571: How to FINALLY Get Out Of Survival Mode & Start Thriving | Heather Chauvin

In episode 5, 7, 1 with Heather Chavin, we are talking all about repairing ourselves, regulating our nervous systems as working mommas, how to stay in our zone of genius in our business, self love and so much more. If you are someone who wants to thrive in all areas of your life, business and at home, you are going to love this episode. Welcome to the Melissa Ambracini show. I'm your host Melissa, their selling author of Mastering your Mean Girl Open Wide, Comparison Iters and Time Magic. And I'm here to remind you that love is sexy, healthy is liberating and wealthy isn't a dirty word. Each week I'll be getting up close and personal with thought leaders from around the globe, as well as your weekly dose of motivation so that you can create epic change in your own life and become the best version of yourself possible. Are you ready, beautiful? Hey, beautiful and welcome back to the show. I'm so excited about this episode because Heather is incredible. She is a leadership coach who helps successful women courageously and authentically live work and parent on their own terms. She started her career as a social worker helping adults understand children's behavior, but it wasn't until 2013 when a stage for cancer diagnosis pushed her to take a deeper stand for change, uncovering how cultural expectations sabotage our dreams. And now she has been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, Real Simple magazine, Mindbottie Green, Google and more. And when she isn't working, you will find her living out what she teaches, which may include kayaking, snow boarding, hiking and anything else that challenges what she believes is possible for herself and inviting her children along for the journey. Now for everything that we mentioned in today's episode, you can check out in the show notes and that's over at MelissaAmbressini.com/571. Now let's dive in. Heather, welcome to the show. I am so excited to have you here. But before we dive in, can you tell us what you had for breakfast this morning? Oh my goodness. That feels like so long ago for me. I actually think I had eggs, veggies and a black coffee. Yeah, eggs and veggies, black coffee. And you are in Canada right now. Yes. In Ontario. Beautiful. On such different parts of the world, but it's so exciting to be able to connect with you. Now, I love your work. You help women manage their energy so that they can stop sacrificing their impact at work, their time with their family and their health. I want to know how did you get started in this work and what led you to start your own business? How did this all unfold for you? Take us back. Yeah. So I feel like it's been forever ago. But so just to give you like a bird's eye view. So I have three children. They're 19 14 and 11 and mothering was kind of like my first spiritual awakening per se. And I was I was 18 when I became a mother. So I was young. And I already came into motherhood feeling incredibly alone. And like I was failing. And I just remember looking at my son thinking, I don't want to become a statistic. And I don't want him to feel the way that I felt. And at the same time, figuring out who I am. And I remember that moment of like, there was something deeper inside of me. Like this is when I discovered the knowing, but also like living a purpose beyond and bigger than myself. And so fast forward a little bit. As I'm learning about my son's behaviors, and I'm using air quotes, emotional behaviors, which I didn't know they were emotional at the time. I was asking questions and seeking support, like what's going on? What's the strategy? How do I fix this problem? And I'm learning about social work and mental health that I'm going to school. And then I land a job working with families, helping them see and understand their children's behavior while at home, I'm trying to simultaneously understand my own. And I figured this like, oh, nobody knows what's going on. But I could clearly see that culturally as adults, we were very, very good at labeling behavior, but not understanding it. And it was, this is the way it is. And there was that part of me that's like, but there's something deeper here. So I kind of went on a spiritual journey. I fell in love with meditation and mindfulness and started teaching that to actually children. But I learned very quickly that it wasn't the children who needed to learn meditation and mindfulness. It was the parents themselves. And there was a lot of projection that was going on. Like, did you fix my child's behavior? Did you handle this? Like, what do I need to, you know, are they going to be calm now? What do I need to do to get them to be calm? And I realized there was this co-creation and this disconnect. And so fast forward, I left my corporate job. I say corporate, it was a corporate job as a social worker. And six months after my like, literally signing the dotted line, my youngest was a year old at the time. I was diagnosed with a stage four cancer. And so at the time I felt like I was already in startup in my business. I had three kids, my youngest being a year old, I was still breastfeeding, trying to figure all of this out. How old do you at this age? I was 27. So as 27 diagnosed with stage four cancer, in startup for my business, and three kids, and no like health benefits, no, I mean, I live in Canada. So there is like that health benefit, but no additional support, no financial support by any means. So I had to work, I still had to continue to build my business. I had someone on one coaching clients. And I continue to work with them throughout this process, literally calling them from my hospital bed. And I realized in that moment, because the clients I was working with, what as I was in startup in my business, I was very focused on like the parent child relationship, like the child, like parenting aspect of it, like they're angry, they're frustrated, help me manage that. When I had my diagnosis, I was like, ladies, we need to stop pretending that our well-being doesn't matter, and that it's not a part of the equation. And that was 10 years ago. And since then, my work has evolved, but at the core room, it's still the same. Wow, babe, okay, okay, okay, there's a lot in there, I'm back. I mean, exactly. So you had the wake up call of all wake up calls to spur you into changing your life, the cancer, which must have been truly terrifying. And for lots of women, there's no specific wake up call per se, like they just get stuck in the cycle of feeling awful and being in survival mode. So how do you help those women find that internal energy or motivation or fortitude to start creating change when everything can just feel so hard and so out of reach? Yeah, so that's it, right? I tell people all the time you don't have to wait to get a cancer diagnosis or a tragedy to happening your life in order for you to give yourself permission. Because I will tell you, I knew way before my diagnosis that something was not aligned for me, like something was off culturally of how women were perceived to be in the world, right? And when I wrote my book, dying to be a good mother, I was like, I was physically dying, like physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually to be good for my children, so that I was literally getting paths on the back. And I want to tell this quick story before I talk about the person who hasn't had a diagnosis, but I remember when I got my diagnosis, I mentally like checked this box. And I was like, I will not suffer like this anymore in my life. Like I am done. It was like a little mental checkbox because Melissa, I had nine years of personal development under my belt. I hired the coaches, I did everything like I was in the masterminds, I went to the retreats, I did all the things. And it wasn't that I wasn't implementing any of that, it was the permission piece, like the embodiment of it, like really truly facing your deepest fears of like, what if I go after that thing and the fear of failure, fear of success, fear of rejection, all of those things, like you see people sitting on that edge all the time. And I tell those people, like, nobody can make you want change. You will listen to inspiring stories, you will attend the coaching programs, the retreats, all the things. You either have to get done with the contrast and the bullshit, like you have to be done with your bullshit. You have to be done saying, I am so sick of just living paycheck to paycheck. I am so sick of just having enough. I am so done feeling like I'm always depleted. And I'm so done feeling disrespected by other people. And when you say like, "I am done with this," you check that box. And then you learn how did I allow this to happen? Where along the journey, did I not take responsibility for what I wanted and desired? Along this journey, like I remember when I had my diagnosis, there was still a lot of that, I don't even know what you would call it. I was just a very spiritual bypassing, but the shame of like, how did I manifest this? Like, I did this to myself. And I really had to work through a lot of that. Like, maybe I didn't do this. Yes, sure, I'm sure there was some neglect. But my body, I mean, I literally was like forced into motherhood. There was a lot of trauma there for sure. Yes, but I don't need to take on all of this. Like women take on way too much. Culture, people, generational trauma, all of that stuff. But it is my responsibility of how I'm going to react to this. And so I tell people all the time, like, I can guide you. I can tell you what worked for me. But if you keep saying, "I can't," I don't have time. My children, and you're using your children to block you, your partner, the economy, the weather, you will always find an excuse. And you get to keep what you defend. And so it's just kind of continuously pulling back the layers of that self-awareness and really getting to that core of, like, "Who do you want to be? And how do you want to feel?" And just slowly chipping away and stepping towards that version of yourself. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. I love that so much. In my program, She Launch, we get people to kind of check in at the very start. And almost sign a contract where they are committed to not playing the victim. They are committing to taking responsibility. They are committed to not using the word "I can't." And I think there's so much power in when we get to a place in our life where we have said, "Okay, I am the creator of my life. And I am in the driver's seat. And I am going to take responsibility for my life and how I'm showing up." And people say to me, "You've changed my life. You've saved my life." And I'm like, "No, I didn't do the work. You did the work. I just provided the vehicle. Like I said, come and get on this bus with me. And we're going to go to this place. And you jumped on that bus. But you did all the work along the way. I just provided you a vehicle to get there quicker. And when I shift their mindset like that, they're like, "Wow, okay." And it brings the power back into them because ultimately, if we want change, it starts with us taking responsibility. So I love that's what has happened for you. And this is what I teach. And this is what is so important we need to take responsibility. So as a mama, like if you are stuck in that survival load for long enough, you can forget what it feels like to feel truly alive, right? So how do you help women reconnect with that part of themselves and feel fully alive again, like if they've completely lost touch with that feeling? This is my favorite topic. And I will say the number one thing is you have to have your own thought. If you have a thought or a little whisper that says, "I shouldn't feel this way," or it doesn't have to be this way, you are right. We launch into motherhood with all of these stories and expectations of who we need to be. The overwhelm, the identity shift in crisis, the hormonal changes. Like there's so much going on, the sleep deprivation. And I always tell people you have to reach for how you want to feel. But there's a story that I tell all the time. I wrote it in my book and it was also inspired by the work of Dingell LePort, like the desire map, because that came out around the time of my diagnosis. And essentially she was saying, "It's not the thing you want, it's the feeling," right? And this is like the core of manifestation, law of attraction. But it was very concrete to me. It was like, "It's not the big house you want. What is it that you want? Is it status? Is it you want to feel a certain way? Is it that you just want space? Do you want things to feel organized or clean, or new or fresh? What do you want? Like what is the feeling?" So I was very clear that I knew it wasn't the things I wanted, it was the feeling. So I could now take that feeling and reverse engineer how I wanted to feel. So this is where a live-ness comes in. So anyone that's listening to this, like, "What's the secret? How do you like get a live-ness?" I'll tell you, it's easier than you think, but it's going to be incredibly emotionally uncomfortable. And for me specifically, there was a moment, I was on the bathroom floor, I was in recovery, and of course, in the middle of the night, that's typically when we have our little panic attacks. It was like two o'clock in the morning, I go to the bathroom, my family's sleeping, and my brain and my stress response is going, and I'm in a state of fight or fight, and I'm like, "I'm going to die, I'm going to die." I just repeat this over and over again, because I'm literally my physical body is breaking down, and I'm in such a place of uncertainty, like as I'm recovering from cancer, and I just was so vulnerable, and I had barely anything left in me, so I was just raw. And I'm repeating, I'm going to die, I'm going to die, but I had the tools at the time to get my mind back to the present moment. So I'm like, "Okay, are you going to die? You have no fact, like no certainty, that's going to happen." Not only that, you are alive right now, right? So I'm like, "Okay, I'm here, I'm alive." Like, your physical body is alive, like, stop projecting into the future, and back to the present moment. So I was like, "You're here, you're here, you're alive, you're alive." Then I asked myself this question, "How do you want to feel?" I'm like, "I don't want to feel dead, I don't want to feel angry, I don't want to feel anxious, I want to feel alive." So then I'm like, "I want to feel alive, I want to feel alive, I want to feel alive." So I got myself from what I don't want to what I do want and attached to that feeling. Now here was when Morphear came up, because then the next thing that happened was like, "I have no evidence in my life of when I felt alive." Like, I realized that in that moment. I'm like, "I was a mother." At 18, previous to that, I was an underachieving, highly sensitive teenager who didn't know who they were. I had no time to figure out who I was in the world. And so I had no evidence of what a live-ness felt like in my being. And so that's when I went on the journey to be like, "Who is she? What is that version of? How does she spend her time? How does she respect herself? What is she going to do? But when you're starting from the bottom up, what is the embodiment of this feeling that I crave?" And so I started making a list of what wouldn't a live person do? Well, tomorrow, they're going to get out of bed. They're going to get out of bed and they're going to take a shower. And if I just had tiny bits of energy inside of me, and all I could do was take a shower, and then I was exhausted, and I had to go back to bed, that's what I did. And then the next day, took a shower, sat on the porch. The next day, took a shower, sat on the porch, like, did something tiny. But what I noticed in my brain was that it started to focus on, how do I want to feel instead of how much can I get done, or what does everyone else need from me? And I'm very impact-driven. I want to make an impact in my children's lives. I want to break generational patterns. I want to change women's lives. But I know that the more alive and aligned I am, that is when I make a bigger impact. That is when the legacy is born. That is when the transformation happens for others. So it is very difficult or emotionally uncomfortable, as I would call it, because I don't want to condition myself that things are heard. They're just emotionally uncomfortable to stop in the moment, be like, "Where's my brain focused? Is it focused on what I want, or what I don't want?" And so that was the aliveness to me, is like being curious about it, and kind of going after that feeling, and searching, and reaching for that instead of staying stuck in what I didn't want. I love that. So how are you currently feeling? How do you want to feel, and then change it? Do the things that are going to help you feel the way that you desire to feel? I think this idea that we have to be always happy, and always up, and always feeling alive as a mother, a working mother, or anyone, is only dragging us down even further. There are times where you feel flat, and that's okay, but what can you do to shift that energy, to shift that state? And this is why I am such a big fan. I have a thing called the self-love menu, and basically the menu of 10 things that light up your soul, that make you feel truly alive in the best version of your self. And you create this menu and you stick it on your fridge, and this is just things that are going to be good. involve only you. So not like going out to dinner with my husband, things that just involve you. So like moving your body or going and watching the sunrise or reading a good book or having a bath, whatever it is. And whenever you are feeling flat or not alive or any other energy that you don't want to feel and you want to feel truly alive instead, you go and do one of those things of that menu and that starts to shift that energy. So that's something that I personally do and it really works. But I want to talk to you about energetic time management. What is energetic time management? Yeah. So it's taking what I was just talking about to like the next step. So I physically had to put these things on my calendar. And I mean, I've been utilizing this process for 10 years. I've taken it to the next level. And now it's like internal for me. But everything is guided by how do I want to feel? How do I want to feel? And I'll give like some specific examples. But in general, I tell people brain dump everything that's on your mind, right? If you're overwhelmed to stop brain dump, I love to put things in categories. So if it's child related work related, some people have four categories, some people have 40 categories. I'm like, it doesn't matter. It could be project based. It's fine. But write down all the list, put them in categories. And then ask yourself, usually I like to have a self category. Sometimes that's empty for people. And they're like, oh my gosh, the fact that I don't have anything in there kind of indicates where the challenge is. But if there is things on the self category, I say put those things on the calendar first. You have a blank calendar. You're planning your week. Like start to just put those baby steps on your calendar first. And what's going to happen is your priorities are shifting, right? We are typically at the bottom of the list. And then so it's reverse engineering, how you want to feel. There's so much resistance that comes up for people, even just doing that. They don't want to put themselves on the calendar because then it's the fear of failure. It's like, well, what if it doesn't work? Perfectionism, all of that stuff comes up. And then the other aspect of it is once you have these things on the calendar, when you actually don't do them, you have to face yourself. Like, why didn't you go for that 10 minute walk that you put on the calendar? Well, somebody called me or somebody texted me or I had to put a fire on. It's like watching observe how we like go to rescue these other people. Like they can't do their own thing. We have to rescue them because we're avoiding feeling a feeling. We're avoiding sitting, allowing other people to sit with their emotional discomfort. And therefore, we are most likely avoiding something within ourselves as well. And so that's like the core of it is taking your to-do list, prioritizing it, putting you on the calendar first, not like eight hours a day, could be like 30 minutes a day, and then starting to put your second priority on there and third and fourth. And then you will see how your relationship with time will switch. And that's kind of the strategy behind it. And then the advanced level, like as you get that down pat, is like, okay, wow, look at how I show up in my relationships. Look how I'm sucking life force energy out of myself trying to have these, trying to rescue other people and do their work for them or avoiding the emotionally uncomfortable conversations. When you are, it doesn't matter if you're a parent, if you're a business owner, if you're intimate relationships, all these skills are universal. And I just today had to, I was like feeling into, okay, there's a little like resentment coming up. And I'm like, okay, I know that means I have overstep my own boundary. So where is this coming up? Where do I need to put more boundaries in? Where do I need to have conversations with people? And then you get people in your life that will hold you accountable too. And so it's funny because as you develop this kind of language and you rinse and repeat the process, for me personally, and what I've seen with people is alignment and fulfillment and all the things that we want and desire actually comes when we are willing to feel our feelings. And we can do those things on the self-love list. But we cannot have the expectation that when I do this thing, I'm going to check it off, all my feelings are going to go away again. It's like, no, we need to sit with the duality of both and stop with this good feelings, bad feelings. Like, I did all the things. Why am I not feeling the way I want to feel? And it's like, there's other layers to it. It's not just checking boxes or not robotic. There's a lot going on within us. And most of the time we've like, for a lot of people, you suppressed it for so long that it's a language you have to learn to understand within yourself. Absolutely. So people pleasing is a really big energy link. What are some other common energy links that you see? So it's funny you say people pleasing because I never thought I was a people pleaser. I never identified as a people pleaser. But I would do it like begrudgingly, like saying yes to an event. And I'm like, oh, I guess I should go. I'm not very social. But I didn't show up like, well, if I don't go, they're not going to like me. That was never my thing. Control is a huge one. Before my podcast was called emotionally uncomfortable, it was called mom is in control because I had these women who were mothers who wanted to feel in control. And I'm like, control is not actually a feeling. So that's a red flag right there. So observing how we are trying to control other people's behavior, how we are trying to control the outcome. I mean perfectionism, upper limiting ourselves, like the lack mindset, observing. This is a fun one too. Observing how we add drama to situations when we are like hitting our upper limit. How, and I will watch it within myself. And it's the tiniest, tiniest thing. Like even when I don't know a few months ago, I'm like, I want to learn how to make sourdough bread. Not that big of a deal. I could watch a few YouTube videos. And I could see in my mind is like, this is going to take so much time. I don't have capacity for this. Love all the time. I'm like, you're learning to make bread. You've made humans. You can make a freaking loaf of bread. But then I had to have boundaries with my own mental drama. And I'm like, I am going to commit a weekend to figuring this out. And I'm going to watch as many YouTube videos as I can. And I'm going to allow myself to fail. And I made it a challenge to just push through. So resistance is a big one too. Excuse us all of that. Yeah. Oh, yes. Okay. So if any of those are resonating with anybody, let's stop doing them. Just stop. Just stop. Life is so much better when we don't do those things. Yeah. It's so much better. So how can we structure our time to increase our productivity without getting stuck in the overwhelm or procrastination? Well, I have thoughts on this because I feel like even productivity is such a tricky and trendy term. Everyone wants to feel more productive. But it's like, what is your definition of productivity? Like what is your definition of success? This like never enoughness. Like it doesn't matter if you had the perfect day. Right. I feel like sometimes productivity is sprinkled in perfectionism in this like never enough ness. I always ask myself, or I'm always reflecting. And I'm like, okay, overwhelm is a symptom. It's not a personality trait. Doesn't matter if we're talking about nervous system or anything else. If I have the belief that feeling good is my birthright and feeling good is the goal. And I feel not good. I have to check in with myself and say, what is this? Is this? I just didn't get a good night sleep last night. Am I so out of alignment? Am I just outside of my comfort zone? Like what is truly going on here? So when I look at my day, you know, some days and I can be super flexible, I'll be in a season where I'm super flexible with my time. And I'm like, you know what? This is freedom to me where I can have slow mornings where I can have connection time with my family or myself. And then there's seasons where I'm like, okay, this is actually resistance now. This is me sabotaging a goal where I need to lean in a little bit more. And I need to tighten it up. And I need to actually look at my calendar. And I've had to learn with my own brain, what works, what doesn't work, the seasons that I'm in, what energy do I want to live in? Do I need to be a little more in the masculine and like a little get shit down energy versus like, just go with the flow. And what I mean, by go with the flow is just like feel into it. And also really learning to know yourself. It's interesting because sometimes I'll be more in a, I'm not going to say go with the flow state, but more of like, I'm not going to be so like married and attached to my calendar of like, I need to get this done. I need to do this. I need to do this. And I've observed myself with like, is this sabotage or is this the rest I need? Is this what my soul is craving right now? The other thing I want to say about time because we can talk about structure. We can do all those things, but that's not sexy to me. Is like staying in your area of genius. When you are scaling your time or energy, it's like, what do you love doing? What actually gives you more energy and sitting in front of a computer and being a task master as a visionary does not give me energy. So I have to ask myself, how can I? How can I have more energy? Who can help me with this? Do I need to outsource do I need to what type of person do I need to hire on my team? Who on my team do I need to ask for this? And if I don't have a team and I need to do all of these things, do I actually need to do all of the things? I will often do a brain dump when I'm overwhelmed because I will not push when I'm overwhelmed. I stop, I'll dump everything out, and I'll ask myself, what is the one next thing that you need to do that most likely you are resistant to? Like you're like, "Ooh, I don't want to do that thing that's going to move the needle in whatever area of your life you're looking to do." And I train myself to do that one thing, and I lean into the fear of leaning to the resistance and the clouds literally part on the other side. So that's my productivity hack is doing the thing you're resisting the most. Yes, and it's so important to actually ask yourself, what is my zone of genius? What lights me up? What do I love to do in my business? I know that answer straight away. For me, it's podcasting, it's writing books, it's speaking, and it's coaching. These are the things that I love. And so for me, I aim to stay in those lanes as much as possible. I don't love some of the other things, so I hire or I delegate the other things. And then that allows me to stay inspired, to stay uplifted, to stay in my zone of genius, because as you know, when you are a mama, a working mama, if it's not lighting you up, for me, it's like it's not worth it. It's not worth time away from my daughter. You know, I would rather be with my daughter. I remember I had a year-long maternity leave, and then I went back to work after. I still had my podcast, and I had about four months worth of episodes, and then I slowly went back, and it was amazing. But I wasn't launching anything, I wasn't coaching inside. She launched, I wasn't doing any speaking gigs. So this was good. But I remember I had a Facebook ad meeting with our team. It was an hour long. I got off the meeting, and I just burst into tears. And I was like, that was an hour away from my daughter. And I did not enjoy one second of it. I was like, this is not where I want to be. I don't want to be in a Facebook ads meeting. It's just that doesn't light me up. That doesn't inspire me. And I have an understanding of it. But I was just like, guys, that's not my zone of genius. That is not where my soul feels lit up, and then I was feeling resentful, and then I was feeling guilty, because I was away from my daughter. So, know your zones of genius. Know what lights you up. If you know those things in your business, then you hire and delegate the rest so that you can stay the visionary. That's where we want to be. Yeah. And what I would say in that moment specifically, it's going to keep coming back to you until you actually listen to it. So I have learned, and I talk about this all the time, is using your emotional states, like anger, resentment, guilt. These are the things I hear for women a lot, especially guilt. I'm like, pretend that these, like there's so many ways that we talk about, like, understanding your emotion. But I am like, talk about them, like, their children trying to get your attention. They're not just, oh, I'm not going to take action because I feel guilty, or I'm going to like, shrink. No, be like, okay, there's resentment, and there's guilt here. Cool. Lean in, like, talk to them. Hey, why are you here? I'm trying to, you know, if you can intuitively talk to your body, this takes time, it's a skill, but I just sit and I'm like, why are you here? It will talk back. It's the little whisper. It will say, like, I'm trying to keep you safe. And then I always ask, okay, what do you need for me? Like, Gil, what do you need for me to feel safe to leave my body? And it will say, you need to have that conversation. Or you need to let this go. Like, you need to go after what you want. And then I'm going to be here. I'm going to hang out because I know you love your children, but you're not, you know, you have to have boundaries with your emotions too of like, okay, you're not going to run the show. But this Facebook ad things, yeah, that sounds like deaf to me. I would not want to be in a Facebook ads meeting either for an hour, 100%. So here's the thing too, it's like, awesome. Is there aspects of it? And is there a moment where you're like, okay, I have to attend this meeting for the next month? Because nobody else is going to attend this meeting. So that is your cue that you need to hire someone. If you don't have that person on your team already, then when you go to hire someone, you should's going to come up, right? It might be like, well, I'm not making enough money or blah, blah, blah. Like, something else is going to come up for you. It's an opportunity for growth. Like, these things are always there to teach us to grow. I remember the bigger and bigger my team got, I watched my identity shift from I'm working one-on-one with these clients too. Okay, now it's in a group setting. Okay, now my job is to lead my team. And my team helps other people and like, it's become this like community thing. And so slowly you're growing, you're scaling. But if you can utilize, and it doesn't have to be in business, it can also be at home. Of like, observing and watching my children, now that my oldest is like becoming an adult, watching how they talk to each other because of the way I've talked to them over the years, watching how quickly they can repair when you know, something didn't go as planned. And I'm like, it's just by role modeling. So I just know that the more willing I am to scale and grow my capacity, even if my ego or my fear or my guilt wants to tell me, if you grow, that's going to take away from your children or if you grow, you're not going to be able to do that. I like to ask myself, especially in the last year or so, how would I show up, what decision would I make if I deeply trusted myself? And also, if I could wave a magic wand and anything was possible right now, what would I want to do? Like, how would I want to spend my time? What would my business look like? Because I also feel like, you know, you get into something, you're scared. You're like, oh my god, I'm so excited. I love this work. You do it for a while. And then you're like, okay, now I'm bored of it. Now I need to grow. Now I need to do something else. And so we're always, you know, always checking in and asking yourself, like, what is it that I crave? What is it that I desire? And to me, that's energy. And sometimes it has nothing to do with asking my body. I mean, having a diagnosis, I don't even identify as a cancer survivor. I mean, it's so long ago and I'm like, it's not in my being. That's not what I lead with. But I look at, okay, what's my physical body telling me? This might be a hormonal thing. This might be like something else is going on, but I'm always tuned in. All right, my mental body, my emotional body, my spiritual body. What am I craving? And it even changed my relationships. Like, I'm always asking my husband, what are you craving? I mean, sometimes he thinks I'm a little wackadoodle because I'm like, what's your soul craving? And he's like, oh, God, here she goes. But I'm like, what do you want to do? Like, what trips do you want to go on? Like, what's your soul craving? And it might take a week until I get an answer. Sometimes I get it right away. But it's like giving everyone we love around us permission to nurture themselves rather than living by a to-do list. We still got to get things done, but we can be and live. And when we do that in between our to-dos, that is true love to me. That is the gift we give our family. Absolutely. And we teach by embodying, especially with our children. Like you said before, they are modeling everything of us. So I want to talk about reparenting for anyone who is unfamiliar with this term. Can you give us a quick definition of what reparenting is? And then could you tell us about your journey with reparenting? And how do we reparent ourselves? As personal growth on steroids, I'm just going to call that's going to be the definition. I'm going to give reparenting. I also, I feel like the advantage I had of having a child so young was that I didn't know what I know now. I feel like if I was a educated adult jumping into parenthood would scare me more than it did when I found myself pregnant when I was younger. Because, of course, in this world of parenting, we've kind of swung the pendulum a little too far of gentle parenting in my opinion, gentle parenting, conscious parenting of like a perfectionist of like, I can't say this, I can't do that. Okay, when they do this, how do I reply? What do I say? And then when you have a teenager, it's a complete, that's a next level, a new level, new level, new devil. And what I have noticed with the reparenting is it doesn't matter how much personal work you do on yourself to try to get ahead. You're like, okay, they're coming. I'm going to get ahead of this. I'm going to like read this book. I'm going to do all the inner work. Your child will show you that wounded little part of yourself. They will get you. They will mere right back to you where you need to go and where you need to grow. And I remember over and over again, at developmental phases, especially with my oldest, we're like growing up together, but this co-creation of the first time he had anxiety as an example or presented very anxious and school started calling. I was like, anxiety, like, first of all, I didn't even know what anxiety was. And then I was thinking, I don't know how to manage anxiety. Do I have anxiety? I then discovered that I was anxious as well. We're scared and want to control things in our children when we don't know how to control it within ourselves. And so observing and watching all of these triggers that our children have, it's always about ourselves. I do believe, especially working with children and former life as a social worker, that our children are having their own spiritual experience. Like they are having their own human experience. Their soul is having a human experience. And we have to look and observe that. If that child is struggling, we have to say, look, that child is struggling. The one thing I think the parenting industry does not do well is there's a constant reflection on the parent. Like, what does that say about you? And they make it like about the parent a little too much, I think, when it's like, but your child is still struggling over there. I do believe we need to give our kids coping strategies. We need to present it to them. We need to say, maybe talking about the problem is not going to help them because they're shutting down. So let's get them in an environment where they may be around positive coping strategies. Maybe let's put some spa music on, meditation music on, in the home to lower the frequency, to make it feel grounded. Maybe we need to talk less and just go for a walk and just move our bodies and move energy. And so we're kind of like looking at this child outside of us and realizing that a lot of our anger, anxiety, overwhelm that's coming up within us, we're just, it's just triggering the little child within us that didn't get those needs met. And yeah, it brings up all of those wounds. And we get to kind of look at that little version of ourselves and be like, I got you now. I'm here for you and I'm the adult that you needed. And that's definitely been a huge part of my parenting journey and adult journey as well. I don't know if it ever goes away. - Yeah, so I think a lot of us, we have this expectation that children should just be emotionally regulated. But firstly, like you said, they have never been taught because we were never taught and we don't do it ourselves. So if we want emotionally regulated children, we have to be emotionally regulated ourselves. So what are some strategies, like some tactical things that people can do when they catch themselves out of balance when they're not emotionally regulated or their child? Like what's the first thing that we can do? - Okay, so this question actually brought up for me that our children do know how to emotionally regulate most of the time, but we don't like the way they do it. So example, crime is an emotional regulation strategy, but we don't like it sometimes because of the noise level and then it triggers our sensory overload and then we're like, stop crime. Or they're screaming or they're having a tantrum, like it's an emotional regulation strategy, but as they get older, we have ego and it doesn't feel socially acceptable. So we're like, stop, you're embarrassing me. Like, don't do that. We can't do that here. And so then we're trying to like shift and manipulate and do all of these things. And yes, we want to keep them safe to, we want to do all the things and sometimes there's other things going on in our children's brains. But for the most part, we are just uncomfortable with emotion to begin with. And so when we are uncomfortable anger, as an example, having three boys, when we are uncomfortable with emotion, we want to stop like emotion. So what I've noticed is when we're trying to emotionally regulate, we're like, okay, I got to meditate. I got to do breath work. I got to do all these things. And I need to feel emotionally regulated all the time. When in reality, true, totally get it. We can do all of those things. You can do tapping, you can do breath work, meditation, self-awareness is the whole point. That is key. But realize that actually feeling feelings is not a bad thing. And that is an emotional regulation strategy. Once you start doing that, then sometimes you want to have boundaries with your emotions. You're like, okay, I opened the can of worms and now I want to cry all day every day. Like that example as grief, right? Some people are like, oh my gosh, I've opened it too much. I'm never going to stop crying. And I've witnessed that even with people that I work with, on my team, my clients, I'll have someone who would identify as highly sensitive. And for the first two years of working with me, she just cried all the time. I was like, it's fine. And she went through like, I don't want to react like this all the time. And I watched her just continue to heal and grow and be like, I want to feel better in my mind and body. And sometimes when you go on a healing journey, you actually feel more because it's been like trapped inside of you. And so there's things you can do on a daily basis. Yes, but be mindful. Am I just trying to put a band-aid on this problem? Or am I actually trying to like become the type of person that lives this life where I am more proactive than reactive? So an example, like I know there's all these tips and strategies, but a specific example, a lot of people will say, like, I want to stop yelling. So their question to me is, how do I get my child to stop doing whatever? And I'm like, you don't get your child to stop doing anything. You realize that child's behavior is triggering something inside of you that causes you to yell. Yelling is a stress response. So you are stressed out. So you need to ask yourself, why am I so stressed? And it may be there's so many aspects of life that you're incredibly stressed about. And that's a whole other conversation. But when you can say, where in my life am I trying to be heard? I'm yelling to be heard. Well, I'm not hearing myself, right? So it's like we pull back these layers. We pull back these layers. So emotional regulation is not just meditation. It's not just tapping, better sleep, better nutrition, exercise, movement. Those things are fabulous. But from an emotional perspective, observing your emotions as if, huh, why am I yelling? Why am I trying to be heard? What is my body trying to tell me? What is my soul trying to tell me? How is it yelling at me? When I was diagnosed, my body was yelling at me. It was giving me all the signs and symptoms and bells and whistles. And I was yelling because I was not emotionally regulated. But my body was so stressed out. And nobody actually sat me down, looked me dead square in the eyes and said, you are living in a survival state and you are going to burn out. Nobody ever said that to me. And I, to this day, completely, like, I wish somebody would have said that to me. So there's a lot that happens in this whole world when people are like, I'm living in survival mode. Our bodies are resilient AF. But at some point, you have to say, I am worthy of 10 minutes today and just know it doesn't need to be all or nothing and you can slowly chip away and regain your life, regain your energy. You are very resilient and you are capable and do not give up. And it will be emotionally uncomfortable, but you are worthy of feeling good. When I feel myself up, I am such a bedder, mama. I have so much more patience. I am more present. I am more playful. Like, just the other night, my daughter has recently dropped her nap. Okay, so she's almost three. She's recently dropped her nap. And so sometimes like at five o'clock when we're doing bath and dinner, she's just exhausted. She's ready for bed and the emotions are higher. And I was able to just be there and to be her rock and to be so calm and later that night we got into bed and my husband said to me, "You were so beautiful with her during all of that. "You were so beautiful with her." And I said, "Oh, thank you." That's really nice. And he's like, "That's a result of you feeling full "in your work and in your own self-care "because I had just been in the middle of a three-day challenge, "which I absolutely love." Like for me, I love presenting, like I said before, that's one of my zones of genius. So I'm lit up to the stars in my work and I'm full from my own self-care. I was able to just be her rock and that was reflected back to me when Nick said, "You were so beautiful with her." And I said, "Thanks, thanks, honey." Yeah, now reflecting back, yeah, I was really patient and I was really present and I was able to hold space because I felt regulated and happy and content within myself. And usually when we react is because we don't feel those things within ourselves, right? And so we explode like a volcano. We just explode. And we don't wanna be explosive mothers or humans. We don't wanna react and explode and like a volcano anytime something happens. You know, we wanna be regulated and calm and present and patient. And this is really important for me. This is what I teach inside she launch. I teach women how to have the impact and the income that they want without burning out and without sacrificing their relationships. Because I've been there, I've burnt out, I've sacrificed my relationship. I don't wanna do that again. So I'd love to know like when it comes to women, what are the specific tools and strategies that you recommend so that we can increase our income and our impact without running ourselves into the ground? - Well, I think you just said it and we've been talking about it this whole time is taking care of yourself in whatever aspect that looks like and expecting the guilt, expecting the resistance, expecting the identity shift, right? You're becoming a different version of yourself. And slowly, just these little tiny steps will make you become that version of you. And just like you said, Melissa, you were full. You were lit up and asking yourself, like some people might be thinking, well, I don't know what that is for me. One of my favorite journal prompts is wouldn't it be nice if, and whatever you are writing down under that journal prompt is the desires that are inside of you. And if you give yourself permission to go after those desires, that's where the magic happens. And you become too feel fuller. You start to have more capacity, more time on your schedule, more energy, more money starts to come in because you have the capacity to do the things to bring it in. And you also start to attract it. And then you have the patience, just like you did for your daughter, you have the patience to be with your partner and to be like, okay, I can hear you, right? It's not landing on angry ears. I can hear you. I hear that you need connection and we've been a little disconnected. Let's create space for that. Let's create time for that. Let's physically put it on the calendar to start and then it becomes more intuitive. So it's all connected. It's like start where you are, right? A little tiny list of what you want, what you desire, how you want to feel, start taking those baby steps towards it. There's something, this process that I've been talking about, energetic time management. There's something I created called the 10-minute habit when I break it down into 10 minutes because it's really difficult to start when it feels like you're climbing a mountain and you're like, I'm so overwhelmed, I don't know where to start. So I bring you through a process to just like bring it down to 10 minutes and start with those 10 minutes. And if you can do that consistently, you really see how this process, like I don't believe in hard things. When I hear the saying, my body physically goes, no, no, I've rejected hard. I'm like, I want a life of ease. I want a life of abundance and alignment when something feels hard to me. It's usually just emotionally uncomfortable or it's outside of my comfort zone. And I ask myself, this is new to me. How can I make it more aligned with how I want to feel? And so maybe I'm like, this is easy. I physically tell myself, this is easy. It's not that big of a deal. It's just an email. You're just sending an email. You're just putting your face on Instagram. This is easy. You're just hitting submit or you're just hitting play to launch your podcast or whatever. This is easy. It's emotionally uncomfortable, but it's easy. So it's like just lean into that a little bit. Find your edge. Mm, yes. I love it so much. I'd love to pretend that you had a magic wand right now. And you could put one book in the school curriculum of every high school around the world. What book would you choose? Now, let's pretend yours is already in the curriculum. What other book would you choose? It's for boys and girls around that 15, 16, 17 year old age. Well, it's funny, because my 19 year old, I'm always like, how can I get him to read a book? And I say that because he's like, mom, he says, you're not going to have their show by me, meaning like, when you're in this industry, you're not allowed to give your children too much advice when say good older, so they're going to reject that as teenagers. Anyways, the first book that came to mind, it's called The Leader Who Had No Title, and it's by Robin Sharma. And it's like a fable. It's not very big. And it's one of the books that I read early on in my days, and I have no idea why. But I love reading about leadership. I love talking about leadership, because it doesn't matter if you are leading as a parent or in your business or as a friend or as a child or as like a neighbor or just like a human in this world. And I also feel like there's so many books about how to be successful and how to do it right. This book is literally about The Leader Who Had No Title, the person that showed up as a leader made an impact and was not significant from an ego perspective and really made an impact in the world. Beautiful. I love it. I'll link to them in the show notes. And I love Robin Sharman's book, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. That was one of the first ever books that I read on this journey, like back in 2010. And I loved it. It's such a great book. Yeah, he's an OG. It's funny, because like these books just fall off the bookshelf into your lap and then just takes you on a journey. And you're just like, OK, what's next? What's next? Absolutely. All right, babe. I would love to hear how your day looks. You've got three kids. You work. Tell me what time you get up. All of your rituals, your routines, when you work. Tell me the whole day until you go to bed. I'd love to hear. And I know no two days are ever the same. So just kind of give us like a typical day in your life. I always tell people, I'm the rebel. And I rebel against routine. So if something is too structured, I will rebel against it. And I will say this is also seasonal. So based off of the season that I'm in, how my children are, all the things. Well, I'll tell you the season I'm in right now. Wait, before we go in, what human design are you and what's your star sign? I don't know my star sign. Oh, you mean like Pisces? Yeah, your Pisces. OK, cool. Do you know your human design? I'm a generator. Oh, OK, cool. Me too. Yeah, OK. OK, go. So right now, I don't get up with an alarm. I do wake up around 6.30. But before I was getting up with an alarm, and I had like a strict routine, did not like it. Now I get up, get my around 6.30-ish, watch, like get my kids up ready for school, breakfast, all the things. And that's more of like a connection time. Sometimes I'll start working right away. I have no routine. I'll just start working. And then I love going to the gym around 10 AM. I used to-- I tried so hard to do it really early in the morning. And I was like, no, I like a slow morning. I like a slow routine. And to me, freedom is being able to work my schedule around that midday. And then, yeah, I will either have some creative days where I have no meetings. And I'm just writing or I'm thinking. I love being outside a lot. So I will try to walk outside a lot to think about creative things and just do little things in my notes. Or sometimes I'm doing meetings back to back. And when I say meetings, it could be teaching. It could be coaching in some capacity. I don't really love a meeting because that's not fun. But I love when I'm there to be able to inspire people as well. And those days just fly. I could be sitting all day, not eating. And I'm just like lit up. I'm like, yes, I really like help people break through some barriers today. So it really depends on the day. But I will say the beginning of the day is pretty slow in the sense of jumping into the day. And then the evening, I kind of have my little evening routine. I try to definitely bring my phone in my room. And I'm trying to get out of that bad habit. I'm just going to say I'm a real human. But it's always like pushing the envelope of like, how can I make this better? What do I need to do? And observing my own behaviors of like, why am I doing this? So I love to have like a very slow evening routine as well. And what I do is look at the next day. And I ask myself, what can I do to get ahead of any roadblocks? Do I know the zoom links? Do I know where I'm going? Do my children have everything that they need? Are we going to be yelling about the socks that you're wearing if there's any sensory stuff? So we're going to deal with that the night before. And it's an absolute game changer. I kind of start my morning routine the night before. Yeah. That's what I can give you. I love it. Thank you for sharing, babe. I do the exact same thing just before I like a wrap up for the day. I look at my calendar for the next day. With my husband, we kind of both look at it together. We share a Google calendar so I can turn on his calendars. So we stand in front of my computer or his computer. We have a look and we go, OK, cool. Yep, oh, we need to move that. Oh, OK, you do that. I do that. Who's doing this? And we kind of look so that we know that the day is going to flow beautifully and effortlessly because we have looked at it the night before. And we also do on Sunday. We look at the whole week before. the following week and we kind of look at every day. And then again, we do it the night before to just check. Because things change all the time. But get a digital calendar with your partner. And so what we do is I'm in pink, he is in blue. And then anything to do with the whole family is in yellow. So anything to do with Nick and I or Nick or Bambi, we put it in yellow and then I'm pink, he's blue. It's super easy. I can turn his on and off. And I live by my calendar. I truly am like, I don't know how I would function without knowing what I go to next, where I go, what's the zoom link, you know, all those things. So get a digital calendar. That is going to relieve so much stress from your life. So I love that. Thank you for sharing. I have three rapid fire questions for you now. Are you ready? I'm ready. All right, babe, what is one thing that we can do today for our health? Consider how you want to feel. Yes, beautiful. Ask yourself that question. Maybe that can be one of the journal prompts for today. How do you want to feel? I love that. Beautiful. OK, next one. What is one thing that we can do for more wealth in our life? Define that for yourself and look at it constantly. So once you have a definition of what a wealthy life would look and feel like for you, keep asking yourself, how can I create more of this? There's your next journal prompt to everybody. What does that look like for you? What does wealth look like for you? And the final one is, what is one thing that we can do for more love in our life? I think it's the same thing. It's asking yourself, what is that feeling? What does love feel like for you? And not so much the cliche of love yourself more. But ask yourself, what is that feeling and try to connect to it? I'm sure you're very familiar with Mary Ann Williamson's book Return to Love. And I find myself with that next to me a lot and asking myself, where in my life do I need to return back to love? Often it's within myself first, but just projecting that to the people I care about as well. Yes. Again, another OG book, such a goody. Babe, what is something that you have changed your mind about recently? I'm like, all the time. I mean, more and more non-attached to everything. I'm like, try it. Let's see if it sticks. Let's see how long I like it for. You know what? I will say even just reflecting on today is what I'm willing to tolerate. So what I'm willing to tolerate in the sense of previously, I would allow people to take advantage of my big heart, of my empathy, my compassion. And I can be very empathetic and compassionate, but I have changed my mind on what I'm willing to-- how I'm willing to let people treat me. Yes. Beautiful. Is there anything else that you want to share or any lost potting words of wisdom that you want to leave us with? I always like to tell people, this is not difficult. It's just a returning home back to yourself. And when you really do focus on how do I want to feel? How do I want to feel when I'm about to communicate with my child? How do I feel? How do I want to feel when I am about to drive to work? When you start to align your life with that, you will realize all the things you are looking for come back home to yourself. And that is the secret. That's literally the secret that everyone is searching for. The better you feel, the easier it will get. Yes, absolutely. Well, this has been such a delight. I have loved this conversation so much. Thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing so much with us. You are helping and you are serving so many people. So I'd love to know how I and the listeners can give back to you. How can we serve you today? How can you serve me today? Go check out the podcast, emotionally uncomfortable, and listen. Write or maybe a review, share it, and honestly give back to yourself. I think anyone who is in an impact-driven business just truly wants other people to take what they say. The hard-earned information that we put out there and implement it. So I always love when people listen to this conversation. You can also welcome to Semi-Message on Instagram at Heather Showme, CHAUVIAN. Semi-DM, let me know you listened to this conversation and what the biggest impact was for you. Your biggest takeaway. Yes, and we'll link to all of that in the show notes as well. Heather, this has been such a delight. Thank you, Melissa. I hope you got so much out of this episode. I always love hearing how other mommas are doing things, and especially a momma of three. Seriously, she is amazing. Now if you loved this conversation and got a lot out of it, please subscribe to the show and leave me a review on Apple Podcast. If you haven't already, please go and do that right now, because it means that we can inspire and educate even more people together. And it also means that all of my episodes will pop up in your feed so you never have to go searching for a new episode. Now come on over to Instagram at Melissa and Breceny and tell me what you got from this episode. I absolutely love connecting with you there and I love hearing from you. So jump on over to Instagram and introduce yourself right now. I would love to hear about you and your business and where you're right in life. Come and share with me. Now before I go, I just wanted to say thank you so much for being here. I do not take it lightly. Thank you. Thank you. I'm so grateful. Every time you come back and every time you come and message me what an episode has done for you, I just am so grateful. So please keep coming and doing that because I love hearing from you. And I'm so grateful that you are making a shift within yourself and you're wanting to be a better version of yourself. You're wanting to be the best, the healthiest and the happiest version of yourself. And I just want to honor you for showing up today. You rock. Give yourself a pat on the back. Now if there is someone in your life that you can think of that would really benefit from this episode. Please share it with them right now. You can take a screenshot. You can share it on your social media, which I'll be so grateful. You can email it to them. You can text it to them. Do whatever you've got to do to get this in their ears. And until next time, don't forget that love is sexy. Healthy is liberating and wealthy isn't a dirty word.