Soul Compass

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Soul Compass

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Career & Life Coach, Counsellor. Rebel with a cause. 7300 words. Hilariously, that’s how long my first version of this profile was. Ta da! Truly. I wasn’t.

I set myself a challenge to squash it into a three sentence summary. Aspiring teenage musician has existential crisis after controlling grandmother tells devastating lie which leads to decades of enmeshment, bullying and making bad choices with men. Survives near death experience in childbirth, autoimmune disease & the hiding of authentic self while becoming serial career changer & doing well paid, prestigious roles purely for money & because of lack of sound decision making processes, lack of self awareness & lack of direction. Hits thirty & finally feels deserving of doing something for self, so trains in polarity therapy & counselling then becomes a specialist career and life coach helping people work out what to be when they grow up (all while dabbling in piano, stand-up comedy & quantum theory.) There’s obviously a ton of detail missing but the message is I have lived a life. And learned a lot from every experience. Even the car accident, even the failed marriages, even the workplace bullying. That lived experience makes me an excellent, intuitive, straight shooting coach for anyone who wants to make great choices by understanding what it is that lights you up. We take quite a trip together, a journey inward to discover internal drivers rather than finding external things to direct you. Once we reassess your career and life situation, we work out how to reinvent you & your personal brand to align with your new direction. Then you can re-imagine your whole life … so dream big! Of course, I could just write you a resume. But then you never get to work out the great stuff. Like what or who you’re saying yes to that you would rather not. What or who you’re saying no to that you deeply regret not pursuing. And what the risk is of having all you desire. Coaches are a dime a dozen so it’s important you find the right one. I’m a good fit for anyone prepared to do the work and commit to change & growth—corporates, mothers looking to recreate careers, top execs who want something more meaningful. And I’m a specialist transition coach for personnel leaving the defence force. Are you willing to die with your music still in you? Being smart is one thing. But without the integration of knowledge of your heart, you know nothing. Emotional intelligence is Queen. Faith in life, forgiveness, trust, compassion are all you need to start to return to you. If you want to talk about better processes for choosing your career & life, I’d love to connect.

05/11/2026

Here is the part of the report I could not get past.

Across the life of the survey, the wage premium a degree delivers over finishing at Year 12 has fallen by 20 to 25 percentage points for women. For men it fell 7 to 11.

Now look at why. Women who finished at Year 12 went from $1,110 a week to $1,560. Women with degrees went from $1,670 to $1,860.

The floor came up a long way. The ceiling barely moved.

So the system got better at paying women without degrees a bit more. It did not get better at letting qualified women rise.

If you did the degree because you were told education was the way through, you were not wrong. Hello Uni, the HECS debt and all those nights at the kitchen table. You were just never told the premium would be quietly handed back while you were busy using it.

The full write-up is here, and it is free: https://www.soulcompass.life/blog-the-invitation/hilda-2026-women

03/11/2026

The 2026 HILDA report landed and the whole country had the same conversation. We are all overqualified for the jobs we are doing. One in two working Australians feel it.

True. Also not the story.

Women turn up in six of the ten chapters. As a declining health line. As 87% of single parents. As the group whose degree stopped paying what it used to. As the most overeducated cohort in the country.

And here is what nobody said out loud. That is not six different women. It is one woman, in one body, carrying all of it across a lifespan, often at the same time.

So I went a little nuts with the pen and paper, and tadah, about 6,500 words. Twenty-four years of evidence, read as one woman's life. It is quite a read, so grab a cuppa.

Australia’s longest-running household survey tracks 17,000 people over 24 years. It has no questions about menopause, and one tick box about violence. A career practitioner’s analysis of the 2026 HILDA report through a women’s lens.

31/10/2026

You're not asking for too much. You're asking without the discount you've been trained to apply.

The gender pay gap is real and it's measurable. The belief that you should quietly accept your share of it is neither.

Most of us learned early that asking for more was greedy, pushy or 'a bit much'. So we round down. We ask for what we think won't cause a fuss, then wonder why the bloke two desks over earns more for the same job.

Before your next review or interview, find out what the role actually pays. Not what you think you could get away with asking for. What it pays.

29/10/2026

We are not who we once were at the 90s dance party - we are so much more.

Except now it starts at 4pm and you're home by 10. You can still groove with the best of them - you just do it on your own terms.

Different capacity. Different needs. Different values. A different outlook, earned the hard way.

Here's the bit that gets lost though: it's easy to read this as a decline story. As if you're the same woman, just slower and more tired now.

You're not. Somewhere in the years you might've called 'inconsistent' - the career breaks, the parts that felt like standing still - you built something real. Judgement. Range. The kind of instinct for people and problems no early-career version of you had.

That's career capital. It counts, whether you built it in a boardroom or a school pickup line.

Tag a woman carrying more capital than she gives herself credit for.

If this hit home, Embracing The Messy Midlife ($77) is a good place to start naming what's actually going on.

www.soulcompass.life/embracing-the-messy-midlife

29/10/2026

Maybe you got the thing you were told to want. The title, the money, the desk by the window.

Maybe all of that was success for you once, and you've completed that mission. Like getting to the end of Space Invaders, at some point there's nothing left to shoot at.

Perhaps it's time for closure on that chapter, and to redefine your future around a different version of success. One that takes into account your values, your capacity, the people, the place and the woman you are now.

Full blog: https://www.soulcompass.life/blog-the-invitation/i-hate-my-job-but-which-bit

28/10/2026

Career success, as advertised:
Corner office. Sharp blazer. Six figures. Effortless. Has it all.

Career success, as lived by most women I know:
Took the part-time role because childcare. Turned down the promotion because the hours didn't work. Rewrote the résumé three times. Still asked to 'show more leadership'. Doing the after-dinner laptop shift while everyone else watches telly.

The glossy version isn't a lie. It's just a very small slice of the truth, sold as the whole pie.

Sometimes a better résumé is the answer. More often the conversation is messier, more honest and a lot more interesting than the ad makes out. That's the conversation I'm here for.

26/10/2026

Nobody handed you a map for this. So we're drawing one together.

The chart's unwritten. That's not a problem to fix. That's exactly the point.

IMRAMA is twelve weeks of plotting your own course. Open enrolment, start when you're ready.

www.soulcompass.life/imrama-1

26/10/2026

You can be grateful for a job and still want a different one.

From a young age we're told to be grateful. Grateful to have a job at all, despite the injustices and, you know, having b***s. Some of that comes down the generations, from women who were told to stay home and 'just' be a housewife and mother.

So we take what we're given and don't make a fuss.

Here's the other side of it. Some women would love more time at home but can't afford the pay cut or the loss of career capital. Others would love more work and more money and can't get either. Both are allowed. What isn't helpful is judging women for the choices they make inside a system that gives them so few good ones.

Gratitude is not a life sentence. Wanting something different is not ingratitude. It's information.

24/10/2026

In my experience, the old line holds true: most people don't leave jobs, they leave managers.

One bad manager can make a good job unbearable, and one great colleague can make a mediocre job survivable. Knowing who is who in the zoo matters more than most career advice admits.

That's not an indictment of you. Neither is a shift in your values, expectations, needs or wants.

What I usually see in midlife women is a real mix of these turning up at once. We've been so busy 'performing' life the way we thought it should be done that by midlife it just isn't sustainable. It often becomes a health hazard in a fancy suit called 'career'.

Full blog: https://www.soulcompass.life/blog-the-invitation/i-hate-my-job-but-which-bit

24/10/2026

The most qualified generation of Australian women there has ever been.

57% of women born in the 1980s hold a university degree. For the men the same age it is 42%. We did exactly what we were told to do.

And the wage premium that degree delivers has fallen 20 to 25 percentage points for women across the life of the HILDA survey. For men it fell 7 to 11.

Not because graduate women went backwards. Women who finished at Year 12 went from $1,110 a week to $1,560. Women with degrees went from $1,670 to $1,860.

The floor came up a long way. The ceiling barely moved.

The glass ceiling is not a metaphor in this dataset. It is a number that has hardly shifted since 2001.

And it does not loosen with time. 56.5% of women aged 18 to 24 are overeducated for the job they are in, the worst affected group in the country. Of everyone reporting overeducation, 64.7% are still reporting it four years later.

I have written a full response to HILDA 2026 - every chapter she appears in, read as one life rather than six separate findings.

It is in this month's Red Thread, landing tomorrow. Comment HILDA and I'll send you the sign-up link.

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