and people I've gotten to meet through having to navigate all of these obstacles.

I know this sounds cheesy but think about something where you’ve faced some setbacks along the way; maybe you’ve heard no from the first 5 job interviews or you missed out on an audition or you had to study twice as hard compared to the subjects you find easier..

When you did end up reaching that goal, isn’t
it so much more meaningful when you’ve had to dig deep for it than if you’d simply been able to glide to the top?

Because you are forced to learn and experience things that helps grow your the courage to take that next step further or help someone else who’s now struggling with what you’ve been through – and so often in time you’ll look back and see that what was appeared to be in the way was actually a part of the way you’ve been able get to closer to where you want to go and the kind of person you want to be.

Even if you can’t see that in this moment, doesn’t mean you never will.

Resilience comes through overcoming difficulties; you can't hide away from hard things and expect to become stronger. We actually need adversity in our lives to grow our skills at coping with it.

So as you see my face smiling next to the wonderful Julie Bishop, I hope it inspires you to set your own big goal;

one that requires you hearing lots of 'no's,

lots of 'are you sure you're really going to make it?',

lots of uncertainty;

because that's how you learn how become someone who knows how to handle failure.

And that is the greatest skill you can develop. 

Because no one makes it all the way to the top, without being ridiculed or rejected along the way.

That I know for sure.