How Dogs and Following your Heart Can Save your Bacon
Contributed by Sarah L.
The first time Astrid Mueller took a leap of faith was when she lived on Kodiak Island and decided to divorce her husband. She felt her marriage did not align with her anymore. She was scared though. Astrid had been lucky during her marriage. Her husband had taken care of their main expenses while she built her coaching business.
If she left, what would she do to survive? How would she make an income? Despite the unknown, staying in a marriage she had outgrown seemed far worse than taking the leap to follow her heart. So, she did what she always does when big questions are swirling around in her head, she went for a walk.
It was a bright and sunny day. She breathed in Kodiak Island’s salty air while walking among the Sitka spruce that swayed in the wind. As she was coming down a hill, she ran into a friend. He was so happy to see her: He urgently needed a dogsitter.
“The universe brought me to the right place at the right time,” Astrid said, excited at this opportunity to be around dogs and make some money.”
For Astrid, taking care of dogs was not just a job, it was a soul-filling activity. Astrid likes to say, “dogs saved my bacon” not only helping her gain income, but also releasing stress, and filling her with love and happiness. While in the midst of dog sitting for her friend, she had a life-changing idea: she could make stable income from dog sitting while she continued to grow her coaching business.
Filled with inspiration, she built a Facebook page, inviting her friends and members of the Kodiak community to join. By the end of the weekend, she had already found her next clients and her fun new side gig was starting to take off!
“It was all intuition and inspiration,” Astrid said.
Fast forward several months, Astrid moved to Anchorage and then to Palmer to heal stage 4 cancer.
One of her doctors said that it could not be healed. But Astrid didn’t accept that as her truth. With faith, her positive outlook, and with focus on her emotions and mindset, she discovered huge resilience, and fully recovered.
Just like with the dog sitting idea, she kept following her intuition and heart to support her healing.
Out of this healing journey, she found a new passion to help cancer patients heal and thrive.
Now more than ever, since surviving cancer, she doesn’t compromise on her health and happiness anymore.
“I’ll do things to take care of myself, but I don’t take actions based on fears and what I think I should do,” she said. “I follow my heart.”
It was challenging to stay calm after cancer, as she did have any regular income and all her savings were used up. But instead of feeling anxiety, she chose joy.
“Choosing joy is not like a switch we can just turn on when we’re stressed out. But we can choose to do things for ourselves that lead to joy,” she said. “That can be anything like walks, playing with dogs, or choosing a fulfilling occupation.”
Astrid tried DoorDash and considered other side gigs to make additional income, but the numbers didn’t seem to add up. These jobs were taking valuable time away from building her business and helping people.
However, she stayed curious —and for the most part calm —thanks to skills she learned through her cancer journey and coaching experience.
Then it all came to her in an epiphany: She would start a “doggy day care!” she said.
Immediately after posting on Facebook, she got flooded with requests.
“Doggies who are otherwise lonely during the day get loving company while I get to continue growing my CANcer coaching business working from home,” she said happily.
Astrid intends to keep her day care and dog boarding exclusive so she can focus on her business without too many distractions, but she still has a few spots open.
Just like dogs who take breaks, play and need joy to live happy lives, so do people. Joy is the foundation of her practice.
“Health and happiness are important, not just nice to have,” she explained. “Health and joy are life. Following my heart helps me create joy and that helps me be healthy, and live! Solutions always show up when I follow my heart. And joy ripples on to others from there!”
To find out more about Astrid’s doggy day care, find her on Facebook as “Astrid Mueller Life.” To find out more about her CANcer coaching, visit AstridMueller.com
“Doggies” as Astrid says are yet again saving her bacon! And so has been following her intuition and heart.