The simple tools for changing your life for good
What if you were told it only takes just ten minutes to make real, lasting, significant change in your life?
In Torquay author Rosanne Michie’s latest book ‘Change Your Life in 10 Minutes’ from Brolga Publishing, she sets out to show the proof is in the pudding.
Using scientific evidence and her own personal experiences and struggles, Rosanne provides tips and tricks you can use to get on the path towards positive change in under ten minutes.
The book features chapters and personal reflections on kindness, compassion, connection, breathwork, environment, nourishment, weight management, movement and ageing.
Rosanne says writing the book helped make sense of her own emotional face plants, and the lessons which resulted in simple techniques to move in the right direction whatever the task may be.
The idea for ‘Change Your Life in 10 Minutes’ all started with her “flapping her arms around” in the waters of Fishermans Beach in Torquay.
“I’m not a great swimmer but I’d signed up to do one around Lord Howe Island a few years back.
“I wasn’t good enough for the local swimming group, so I joined the Wednesday Open Waders group.
“I rocked up at the crack of dawn, terrified, walking into what felt like baby vomit up to my neck, and I thought I better start practicing my swimming.
“I joined some other swimmers, hacked to the buoys out the back and was just cursing myself and was so angry.
“Huffing and puffing, I turned back towards land and the sun began to rise and I just found that the tide had turned.
“It was like this magic, and I had this epiphany you could change your life in just ten minutes.
“Everything that had previously seemed so difficult went out the window and I felt like the tide was on my side.
“That’s where the ten-minute concept was born.”
Rosanne is a former newspaper columnist for the Sunday Herald Sun and has spent several years of her post-corporate journalistic career as a consultant specialising in change.
She is both a mother and stepmother to children with special needs and is also an avid sports nut.
“While we are stuck and wanting things to improve, if we just move a tiny little inch, we are in a completely different place.
“Ten minutes is scientifically a really good period to commit yourself to getting something started.
“Once you get started then it’s just the repetition and doing it a little bit more inch by inch.
“These hundreds and hundreds of hacks to do ten minutes are those things which have the propensity to move the dial one degree to inch forward.”
Rosanne begins each chapter of the book with her own reflection and life-changing experience on each topic.
Some are on a lighter note and some much deeper and emotional, including her recount of grief associated with her father passing away in her chapter on resilience.
However, appropriately, she says writing the first chapter about water was one of her favourites.
“Water has an incredible power to spark change.
“The chapter starts with the anecdote of me standing on the shore at Fishermans Beach petrified of what’s to come.
“It then goes into the powerful healing aspects of water and the ocean and the millions of ways you can use it in ten minutes to support you.
“I’m a living example of how water can change your life.
“It might be a water view; it might be breathing and grounding exercises without shoes on.
“We are all about the water here in Torquay too, so appropriately it’s why the book starts with that moment at Fishermans Beach for me.”
While the book centralises around the concept of doing something for ten minutes, Rosanne says starting with even one minute can be life-changing.
“If ten minutes is too long to go swimming in the depths of winter, go in for one minute.
“You can play with your resistance and do a deal and just do one minute, but ultimately most times, you’re going to keep doing it after.
“It’s exactly how I wrote this book, by just inching through it.
“When it was hard, which it frequently was, I wrote it in ten-minute increments.
“Four hours later, I’d be super into it, so I guess I’ve tried to walk the walk with my own concept.”
Rosanne says the book is for absolutely everybody, no matter their experience, age or background.
“Accessibility is the biggest thing with the book, everyone can find something in it.
“You don’t have to have a lot of money or any money, it’s just about having the intent to change something up.
“I really wanted to make a book which ultimately gives people the opportunity to help themselves without signing up to an expensive gym or having lots of friends.
“All you need to start is just a bit of a dream, goal or intent to do something differently to the way you’ve done it in the past.”
Change Your Life in Ten Minutes will be launched at Four Pines Brewery in Torquay on September 14.
For more details and to preorder the book, head to changeyourlifein10minutes.com/