Five years ago, in the middle of Melbourne’s COVID lockdown, I heard the words: “You have Stage 3 melanoma, and it’s aggressive.”

At the time, I didn’t know whether I would make it to this five-year milestone.

Now I’m here. And I want to stop and acknowledge it.

This is a very personal episode of Leading You about what these five years have really looked like: surgery, treatment, scans, side effects, hospital stays, fatigue and an enormous amount of waiting.

But there has also been so much life.

I’ve worked. Travelled within Australia. Spoken on stages. Written a book. Hosted this podcast. Laughed a lot. And some of these past five years have been among the best years of my life.

One of the biggest things I’ve learnt is this:

You don’t need a crisis to change how you live.

In this episode, I explore:

• Reaching the five-year milestone after my Stage 3 melanoma diagnosis
• Why I’m choosing to celebrate rather than immediately move the goalposts
• How serious illness changed my relationship with waiting
• Why resilience is often much more ordinary than we imagine
• Letting go of who I was before cancer and creating a life I love now
• Who gets the best of our energy, and who gets the leftovers
• Three questions to help you think differently about your next five years
• What self-leadership looks like when so much is outside your control

I’m not going to pretend cancer suddenly made me enlightened. I still worry. I still work too much sometimes. I still get annoyed by things that don’t matter.

But I understand time differently now.

So I’ll leave you with one of the questions I ask in this episode:

If the next five years went incredibly quickly, what would you be disappointed you hadn’t done?

You don’t need something dramatic to happen before you build a life you genuinely want to be living.

Don’t wait for the crisis to give yourself permission.

Timestamps

00:00 Welcome to Leading You
00:23 Five Years Since Diagnosis
02:42 Googling Prognosis and Resolve
04:04 Living With Ongoing Treatment
06:04 Hope and Celebrating Milestones
09:58 Stop Waiting to Live
13:09 You Are Stronger Than You Think
14:58 Lead Her Collective Invitation
15:54 Three Questions for Your Life
20:32 Choose How You Lead Yourself
22:09 Gratitude and Final Goodbye